“We’ll be the first! A real three-act play right on the river. Introducing the interior of America to the finer dramatic arts.” He was framed by the window light now, which seemed to emanate from his limbs rather than shine through the glass. A three-act play! I thought of all the new costumes that would require.
“We only have about a month, so we’ll have to rehearse every morning until then. It’s not Shakespeare, mind,” he said, looking at Thaddeus, “no important speeches. We have to remember the audience we have—farmers and merchants wanting a bit of an escape. But you’ll be able to sink yourself into a role for all that.”
“That’s the idea!” Thaddeus said. He seemed to puff up with satisfaction.
“And we’ll need a whole line of new costumes,” Hugo went on, looking at me. Although I’d been thinking just that, when his eyes met mine, all my blood seemed to rush out toward the tips of my fingers. I wanted to begin right away.
“Have you chosen a play?” I asked. Hugo was holding a script in his hand on oversized paper bound in oilcloth. As an answer, he waved it up and down like a flag.
“The Midnight Hour,” he said. “Ruse Contre Ruse in the French.”
Two of the windows behind him were open and I heard a steamboat puff hard like an old woman pressing her lips together and then blowing out air to show her disapproval. Hugo was smiling broadly. His enthusiasm seemed to go around the room like someone tapping us each on the shoulder. The actors and actresses seemed just as excited as he was, except Mr. Niffen, who looked different only in that he had put down his newspaper to listen.
Pinky glanced at Liddy, something hungry in his face.
“I’ve seen that,” he said to Hugo. “It’s good fun. Who will play the marquis?”
“That would be Thaddeus. And Mr. Niffen will play Sebastian. Liddy will be Julia, of course, and I’ll stand up for the General.”
Pinky’s ears drooped forward in disappointment, but Liddy’s face positively shone.
“Wonderful idea. But won’t the audience grow bored?” Mrs. Niffen asked, as usual mixing her compliment with a complaint so that you didn’t know which she truly meant.
“It’s a comedy,” Hugo told her. “And it’s short.” He bounced up and down on his toes and looked at our faces, resting at last on mine. His smile broadened. “What do you say, May? Think you can pin together a wardrobe in three or four weeks?”
I felt myself smile in spite of his suggestion of pinning. “I can try.”
• • •
We were tied up in Listerville, Indiana, and as soon as we could, Liddy and I went up into town to look at fabric. Celia trailed a few steps behind us reading a book while she walked. There was a high wind coming off the river and the tree leaves waved this way and that as if, Liddy said playfully, they were avoiding a conversation.
She was in good spirits. We all were. The prospect of a new play and all the costumes that it would need made me happy and restless. I would be overseeing an entire production from scratch, and I wanted to start everything at once. Hugo had given me a list of the characters—the Marquis, the General, the young ingénue, and so on. The ingénue—Liddy—would be the easiest.
“Something pastel, of course,” Liddy was saying. “Youthful. Maybe a large hat? Does it take place in the summer?”
“We don’t want to hide your face. Celia, watch yourself!” Celia had just tripped over a root in the dirt road. I held out my hand for the book. It was a slim leather volume with a title etched in gold. “Songs Along the River,” I read aloud. Liddy turned her face away but not before I’d gotten the impression she was blushing. Then she said quickly,
“What’s that boy got?”
Underneath a large sycamore tree at one corner of the town square sat a little black boy about six or seven years old.
“Happy in a box!” the boy called out when he saw us. Nested in his lap was a muddy cardboard box. “Come see happy in a box, only a penny a look!”
When we came up to him he smiled, showing a space where his two front teeth had once been; now two stony white nubs were beginning to show themselves. He was barefoot and wore a too-long shirt with the cuffs rolled up. His eyes were bright and friendly.
“I’d like to see what happy looks like,” Liddy said, opening her purse and giving the boy a penny.
He was careful to keep one hand on the box lid. “Have to crunch down over it, ma’am,” he instructed.
The three of us knelt on the grass. Then the boy lifted the lid a couple of inches and I saw a very small sand-colored toad inside, with a couple of stalks of curved green grass in the center next to a small gray stone.
“This is happiness?” Liddy asked. Celia poked her finger in, trying to make the toad turn.
“Happy,” the boy corrected. “You notice how his color’s that unusual? And look here at these little red spots downside his back: that’s what make him lucky.”
An older man suddenly walked up to us as we knelt there. He was short and wore good clothes and had a moustache with long waxed ends. A rolled newspaper was wedged under one arm and he carried an air of knowing better than anyone else what was what.
“Happy in a box, sir,” the boy said to him uncertainly. “A penny a look.”
The man leaned over and pulled up the box lid without paying. He peered inside. “What’s this? A frog? You’ve asked these ladies to pay to look at a frog? Why, they could see twenty or more if they just stepped over toward the creek! Give them their coin back at once!”
He had a southern accent although we were in the north, in Indiana. The boy opened his palm and the man took the penny. But he did not give it back to Liddy at once.
“I’m sorry, ladies. This boy ought to be whipped. I would do it myself if I had a whip on me.” He took his rolled paper out from under his arm as if that might do in a pinch. “Imagine! Asking folk money to see a frog!”
I looked at Liddy, unsure what to do. A kind of stubbornness crossed her face. She stood up and took the penny from the man and gave it back to the boy.
“It’s a frog in a box,” she said. “I could see twenty in a creek, but I’ve never seen one in a box before.”
The man pulled his chin back, astonished, and his face became red with anger. Celia and I stood up now, too, bolstering Liddy on either side.
“You’ll ruin him for good, honest work,” the man told her in a booming voice.
Liddy ignored him and turned to the boy. “Why do you call him Happy?” she asked.
The boy looked at her carefully, as if uncertain whether he should talk. He stood up and pulled the box closer to his chest. “Because he haps about,” he said.
“Get along now, you,” the man said roughly, prodding him with the end of his rolled newspaper. “Don’t come back along here with your tricks, d’you hear?”
The boy scampered off down the street, holding the box in his hands in front of him like a tray. Once he was far enough away from us to feel safe, he slowed down and began skipping.
But the red-faced man wasn’t finished with us. “If you think you’ve done that boy a good turn, you’re mistaken. Hard enough to get them to understand honest work. This is what comes from freeing them. Damn liberals. Damn abolitionists. It’s you women,” he said.
“Oh, did women write up the legislature for the free states?” Liddy asked. Her face had become as red as the old man’s.
“Now, don’t be smart. You make men soft is what you do. Soften them up like the sun.”
Like the ends of his moustache, I thought, which were beginning to look oily in the heat.
Liddy turned her back to him in an exaggerated, theatrical manner. When we were out of earshot she said, “Imagine bullying a young boy like that. A young, harmless boy.”
For a moment the wind blew hard against us, and Celia took hold of Liddy’s hand. Liddy was more of a guardian to Celia than Celia’s own aunt was. Every night before a performance the three of us gathered in the green room to put on costumes and makeup and di
scuss the crowd we might have that night. She and Celia let me into their company as though they’d been waiting for me, and I couldn’t help but compare this to Comfort’s manner, her jealousies and petty remarks, her way of keeping me out, which I thought I hadn’t minded—at the time I didn’t think I wanted to be included. But I enjoyed those minutes with Liddy and Celia before every show. I had never heard Liddy be petty, not once, and I understood why Pinky watched her, waiting for his chance. It was not just because she was pretty. She had a big heart, and I admired that. I wasn’t surprised that Liddy would take the boy’s side.
But she was young, too. By the time we got to the shop, she had already forgotten about the man with the waxed moustache. She laughed at something—maybe the wind or maybe the thought of her new dress—and she swung her hand forward with Celia’s and then back again.
“Let’s see if they have some pink fabric,” she said. “A pretty pink ingénue.”
• • •
Thaddeus’s sense of importance hadn’t diminished, and he came to me that evening with ideas about his costume, which involved “as much shine as you can manage”; he suggested a gold cape. When he had played opposite Comfort in Pittsburgh, Thaddeus wore a very large top hat with a red feather, and he wondered if I might make one just like it for The Midnight Hour.
“I thought the action took place in Spain,” I asked.
“Spain or France, but that doesn’t matter,” he said. I disagreed. It did matter. If the play took place in Spain, he should wear Spanish clothes.
“The main idea is to make me stand out,” he said, “like you did for your cousin. Comfort always looked better than—than the rest of us.” I had the feeling he was about to say better than me. He looked at me curiously. “What word do you have of her?”
“None,” I told him. “Remember, she thinks I’m back home.”
“Does she? Oh, yes, that’s right,” he said, and I was amazed he could have forgotten our little scheme so quickly. Like Comfort or Aesop’s grasshopper, Thaddeus lived only for the day at hand. But, also like Comfort, his days playing the charming young lead were numbered, what with his thinning hair and swelling paunch. I resolved to make as shiny a cape for him as I could.
However, a week or so later I did come across a notice about Comfort, one that confused and worried me. I could not say that I’d been looking for news all this time, but I did make it a point to read about any forthcoming lectures advertised on post office walls, a habit I started while waiting for Postmaster Mundy back in Jacksonville. Hugo’s new play was now in closed rehearsal, and I was under strict orders to stay away from the auditorium—which was fine with me, since I was spending more and more time each day searching out fabric and props.
The notice had been put up in Birchfield, Indiana, where we had landed one hot, humid morning. The river was swollen high from a week of rain, and the pecan trees lining the bank looked like a wall of fresh, green leaves. As I walked into town with Hugo I could hear heat thunder in the distance. He took my arm, which he usually did now. We often climbed up muddy banks or slippery paths to get to the dirt roads that led to town, and I appreciated his steadying hand, though it meant we walked rather close to one another. That day Hugo smelled like freshly cut wood, and I asked him if he’d been repairing the boat.
“Just a bit of prop making,” he said, and then he abruptly changed the subject as though it were a secret; I found out in due time that it was. “Now, May, how did you come to be so good at sewing? You should have seen my sister sweating over a needle.”
I told him about my mother and how she never needed a rule to keep her hems straight, and about my father, who was so particular about his wheels of cheese. I came from a family of perfectionists.
“Have to be a perfectionist,” Hugo said, “and patient, too, to make cheese.”
We were beginning to know each other’s pasts, and to my surprise I liked that he asked me questions about myself. Hitherto I had thought of myself as a private person, like my mother. It occurs to me now that perhaps I just hadn’t had much chance before this to become acquainted with another person, a new neighbor, a new customer; I had lived quietly alone with my mother, and when she died, I lived alone with Comfort. And Comfort, I was beginning to see, took great pains to keep me away from anyone else. As on the Moselle, she laughed at me and changed the subject if I drew too much attention.
Hugo and I stopped off first to pay our landing fees at Birchfield’s business office, which was in its own small building between the post office and the saddlery. It had a tin roof, and inside it was even hotter than outside. While Hugo paid our fees, I went over to look at the notices pinned up on the far wall, mostly to be closer to the open window.
“Showboat, that right?” The clerk smiled, holding out a pen for Hugo to sign his name. “Wife and I go to your show every year. Still have the dog?”
Outside, the thunder rumbled again and I saw that many of the notices had been folded over by the wind. I straightened a few out—one advertising sperm oil and another offering brown French linens at a discount. As I turned over a third one, I saw printed in heavy block letters:
COMFORT VERTUE,
The Abolitionist.
Even though I’d been prepared to see, had even sought out, such a notice, I still felt a ripple of warm shock go through me as though I’d come upon something wholly unexpected. Her name spelled out in letters as large as a half-smoked cigar made her seem like a villain, and my shock increased as I read further. It wasn’t an advertisement for her lecture, as I first thought, but rather a call to arms.
COMFORT VERTUE,
The Abolitionist.
That unvirtuous New York actress COMFORT VERTUE, will hold forth tomorrow evening, at the Quaker Meeting House in Viola, Indiana. The present is a fair opportunity for the friends of the Union to snake Vertue out! A purse of $50 has been raised by a number of patriotic citizens to reward that individual who shall first hit the fair lady square above the neck with fruit or vegetable of their choice so that she may learn what happens to those who invade our soil and try to rally our men in an unjust cause! Friends, we must be vigilant!
As I read over the notice again I felt a sharp twinge in my bad ear. “Unvirtuous”—was that even a proper word? And Comfort was no more a New York actress than she was an actress from anyplace else, although I had a feeling she would like that moniker. But the real problem was the fruit or vegetable of choice. If nothing else, I should warn Comfort about what was brewing if I could. How many inns were there in Viola, Indiana? There might be rooming houses, too. Would a letter reach her in time?
“All right, then,” I heard Hugo say, and the sound of coins clinking on the desktop behind me. I quickly pulled the notice off its pin, folded it up, and put it in my pocket.
“We’ll get to Green River in a couple of days,” Hugo said as we went out the door. “That’s a pretty spot, and we always get a good crowd. What’s tomorrow, June second? Why, isn’t that your birthday, May?”
“My birthday is June third,” I told him.
“Oh, that’s right, that’s right,” Hugo said. He had a card file in his office with all of our names, winter addresses, birthdays, and next of kin written down in case of emergency. “The day after that, then. Sunday. Now, that’s convenient, what? Very convenient.”
I was hardly listening to him, I was still thinking about Comfort. “Where do we go tomorrow?” I asked. “To Viola?”
“Either Viola or across the river to Beswick,” he said. “I haven’t made up my mind.”
His words beat a rhythm with that particular English staccato, as if every fourth syllable was a bullet or a bee. I could see the flag of the Floating Theatre in the distance flutter like a handkerchief. The wind was getting stronger now, and a sheath of dark clouds had begun to crawl over the river.
Alpha, beta, gamma, delta.
“I’ve always wanted to see Viola,” I said.
“Have you, then? Why is that?”
&
nbsp; I knew as little about Viola as I did any other town on the river. I cast around in my mind for something that might give it distinction.
“My friend was born in Viola,” I said.
“In Viola? But wasn’t it platted out only ten years ago or thereabouts?”
I didn’t say anything. The first lie wasn’t the trickiest, I was learning; it was the one that came after that.
Hugo pulled out his handkerchief and swiped it across his forehead. Then he took off his straw hat, wiped his hairline and nape, and then folded the handkerchief back into a damp square and pushed it into his pocket.
“Well, it’s all the same to me,” he said, replacing his hat. He smiled at me. “Viola it is.”
10
The next morning I woke early, before the sun rose, even before Leo and Hugo got up to move the boat to Viola. I dressed and made my way down in the darkness to the green room, where two box irons were kept like metal turtles in their shells. Liddy and Celia always ironed their costumes at the very last moment before we started in on makeup, because Liddy wanted her dresses to look their best and Celia liked the smell of hot starch.
I was pleased because last night’s audience had been our best one yet: seventy-two tickets sold, mostly adults. In the front row a line of look-alike brothers, five of them, laughed heartily at every joke, emitting a fresh waft of onions each time. They all had round red faces with wide noses, and the middle brother slapped his knee at the end of every act. He was a jovial fellow with a deep laugh who looked as though he enjoyed every single thing that came his way. Afterwards, when the players had taken their bows and everyone was filing up the aisles to leave, he stepped up to the piano to talk to me.
“Finest playing I’ve heard outside of Akron,” he said. “You take lessons?”
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