Blockbuster

by Richard H. Smith

  He changed the topic and said,

  “What’s eating you, Nate?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Hum, you look like, like you in love,” Spence said. “Yes, you in luv.” He elongated the word as if he were blowing a low note on a saxophone.

  “What are you talking about, Spence? It’s nothing.”

  Spence persisted, smiling, “It’s a lot of nothing. Yes, you’ve got yourself a heartthrob.”

  I had to admit that his joking about it ended my bad mood. And was there anything he didn’t notice? Fool that I was, I had fallen for Carrie from the first day I met her when she had walked into the lobby seeking a summer job.

  I had been changing a Coke syrup canister on a slow Saturday afternoon in early May. From a distance she seemed about fifteen or sixteen because she was so small and slender. She was dressed in faded jeans and a plain blouse, both a size too big for her. But as she got closer, her striking blue eyes, so full of keen energy and intelligence, stunned me, transforming my impression of her. And she spoke with a voice so mature, like a woman of twenty-five, already full of achievements.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “Carrie Jenkins.” She held out her hand and gave me a strong handshake. “I saw the sign outside that you’re hiring. I’d like a job for the summer.” I detected the scent of something. Not perfume. More like a bar of soap.

  She pronounced each word with such confidence, matching the rich energy in her eyes. The effect was unnerving.

  I stuttered out a reply. “I’m the assistant manager. I’ll get you an application.”

  My hands fumbled, and I accidentally released the pressure on the cable attached to the new canister. A spray of amber Coke syrup hissed upwards, splattering the upper part of my shirt and the counter before I could close the line.

  “Damn,” I said under my breath, my face reddening with embarrassment. “How about taking a seat over there?”

  She grabbed a handful of napkins from a dispenser and offered them to me.

  “Thanks. They’re old cables. We need new ones.”

  “My fault, I distracted you.”

  I appreciated her kind explanation, hoping she believed it. I got her an application and had her working for us by the weekend.

  And so there was no fooling Spence. He had too many years experiencing the ways of people, and he had kept piling up wisdom along the way.

  Later, after everyone else had left for the evening, I helped Spence with the cleaning. With each row, he swept up the trash as I followed with the mop. He had a Coke, which he set down in the aisle. After finishing a row, he scooped it up and took a swallow from that one side of his mouth. I thought again about the woman who had hit him with the two-by-four years ago. I swept the mop from side to side to finish the row and asked,

  “Spence, if you don’t mind my asking, if you’re so smart about love, why did that woman hit you with that two-by-four?”

  He didn’t answer. Not right away. He started another row. When all the cups and popcorn boxes from the row were in the trash container and I had finished the mopping, he straightened his back and said, “Married to her for thirty years, until she got the cancer.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Long time ago.”

  We did another row in silence.

  “Nate, I’m going to tell you something,” Spence said. “A while after I first married and I’d be working in the field, before I got my own patch of land, there was a woman who lived in a house overlooking it. Sometimes, I’d walk across that field, all the way over to her house. And I’d get into bed with her. Later, I’d swear I’d never walk across that field again. And, do you know, the next day I might walk right back over there. Ain’t that the darndest thing?”

  “I guess so,” I said, after his words penetrated my thinking for a moment. “Is that why, well, your wife used the two-by-four?”

  “I love the loving. Don’t you, Nate?”

  “Of course. But, Spence, did you love your wife?”

  “Love my wife?” he said, with an intense expression on his face, its meaning I could not label. Then, the look in his eyes softened. “Not one day passes I don’t pray her alive, undead.”

  This threw me off balance. We finished the last few rows in silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I spent most of the next day wrapped up in my own troubles. I caught myself looking in the restroom mirror, self-conscious over the Asian cast to my eyes and irritated by my irregular row of lower teeth. I avoided conversations, pretending to be absorbed with preparations for Jaws, even though Carrie dominated my thoughts.

  After the last show started and most of the employees had already taken off, I noticed that the “S” in Jaws on the north face of the marquee had slipped. It was at a slant, creating a sloppy impression. I went outside to fix it.

  After straightening the letter, I sat for a while with my legs dangling over the marquee entranceway. The night air was thick with moisture, but a cooling breeze felt good. A mosquito landed on my forearm, and I swatted it away before it could bite. I took a few moments to survey the property with fresh eyes.

  At this height and in the darkness, I might as well have been in a space capsule on its way to Jupiter, as in 2001, a Space Odyssey. I summoned up strains from the theme music, enhancing this sense. The cars swished by the main road in both directions, like streaking comets. The light from the theater lobby shone just enough for me to notice a squirrel zigzag about near the base of the marquee. It found something worth gripping in its mouth and shot across the grass and up a pine tree. Sitting in this position, looking down on the world, partly cleansed me of resentments. I felt hungry and remembered an almost empty box of Junior Mints I had in my jacket pocket. I ate them, one by one, savoring each.

  I studied the theater building. The vast size of our main theater struck me anew, and I reminded myself that it was by far the biggest in the area. It stretched down a natural slope that had probably made the grading easy when constructed about twenty years earlier. Just a simple structure, red brick with no frills, and yet it had a grandeur to it. Sitting there, sturdy and sphinxlike in the night, it was a functioning monument to the movie theater business.

  It fit over 750 people. With rocking-chair seating, full stereophonic sound, and a super widescreen, it was the obvious choice for Jaws over other theaters. We rarely filled it, but when we did, it was exhilarating. True, the headaches caused by foul-ups magnified as the crowds got bigger. The law of averages resulted in more people complaining, getting sick, stealing, defiling property, you name it. But there was no denying the energy that the crowds produced. A sold-out crowd meant that the movie was good and people were enjoying themselves. If someone was on a diet, to heck with that. Time to have a tub of popcorn, maybe with butter, a box of Raisinets, and Coke to wash it all down. What was life for if you couldn’t indulge at the movies? Some of us completed our romantic dreams at the movies, lost it at the movies, and in more ways than one. Jaws, by all indications, would be spectacular. My shoulders made a slight shake in anticipation.

  Owen’s van entered the parking lot and took a place near the marquee. He had the windows down, and I heard his 8-track tape player belting out a Led Zeppelin guitar solo. Owen, instead of coming inside, waited for the solo to end and killed the engine. He got out and stood by the driver’s side of the van. He didn’t notice me, and I stayed quiet. Then it seemed I had to stay quiet, as if I were secretly hiding within a dark corner of someone’s room. I stopped the swaying of my legs and drew them up, slowly.

  Owen glanced left and right, reached into his shirt pocket, and took out a cigarette. He lit it and inhaled. It was a joint. The distinctive smell of pot wafted past me seconds later.

  Carrie came out to meet him, and she said,

  “Don’t do that here!”

  “Hey, it’s good stuff.”

  “You’ll get caught.”

  “There’re never any cops aro
und here.”

  “But Mr. Burton’s out here.”

  “I’m scared,” Owen said, with a mock expression of terror. “I mean, he’s such a Boy Scout. Kind of naive. Don’t you think?”

  My head spun. Boy Scout. Naive. So that was what he thought of me.

  “You didn’t need to make him feel ignorant.”

  “Sorry, I can’t help it. He makes it so easy.”

  Carrie, although she had defended me, seemed to agree with him too. My face felt hot. Had they both been just humoring me? Was I even someone they took seriously? Was Carrie only being polite?

  Owen leaned over to give Carrie a kiss, but she drew her face away.

  “Come on,” Carrie said. “Let’s go. Throw that away.”

  They got inside the van, and Owen took the remaining drags from the joint. He tossed what was left of it out the window onto the asphalt, and they drove off.

  I felt like a dated figure in a Norman Rockwell magazine cover. I recalled a scene from The Incredible Shrinking Man, the science fiction movie from the 1950s. The main character, trapped in the basement of his house and terrorized by spiders, realizes he has shrunk so small that his cries for help go unheard. Owen had me nailed. I was way out of my depth, a twenty-four karat fool. There was no sugar-coating it. And I was close to hating him for it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When I came up Mrs. Roe’s driveway, I was disappointed to see the kitchen light on. Mrs. Roe was still awake. She would be full of good cheer, and I was in no mood for matching effort.

  I exited the car and saw her at the top of the back steps.

  “Ah, creeping murmur and the poring dark fills the wide vessel of the universe,” she said with a hushed, theatrical voice.

  “Mrs. Roe, you always have a good one for me.”

  “Prince Hal, before the Battle of Agincourt, come from visiting his troops by their campfires.”

  “With Jaws coming, a battle is about to start,” I said, sidestepping my ignorance of who Prince Hal was.

  “Where’s the smile I like to see you wear?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’m fine.”

  I needed to put up a better front. Even in the shadows, my face told a tale.

  I gave Byron a couple treats and took him out in the backyard for a few minutes. He looked so happy that, for a brief second, I wanted to trade places with him. A cup of tea awaited me when I returned to the kitchen.

  “Tea for two?”

  “Yeah, two for tea.”

  Mrs. Roe had placed the cup in a small, cleared space on the wide kitchen table among a spread of jigsaw pieces. She was halfway through completing the starting edges of what was probably a thousand-piece puzzle.

  “What’s the puzzle about?” I looked around for the box lid.

  “Haven’t the faintest idea. I found the pieces in a paper bag in a trunk down in the basement. The trunk still had the Cunard Line label on it from when my husband and I shipped over to the States in 1946. My late sister gave it to us. Makes it more fun, not knowing.”

  “This hits the spot,” I said, after taking a careful sip of tea.

  “Nate, what’s on your mind?”

  “Getting ready for Jaws is all.”

  “I’ve heard the radio ads with the haunting music,” Mrs. Roe said with an exaggerated shake of her shoulders.

  “They’re good. They’re all over the place,” I said. “People are imitating the music around the theater all the time. There’s something about it. Something deep and primitive.”

  “Yes, yes. And do you know, even my neighbor, Marion Lester—you’ve met her—is planning on taking her grandkids. But, Nate, dear, I see from your bookmarker that you still have a way to go with the book.”

  I had been carrying my copy of The Last of the Mohicans with me. I’d set it on the kitchen counter as I came in. The bookmark’s place hadn’t changed for several days. She paused for a moment and gave me a steady gaze.

  “What is it, Mrs. Roe? What’s making you stare?”

  “A cat can look at a king,” she said, laughing. “I daresay you remind me of several boys I had when I was teaching, and I have an idea. They were bright, but they had something, a condition of a sort, that held them back. I suspect you have the visual form.”

  “A condition?” I didn’t like having a condition.

  “I say condition, but the important thing about it is that it is something that interferes with the normal thinking of an otherwise capable person. And so, a very bright person can seem, and only seem mind you, limited, and unfairly so. Dyslexia is the name for it. This, Nate, I believe, is why you say you are a slow reader.”

  “Dyslexia?” I felt defensive, though she wouldn’t want me to feel this way.

  “Nate, dear, let me show you an example. Sometimes, you transpose letters. Look, I’ve saved one of your written notes.”

  She showed me a slip of paper upon which I’d written a note a week earlier. She must have had it handy for a while, waiting for the right moment to show me.

  “Here, you spelled ‘cat’ as ‘act’, reversing the order of letters.”

  “I did that?” I said, hardly believing it.

  “You must realize that these are easy words, words you know. I’ve seen you do it at Scrabble too. That’s one clue, when someone does it for simple words, ones that anyone would know, really.”

  “Even the easy ones,” I said with a sense of revelation. Yes, this was the key point. I recalled the mistake I’d made with the marquee letters and revisited the embarrassment.

  “I know you don’t think badly of your abilities, but, still, I don’t want you selling yourself short. You’re a bright lad with a nimble mind.”

  Mrs. Roe told me more. She pointed out other things I did that were giveaway signs. My case was mild, which made it seem like I was just a slow reader. She said she could help me if I were interested. There were professionals she knew from her days as a teacher who could do a more complete diagnosis. There were things that could be done to overcome it, even for an adult like myself.

  This excited me. I had been taken aback at first. Who wants to be diagnosed with dyslexia? Sounded like a disease. And yet, I liked this kind of explanation for why I was such a slow reader. I never thought I had a slow mind. Actually, I thought I had a quick mind. But I must have feared I was slow, maybe even partly believed it.

  “I guess my reading has bothered me. But this fits,” I said. I remembered when I was in fifth grade. The school placed me in the slower class because my reading scores were low. Doubts had burrowed their way into my young self. But soon they moved me up to the top class because of what I had said in class. Also, I had a good memory. Testing, timed testing with reading, was the problem, not me.

  I added, “So, this can be corrected?”

  “Especially now we’re understanding it better. Big bowls take a long time to fill. Oh, and there’s one more thing. Let’s have a look at your tea leaves, shall we?”

  “Tea leaves?”

  She pulled my teacup toward her. A few leaves had risen to the surface, forming a slow, circling pattern.

  “I will discover to yourself, that of yourself, which you yet know not of.”

  Another line I couldn’t place.

  “Ah, yes,” she continued. “This looks good, very good indeed. I can’t say what will happen. And it won’t happen right away. But, as I say, marvelous things are in your future.”

  I gave her a skeptical look but went along for the fun of it.

  She slipped a ring off her finger and let me hold it, examine it.

  “It belonged to my dear mum. She ran a spiritualist church in Manchester. She ran seances, connected with the dead, and looked into the future. Reading tea leaves was one of her talents. She had the gift. I like to think I have the power too. Her ring might help?”

  “Stop pulling my leg, Mrs. Roe.” Though I wanted to believe it.

  “Heavens no. Whatever do you mean? I wouldn’t think of it, not over a serious matter
such as this, gracious me,” she said, a twinkle in her eye as she took the ring back and replaced it on her finger.

  She added, “And of course, the roe is the best part of the fish.”

  I laughed, my bad mood now faded.

  I asked Mrs. Roe whether she had a book of Robert Frost’s poems. I hoped to learn more about Frost. What would a larger sample of his poems be like? I wanted to be impressed, to prove I was right choosing him. As I figured, she quickly found her volume of his collected works and placed it in my hands with much satisfaction and pleasure.

  Before turning in, I asked her, “Was Frost a reactionary?”

  “Reactionary?” she said. “No, I think that would be going too far. Conservative, yes—reactionary no—in so far any label fits such a man.”

  “Afterall,” I said. “Why would President Kennedy, a Democrat, ask him to read a poem at his inaugural?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Would you call him old-fashioned?”

  Mrs. Roe laughed. “Well, he would be over 100 if he were alive today. Some would call him so. In some ways. Yet his best poems are for all time. Let me pick one for you to read before you go to sleep. Ask yourself if it seems old-fashioned.” She thumbed through the pages and came to one she had earmarked at another time. “Design” was its title.

  Once in bed, I read the poem. I liked it from the first lines:

  I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

  On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

  Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth —

  I had one foot dangling a little over the edge of the bed, and I pulled it in quickly.

  Assorted characters of death and blight

  Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

  Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth —

  A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

  And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

  These lines were bone-chilling and got me thinking about the Jaws poster yet again. Suddenly, a pride welled up within me over my choice of Frost. Hardly mere stuff for middle school. Hardly old-fashioned. And the rest of the poem was good too: