Just then a bolt of lightning sharked down the sky with a clipped retort of thunder. It startled Mittie, and he lurched backward into the man who was pushing at him from behind. It was fat Bobbie the Shriner. Mittie had inadvertently elbowed him in the nose.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” snarled Bobbie. “Dumb Jew.”
Mittie whirled, his nostrils flared open, but Bobbie stiff-armed him into the side of the building. Mittie cracked his head against the wall, slumped to the ground, and Bobbie passed on with the rest of the crowd. Mittie and I were left alone. The rain hurt, hitting hot sweat, and a rancid smell steamed from my jacket.
I was suddenly achingly exhausted. I wanted more than anything to go home, any home, and fall in any bed. I had been in Floren Park less than thirty-six hours. And too much had happened, too much to worry over, deal with, see, too much food and drink. Too many people.
But Mittie refused to get in the Red Bus or even to step inside the theater to be out of the rain. He had the keys to both so I was handcuffed, especially since Spurgeon’s Great Dane still guarded the other end of the parking lot, and any retreat back to the Red Lagoon was cut off by a patrol car that had screeched up unbearably loud and bright to the entrance of the bar; two policemen were standing in the doorway pushing people out.
So I walked over and sat beside Mittie on the bank of the creek, where he had decided to lie down for a while. The black water was rushing past us, furious, insane, slapping at the rocks and siding, almost up to the edge of the bank, so high that it hit against the bottom of the wooden bridge that spanned the creek about twenty feet up from where we were sitting.
“Look how high that water is! The bridge is going to go,” I said, hoping to arouse him.
Mittie didn’t answer. A cut on his cheek had opened, and rain washed the blood down, red-black through the caked mud, into his mustache. My mouth tasted salty; my tongue hurt from where I had bitten it. My head ached, so did my neck, arms, legs, and back and heart. I stared at the water.
Finally Mittie sat up and spoke. “What’s the use?” he said. I agreed. He went on, “Everything I touch turns to shit in my hands. Did you see what that guy did to me?”
“Which one?” I asked. The toadie who had flattened him in the bar, or Bobbie who had slammed him into the wall outside, or Spur, or me?
“Does that to me, and what do I do? Take it! Lie down and suffer. The suffering tribe! I hope he burns in hell. Shit.”
Listening to Mittie talk embarrassed me, made me ashamed for him and of him and of myself.
Suddenly a car with one headlight screeched into the lot behind us. It was Wolfstein’s Austin Healy, now the shorter for a crushed front end. Leila got out of it. How did she know we were there? Spur? The manager? Oracles, visions, crystal balls? She had on a beat-up raccoon coat over her robe and some silver boots, probably relics of old majorette days. I stood up and called to her. Mittie grabbed my arm.
“Why did you do that?” he hissed at me. “I don’t want her to see me.”
He pushed up off my shoulder, digging into a bruise, vaulted to his feet, and started running along the bank, away from Leila’s approach, toward the bridge.
“STOP HIM!” Leila called, and I obediently took off after him. He got to the bridge, ran halfway across, then climbed the side rail, poised himself, and just as I caught up with him, jumped. I threw myself at his back, but missed him.
“Oh, Christ, Mittie, for Christ’s sake,” Leila called.
Straddling the side rail, I leaned over to get a closer look at the foaming chum I was going to have to dive into in order to rescue my employer, my drinking pal, my rival. But before I jumped, Mittie’s head appeared. Then his shoulders. Then his gleaming belt buckle. The water was only waist high.
We could see that he was clutching his left arm, hugging it with his right. “YUH-OWWWHH!” he cried.
Scrambling back from the bridge, I rushed to the point on the bank closest to Mittie. There I skidded down and out into the current. From shore, Leila tugged at me, and I stretched out to tug at Mittie. Slowly we landed him.
“I think I’ve broken my arm,” he screamed.
“Well, Mittie,” Leila said softly. She looked at the arm, felt it, moved it, “It looks like you’ve broken your watch too.”
This time we did not ask Dr. Ferrell to make a house call, but drove to wake him up at his office-home instead. We found he had not been sleeping.
“I hate life,” Mittie mumbled as we helped him up onto the examining table. His arm was not, after all, broken—merely bruised. He had, however, pulled a muscle, jammed a finger, and crisscrossed his legs with nicks and cuts. We told Dr. Ferrell that Mittie, slipping in the mud, had accidentally fallen into the creek. But he must not have believed us, for when we were leaving (cleansed, braced, and bandaged), he put his hand on Mittie’s shoulder and spoke to him cheerfully, “I know it’s enough to make you think it’s not worth it, to drive you mad. I mean, if the world’s that crazy, then nothing makes any sense. Kind of puts our problems in a sort of perspective, though.”
We looked at him puzzledly. “What do you mean?” Leila asked.
“Kennedy.” He rubbed his forehead with his hand.
“Did Bobby lose the primary? Oh, he couldn’t have!” Leila moaned. The Kennedys received from her a fidelity unwavering; more absolute, it struck me, than more immediate passions.
Ferrell stared at each of us. “Where have you been? I thought you’d heard. Some maniac shot Bobby a couple of hours ago. He’s not expected to live.”
Part Two
The Land of the Lion
Chapter 8
Depression
We of the Red Lagoon world survived. And even, after a while, stopped talking about the loss of Robert Kennedy too. And settled into the frenetic, yet rather enjoyably exhausting routine of performing daily before a live audience, whose critical and financial favor we courted, in the reverse order.
Two weeks went by, filled mostly with onstage dramatics, as opposed to the in-the-wings variety that had so crowded my opening days with the company. Sabby Norah got poison ivy and Mittie shocked himself sticking a screwdriver into a live socket, but otherwise routine prevailed. To my relief, I even discovered I had an actual flair for set designing, and having been complimented on my modernistic approach to The Fantastiks (a style arrived at by the genius of ignorance and consisting largely of the chairs and tables used during rehearsals), I felt optimistic about taking on the construction of a “real set.”
With this confidence in mind, I checked out the three books on stage production, carpentry in the home, and working with wood owned by the Floren Park Public Library. These I conspicuously read over lunch and dinner. Meanwhile, I had other duties. I painted local advertisements on our drop curtain, varnished Leila’s face on the barroom floor, sat with an eager smile in the box office, assisted nervously in the light booth, drove to the supermarket to buy supplies for the concession stand, and baby-sat for Maisie and Davy. At Mittie’s request, I also agreed to act the part of the sheriff in the street-canvassing pantomime, though, feeling like an idiot, I was rather stiff in the role. The previous sheriff, having risen to stardom as the Belle of Black Bottom Gulch, refused to continue in the part, or more particularly, in the outfit. Her name was Margery Dosk, and she was, according to Joely Finn, heavily involved with Marlin Owen, the burly fellow who played the heroes in our mellerdrammers. It was their second mutual summer. Maisie had already told me that Marlin had a “sex book” and “smoked drugs.” As usual, she was right about both, being uncannily canny for a four-year-old. She also told me another of the guys had a real glass eye.
The fact that both children seemed to take pleasure in my company during those weeks was always flattering and only occasionally annoying. I spent a lot of time with them. Together we constructed forts, painted people and places, collected interesting obje
cts like dead beetles and strips of tire treads, made-believe, and watched our surroundings. Maisie was an excellent cardplayer (Go-Fish and Concentration being her best games), and without my detecting her in any acts of legerdemain, she consistently beat me at both. Davy was a less complicated child than his sister: open, easily happy, easily hurt. I found myself liking them.
Weekends at the Red Lagoon were much like other days, except that on two Saturday mornings, Leila got us all up at dawn to drive fifty miles somewhere to put on a puppet show at a camp where city projects children were brought to spend a week of their lives in natural surroundings. They were always glad to see her.
As for the rest of my leisure time, Verl and Dennis drove into Floren Park every once in a while. We went fishing and played Scrabble, and Verl talked to me; he somehow seemed to get me connected with what was going on inside of me, and I would have missed him more had I not begun to become good friends with Joely Finn, who shared with Verl some of that weight that always acted on me like ballast to a skittery craft. Joely was less hopeful, though, and angrier.
Meanwhile, Mittie and Leila had apparently signed at least a temporary moratorium on their disagreements. However, except in a business way, they appeared to see little of each other, and I, partly by design, saw less of both. I found out it had been Tony Menelade who had called Leila about Mittie, apparently who got drunk and into fights there all the time.
Nathan Wolfstein was still alive and functional, despite Dr. Ferrell’s prediction, as well as his admonitions. While blocking in a scene, he would sweep and stalk around the stage, cigarette in one shaking hand, a cup of bourbon in the other, looking like a heron with the d.t.’s. His directing techniques, nonetheless, impressed me as more professional than anything else I’d seen connected with the Red Lagoon. Understanding, in a very fine, precise way, the individual limitations of his material (the company players), he still managed to elicit from them skills that surprised even the actors involved. An autocrat by intent, he was a midwife in strategy; by wheedling, coaxing, flattering, nudging, and frightening them, he delivered very good performances from very inexperienced people, while leaving them the satisfying impression that they had given birth to their own dramatic Muses. I enjoyed watching him work; it was like watching a good pitcher.
Wolfstein directed the “real plays,” which were presented on Wednesday and Thursday nights when there were fewer vacationers wandering in Floren Park. Mittie remained in charge of the melodramas. The latter were our moneymakers, therefore offered to the public on Saturday and Sunday matinees, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights. The “real plays” were primarily for the private pleasure of the company (since few people came to see them), as well as for the education of the “apprentices.” Mittie, after all, advertised the Red Lagoon Players as a “training school” for young actors, and since each apprentice paid $400 in advance for this vocational program (on his father’s advice, Mittie estimated $900 per pupil per summer, awarded each a $500 scholarship because of his or her special qualifications, and asked that the remaining $400 be mailed to him by check or money order before their arrival), it was incumbent on the teaching staff to offer instruction in more aspects of The Theater than simply that perennial favorite The Belle of B.B.G.
The teaching staff was composed of Mittie, Leila, Wolfstein, Joely Finn (who was a graduate student at the U.C.L.A. film school in the winters and stage manager of the R.L. Players in the summers), plus any apprentice who had been there more than one summer. The second-run apprentices were Marlin Owen, who had graduated from Ohio State and lived with his widowed mother in Dayton; his girlfriend Margery Dosk, the Belle from Indiana; and Seymour Mink, who stayed with his grandparents in Newark, New Jersey, and wanted to be a doctor. There for the first time this summer were Sabby Norah, who had just graduated from a small Nebraska high school; myself; Ashton Krinkle, a delicate young man who had a 1-Y classification, wore a black cloak, and read—or was purported to read—Swinburne in his room; Pete Barney, who was overweight and had asthma and played the piano in a bowler hat; Suzanne Steinitz, who claimed to know the Strasbergs and claimed to be from Manhattan, though all her mail came from Delaware; Ronny Tiorino, who really was from Manhattan and thought he was Marlon Brando; and Jennifer Thatcher, who was from Alabama and had sung in all her school plays and whose aching grief was that she had been born too late to try out for Scarlett O’Hara. There was one other picture on the castboard: Buddy Smith, who had never come because be had been drafted in May; Mittie left it up. I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend time with any of them except Suzanne, whom I took to the movies from time to time; she hated bars, and there were no coffeehouses in town. Together we kept up with what was going on in New York.
The third week in June, Wolfstein was directing Hedda Gabler, and Leila had the lead. Since she had recently played the lead in The Fantastiks too, the Starks were charged in the suggestion box (by Suzanne) with rank nepotism. Actually, Leila kept held the latter part only two nights, before Mittie—without the slightest twinge of uxoriousness—had given it to her understudy, Jennifer, who lacked some of Leila’s physical appeal, but did manage to sing on key. Regarding Leila, a guy had once yelled from the audience, “Christ! Is she going to sing again?”
Meanwhile, I had been diligent with a T-bar and No. 3 pencil up in my studio. And I was confident in my mastery of scenic skills. I now knew how to build a flat, making tall screens of frame and canvas, coupling them side by side into a miraculously standing wall. I now knew how to scumble, spatter, sponge, roll, trim, trip, strike, and fly. I now knew the meaning of flippers, and wagons, and two-folds, and toggle-rails, and brace cleats, stage pegs, boomerangs, tormentors. I now knew the meaning of ellipsoidal reflector.
And like the walls of a De Mule Jericho reversed, the walls of Hedda Gabler’s house, complete with windows and doors, were up a good half-hour before the curtain rose on June 21st. Onstage was a drawing room smug with rummaged Victorian furniture, behind which, by opening some double doors, one could walk a few feet into a small sitting room upstage center. And then, my favorite effect, a garden cultivated stage left, with assorted trees blooming in paper-mâché on a painted backdrop, and with a white garden bench, all visible to the audience whenever Hedda chose to draw back the rich drapes that covered my paneless glass French doors.
For these triumphal edifices, I anticipated laurel; instead, I was handed birch switches by the malign fates (and by several members of the company).
First of all, my flats did not seem to fit together as well on the stage as they had in my new sketchbook; arithmetic was always my weakest subject. Instead, they tended to buckle and gape rather unbecomingly. Next, the side sections were so long that when we attached them to the back wall, there was no room left behind it for the sitting room no matter how we squeezed the furniture together. We couldn’t pull the sections forward because of the permanent flats which extended from either side of the proscenium to mask the wings from the spectators’ view. So our only recourse was to jockey the sides at wider angles. This took care of the depth problem, but left the back wall a half-foot too long on each end so that we couldn’t lash it to the sides frame-end to frame-end in the normal secure manner, but were forced simply to lean the flats against each other, brace them, and run a rope around the back of all three sections—above the door and window lines—and hope it held them.
In addition, the individual flats (four to a wall) proved to be of rather varying heights, and gave the overall impression of a graph of the monthly stock market report. We passed it off as expressionism, but frankly it was not what one would expect in the drawing room of an upper-middle-class home.
As I stapled the last lilac, the curtain rose on these slight imperfections only fifteen minutes late. Because it was raining and both the movie houses in Floren Park happened to be showing The Absent-Minded Professor, our house was larger than it usually was for one of our Wednesday night classics. Forty-three accidental pa
trons of the arts were therefore treated, as Joely Finn cruelly noted, to the surprise drawing room comedy of the summer season.
At 8:45, having done my best by my sets, I hurried over to the lighting booth, where I was to assist Seymour Mink at the control board. The first act moved along reasonably close to the text. Only one really noticeable slip occurred, when the large portrait of Hedda’s father, General Gabler, slipped off the wall and onto the head of her visitor (an elderly aunt played with the sniffles by Sabby Norah), knocking the tea from her hand and the lines from her head.
Our real difficulties did not begin until the first intermission; they continued, however, uninterruptedly, past the final curtain. Hedda Gabler (played with the smolders by Leila) had distinctly stated in Act I that she planned to remove her piano from the drawing room into her (offstage) bedroom. A writing table, she said, would be put in its place. Sadly we discovered that because of the elaborate way we had tied the set together, it was impossible to get the piano off without dismantling the walls. So we were forced to leave it onstage covered with a tapestry and to place the writing table in front of it. This cut down considerably on the acting area and hampered the actors’ movements, for now they could sit on the sofa in the center of the stage, and at the same time, scribble at the writing table, which was presumably set against the far wall. Home had a cluttered look
We solved a related problem (that Hedda was supposed to go offstage from time to time to play this same piano) by scurrying around to locate a record player and a classical record, and setting them up in the wings. (Our original plan, dependent on the piano’s being off in the bedroom, was to have Ashton Krinkle actually play the Chopin Nocturne he knew on it.) Unfortunately, the only classical record Pete Barney, not an aficionado anyhow, could find in the theater happened to be a symphony rather than a solo piano piece. Hedda’s resulting musical virtuosity (as she walked into her bedroom and performed, alone, Beethoven’s Fifth), probably caused our audience to wonder why she had not chosen a career on the concert stage as a clear phenomenon, rather than settling for the drudgery of housewifery that she so obviously despised.
The Delectable Mountains Page 8
