The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  “Secret pitcher show?” said Arlis.

  “Landon, don’t you dare tell me that you showed that to her!” Sharline said, with her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. Hoppy tried to remain poker-faced. “Did you?” Sharline demanded. “Did you show her the ‘Assortment?’”

  “Maybe,” said Hoppy.

  “And it sure was fun,” said Helen. “More fun than a barrel of monkeys. Arlis, you wouldn’t believe all the things that folks can do with each other!”

  Ole Arlis was studying the inside of Topper and remembering how it was possible to watch a pitcher show on the wall. “Let’s see it,” Arlis said. “Rewind it and show it to me.” Hoppy pondered whether to show it to him. Probably ole Arlis didn’t know nothing but the missionary position and had never done nothing else. But Hoppy remembered what had happened the last time he’d shown “Assortment” to another feller, who was Preacher Binns, who had been turned into a sex fiend by it.

  “Helen, honey,” Hoppy said, “do you want ole Arlis to see it?”

  “Who cares, my darling?” she said. “I wish they both would just go away.” Hoppy did too. He wanted to finish with Helen the unfinished business. An idee occurred to him: he could show “Assortment” to Arlis and while Arlis was watching it, maybe with Sharline, Hoppy and Helen could get up front into Topper’s cab and finish what they’d been doing before they were so rudely interrupted. So Hoppy went ahead and rewound the reel of “Assortment” and threaded it into the projector. He restarted the delco and flicked on the switch to start the projector. But the projector wouldn’t come on. He reflicked the switch, without luck. It must have got something knocked loose when Helen crashed into it. He tested the exciting lamp, and he tested several connection wires, and he tested the path of the film through the various sprockets, but something was sure fritzed or haywire or bunged up. He spent a long time messing with the machine. By and by Helen came and draped herself across his back and said, “What’s the problem, honeybunch?”

  “This goddamn projector is on the blink,” Hoppy said.

  “Did I hurt it when I bumped into it?” she asked.

  “Maybe you did. You sure give it a good whack.”

  Hoppy spent several more minutes fiddling with the machine and then he realized he would just have to take it apart to fix it. The trouble was, he wasn’t sober enough to take it apart and fix it properly, let alone put it back together, and there was no telling how long it would take even if he was sober. Sharline offered to make a pot of coffee. Arlis told her, “Sweetheart, don’t forget what we came here for in the first place.” And then, while Hoppy was trying to concentrate on the inner workings of his projector, gabby Arlis went on a-talking, telling as how he’d been thinking, and him and Sharline had talked about it considerable, and he’d done already told his Maw the postmistress who owned the store that he was fixing to give it up, that is, he wanted to quit, and maybe see some of the world while it was still there. He hadn’t never seen much of the world. He’d never been to a bigger town than Clarksville. He had met up with some folks who’d been all the way out to California, looking for work during the Depression, and had stayed out there for quite a while until homesickness brought them back. You never dreamt of any such Paradise as California was said to be, why, folks out there even had orange trees and lemons right in their front yard! And jobs! Why, there was no end to all the high-paying jobs of work to be found all over the place. Most of the Ozark folks heading for California had to travel in old beat-up trucks loaded to the ground with all their worldly goods, but Arlis, he had him a pretty good Chevy roadster, as you know, and he could get out to California pretty quick and easy, and also he had a bit of money saved up, enough for him and Sharline to live on until he found a good job….

  Hoppy was just a little surprised that this notion didn’t seem to bother him at all. If he hadn’t been so crazy about sweet Helen, he might have actually got bothered by Arlis’ announcement of his plan. But as far as he was concerned right here and now, Arlis was welcome to take her to California or to the moon as far as he was concerned. He didn’t say this, though. In fact he didn’t say nothing.

  “Landon?” said Sharline. “Say something.”

  “Helen?” said Arlis. “Say something.”

  Hoppy was having several thoughts. He was thinking about how to get himself alone with Helen as soon as possible. Then, on a more far-seeing level, he was thinking about taking over the store after Arlis and Sharline had gone to California. He could settle down here in this town with Helen and give up the precarious business of trying to show pitcher shows.

  “I’m all confused and uncertain,” Sharline said. “Tell you’uns the truth, I aint so wild about giving up Hoppy and Topper and the road and pitcher shows and all.”

  Arlis said, “And of course I realize how this just shocks the daylights out of poor Helen, who has been planning to spend her life with me.”

  “Who’s shocked?” said Helen. “What daylights? Good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me.”

  Nobody said anything after that, for a long little time. Eventually Sharline grabbed Hoppy by his elbow and gave it a shake. “Landon!” she said. “Say something.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Hoppy asked.

  “Don’t you care?” Sharline asked. “Don’t it make you mad?”

  Helen said, “Darling Hoppy and I can look after ourselves, thank you.”

  There was something a mite familiar about all this, Hoppy suspected. He was still feeling kind of frustrated, from that unfinished sucky-suck, and he was not thinking straight on account of having drunk so much of the love-in-idleness. Hoppy abruptly had an awareness of some parallels between the four of them and the four lovers in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It also hit him belatedly that the other girl in that pitcher show was named Helena, and the one here was named Helen. This was such an odd coincidence that he began to wonder if all of this wasn’t just a dream. It sure was midsummer, although nightfall was still a ways off.

  “O me!” cried Sharline. “What news, my love? Am not I Sharline? Are not you Landon? Aint I just as fair-looking as when you first fell for me? O why are you giving me up? Ye gods forbid!”

  Although Hoppy recognized all of this as words that Hermia had spoken to Lysander, more or less, he was still touched that Sharline was saying every word not as if she was just quoting ole Mr. Shakspear but as if she meant it. So he answered her somewhat in kind: “Sorry, kiddo, but you turn my stomach, and I’ve just got feelings for Helen.”

  “O me!” cried Sharline again and thrust her face up close to Helen’s as if to bite off her nose. “You juggler! You canker-blossom! You thief of love! What, have you come by night and stolen my love’s heart from him?”

  Helen got right into the spirit of the squabble, although she was too tipsy to remember all the words. “What, will you tear impatient answers from my gentle tongue? Fie, fie, you counterfeit! You puppet, you!”

  “‘Puppet,’ huh?” Sharline said. “Are you talking about you being taller than me? Why, you painted maypole, I’m still tall enough to reach your eyes and scratch them out!”

  Helen blanched and drew back, shielding her face with her arm. The two gals went on having their catfight, partly right out of Mr. Shakspear, partly out of their own feelings, in their own words. During the showing of that pitcher show, Hoppy had noticed how the audience had been more caught up by the fight between Hermia and Helena than any other part of the show. It was the only part of the show that seemed to have the excitement of a good gunfight in a Hopalong Cassidy pitcher show. It was almost as if Sharline and Helen had their six-shooters blazing away at each other.

  Maybe they knew it too. “Why, get you gone!” Sharline said to Helen. “What’s stopping you?”

  And Helen answered as Helena, “A foolish heart that I leave here behind.”

  And Sharline, “What! With Landon?”

  And Helen, “With Arlis.”

  And then both gals burst out lau
ghing and fell into each other’s arms, and just held each other tight while they went on laughing. Hoppy and Arlis didn’t know what to make of it, but Hoppy poured a glass of the love-in-idleness for Arlis, and said to him, “Just be sure you’re looking at Helen when you drink it.” Hoppy felt the effects of the booze were wearing off on him. Maybe he would have that pot of coffee after all, and see if he couldn’t get the projector to working.

  Sharline brewed up a pot of coffee for Hoppy and Helen, but Arlis preferred to stick with the mountain whiskey, and, as he’d been asked, he kept his eyes on Helen while he drank it, which sure enough made him decide that his former girlfriend wasn’t so former after all. He developed such a hankering for her that he was no longer interested in watching the secret pitcher show. But clever Sharline said to Hoppy, “Let me see if I caint find out what’s wrong with the projector,” and she proceeded to look it over. Hoppy was glad to let her do it, because she was the only hundred-percent sober person there and also because she’d been looking after that projector ever since the days when she’d been Carl. To get away from Arlis’ grabby hands, Helen kept Sharline company while Sharline messed with the machine, and Hoppy continued to marvel at how the two gals had gone so fast from being a pair of fighting hellcats to being the best of chums.

  Wouldn’t you just know that Sharline would fix the projector? And with a wad of chewing gum! It turned out there was a loose solder on the underside of the transformer, and that piece of gum did the trick! “Assortment” didn’t have any titles or beginning as such, it just started right up, with a feller humping a gal on the fender of his auto in broad daylight, and they got a good look before Sharline stopped the projector, saying, “Nobody needs to watch this right now.” She took “Assortment” out of the machine and loaded the one leftover reel, the final reel, of “The Painted Stallion,” all that remained of their collection after Binns had stolen the rest. Hoppy asked her why she was doing that.

  “Just for old time’s sake,” she said.

  Hoppy thought it was nostalgic but bothersome to see that old familiar shot of the beautiful white woman dressed as an Indian chief atop a paint horse atop a mountain crag shooting an arrow. He was angry all over again at Emmett Binns. He felt that he’d had a calling to take “The Painted Stallion” into the backwoods and brighten the lives of folks with it. But now he couldn’t do it any more. He tried to explain to Arlis and Helen the significance of this fragment of the serial. Then he noticed that there was no sound coming from the film. Of course not, because the loudspeaker was still on top of Topper, and he hadn’t needed it to show the silent “Assortment” to Helen. He climbed the ladder on Topper’s side and brought the speaker down and inside, but there still wasn’t any sound coming from it. “Have you turned on the amplifier?” he asked Sharline. And she flicked a switch, and then some other switches, but the sound wasn’t coming through. Hoppy took over, and inspected all the complicated parts of the projector that were responsible for capturing the film’s soundtrack: the parts of the amplifier, the spring suspensions, the photo-electric cell, the sound gate, the sound sprockets, et cetera. He confessed he couldn’t find the trouble. Sharline took over, looking for another spot needing chewing gum, but she couldn’t find one. Something serious was wrong with the sound system.

  The quartet talked about it and realized that they wouldn’t be able to show “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” without any sound. As far as Hoppy was concerned, they could do without ole Felix’s music, but they couldn’t do without all of the spoken words, which, after all, was what Shakspear was all about.

  Helen fetched her copy of the feller’s Collected Works and opened it to the play on which the pitcher show was based. “I’ve got an idea,” she said. “It might not work but it’s better than nothing.”

  So they spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening, running the silent “Midsummer Night’s Dream” through the projector, shining it on the interior wall, while they tried to match the words of the play to the words that would be spoken on the screen. Arlis took the part of Theseus, and Helen was Hippolyta. The quartet of lovers was as it had been, Hoppy as Lysander, Arlis as Demetrius, Sharline as Hermia, and Helen as Helena. Hoppy was also Oberon, and Sharline was Titania. Sharline as “Carl” was Puck. The “mechanicals” or laborers were done by Arlis as both Peter Quince and Snug the joiner, Hoppy as both Bottom and Snout the tinker, Helen as Flute the bellows-mender and Sharline as Robin Starveling. It was a lot of parts, and the first run-through was considerably confused. They all had difficulty knowing which words to leave out, because the pitcher show had cut so much of the play’s words to save time.

  But by the time that twilight fell, they were confident they could do it. Arlis’ mother had brought over some supper for them to eat, and some kids had brought over from the store the tub full of ice and soda pop for the concessions. Helen helped out at the concession stand, making snow cones and popping the popcorn. Two large flatbed trucks with folks sitting all along three sides delivered a big chunk of audience for the show. There was going to be a sizeable crowd, thanks to the posters Arlis had put up. Arlis offered to handle the ticket-selling, so that the gals could concentrate on the concessions and Hoppy could do his juggling acts. He was managing to keep six balls in the air at once, one more than he’d ever been able to do before. The crowd sensed that he was doing something impossible and they gave him a big round of applause throughout. But when Sharline did her juggling with the chiffon fascinators, it brought the crowd to their feet with applause. In their magic acts, he levitated Sharline higher than ever before and made her disappear twice as much.

  When it was dark enough to start the projector, Helen said, “I know just about all of these folks, so let me make the announcement.” And she went to stand in front of the screen and told everybody that unfortunately the sound system on the motion picture projector had become inoperable, and therefore they were going to substitute the voices of actual people here present for the voices on the screen, as best as they were able. If this offended anyone or disappointed anyone, the management stood ready to offer refunds to one and all. “Let us begin,” she said and waved her hand like a conductor, and Hoppy started the projector then ran as fast as his limp would allow to join Helen, Arlis, and Sharline as they stood below the screen sharing the Shakespeare book.

  It all went fairly well, and the good audience often clapped their hands in a way they might not have done at pitcher shows without live voices. Hoppy almost missed ole Felix’s music. But at one point during a silence between voices, somewhere a whippoorwill called out, beautiful as music, and later an owl hooted, and the grass and trees came alive with crickets and katydids and cicadas and all manner of peeping and piping frog, and croaking ones too. When the first scene of fairies appeared, the smoke from the cigarettes of all the smoking men and boys merged with the wispy fogs on the screen that merged with the fairies, and all of it merged with the world beyond and around the screen.

  Some child in the audience was the first to notice, and stood up and cried “Oh, look!” and everyone looked and there were actual little fairy-critters a-dancing out of the woods and around the screen, and across it, so that you couldn’t hardly tell the difference between the fairies on the screen and the real ones, except some were flat and some were round and deep.

  “My fairies!” Sharline cried.

  On the screen Oberon was saying “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,” but he was just mouthing the words, and Hoppy, who was supposed to supply his voice, was too busy watching Sharline’s fairies, and of course Sharline, who was supposed to supply the voice for Titania making all those speeches, was thrilled to pieces to see her fairies. So all of those grand words between Oberon and Titania were neglected. Hoppy ran as fast as his limp would allow to turn the projector off so they could all just watch the real fairies dancing and cavorting. Real fairies? He said to himself. But he stopped the projector. The fairies, however, if they had ever been there in the first place, had fled
into the woods. Sharline had fled with them. Hoppy restarted the projector and rejoined Arlis and Helen. Helen whispered, “I’ll just have to take her parts,” and she read the rest of Titania’s speech about “our moonlight revels.” And then there was a long scene between Demetrius and Helena, so they didn’t miss Sharline for a while, and by the time she was needed again to speak for Hermia, she had come back, saying “Oh, ’scuse me please. I just had to go and talk to them.”

  From there on, everything went okay. Hoppy enjoyed being Bottom, or Cagney’s voice, in the scene between Bottom and Titania when Bottom has been changed into a jackass. And in the scene where he wakes up and discovers he’s not a jackass any more, and reaches up over his head to see if his long ears are still there, Hoppy couldn’t help reaching up over his own head to feel for his missing ears, and the audience laughed.

  Very few of the audience had left early, although it was close to midnight before the pitcher show was over. Hoppy wondered if it might not be such a bad idee to just keep things the way they were, and try to persuade Arlis and Helen to go on the road with them, to show their silent version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at other towns. But he knew he’d better try to get the sound system fixed. He had a notion that there might be a short-circuit in the rectifier, and he could check that out first thing tomorrow.

  After the last of the satisfied audience had drifted away, the quartet lingered for a nightcap from the demijohn. Sharline took a crayon and wrote on the side of the demijohn, love-in-idleness, with three big Xs below it. “This is powerful stuff,” she said. And then she said, “You did see them, didn’t you? My fairies? They were really there, weren’t they?” And she looked at Hoppy, and at Helen, and at Arlis, and each of them nodded their heads.

  They were interrupted by the screech of a car’s brakes, and a vehicle stopping as close to Topper as it could get. The driver jumped out. It was Teal Buffum. “Folks!” he exclaimed. “We just caught sight of that there preacher feller, Emmett Binns! He’s a-heading north on the Alum Cove road!”