Understudy for Death

by Charles Willeford

  “Is her sister seriously ill?”

  “No, but she’s had a death in her family, and I mean the G.O.C., the Ground Observer’s Corps. Now that the Air Force doesn’t need the G.O.C. any more, Mrs. Pritchard’s lost the sole purpose in her life. She kept the G.O.C. going in this town for the last ten years almost singlehanded. She’s logged more than thirty-five hundred hours in the courthouse tower, looking for enemy airplanes, and now they say observers aren’t needed any longer. All these years she’s been going all over town, ringing doorbells, drumming up volunteers, talking to women’s clubs, boy scouts, anybody who’d listen to her. She even trapped me into taking turns in that tower for three weeks. You never knew that I was hooked on that, did you?”

  “In the beginning a lot of people were hopped up on the G.O.C.”

  “That’s the point. In the beginning. But the last seven or eight years has been a different matter. In Lake Springs, Mrs. Pritchard was the G.O.C.! Without her, they would’ve been out of observers long ago if she hadn’t pushed it. It was her baby and she nursed it to her withered old bosom. And now that it’s gone she’s lost her whole purpose in life.”

  “She’s got a husband,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah,” Johnny said dryly, with a little laugh. “A nut. An old man who wears a two-hundred-dollar tailor-made uniform to take tickets at a second-rate movie house.”

  I laughed. “Is that right, Johnny? I knew he wore a fancy uniform, but—”

  “It’s a fact. Mrs. Pritchard told me herself.”

  “Well, I suppose the old lady deserves some credit for her work with the G.O.C. If you call me when she gets back from Atlanta I’ll do a feature story about her.”

  “Good. And how about an editorial?”

  “I’ll tell the M.E. He writes the editorials, when we don’t use canned ones.”

  “Thanks, Richard. Let’s have another drink.”

  On the way back to town I stopped for a hamburger and a cup of coffee at a drive-in. I bit well into my hamburger, almost biting past the small coin of meat, as I happened to think of Mrs. Huneker and the parallel between her death and the loss of Mrs. Pritchard’s beloved G.O.C. Maybe Marion Huneker had also lost something or other without warning? Something she was unable to replace with anything else? In my future interrogations, perhaps I should try to develop that line of questioning. There didn’t seem to be a damned thing to go on so far. It was like a fresh bulb in a string of Christmas tree lights. When one went out they all went out, and you had to try every socket on the string before you found the dead one…

  Instead of blinking the lights for the carhop I honked the horn.

  “Why in the hell don’t you people put some meat in your hamburgers?” I snarled at the vapid blonde in red pedal pushers, as she removed the tray from the door.

  “See our sign?” She pointed indifferently. “We’ve sold more than fifty million hamburgers and you’re the first customer who ever complained.”

  “You say that like you memorized it.”

  “Well, what do you expect for a fourteen-cent hamburger?”

  “How many hamburgers do you eat here in a day?”

  She smiled, licking her lips. “I may work here, mister, but I don’t eat here.”

  The gag was old, I know, but I laughed anyway. And I needed a laugh of some kind to face the evening ahead.

  Chapter Seven

  “That’s a very touching tale, Hudson,” J.C. Curtis said sourly, after I finished outlining the Mrs. Pritchard story to him in his office. “I’m perfectly willing to give the old lady some belated recognition for her work. And I’m proud of you for smelling out the story—which I should’ve done myself. But the real tragedy here is the husband, in his two-hundred dollar fancy uniform.”

  “I don’t see the connection.”

  “Why does he wear it? He’s a retired insurance executive on a more than adequate income. He wears it because he needs a sense of importance, and a bright red uniform fills the need. Now. Suppose Blanche Pritchard, his wife, had devoted as much time and effort to her husband during the last ten years as she did to the G.O.C.? By building up her husband’s ego instead of some abstract government alphabet ritual, her husband would be a happy man in his own right.”

  “Hell, he’s happy now.”

  “That isn’t the point, Hudson. True happiness, shared happiness, is not the same as manufactured happiness.”

  “The results are the same, aren’t they?” I shrugged.

  “Do you really think so? Give me an example, then.”

  Rubbing my chin, I tried to think of one.

  “Then get back to work,” J.C. said sharply. “I can’t waste my time on you any longer.”

  “Yes, sir.” I turned to go but he stopped me.

  “Just a second. Here are some more clippings for you. I went through some old out-of-state papers and cut them out. There are nine different stories here, where men shot and killed their wives, mothers, or children, and then themselves. An interesting pattern, very. In these cases they were all men of action, and none of them left notes. In suicide, when they go alone, without taking members of their family along, a note is left invariably. But not in these murder-suicide cases—”

  “What am I supposed to make out of that?”

  “I don’t know, that’s up to you. But Marion Huneker was a murder-suicide case and she left a note. That’s out of the norm, but then, she was a woman. You should be able to make a graph of some kind, and we can have the advertising department do some artwork for it. A nice chart of statistics, something to back up your detailed survey—”

  “All right, I’ll see what I can do,” I growled.

  “How is your investigation progressing?”

  “I interviewed her best girlfriend today, at full length.”

  “Did you learn anything?”

  “She subscribed to the Book-of-the-Month Club.”

  “Excellent! What else have you uncovered?”

  “Mrs. Huneker was rather fond of a drink called the Pink Lady.”

  “Fine! Might be a good title for the article. No, too obvious. Godspeed, boy!” He waved me away with a flick of his small hand.

  I always took considerable pains with my column, Up In The Air with Richard Hudson. The Aviation Writers of America had written me a complimentary letter about one of my columns, and it had spurred me to do my best after that, I suppose. I often went so far as to re-read what I had written and to rewrite items that might be challenged on the grounds of clarity, if not fact.

  I turned in my completed column to Harris with instructions to either run it the way it was written or not run it at all. He grunted unintelligibly, and I drove to the Civic Theater.

  The Lake Springs Civic Theater was not a converted barn; it was a converted garage. The building had been willed to the city by its former greasy owner, and the Civic Theater, which had been putting on plays in the high school auditorium, had asked for and received the use of the building as a theater. The group was rejuvenated after acquiring the new building. Volunteer manhours of work, in addition to many donations from merchants, had transformed the old garage into an attractive little theater. There were three hundred seats, an outside patio with a few scattered potted palms where coffee was served during intermissions, and an almost adequate parking lot.

  I parked in a space near the exit, and looked for Bob Leanard, the director, finding him in the shallow lobby giving final instructions to the ticket-seller. Bob was twenty-eight, but he looked much younger. He wore a straggly black brush on his upper lip, and a matching triangular patch of hair beneath his lower lip. His face hair looked as if it were dyed because his crewcut was reddish, streaked with strands of yellow. The fact that his shaggy goatee made his face resemble an unkempt armpit was his problem, not mine.

  “Man, I sure could’ve used you in this play,” Bob said, as we shook hands. He took my elbow and squeezed it gently. “Let’s go out on the curb for a smoke. This has been one hellova week, but it
’s the stage manager’s baby now!”

  After we lit up I grinned and said: “A theatergoer told me today that Lilliom was an ambitious venture for amateurs.”

  “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, Richard. It was my idea to use it as an opener, so it had better be good. As usual, the board wanted to open with a comedy, but the royalties for anything decent are high as hell, so I convinced them to play Lilliom instead. If this goes over, next time we can play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?”

  “I’d rather see a varied program,” I said thoughtfully, “instead of all comedies, no matter how much they make.”

  “Yeah, but it takes money, money, money, Richard. I’m with you; I’d do Sheridan, Saroyan, and Shakespeare if they’d let me, but I know nobody would come to the shows.”

  “I would, Bob!” I laughed.

  “Yeah, you bastard. You get in free.”

  “And tonight I’m bringing a guest. Mrs. Chatham, and she wants to meet you. You might write her one of those nice form letters encouraging her to become a patron.”

  “I’ve got to get backstage in a minute.”

  “Don’t worry. Give the stage manager a free hand.”

  Bob sighed, fingering the triangle of hair under his lip. “I’d better start turning things loose, anyway. I won’t be back next year.”

  “I didn’t know that. The board isn’t bouncing you, is it?”

  “Oh, no! Television. I finally got the call, and progress is my most important product. In February I’m going to Waco, Texas to direct television. No more begging for little theater jobs, borrowing furniture, explaining the obvious to bigoted boards. All I’ll have to do is push buttons in a control room.”

  “Yeah, and you won’t like it, Bob. This medium, blue-eyed baby without conscience. Fallowed be thy fameless frame.”

  “What’s that from?” He raised his dark eyebrows.

  “It’s a couple of lines from my play,” I said self-consciously, feeling my face grow warm. “I don’t know if I told you or not, but I’m rewriting it in blank verse.”

  “Sure, I remember. You said you were thinking about that last year. How’s it coming, anyway?”

  “Slow, slow.”

  “Stick with it, Richard, and if you like, let me see it sometime. I’d like to have you drop by the theater some afternoon anyway, so you can see what the playreading committee did to Rock Hunter. They did a blue pencil revision and removed every single reference to sex! It’ll run about forty minutes short, and it’s a short play anyway. It’ll be about as funny as a rubber crutch. And that, my critical friend, is the next Civic Theater production! Me for television.”

  I laughed, but I wasn’t surprised. The nine-member Civic Theater board had five Methodists and four Baptists. I shared his disgust, however, and we were discussing the cuts and possible repairs he could make when Gladys Chatham arrived.

  “What’s all this?” she said smilingly, taking my arm. “Something that’s almost as good as sex?”

  “Ho, Mrs. Chatham,” I grinned. “This is Bob Leanard.”

  After the introductions Bob Leanard excused himself and went backstage after all—he wanted to be certain the curtain arose at 8:40. Gladys and I went through the theater and out onto the patio where we could sit down. The talk with Bob had depressed me, and I must have looked glum.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Gladys said. “Didn’t you expect me or did you expect me?” she said lightly as we sank down on a bench beside the lily pond.

  “I only wanted you to come early so you could meet Bob Leanard,” I replied, truthfully. “In a way, I expected your husband to be with you.”

  “You didn’t ask him, you asked me. Did you expect me to sit in his lap?”

  I grinned and shook my head. “You can usually get another single, even on opening night.”

  “Well, when Vic came home, I demanded that he take me to the theater. To demand is to challenge, and he refused automatically; so I came alone.”

  “Why do married people fight so much?” I sighed.

  “I don’t know, Richard.” Gladys patted my hand lightly. “It’s an occupational hazard. I hate it, but once it begins there isn’t any way to end it.”

  “I suppose.” I changed the subject and told her about Bob’s decision to quit at the end of the season, and gave her some background on his reasons.

  “Is that why you’re so gloomy?”

  “I like Bob.” I nodded. “He’s a good director. And I know damned well he isn’t going to be happy in a Texas TV station. He won’t be doing any real directing, not like he’s accustomed to in little theater. It’ll be a grouping of a few western music guitar players, or something like that, but nothing creative. And I know he won’t like it.”

  Gladys laughed. “And besides, you had already selected him in your mind to direct your own play, hadn’t you?”

  I grinned. “That thought had crossed my mind.”

  “I may not know you too well, Mr. Hudson,” Gladys said, fluttering her eyelashes with a false coyness, “but I’d be surprised if you didn’t have a few sexy scenes in your play. How would you get them by the Civic Theater board?”

  “My play’s in blank verse. The sex scenes are much too subtly written to be spotted by Baptists and Methodists.”

  “I like selfish men; they’re so practical.”

  “That’s the first time I’ve ever been accused of being practical.”

  We went inside, picked up programs, and I led Gladys to my regular seats, which were on the aisle in the row beside the exit to the parking lot. When the curtain came down on the last act I had to get out fast to write my review before the deadline. I shoved my program into my pocket for future reference, and nodded to a few acquaintances in the audience.

  “Beryl Hudson,” Gladys said, studying her program. “Is she any relation to you?”

  “In a way. She’s my wife.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me your wife was playing the lead? She’s ‘Julie,’ and that’s the female lead, isn’t it?”

  I snatched the program rudely out of her hands, searching the cast of characters with a trembling forefinger. BERYL HUDSON leaped off the pages in boldface type.

  “What’s the matter, Richard?” Gladys said anxiously. “Are you ill?”

  “No,” I said hoarsely, shaking my head. “Surprised. I could lie to you, but I honestly didn’t know my wife was in the play.”

  My bewilderment was sincere, and Gladys giggled with delight. At that moment the houselights went down, and she had to stuff a balled-up handkerchief into her mouth to stifle her glee.

  I didn’t applaud the set like the others; I was benumbed. Tiny sharp needles pinged into my arms, my legs, and then pricked my chest. My face was blazing with fire, and my body was cold. I shivered for a second, and then got control of myself.

  Beryl can’t act! my mind screamed silently.

  And she couldn’t act. She had been in her high school graduation play in Gainesville, but that had been many years ago, and she had only played a walk-on part at that. This wasn’t enough background to play the lead in a tough play like Lilliom! Bob Leanard was either trying to get revenge on the board of directors, or he had lost his mind. And then I cursed him beneath my breath for not telling me.

  I wondered whether the secret had been his idea or Beryl’s.

  To be on the safe side, I cursed my wife beneath my breath.

  What hurt my feelings more than anything else, sitting there in the dark, tense with anticipation, was to watch my wife pull it off—and she did so, beautifully.

  Beryl had the typical untrained soft southern voice, with every bad habit of speech there is: hesitations, indistinct phrasings, poor or little projection, maddening slowness, ignored “ing’s,” and mispronunciation. She always said “chirren” instead of “children.” Of course, I could tell that Bob had drilled her in projection, but from time to time she forgot all about it, and her soft voice dropped way down. Then, remembering that she was supposed
to speak up, she would raise her voice again, and there would issue forth a tremulous, shivering undertone, caused, no doubt, by a combination of stage fright, fear, and lack of confidence; and the knowledge that I was in the audience, alert for every mistake she made.

  In the part of Julie, however, this quavering tremolo was quite effective, and definitely in her favor. Julie, in Lilliom, is, beyond a doubt, the most sympathetic part that has ever been written for a woman. Julie marries a worthless, philandering braggart, becomes pregnant, and then her husband is killed when he attempts a poorly planned hold-up. The unrepentant husband then goes to Heaven or some other unlikely place; fantasy sets in, and the Justice of the High Court or Purgatorio, gives him one chance to return to earth and commit at least one decent act before his final judgment. He is returned for one day, and now his daughter is in her young teens. After talking to her helplessly for a few moments, Lilliom ends by slapping his daughter across the face. Back the poor devil goes to Purgatory…

  The final scene, when it is performed correctly, will jerk tears out of the eyes of a Finance Company Branch Manager:

  LOUISE:What has happened, mother?

  JULIE:Nothing, my child.

  LOUISE:Mother, dear, why won’t you tell me?

  JULIE:What is there to tell you, child? Nothing has happened. We were peacefully eating, and a beggar came who talked of bygone days, and then I thought of your father.

  LOUISE:My father?

  JULIE:Your father—Lilliom.

  (There is a pause.)

  LOUISE:Mother—tell me—has it ever happened to you—has anyone ever hit you—without hurting you in the least?

  JULIE:Yes, my child. It has happened to me, too.

  (There is a pause.)

  LOUISE:It is possible for someone to hit you—hard like that—real loud and hard—and not hurt you at all?

  JULIE:It is possible, dear—that someone may beat you and beat you and beat you—and not hurt at all. (There is a pause. Offstage an organ grinder grinds away, and the curtain ends the play.)

  Beryl had never looked any lovelier in her entire life, not even when we were first married. The long old-fashioned white dress, the parasol, and her long, soft hair falling to her shoulders, made her resemble a portrait by Gainsborough; and the pancake make-up successfully hid the tiny sun wrinkles around her eyes. I didn’t need Gladys to remind me of these things when we went out onto the patio for a smoke at the end of Act One.