“Tomorrow night we start your schooling, but it is imperative that you never utter that name so long as you are in a theater.”
“What name? Macbeth?”
“Out!” screamed Sir Reginald, tossing the boy from his dressing room and slamming the door. In the hallway, August could hear the backward Hail Marys again, along with several other phrases that would give pause to even the most open-minded censorship board.
* * *
True to his word, Sir Reginald began the education of August March the very next evening. Though the boy was woefully behind his age group, he was nothing if not a quick study, and Sir Reginald was pleased to see that August took a keen interest in bettering himself. In less than a week, August could add together basic sums and write his name. A week later, he could recite all the kings and queens of England, though he had yet to hear of the Declaration of Independence; Sir Reginald’s history lessons tended to skew British.
King Lear ended its run just a few weeks after August’s schooling had commenced, but Sir Reginald refused to let his enchanting protégé’s mind be neglected.
“You’re to commit these books to memory, child,” he ordered, handing over a heavy stack of freshly purchased tomes still wrapped in brown paper. Among the miniature library were mostly classic books for new readers, but also a few more advanced volumes, such as Scotland Yard: A History, and Tutoring on Tudors.
August, who rarely received gifts, was gracious to the point of deference. “Please don’t go,” he begged, his eyes shining with tears.
For all his pomp and, some critics said, self-indulgence onstage, Sir Reginald was uncomfortable when confronted with emotions in his actual life.
“There, there,” he said, patting August on his back while hiding tears of his own. “As soon as I wrap this ridiculous picture in Hollywood, I’ll try to get another play to come through the Scarsenguard.” As soon as he’d spoken, Sir Reginald realized he truly meant what he said.
“Really?” August asked, clutching the books to his chest.
“Of course!” shouted Percyfoot with a bit too much bravado. “Why, you still know nothing of the Magna Carta, and I’d love to hear your theories on Sir Francis Drake and Elizabeth’s rumored liaison.”
August was used to adults speaking utter nonsense, and while it usually bored him, he couldn’t help but be cheered by Sir Reginald’s infectious tone. Dropping his books, he ran and threw a hug around the man’s sturdy leg.
“Enough of this, child, I must be off!”
As soon as he was back in his hotel, Sir Reginald Percyfoot arranged a call with his no-good agent and told the nincompoop that he was no longer interested in the coveted five-picture deal with Jack Warner.
“Tell that greedy-pig stumblebum that I’ll do one picture and one picture only! Then I want to be back at the Scarsenguard!”
Sir Reginald’s no-good agent hung up the phone in complete confusion, and then, as agents are wont to do, forgot the conversation entirely.
* * *
The months after Percyfoot’s departure were depressing ones for August. After all his stirring interchanges with his mentor, the boy found he no longer had the keen, dewy-eyed freshness of the amateur when watching plays. Now he was critical, snobbish, and bored, one of the churlish indoctrinated. Why on earth had the idiot director staged the scene in that fashion? And those cheap and tawdry sets hardly illuminated the playwright’s intention, that is, if the lummox who wrote this dreck had any intentions to begin with. August’s cherished cubbyhole above the center spotlight was no longer a harbor of divine theatrical transportation but the contaminated den of the most acidic critic in New York City.
To make up for the lack of artistic integrity in his life, August took to exploration. Not of the outside world. Miss Butler had been adamant that he never leave the theater and had spun many of her trademark tales to frighten him.
“Taxi drivers will steer straight for you, eager to run over anything in their paths. They scratch a tally on the side of their cabs each time they claim a new victim. And then there are the social workers. They hunt down little boys and throw them into orphanages. You know how terrible orphanages are, don’t you, August?”
Indeed he did. The serialized account of the little orphan Annie was his favorite radio program. To him, an orphanage sounded like the worst place in the entire world.
“And don’t even get me started on tourists,” Miss Butler would sometimes add, barely daring to whisper the words. “Horrible creatures. Really, something ought to be done.”
So it wasn’t the city that August took to surveying, but the Scarsenguard itself. The theater held no secrets for him now. No corner went uncharted, no ladder unclimbed. He knew every inch of the place and could scale a rope or even a curtain with feline liquidity.
The heavy, musky scent of dust, tangible and oppressive, became August’s constant companion. He could soon differentiate mouse droppings from those of a rat, and after only a few more weeks of applied research, could state with assurance the mood of any particular rodent by the quality of its squeaks. Such was his life, this boy in the rafters.
Still, he didn’t forget his promise to Sir Reginald, and devoted plenty of time each day to his studies. He clung to books with the desperation that a drowning man might to driftwood, and as a result became even more precocious than he’d been just a few months prior. At times, Eugenia Butler found him downright cynical.
“Good gracious, child, what on earth are you reading?” she asked one evening, eyeing the opus August was leafing through. A worrisome (albeit impressive) eye-roll greeted her query. “Now see here, boy, I asked you a question. When you reach puberty, you’re welcome to be as irksome or sarcastic as you’d like. I’ll be dead and won’t have to suffer through it. But while I’m alive, I aim to enjoy the charms of your youth. So please, pray tell, what are you reading?”
Sighing, August answered, “It’s a collection of seventeenth-century Russian poetry.”
Eugenia Butler was unable to stifle her boredom, even for the sake of the child’s tender feelings. “Good god! What absolute rubbish! Boys your age should be reading comics!”
“What are comics?” he asked, unable to cork his curiosity.
Eugenia sighed. “Go talk to the rats, August.”
Though rude and sullen, he was at his heart an obedient boy, and snapping the book closed, did as he was told.
Conversations of this ilk, of which there had been many, were distressing to Eugenia. For all her maternal faults, Miss Butler loved August, and even her cloudy eyes could detect that something was off in the boy. On her cab ride home that evening, she decided to throw the boy a party. After all, he’d never had a proper birthday. A party would be just the thing to lift his spirits and make him stop being such a horrible little bastard.
* * *
The next morning Eugenia went out shopping for August’s surprise party. She intended for the day to be entirely marvelous, full of whimsy and maternal felicity. However, as she started her errands, she couldn’t shake off a nagging paranoia that, due to today’s efforts, August would be discovered and taken away. These suspicions somewhat soured her well-intentioned aspirations.
The tingle of bells above the door signaled her entrance to the cake shop.
“How can I help you today?” asked the baker, a smiling man with an overlarge nose.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern,” Eugenia snapped, unfounded worry over August’s discovery shattering her earlier fantasies.
The baker’s eyes went dead.
“I’m so sorry,” Eugenia said, embarrassed. “I’ve had a long morning. I’m here for a birthday cake.”
At her apology, the baker visibly dropped the social armor he’d been donning. He smiled. “Will the cake be for a boy or a girl?”
Eugenia reached over the counter and slapped him across the face. “Keep your big nose out of my business, snake!”
Seven minutes later, she left the bakery w
ith a stale spice cake.
She didn’t fare much better at the toy shop, either. As soon as she arrived, a mob of children nearly knocked her over. Miss Butler looked for guardians to come discipline their charges, but all the parents present seemed to willfully ignore their unruly issue.
Since Miss Butler refused to offer any information about August’s age or interests, the attendant had a difficult time helping her select a suitable gift. Exasperated, she finally gave up and purchased a jigsaw puzzle and an insipid picture book about a ball of yarn.
At the Scarsenguard, August was understandably confused when Miss Butler presented him with the rather pathetic spread meant to be his birthday party. The jigsaw puzzle was greeted with tepid enthusiasm and the picture book with unconcealed horror. As Miss Butler squawked her way through “Happy Birthday,” August decided that birthday parties were on the whole disagreeable and was glad they happened only once every seven years or so.
Miss Butler tried to tell herself that she’d succeeded in lifting the boy’s spirits, but when August nearly choked on the dry spice cake, she was forced to admit that the party had been a complete disaster. Conceding defeat, she was packing up her purse to beat a shamefaced retreat to her brownstone when she saw the corner of a postcard sticking from her handbag. The postcard! She’d nearly forgotten.
“Oh, August,” she called. “Before I go, I have one more present for you.”
The child’s eyes widened in anticipation of the terrors he would be subjected to, but when Miss Butler handed him nothing but a postcard, his forehead wrinkled in confusion.
“Read it,” she said.
The front showed the famed Hollywood sign, which, until that very moment, August had never seen. He flipped the card over. It was addressed to Miss Butler but intended for August.
“My dear boy,” the card started, “Hollywood is even more deplorable than I expected. I said ‘Sophocles’ the other morning, and everyone thought I had sneezed. The people are wretched and the weather is worse! Constant sunlight? Can you imagine anything more harrowing? Good news, though: my scum-of-the-gutter agent managed to secure me a part in New York. In February, I’ll be back at the Scarsenguard!”
August squealed in delight. The rest of the note was squeezed into the margins. “Must run. Keep up your studies and swear to never go west of the Hudson River!”
The signature —“Unabashedly, Sir Reginald Percyfoot”—took up half the postcard.
“What’s today?” August asked.
“October ninth,” answered Miss Butler, consulting a calendar.
“That means Sir Reginald will arrive in”—August’s nose twitched as he calculated—“four months!”
August ran around the room, trumpeting his good fortune to the heavens, while Miss Butler looked on laughing. All her earlier failures were forgotten, and August leapt into the old woman’s arms, planting a decidedly uncynical kiss on her cheek. From that time forward, though he was actually born sometime in April, August forever celebrated his birthday on October 9.
* * *
At first it seemed as though the four months leading up toward Sir Reginald’s return would be nothing short of an eternity, but affairs outside the Scarsenguard seemed determined to finally introduce themselves to August March, whether he wanted them to or not.
The year was 1941, and nearly two months after August’s birthday celebrations, an island called Japan bombed an island called Hawaii and apparently nearly every citizen of the globe seemed to harbor strong feelings on the subject. To August, the event was one of the many inconsequential idiosyncrasies of the world at large and had nothing to do with him or the Scarsenguard. Had the circumstances been different, he might’ve been correct, and would’ve continued about his life as he had before, giving current events about as much attention as a weary parent might to the incoherent babblings of a toddler.
However, just two short days after the attack, a large man with a larger mustache came trouncing through the theater, trailed by a bespectacled assistant.
“That’s Mr. Barreth,” Miss Butler whispered to August as Barreth stormed past. “He owns the place. Rich as chocolate. His father died a few years ago and left him property all over the city.”
August’s curiosity was piqued. The Scarsenguard had an owner? He’d never realized that anyone owned the Scarsenguard, let alone a man with a mustache so large it looked like a ferret suffering from heatstroke. But August wouldn’t judge based on appearances. Instead, he’d get the measure of the man with a dose of harmless espionage.
Barreth and his assistant swept through the theater, August on their heels, undetected.
“Keep up,” Barreth snapped to the smaller man as they descended staircase after staircase, finally ending up in the basement. August slipped into a vacant broom closet and kept watch.
Barreth paced the room, running his hands over the walls and looking it all over with a critical eye. Eventually, he seemed satisfied.
“I think this is the one, don’t you?”
“I do, sir,” the assistant agreed. “It’s certainly a spacious venue. And may I just say, sir, I think it’s so admirable, what you’re doing for the country. I know that everyone’s pitching in and looking to help where they can, but you’re really going above and beyond.”
August stifled a snicker at the assistant’s pathetic attempt at flattery, but Barreth was not amused.
“Get this through your thick skull, you little nancy,” Barreth spat, “I’m letting Uncle Sam borrow my theater to get the IRS off my ass. I’d donate my wife to the government to avoid an audit. Understand?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Good. Now let’s get out of here, this place gives me the creeps.”
“They say it’s haunted, sir,” the assistant whispered.
“I know what they say! I own it!”
“Of course, so sorry, sir.”
Barreth sighed. “I need a scotch.”
Later, when August related the conversation to Miss Butler, she didn’t seem at all concerned.
“Don’t try to understand the rich, August. They’re a different species. Best to avoid them altogether, I always say.”
As it turned out, Barreth was only the first of many intruders the Scarsenguard was forced to suffer. The day after Barreth’s arrival, a whole brood of strangers descended on the Scarsenguard, bringing with them a menagerie of wood and paint cans and all the wretched accoutrements of the fix-’em-up.
“What is going on here?” a flabbergasted August asked Eugenia after being nearly decapitated by a passing ladder.
“I’ve only just heard,” she answered, wringing her hands in delight, “but it seems Mr. Barreth has lent the Scarsenguard to the war effort. They’re converting all the backstage into a sort of recreational center for the soldiers when they’re on leave. There’s already a space like it in Hollywood. Scads of celebrities show up and dance with the boys—everyone who’s anyone has been there. And now all those sorts of people will be at the Scarsenguard! Can you imagine it, August? It’s a big to-do!”
Recreational center? Soldiers? But surely that sort of commotion would be distracting during performances? August voiced his concerns.
“But, darling, there won’t be any performances. The soldiers won’t be admitted until the sun goes down, and the ruckus those kids make will drown out anything the windbags upstairs would be saying.”
August had read of a person’s jaw dropping in some of the more plebian novels he’d devoured, but never until that moment had he experienced the sensation. “No plays?” he finally managed.
“Just not at the Scarsenguard,” she added, realizing the drastic effect her words were having on the boy. “Broadway wouldn’t shut itself down for a silly old thing like a war.”
“How long do wars usually last?” August asked, grasping for even the faintest of silver linings.
“That depends. The Great War was around four years, if I remember correctly, but some drag for much longer. Yea
rs and years and years . . .”
August heard no more, for like the heroines in those banal best-sellers, he retired to his chambers to weep.
* * *
The date was March 2, 1942, and work on what was now called the Backstage Bistro (a horrible name, in August’s opinion) was completed, the grand opening scheduled for that very evening. August ambled in a daze as volunteers strung gay lanterns from this pole to that or dashed through the doors with another armful of bouquets. To think that less than five months ago this had been a respectable theater. Now, August thought as he watched giggling women of all ages add finishing touches to the garish decor, this grand cathedral of art had been transformed into a brothel.
Just after Christmas, when August had come to a tenuous peace with his new lot, he was dealt another dire blow, this one in postcard form. It was from Sir Reginald:
Dear August,
Looks like the play’s been canceled due to the war. Dreadful luck, but it was a ghastly piece of slop in any case. Picture wrapped, headed straight to London to appear in a benefit for the boys over there. Sorry, old chap, but keep that chin up, I’ll be in New York as soon as the gods allow!
The gloom the boy felt upon receiving this bit of news was so palpable that Miss Butler took to avoiding him altogether lest she get swept up in the whirlpool of his melancholy. Besides, now that there was no laundry to attend to, she’d become a rather important figure in the Backstage Bistro’s construction. She’d worked at the Scarsenguard for myriad years, and the volunteers, most of whom had never seen the inside of a theater, peppered her with questions ranging from “Where’s the bathroom?” to “Is this beam weight-bearing?” Few had time to even notice the desolate child gliding about the place, and when they did, Miss Butler would quickly improvise that his mother had just dashed out the door. She was never refuted.
And so the weeks passed, for Eugenia in a state of bustling negligence, for August in malaise, until finally the inaugural evening was at hand. It was the least excited August had ever been for an opening night at the Scarsenguard, but he did have to admit he was looking forward to any distraction from his sour reverie.
The Astonishing Life of August March Page 3
