by Ed Kurtz
The reverend nodded gravely. He remembered.
“I ’spect there must’ve been thirty of us in front of that picture house, all a’ hollerin’ scripture and demanding he stop running that nasty stuff, but he didn’t pay us a bit of mind, Reverend Shannon—not one bit!”
“Let us not be weary in well-doing, Mrs. Hutchins,” Shannon said, adopting holy writ to suit his point. “For in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
“Oh, oh yes, reverend—you’re so right. As usual, you’re so absolutely right.”
Shannon smiled sagely and patted the fat woman’s knee, reassuring her as he might a frustrated child. With his other hand, he pointed at the ceiling.
“It’s our great God who is right, you’ll remember,” he said.
Emma Hutchins smiled with trembling jelly lips and watery eyes. Yet again, Jim Shannon felt as though he had tamed a great beast.
With effusive thanks and an austere pledge to get her entire sewing circle behind this most important cause, Mrs. Hutchins took leave of the church, leaving Shannon to the blessed silence of his increasingly rare solitude.
“He that endureth to the end,” he muttered to himself while he fumbled through the sundry items cluttering his desk in search of a cigarette. He found one, lit it, and emptied his thoughts as he enjoyed the simple pleasure of a quiet smoke. It was over much too soon.
For within hours, he knew he would find himself at the forefront of yet another angry mob, all torches and pitchforks in the figurative sense, demanding changes that deep down in the core of his being he couldn’t possibly care less about. So there was a randy movie playing the Palace? So what? In a town where every able-bodied man and woman was fully expected to get hitched and make babies as soon as they’re able, what was the harm in showing folks what they’ve already seen or what they’ll be seeing before long? Childbirth, reverend! Old Hutchins had practically spat at him. It’s too disgusting to imagine! This from a woman who’d birthed seven children of her own. Shannon shook his head and stabbed out his smoke.
He had a passel of calls to make.
And while he begrudgingly made his calls, Jim Shannon’s daughter put aside her dull social studies book to see who was tossing pebbles at her window.
“Margie!” Scooter shouted from the garden below. He was trampling the petunias.
“Scooter Carew, you ninny! You’re standing on daddy’s flowers, for Pete’s sake.”
Scooter, a reedy red-haired boy of seventeen, looked dumbly at the obliterated petunias beneath his huge, clumsy feet.
“Aw, gee,” he moaned, stepping back from the irretrievably dead flowers.
Margie could not help but smile at his awkwardness. It was adorable, in its way.
“I hope you was plenty careful getting over here,” she said.
“I came in through the woods,” Scooter said. “Didn’t even see the church, so he can’t have seen me.”
“You’d best hope not,” she warned. “I’ll be out in a shake.”
Margie shut the window, checked herself over in the vanity mirror. Her curls were buoyant, her navy swing skirt dress crisp and clean. She considered adding a dab of colour to her lips from the secret make-up stash in her closet, but God—if anyone saw her! She dismissed the idea and hurried down to the front door. Scooter hung back behind a thick elm in the yard, putting the tree between himself and the church on the hill. He was persona non grata on Shannon property, even if he was more or less welcome inside the church. The church belonged to Litchfield, whereas the elm behind which Scooter nervously hid belonged to a man who would skin his hide if he ever found the boy snooping around his daughter.
“I don’t hardly see why you can’t just meet me at Finn’s,” Margie complained as she crept from the house to the vast elm tree.
“I feel like Romeo,” he said, blushing. “You know, like in that play.”
“I know the play, Scooter. And they both die in the end, remember?”
“They do? Hell, that’s a dumb way to end a play.”
Margie rolled her eyes and sighed.
“Besides,” he added sheepishly, “I sorta wanted to talk to you in private first.”
“Private?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “You ain’t about to propose to me, are you, Scooter Carew? Because I’m not aiming to be no lonesome war bride after you run off with the Army.”
If Scooter’s cheeks were pink before, they burned blood red now. He wiped his forehead and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“Pr—pruh—propose? Why, no, Margie!”
“Oh, I see,” she said with a playful grimace. “You’ve got some other gal in mind for that privilege.”
“That’s not so, Margie,” he protested. “There ain’t no other gal. Why, I was just gonna ask you to the barn dance on Saturday, that’s all.”
“Oh, is that all? Sakes alive, Scooter—you act like it’s a life or death question. Of course I’ll go to the barn dance, you dummy. I’d have gone one way or the other, and I expect it might as well be with you.”
“You mean . . .”
“Well, that Albert Sommer’s been sniffin’ around a little bit, you know. . . .”
“Albert Sommer! That—that fat turkey?”
“Oh, Scooter,” Margie cooed, “that’s not very nice, is it? I don’t think Albert’s so fat, and he sure ain’t no turkey. I heard he’ll be an officer by the time he gets to Europe.”
“Yeah, sure,” Scooter whined, “one of them ninety-day wonders, I guess. I could do that too, you know.”
Margie burst out laughing and landed a punch on the pouting boy’s shoulder.
“God a’mighty, I’m just pulling your leg anyhow, Scooter.”
Scooter pulled his brow into a tight knit and glowered past Margie, over the open grassland and into the dense conifers behind the church.
“Well, I don’t guess it’s very funny,” he said. “I come to ask you a serious question. . . .”
“It’s just a barn dance, Scooter,” she interjected. “Don’t be so glum, chum. Come on.”
She grabbed his hand and gave his arm a tug. Looking perplexed and perhaps a bit injured, Scooter relented, allowed himself to be dragged from the relative safety of the elm to the perilous line of fire between the church and the house. He wasn’t there long—Margie pulled at him and hurried around the side of the house. In a moment, they were once more blocked from her father’s view. From this vantage point, they crouched alongside the rotting picket fence (a source of humour for Margie, given her father’s penchant for pickets) and scrambled along the periphery until they reached the narrow dirt road to town.
“We’ll have to sneak in,” she whispered conspiratorially between sucks at the straw in her chocolate malt. “Today’s the day—Daddy’s coming.”
“To the Palace?”
Scooter’s face drained white.
“He was gonna picket the stupid thing sooner or later, and like I said: today’s the day. Him and every stuffy old crow who loves him more n’ anybody but Jesus himself.”
“Aw, cripes,” he groaned.
“It’s no big deal,” she said. “We just go in through the back. He’ll never see us.”
“You mean without paying?”
“They don’t got a box office in the back, dummy.”
He gazed wide-eyed at the flat soda pop in his glass. He felt like he was planning out some sort of big heist, which never went well for the heisters in any story he’d ever seen.
“Ain’t that the same as stealing?” he wondered aloud.
“You’re missing the point, boy. It’s not about the tickets, it’s about getting in without being seen. If it helps you sleep better, leave a quarter on your seat after.”
He shot a cockeyed glance at her and groaned.
“I don’t hardly see what’s so interesting abou
t this picture, anyway. Ain’t nobody I’ve ever heard of in it. Lester Keaveny saw it yesterday; he told me all about it. Les says the only reason anybody would want to see it is on account of the dirty stuff at the end. . . .”
“Real live birth, I heard.”
“. . . that’s what Les said, too—except Les said it was awful. I mean, real flip-your-stomach sort of stuff.”
She smacked her lips on the straw, drew a massive mouthful of malt in and swallowed it noisily.
“Yeah, I reckon.”
“Then why bother with it? I bet Mr. Cavanaugh’s got something better next week. And there’s still the dance . . .”
“Good grief, you and that damn dance!” Margie exclaimed.
Scooter shot up straight, stunned.
“Look, forget about the dance, and forget about Motherhood Too Soon—that’s not even the real reason to get in there.”
“It ain’t?”
“No, it ain’t. Listen—”
She leaned across the table, sliding her malted out of the way as she gestured for him to follow suit. Once they were virtually nose to nose, she continued:
“You know Phyllis Gates?”
He nodded that he did.
“Well, she went last night, to the one for both boys and girls. She said just the same as your friend Lester, except there was something else.”
“What else?”
“Another picture, after the one they got going. One that ain’t advertised, like. Invite only.”
“You don’t say. . . .”
“That’s right.”
“Well . . . what’s it about?”
Margie smiled and leaned back on her side of the booth. Scooter’s eyes bulged, primed to pop.
“She didn’t say.”
“Didn’t say? Didn’t you ask her?”
“Of course I asked her, you lunkhead. She just . . .” Margie shrugged. “. . . didn’t say.”
Scooter frowned and made a scoffing nose. Pfft.
“Phyllis Gates,” he said derisively.
“I don’t think she could say, Scooter.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you want to know what goes on at the midnight show, you got to go to the midnight show. Invite only. It’s a secret.”
“A secret,” he repeated in a whisper.
“Ain’t that what I said? Now you’re curious, right?”
He said, “Hmn,” and rubbed his chin. He was curious, but he recognized the fact that he was curious about a great many things he had sense enough not to investigate too closely. He was curious what it felt like to fly, but he wasn’t aiming to leap off a cliff to try it out.
“Could be anything, I reckon,” he said.
“She says it’s worth it.”
“Who? Oh, Phyllis.”
“Try to keep up, dummy.”
“Sorry.”
“At first, I thought maybe it was just some nasty stag film—you know about those?”
Scooter shook his head.
“Well . . .” Margie looked around, made sure no one was too close to hear. “It’s like a sex picture.”
“That’s what Motherhood Too Soon is.”
“Not exactly what I mean—that one is about sex, sure, but a stag film . . . well, don’t you get it?”
He shook his head again, more puzzled than ever.
“Good grief, are you dense. It actually shows it, knothead. People, you know, doing it.”
He scrunched his brow for a moment, mulling it over, and when it hit him all the blood drained out of his face in an instant.
“No!”
“You know Bill Lott? Mr. Lott’s littlest with the missing thumb?”
“Mr. Lott at the filling station.”
“Yeah, that’s him. Bill’s older brother moved on to St. Louis, sells insurance there. Well, Larry—that’s the brother—he told Bill all about these films. Said they have these crazy conventions all the time, all over, in different cities. Just these insurance fellows, and they drink like fish and tear the place up, and a lot of the time—this is what Larry told Bill—a lot of the time, they end up with these filthy shows projected up on a wall in some room or another. You know, they all got them funny Shriner hats on and their neckties around their heads like Indians, and they hoot and holler at the picture on the wall, which is all folks with no clothes on.”
“And they’re . . . ?”
“Like rabbits.”
“Gee.”
“Which is how come I ain’t never getting married, by the by.”
“Huh? I don’t follow.”
“I know you don’t—you’re a man and men are just plain nasty. Didn’t you hear what I just told you?”
“Well . . .”
“But I don’t think that’s what it is, anyway.”
“What what is?”
“The midnight show, stupid. You know, I don’t think you listen too good.”
“I’m listening,” he pouted.
“I reckon if it was just some old stag film, Phyllis wouldn’t have stuck around, and she sure wouldn’t have suggested I go, too.”
“She said you should go?”
“She said I have to go.”
Scotter half-closed one eye and screwed his mouth up to one side.
“Maybe she’s putting you on.”
Margie furrowed her brow. “What for?”
“I dunno. Maybe she wants to make a fool out of you. Maybe there’s something that happens at midnight, something you’re really not gonna like. I just dunno, Margie. Sounds . . . well, it sounds fishy to me.”
Pursing her lips like a disappointed mother, Margie sat back and regarded him with something bordering on contempt. The look froze him, his fingers perched on the straw in his soda.
“Now, why in the world would Phyllis Gates do something like that?”
“People do all sorts of terrible things. They do ’em all the time, really.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, dubious and aloof. “It’s just a mean old world.”
“That what I read in the papers, anyway.”
“You’re such a nimrod sometimes, Scooter Carew.”
He sucked at his straw and exhaled loudly.
“I know,” he said.
“A real screwball.”
“I know.”
The bright plastic clock on the wall behind the counter (drink Nehi! it read around the rim) clicked over to a quarter to seven on the dot. Someone inserted a nickel in the jukebox, selected a Rudy Vallee record. “Life is a Bowl of Cherries.” Scooter smirked.
The truth of the matter was he was deeply, stupidly, hopelessly in love with Margie Shannon, had been for nearly as long as he could remember. The nature of the love changed and developed over the years, changed how he looked at her and what he dreamed about at night, and of course how the Reverend Shannon felt about him. And she had changed, too: not just physically (though boy, had she ever), but personally, too. Gone was the shy preacher’s daughter in pigtails with the downcast eyes, long since replaced by a hawkish young woman with a razor sharp tongue and a fixed gaze that could melt a fellow like candle wax. Scooter did not figure he had done much changing, apart from shooting up like a wild reed to his present six feet, since those halcyon days on the Mount Sinai Bible School playground. Back then, he and the other more rambunctious kids would scrabble up the jungle gym like wild little monkeys while little Margaret sequestered herself in the shade of an imposing oak in the middle distance, munching on a bologna sandwich and avoiding eye contact at all costs. Occasionally, her father would come traipsing up to her, gesture toward the other children, get a stern shake of the head in response. Sometime he brought her a bible to study while she sulked in her solitude. Scooter never took his eyes off her, even when he was hanging from the scabby m
etal bars by his feet.
He had since learned the wisdom in looking away once in a while. Now, however, he turned his gaze back to her and managed something approaching a smile.
“I ’spect we best get to moving if we’re gonna do this,” he said.
“Back door’s never locked,” she answered like someone who knew what she was talking about. Scooter guessed that she did.
He slid out from the booth and dropped three quarters on the table. Rudy Vallee’s optimism pervaded the drugstore, and some of it seemed to rub off on Scooter. With a grin and a mock salute, he bid fat old Finn goodbye and escorted Margie to the door. Finn smiled broadly, his thick hands rapidly working at a large soda glass.
“Nice kids,” he said to no one in particular.
The sign was getting a little worn, frayed around the edges, but the words were still both legible and relevant to the proceedings at hand. no filth in litchfield. It was vague enough to suit countless pickets and protests. A hundred uses in one. Jim Shannon sighed.
On the other side of his office door was the chapel, and in the chapel were a dozen people—most of them women, all of them over fifty—who had come to get organized before marching directly to Russ Cavanaugh’s Palace Theater to demand he pull the degenerative monstrosity boldly advertised on his marquee as Motherhood Too Soon. Among them was Mrs. Hutchins, increasingly agitated, and several charter members of the Litchfield Busybodies Association, Shannon’s private name for her sewing circle. Two of these old crows had managed to browbeat their husbands into joining the good fight, men who gave up arguing a lifetime ago and just sat in the pews with sleepy, surrendered eyes while they waited to be told what to do. As the reverend emerged from his office and spotted the defeated old men, he realized how much he had in common with them. He, too, was at the mercy the LBA. His chosen profession, such as it was, largely depended upon their continued support. And, he bitterly suspected, their gullibility. He might have asked himself who was controlling whom in this relationship, but he simply hadn’t the energy to care enough to address the matter. Things were what they were. Best not to stir the pot.
“Agatha and Mercy Durfee didn’t come,” Mrs. Hutchins said with a fierce scowl. “They told me they’d come, but they’re not here. Those sisters are gonna get an earful from this old soul.”
