Kim learned her lines quickly. She was enjoying herself. “I always used to daydream about being a movie star,” she told us. “But musicals, you know. I never thought I’d be acting in a serious play.” While we rehearsed, Mrs. Thurston brought over our food, rounded up boxes from the local stores, even—with noblesse oblige—from the ones that had canceled their ads. When we weren’t working on All My Sons, we packed equipment, costumes, all the myriad residue of Mittie’s desire to be an actor. “I’m not leaving it for Bruno to toss on the funeral pyre,” Leila said.
Kim and Cary helped with the packing too. “Y’all are being so nice to me,” she kept saying.
By the beginning of that week, everyone had his part memorized.
Seymour would play Sabby’s outraged brother. Ronny was the idealistic son. Pete Barney would take tickets and seat people and run the concession stand and work the lights. Everyone would be stagehands when they weren’t onstage. Joely would run the production. Somehow, Wolfstein had wrestled wholeness out of all the pieces of our talents, feelings, voices, gestures. “I’m proud of you,” he said the night of the dress rehearsal, said for the first time that summer. “I didn’t think I could do it,” he added, for the first time, too, I imagined, in a long while.
We argued out approaches. “If you read it that way, Nate, it elicits sympathy for your character, doesn’t it? I mean, the audience is going to feel sorry for him.”
“The man is not evil, Joely.”
“Bull.”
“No, no. Don’t be so hard and self-righteous. It’s the easy way. Try pushing your compassion where it doesn’t want to go. Extend it to a man who loved his wife, who loved his sons, who tried to give them everything he had been taught to think they ought to want and have…a house, a nice yard”—he held his arm out to the set now put up on the stage—“security. This is an uneducated man who feels inferior to people like his son, but he’s the one who gave the son a chance for an education. All he has to offer is his success.”
“A man who purposely, callously sells machines that are no good, that fall apart and kill people—for money. For a fast buck, Nate!”
“Yes, you’re right, Joely, he wasn’t strong enough to be stronger than what he had been taught to think he was supposed to do: succeed. But he wasn’t bad enough, either, to be able to live without his son’s respect… He fell, he morally fell, and if you live out your life without ever falling once, you’ll be a rare man, Joely, and without need of others’ compassion… Excuse me, I think I’d better go lie down.”
I took his arm. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, thank you, yes,” he coughed. “I’m just going to lie down in the office for a minute.”
“He’s not okay at all,” Sabby said anxiously. “I think Dr. Ferrell ought to see him. Do you think he’ll be all right for the performance tomorrow?”
On the phone, Dr. Ferrell said we should bring Wolfstein in on Friday. He told Leila also that if he saw Ronny Tiorino with his daughter again, and if his fifteen-year-old daughter was doing what he didn’t want to find out she was doing, he was going to have the book thrown at Ronny. It was the first time we’d heard Dr. Ferrell take a serious attitude toward almost anything.
“Well,” called Joely from his bed that night, “there goes the last of the gang that was getting any this summer! Good old Ronny hung in there as long as he could.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure hasn’t been a summer of love.”
“Come on, now. I didn’t have any runaway wife at my fly either.”
“Awh, one night. That’s all. Big deal.”
“Is that all it was? Well, don’t knock it, kid. At least you’re good-looking. What I’ve mostly had is the old personal hand-job. My person, my hand.”
From his mattress on the floor between us, Pete giggled.
I laughed. Joely laughed. And Pete said, “What about Seymour and Sabby?”
“Them?” Joely snorted. “Forget it. Sabby screwing?”
“On the other hand,” I said, “nobody thought she could act either.”
I dreamed that Verl and I were sitting on the creek bank talking, and he told me Leila was over on the other side of the water past the woods. He said she wanted to talk to me. I didn’t want to go over there because that was where Mittie had gotten killed. But Verl said I ought to. When I got halfway over the bridge, all the woods were on fire. The trees were shafts of flames. So I started back. But he kept waving his arms at me, telling me to go ahead, go ahead. “You’re crazy,” I said. “I’ll kill myself.” “No, you won’t,” he kept saying. “Go on. Go fast.” I ran. I could feel myself on fire—my hair seared, my face burning. I kept running. When I came out on the other side, I wasn’t hurt at all. My face, hair, clothes, shoes were just the same. I was in a meadow, and Leila was picking some of the periwinkles Verl and I had seen in the field that first evening when we drove into Floren Park. She didn’t notice me, and then the dream faded.
• • •
That morning, I got up before the others and walked down to the creek. I took my notebook with me so I could reread what I had done. The poems to Jardin seemed—maybe it was because I was outdoors in cool, new air off the sharp mountains—like an old, embarrassing diary. Verl had been right, just too kind—they didn’t even have technique. I tore them into small squares, let them fall to float either to the Atlantic or the Pacific, whichever it was.
• • •
“We need to get the keys to this place, boy.”
“Well, sir, I don’t have them. You’ll have to see Mrs. Stark.”
“You reckon she’s at home this time of the morning?”
“Yes, sir. I’m going back there now.”
“Why don’t I give you a lift, boy?”
I didn’t want to ride in Sheriff Booter’s car again. When I’d seen him in front of the theater on my way home from the diner, I had tried to cut a wide arc around the parking lot. But he’d spotted me. With him was a plump and sour man in a short-sleeved white shirt with a thin tie who carried a clipboard.
“That’s okay, thanks, I can walk.” I started to do so.
“Hold on. We got to go out there anyway. Most folks running a business gits it open before ten o’clock. You think she’ll be at home?”
“Yes, they’re probably having breakfast.”
“Having breakfast?” he chuckled and gave his associate a broad wink. “Ten o’clock and they’re having breakfast! Think they can git their street clothes on by noon?” The other man forced an unenthusiastic smile that quickly was canceled.
“We generally stay up pretty late,” I explained.
“I bet you do, I bet you do,” Booter wisecracked. He seemed to be in a very good mood. “Doing all sorts of things, I wouldn’t mind wagering.” He told the plump man, “This young man’s ridden in my car before on a previous occasion. Strange, isn’t it, he don’t seem too eager to accept my hospitality. I been good to you, son. You know that, and I know that. Don’t we? I could have come down hard, lot harder than I did. You’d been in Chicago, or one of those mean southern towns, you’d-a been in a lot worse fix. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So you just take a seat in this car here, and we’ll go on up and wake up your friends in case they’re not down to breakfast yet. How about that?”
I got in the car.
Maisie ran out on the porch and yelled back inside, “Mama, Devin’s arrested. The police got him!” The company gathered on the porch to see. Fortunately, everyone was decently dressed, no one was shooting heroin, or screwing, or protesting the war, and Spurgeon was gone.
“Good morning, Gabe. Mother, this is Mr. Booter. I believe you met last month.”
“Yes. Mittie’s accident. How do you do, Officer?”
“I’m doing fine, ma’am. And you?”
“Fine, thank you. It’s gotten a bit chilly, hasn’t it? I do believe this summer is just about coming to an end.”
I climbed out of the back seat of the patrol car.
“Was Devin lost, Gabe?”
“Uhhuhhuh,” he gave her a chuckle. “No, this boy just came along for the ride. He likes riding in my car. That right?”
I went up on the porch so I could face him with the others.
“What can I do for you?” Leila asked politely.
“Well, now,” he strolled up to the bottom step, propped his boot on it, while his friend stayed in the car, scowling down at the ditch beside the road. “Mr. Bipple here, from our department of safety regulations, needs to take a little look-see at your the-ater, Leila.”
She smiled. “What seems to be the problem?”
Booter smiled too. “Why, we don’t know there is a problem. We just have to do these little checks regularly to make sure there ain’t a problem.”
“I guess Mr. Bipple must have missed us last summer when he did his regular check-up. And the summer before, too.”
“I guess he musta.” Booter’s grin got wider. “Lot of folks been checking into the town statutes lately. In fact, our mayor called me in just the other day over a little notification he’d gotten from a lawyer regarding one of our statutes.” He bent and lazily picked some grass out of his boot toe. “’Course the mayor was kinda surprised that three old Mexican biddies that can’t read or write or even speak English worth a damn had gone to the trouble, not to mention the expense, of hiring a lawyer to send that little notification outlining my abuses of their legal rights. Our mayor’s a nervous kind of person. He don’t like people getting upset with him. He likes things peaceful.” He stared at Leila, who just looked back at him politely and waited. “So I happened to come across a couple of statutes myself that folks had gotten slack on, had let ’em slide over the years. Safety statutes regarding public places. Seemed to me somebody ought to look into things right away before we had some kind of bad accident here in Floren Park. We can’t risk people getting burnt up and blowed up while they’re here to relax and enjoy themselves. It’s bad for business.”
Mrs. Thurston drew herself taller. “I certainly do wish you had thought of that a month ago, Mr. Booter, before you and your associates allowed several dozen boxes of Fourth of July fireworks displays to be left sitting unattended in the middle of a public field where they could explode on an innocent passer-by.” Well, Mrs. Thurston had not, like Spur, “bitten” the sheriff, but she’d gone a lot further than I would have thought likely in her criticism of a law official.
“Now, whether or not any ‘innocent passers-by’ were involved in that particular incident you’re referring to ain’t been proved, ma’am,” he grinned evenly. “But I agree we got to be more careful in the future. So let’s you and me go on down, Leila, and take a look around the place with Mr. Bipple here.”
Maisie and Davy burst into tears, as if they thought their mother were being taken to the Tower. They had become more and more reluctant to be separated from her as the summer passed. I went, too, to see injustice done. Mr. Bipple discovered, in forty minutes’ time, thirty violations of the town safety regulations—fire hazards, electrical hazards, sanitation hazards.
They pasted CLOSED and CONDEMNED on the doors with a printed explanation of the violations violated. We were shut down.
“As of when?” Leila asked.
“As of now,” the sheriff let her know.
“Look,” she said, “I’ve got posters up, tickets have been reserved.” It was true about the posters, we’d put them up in Boulder. But nobody had ever reserved a ticket, even in good times. Leila’s quickness impressed me.
“Well, take them down. And unreserve them.”
She walked him back to his car. I went with them. Maybe, like Maisie and Davy, I was afraid he was going to take her away.
“Gabe, you think you’re really being fair? I know the Menelades told you to close the place, and I know my father-in-law told them to tell you.”
“Look here, honey. Don’t tell me what you know. I think I’ve been more than fair. More! Have I been riding you hard? Did I or didn’t I look the other way when that crazy husband of yours got himself blown to smithereens? When your boyfriend was selling shit, and your pals were peeing on each other?”
Leila’s head turned away from him. As if filmed in slow motion, I saw the gold swirling of her hair.
“I let you stay in my sister’s place despite all the drinking and sex, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if there was drugs. But you just went too far.”
Her head jerked up. “When was that, Gabe? When I tried to help three old women keep the right to sell their flowers on your fucking street?”
“Don’t you curse at me, young lady! Look here, you went over my head, rubbed mud in my face. I don’t like it when people I’m good to stab me in the back.”
“Neither do I, Gabe. Neither do I.”
“Christ Almighty, why didn’t you come back to me about it? I didn’t realize you were so fired up about those Beaners. Maybe we coulda talked. But with that freak out on my streets—”
“Gabe, it’s the principle! And none of this is the point anyway. You know that. Even if I hadn’t called the lawyer, you’d still be closing me down. How much did Bruno tell the mayor he was going to invest in Floren Park?”
The sheriff’s face bulged purple, “Are you accusing me of being bought? Well goddamn…” All of a sudden, he turned on me. “This is none of your damn business! Git the hell out of here! Christ Almighty, I let him off too!”
“Are you all right, Leila?” I asked.
His face turned a darker purple. “You think I’m going to horsewhip her? Police brutality, is that what you think? You punk college kids, somebody ought to horsewhip you! Git out of here before I make up my mind to do it!”
“It’s okay, Devin, I’ll be inside in a minute.” So I left them. It was funny. Booter was acting as if she’d hurt his feelings.
“Well, what are we going to do?” Sabby asked.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Pete told her mournfully.
We sat around the living room after lunch. Though no one really had known why we were doing All My Sons in the first place, when the theater had clearly already folded, most of the company was gone, and Wolfstein was too ill to be working—still, once Booter told us we couldn’t do it, everyone, even Ronny, was despondent.
Leila put more logs on the fire for the weather had been turning cooler each day. “Nate, put this blanket around you. Maybe it’s all for the best. I don’t think you ought to leave the house today, anyhow. It’s stupid, I suppose, letting something that counts so little get so important.”
“No, it counts,” Wolfstein said hoarsely. He put down his coffee. His hands shook out a cigarette, and he fumbled for his lighter in his old bathrobe pocket.
“Nathan, don’t!” Mrs. Thurston stood up, then sat down. “Oh, Good Lord, why shouldn’t you? Go ahead.” She smiled back when he grinned at her. The grin was like a grimace in his emaciated face.
“Well,” he began, speaking slowly and carefully. “What is surprising, my friends, is that, after all of it, after making such a botch of my declining years, now, when I was fairly certain I had lost the slightest capacity to care in the slightest about…anything at all, that now, I should be given—that your ‘Good Lord’ should give me, Amanda—this most improbable chance to…care very much.” He coughed through his laugh. “Improbable, you must admit, ladies and gentlemen, out here in a Rocky Mountain resort, with a half dozen young folks performing Arthur Miller in an old rollerdome. And I tell you, too… I like it more than anything I’ve done…in a long while.”
Leila smiled across the fire at him. “Since The Good Years, Nate?”
“Yes, since then,” he answered softly.
That was the first time, I think, that any of us had known it. That Wolfstein had—“My God, of course,” Joely said—directed The Good Years, the movie about World War II that had won so many awards. And when I later looked him up in a book of film criticism, they said in a footnote that in the fifties he had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, that he had been praised by the committee as a “model witness” and a “true patriot,” and that he had made no other movies after that. Leila had said once that Nate was dying from self-contempt. It must have been then, with that betrayal of his colleagues, that he had simply quit on himself. That was the thing for which he could not forgive himself.
“Yes,” he said, as we all watched the fire flame up, “it’s too bad they’ve stopped us. But we did well. Leila, as your mother would put it, we did make an effort.”
“Maybe,” I offered. “Maybe we could do it anyhow. Why not? We could just go in, lock it up behind us, and do it anyhow. Even if we don’t have an audience.”
We were all quiet, deciding.
“Devin, yes! We could do it just for us!” Sabby burst out. Everyone looked at everyone else, then all together chortled aloud.
“Call Kim,” Leila told Ronny. She sat up, started lacing her blue leather sandals on.
“You know it’s illegal, Leila. Your performance license has been revoked,” reminded Wolfstein.
“Had you rather not do it, Nate?”
“Ah, dear,” he pulled himself up on Sabby’s arm, “if even Amanda agrees that at this point I might as well smoke, then surely I might as well spend a night in jail.”
“I would certainly hope,” Mrs. Thurston replied, “that after you young people have exerted yourselves to the extent that you have, that the public officials have got better things to do with their time than to go around arresting college children.”
“Tell that to Mayor Daley, Amanda,” Joely said. “I was listening to the news. There are ten thousand cops out on the streets of my hometown today arresting college children.”