by Darren Hynes
Julie’s eyes are bulging in their sockets and Les’s jaw is on his lap and Kendrick’s smiling like a drunk.
“What is she doing here?” Julie says.
Mr. Rollie says, “Take off your pants, Miss Snow.”
“What?”
“You too, Mr. Faulkner. Mr. Pumphrey has graciously offered to fill in for you.”
The cast’s communal gasp drowns out the crescendo in the music. Hands go to mouths; others reach out and grab shoulders. Sharon drops her Snickers wrapper and Paul seems to be fighting the urge to lie down again; Les goes even paler; and Julie’s eyes swell more than Les’s knee has. Then Les is pushing the ice pack aside and telling everyone he can do the show after all and tries getting to his feet, but the pain’s too much, so Kendrick lowers him back onto his chair. Les licks his palm and goes to run it through his show-ready hair, but his heart’s not in it, so instead he looks at Mr. Rollie and says, “Fill in? Him? He’ll ruin everything.”
Then the music’s ending and the lights are going down and Mr. Rollie orders Kendrick to run out and tell Mrs. Cooper to play for a few more minutes and for the rest of the cast to find their places. Everyone reaches for personal props and adjusts costume bits and runs to entrance positions. Sharon’s holding her stomach and Paul’s saying something about not knowing his line. Then the music dies completely and the curtain starts to open but then Kendrick reappears and the music starts again and the curtain closes before too much of the set is revealed and a bedsheet is held up for Marjorie and Julie to change behind and Marjorie’s costume pants are so short they look comical and Julie walks to her place like a mourner following a casket.
Les takes off his flannel shirt, sweater, parka, work gloves, and hard hat, handing them all over to Wayne. He refuses to give up the pants though and insists on Kendrick taking him somewhere where he doesn’t have to listen to all his excellent acting being butchered by Wayne Pumphrey.
Kendrick helps Les to his feet and half carries him away while Wayne gets into Les’s clothes that are too big. Marjorie’s there to roll up his shirtsleeves; Mr. Rollie adjusts the hard hat to fit Wayne’s head; Jason’s placing a script in his hands.
Then he’s being guided to his place and his shoulder is squeezed and a voice that’s Mr. Rollie’s says, “You’re a leader.”
Marjorie. Where’s Marjorie?
An explosion in the music: everything struck or blown into or strummed with full force, and his lips and ears are tingling, and his heart’s racing, and he can’t breathe, and how’d he end up here anyway? Applause and whistling and stomping of feet that seems to go on forever and then the lights going down and then nothing. He’s moving again, but it doesn’t feel like his feet doing the walking; they’re someone else’s, pulling his strings, taking him to where he needs to be. Must be. Now he’s still, and alone, and he thinks We all are anyway, and it’s black and he can’t see and he fumbles to open the script, find the page, but he drops it and it echoes and then the spotlight heats his face and it’s like he’s died and is heading towards the light, or rather the light’s heading towards him, about to engulf him. Bend down and pick up the script, he thinks. Open it up and read. Simple. But he can’t move. Can’t do anything but stare into the light. And it dawns on him then that mostly everything is out of our hands, so maybe it’s just best to get out of the way.
It’s the sound of laughter at the back of the gymnasium that brings Wayne back. That and Mr. Rollie whispering the opening line from his place in the wings, and Jim Butt dropping a drumstick, and the people in the front row whispering. Pick up the script, he thinks once more, but again he doesn’t. Why would he need to when the words are in his head all of a sudden? He doesn’t know if they’re the right words, only that they’re coming from somewhere and they feel like the right ones. Almost like how you know what someone’s saying without them having spoken; you know by what their body does instead, their eyes, the way they hold their mouths or tuck a strand of hair behind their ear or walk away because that too is saying something. So many words, Wayne thinks, when really, we hardly need them at all.
Then Marjorie’s there and she’s addressing the audience and her eyes are glossy and then the lights come up to full and Paul Stool enters from stage left and gives Wayne a hug, which gets a big laugh because the eight-year-old son is bigger than the thirty-year-old daddy. Then Marjorie’s hugging Wayne too and kissing him (not in the script, the kissing part) and she mistakenly knocks his hard hat off and it rolls into the wings, which makes the audience laugh again. The action moves to the kitchen and Wayne’s character Clancy is telling his wife and son about the accident at the mine and how Roy from across the road is unaccounted for. Lights out and then Mrs. Cooper goes to the piano and the rest of the cast filter onstage for “The Mining Song,” which in Wayne’s opinion sounds slightly off key. A scene at the mine then: men digging through rubble, and one in a union hall where angry workers demand safer working conditions. Paul Stool forgets his one line and stops blinking and Wayne has to say the words for him. Another song and Julie has a solo and she’s not bad despite her slip showing. Then a funeral scene where Sharon (her character’s name is Beverly) laments the loss of her husband, Roy. She’s doing great until her wig falls off and the audience laughs through the rest of her monologue and into the next scene. Paul Stool trips and knocks over a vase of flowers sitting on the kitchen table in scene nine and then, inexplicably, says the line that he’d forgotten earlier and some in the audience chuckle; others whisper; someone unwraps candy.
Then Wayne and Marjorie are in heavy coats and they’re standing on a street corner and Wayne’s character Clancy says: “Spring’s coming,” to which Marjorie’s character Bonita replies: “Long way off yet. Spring.” And suddenly Wayne can’t remember what comes next, so he looks into the wings, but there’s no one, so he tries listening for Mr. Rollie’s prompt, but there’s no voice. Marjorie’s staring and he’s wishing now he’d picked up that script and read from the page so he wouldn’t be lost. He thinks there’s nothing worse: being lost. It’s in his mind to walk off stage, grab a copy of the play, and then come back out, but he’s got no feet, legs, body, brain. He’s hardly there—a breeze. Then Marjorie speaks and it occurs to him that he couldn’t remember because he had no words to begin with. Her last lines are spoken directly to the audience and it’s something about wishing she could keep Clancy with her all the time so she wouldn’t have to worry, or hear about him the way she’d heard about Roy and why do bad things have to happen? “But time supplies the gauze,” Bonita says, “the bandages and eventually the cast.” Then her character turns to Wayne’s character and they hold hands and walk off stage as the lights go down and the band starts its instrumental of “The Mining Song.”
Applause and the lights up to full and the cast in a jagged line and bowing at different times because, in all the chaos of the past few days, Mr. Rollie had neglected to rehearse a curtain call. Marjorie and Wayne are pushed to the front, so they grab hands and bow, and the audience gets to their feet. Then Mr. Rollie comes out, wiping beneath his glasses, and saying how happy he is that everyone could make it out and, despite some pre-show hiccups, the performance couldn’t have been better and he likes his odds in next week’s drama festival, which makes the audience clap even louder.
Everyone leaves the stage, and in the wings there are hugs and handshakes and pats on the back and voices saying “Way to go, Wayne”; “Like you’ve been doing it all along”; “Better than Les.” Then Julie’s standing there and she’s fanning her dress and she says, “My slip was showing.”
“I bet everyone was too focused on your singing to notice,” Wayne says.
She pauses. “I was thinking that maybe I don’t like this stuffas much as I thought.”
Wayne stays quiet.
“Most of the time I’m thinking about skirts and shoes.”
“Can’t help thinking stuff.”
“I suppose.” She makes to go, but stops. “You did really g
ood.”
“Thanks.”
“So did Marjorie. Can you tell her for me? I’d do it myself but I can’t find her anywhere.”
Wayne nods.
Julie walks away.
“Reception’s in room 214,” Mr. Rollie says. “But first you should go out and meet your adoring fans.”
The place clears out in minutes and Wayne gets back into his civilian clothes and walks onto the stage to have a look in the auditorium.
She’s sitting in the fourth row from the front, her hands in her lap.
“There you are,” he says.
She looks up.
He goes to where she is. “There’s a reception.”
“I know.”
Wayne sits down beside her. “Wanna go?”
“Rather not.”
“But you’re the star.”
“Go without me.”
“Would Leo go without Kate?”
“Pfft.”
“What?”
“We’re far from Kate and Leo.”
“Not tonight.”
Marjorie pauses. “Tonight.”
For ages they sit and say nothing, like people at ease with each other, comfortable in the silence.
Then the door at the back opens and Mr. Ricketts walks in. He stops for a moment and scratches the back of his head, then starts stacking chairs.
Marjorie says, “You were excellent.”
“No, you were.” Then, “What do you think our chances are next week?”
“Don’t know.”
“I had a dream about St. John’s last night: I was on Signal Hill staring at the ocean and whales were breaching.”
It’s quiet for a moment.
“Did your mom come?” Wayne says.
“She’d have to wash her hair and get out of her robe for that.” Marjorie pauses. “Doesn’t matter. Even if she did come, she wouldn’t have seen it.”
Wayne says, “Why’d you change your mind?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Mr. Ricketts’s voice: “Can’t stack chairs with bums in ’em.”
Wayne looks back. “Can we help?”
“Help? They’d have me in a rocking chair tonight!”
A hand on top of his own. He looks down and then across at her.
“Let’s go,” she says.
“To the reception?”
She shakes her head.
“Where then?”
“You’ll see.”
They both stand and Marjorie leads him back towards the stage as Mr. Ricketts coughs and mumbles and drops a chair and curses.
In the wings now and to the backstage where she stops and faces him and kisses him and uses her tongue and he thinks her saliva tastes like raisins. Then she lets him go and guides him to the door leading into the corridor, and when she pulls it open Pete The Meat is there.
FIVE
Bobby and Harvey are dragging Wayne; Pete’s just ahead, holding Marjorie’s wrist against her back at an odd angle while his other arm is around her neck and it looks like it hurts but Marjorie’s not making a sound; Kenny’s pointing towards an open classroom at the end of the hall.
The floor’s still wet from where Mr. Ricketts was mopping and Bobby nearly slips and Harvey laughs and Bobby says it’s not funny.
Pete turns around and tells them to hurry up and Wayne thinks he’s never seen that look on Pete’s face before.
Harvey’s digging his fingers into Wayne’s arm but Wayne hardly feels it, and Bobby’s whispering into his ear but Wayne can’t make out the words because he still tastes Marjorie’s kiss on his lips.
Then they’re inside the classroom and Pete makes Marjorie and Wayne stand against the chalkboard and Kenny closes the door and flicks off the lights and then stands there with the moon through the window lighting his face. Bobby goes to take something out of his pocket and Pete tells him to leave it. “But,” Bobby says, and Pete goes, “Leave it, I said,” so Bobby does.
Pete steps closer and says, “You’re missing a nice reception upstairs. They got them Vienna sausages— you’d probably like those, Maple Leaf—and pickle toothpick thingies and egg sandwiches—”
“And Doritos,” Bobby says.
“That’s right, Bobby,” Pete says, “and Doritos.” The Meat smiles and his teeth glisten because of the moon. “Your faggot drama teacher made a speech and then got embarrassed when he couldn’t find either of you.”
Bobby laughs, but no one laughs along with him. Then Pete turns to Harvey and asks him what he thought of the play and Harvey adjusts his position on the desk he’s sitting on and says, “A fuckin’ bore.”
Pete nods. “Wasn’t it?” Then to Wayne, “And what were they thinking sending Pumphrey out there?”
Kenny shrugs and Bobby laughs again and Pete looks right at Wayne and says, “The leading man, eh? Think that’s what you are, Pumphrey?”
“More than you’ll ever be,” Marjorie says.
Pete doesn’t say anything, just nods, and, despite the murk, it’s not hard to make out Harvey getting to full height and Bobby standing with his feet shoulder-width apart and Kenny walking forward.
A truck pulls out of the lot, its headlights shining in the window, allowing Wayne to see everything: the whites of Pete’s eyes, and the way The Meat’s shirt clings to his chest; Harvey’s steel-nosed workboots and nicotine-stained fingers; Bobby’s half smile with the now perfect fake tooth highlighting the deficiencies of the rest, their plaque and gingivitis, their crowdedness and cavities; Kenny’s furtive glance out the window and then the door, then out the window again; and Marjorie’s wet bottom lip from where Wayne’s own lips had been just moments ago, and her moist eyes even though she’s not crying, and the way her palms are pressed flat against each thigh as if needing something to touch.
Then the lights are gone and it’s dark again and Pete’s got Marjorie pinned up against the chalkboard by the neck and Wayne shouts, “Let her go!” and then Bobby and Harvey have Wayne pinned up against the chalkboard too and Wayne feels cold despite the heat. Then Pete looks over and says, “He shouts again, put a fuckin’ eraser in his gob.” To which Bobby replies, “Bet he’d like something else in his gob,” which makes Harvey laugh.
Another vehicle pulls out of the lot, more lights shining in, and Pete tells Kenny to close the fuckin’ blinds and Kenny runs over and does it and now it’s even darker, just the shapes of things.
No one says anything.
Wayne hears breathing and swallowing and licking of lips and he thinks about that song and being strange and not belonging anywhere and this here’s the proof, right?
A voice: Pete’s. “Hand it over.”
Bobby snickers and fumbles about and hauls something out of his pocket and hands it to Pete.
Wayne looks and can’t make it out at first, but then knows exactly what it is, and he says “No,” but no one seems to hear him.
And now Pete’s waving it in front of Marjorie’s face and saying, “Sorry, Maple Leaf, it thawed in Bobby’s pocket, so we’ll have to go easy.”
Harvey and Bobby laugh.
“I figured I’d let you do it yourself, but then I thought: wouldn’t it be great if Pumphrey did it for you? Seeing as you like each other so much.”
“Do what?” Wayne says, even though he knows exactly what.
Then Bobby says, “But it’s so dark, Pete. How will we see?”
“You’ll see, Bobby, don’t worry, although sometimes it’s better to imagine.” Pete brings the wiener to his nose and smells it. “I said you’d get what was coming, didn’t I, Maple Leaf?”
A silence.
Then Marjorie says, “Should I lie on the desk over there or on the floor or what?”
Pete doesn’t answer, so Bobby goes to speak, but Pete tells him to shut up and turns to Marjorie and says, “I know what you’re tryin’ to do, Maple Leaf.”
Marjorie says nothing.
“But it won’t work.”
&
nbsp; Bobby says, “What’s she tryin’ to do, Pete?”
“Act like it doesn’t bother her, that’s what. So we’ll get turned off or something and let them go.”
After a moment Bobby says, “But we’re not going to let them go, right, Pete?”
“That’s right, we’re not. Not until Pumphrey here gives Maple Leaf what she’s dyin’ for.”
No one says anything.
Wayne feels Harvey’s grip loosen, and Bobby— seemingly too wrapped up in breathing and trying to swallow without the spit—lets him go, and Kenny’s pacing now like someone waiting for results.
“Not man enough to do it yourself, Pete?” Marjorie says.
And suddenly it’s like a cord being yanked out of something, leaving an unexpected and exacerbated silence in its wake that Wayne thinks might go on forever, except that Pete finally manages to speak. “I’ll have my go, Maple Leaf, don’t worry.”
Then Bobby says, “Me too, Pete?”
“Yes, Bobby, you too. And Kenny if he wants.”
Kenny doesn’t say whether or not he’d like to.
Now Pete’s got Marjorie in a bear hug and is carrying her to the back of the room and when Wayne says to put her down, Bobby hits him full force in the stomach. Down Wayne goes and he thinks it funny how easily the tears come compared to how hard it is to breathe. He’ll smother, he figures, but then suddenly he’s able to draw breath, sucking in great heaps and then wiping the wetness from his cheeks. He looks up and can make out Marjorie, and Pete standing over her waving the wiener as if she were a dog he was teaching a trick to.
“Bring him over, boys,” Pete says.
And he’s lifted up despite not having regained his wind and he coughs as he’s being dragged there. Now he’s standing over Marjorie too and Pete’s telling her to take off her pants and make it quick ’cause they don’t have all fuckin’ night.
Marjorie unbuckles and unzips and slides off and Bobby breathes in Wayne’s ear and Harvey squeezes Wayne’s arm and Kenny goes over and stands guard by the door and Pete’s waving that wiener back and forth like he’s conducting something, which, Wayne thinks, he sort of is.