Stage Two

by Ariel Tachna

  THANE walked into the house in Idle Hour—his pride and joy after all the remodeling he’d done after buying it as a barely standing foreclosed fixer-upper—and took a minute to savor the quiet. It wouldn’t last long. Phillip had texted to say they were on their way home from their first day of working with the theater program, but for the moment, he had the house all to himself. He’d argued with himself when he bought the house, but after growing up on the poor side of town, he’d promised himself he’d live in a better neighborhood. He wasn’t the family type, so the better school district didn’t matter at the time, but it was the right address. Now he was glad he’d given in to the impulse, because Kit and Phillip deserved the chance to go to a good school.

  He padded silently upstairs on sock feet and stripped off his work clothes. He needed to do laundry, but that would have to wait for later. First he had to figure out dinner. Nobody really cared if he wore a dirty shirt to a work site, but Kit and Phillip would care if they didn’t have dinner. He took a minute to wash his hands and let the hot water sting his cold fingers. They probably should have waited another couple of weeks to start this project, since the weather in early February wasn’t exactly warm, but the homeowner was impatient and willing to pay handsomely for them to start now and finish on or before deadline. He’d offered to split the bonus with anyone willing to work outside regardless of the weather, and his crew had come through as always. He was lucky to have such dedicated people. A lot of construction teams didn’t.

  When the hot water felt good instead of hurting, Thane turned off the tap and headed back downstairs. He could make spaghetti tonight. Even he could brown some ground beef and boil a pot of spaghetti. He wasn’t about to attempt a homemade spaghetti sauce like Derek’s mother made, but the kind in a jar wasn’t bad.

  He’d gotten the water on to boil and had the beef sizzling nicely when the front door banged open and Kit and Phillip tromped in. He hadn’t considered the proximity to Henry Clay when he bought the house, but living close enough that the boys could walk had made the adjustment less painful on all of them.

  “In the kitchen,” Thane called. They came in a few minutes later, faces wet like they’d scrubbed them and the biggest grins he’d seen on their faces since before Lily got sick. “Good day?”

  “The best,” Kit said. “I know stage crew is supposed to be community service, but it was so cool, Uncle Thane. They have this huge loft full of pieces, and they put them together like Tetris to make walls and doors and anything you need. We’ll have to build some new ones because we need so many for this year’s musical, which will be cool. Did you know the school has a shop with all kinds of power tools? Mr. Barnes said he’d teach us how to use them all if we needed them, although he didn’t think we’d need the jigsaw this year. But he said if there was time, he’d teach us that too. And we weren’t the only new kids to the crew, so it wasn’t like we were singled out. The stage managers were really nice. They’re seniors. They’ve been doing this since they were freshmen, but since they’re going to graduate this year, they’ll need new stage managers for next year. It’ll probably be Amber and Morgan, since they’re juniors and this is already their third year, but the year after that, it could maybe be me.”

  Thane burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. “Kit, breathe. I promise I will listen to everything you have to say. You don’t have to get it all out at once.”

  “Sorry, but it was really cool. I got a little excited.”

  “I’m glad you’re excited about it, and I want to hear all the details, but you were talking so fast I couldn’t catch everything you were saying. You and Phillip get the table set and the dishwasher emptied and tell me about it slowly, okay?”

  “Okay.” Thane nearly dropped the spatula in his hand when Kit threw his arms around Thane’s waist and hugged him tightly. “Thank you.”

  Thane stroked his hand over Kit’s dark hair. He didn’t have a clue why Kit was thanking him, but he was happy, and that was all that mattered. “You’re welcome.”

  When Kit let go, Thane looked over at Phillip. “Did you have a good time too?”

  “Yeah, it was cool, like Kit said. There’s about twenty of us working on the stage crew, and everybody seemed nice. Emma and Zach are the stage managers, and they really seem to know what they’re doing. Mr. Barnes is officially the sponsor, but Emma and Zach were the ones giving all the directions. Mr. Barnes only stepped in if more people had questions at once than Emma and Zach could answer. I mean, he helped the whole time, but he just worked right next to everyone else, like he was another kid, not like he was in charge.”

  He probably doesn’t have the balls to be in charge, Thane thought. He should probably volunteer a few times to make sure Barnes actually knew what he was doing where the power tools were concerned. Someone could get hurt if he didn’t.

  “Table’s set,” Kit announced. “Did you know Mr. Barnes has been working on theater sets since he was our age? He started when he was in high school. His first production was The Foreigner. He said he’s been trying to convince Ms. Clark to do that one for a few years, but she always picks other things instead.”

  Thane frowned. They’d put on The Foreigner at Tates Creek when he was a senior. He hadn’t been involved, hadn’t even gone to see the performance, but he remembered the controversy over whether it would be allowed to go on after one of the principals walked in on a dress rehearsal and saw people dressed in Ku Klux Klan uniforms. He didn’t know how they’d finally convinced her to let the play continue, but the show hadn’t been canceled.

  That had to be a coincidence. Lots of high schools probably put on that particular play.

  “Dinner will be ready as soon as the sauce is hot,” Thane said as he added the sauce to the ground beef. “You can tell me more over dinner.”

  The boys got drinks out—Cokes for them and a beer for Thane—and waited patiently while he stirred the sauce and dished out dinner. Lily had taught them manners, that was for sure. Thane had never been this patient when he was their age.

  “All right, tell me the rest,” Thane said when he’d set the plates in front of them and taken his own seat.

  Kit spent all of dinner gushing about the afternoon. Phillip nodded along, occasionally adding a tidbit of his own but mostly letting Kit talk. Thane made appropriate encouraging noises whenever Kit looked his way, but Kit didn’t seem to need the encouragement. He glowed with excitement as he talked about the plans for the set and all the different moving parts and how they’d never attempted something this complex before.

  Thane still didn’t know if this would solve Phillip’s and Kit’s problem with the bullies, but seeing the joy on Kit’s face, he resolved to do everything he could to encourage them. Anything that made Kit this happy was a good thing.

  Chapter Six

  THANE seated the nail in the two-by-four with one hit and reached for another. Derek came into the room where he was working, carrying more for the wall frame of the addition they were working on. Thane looked up and said, “I’m leaving early today and Thursday.”

  Derek grunted as he set down his load. “Okay. What time?”

  “I need to be at Henry Clay by three thirty.”

  Derek grabbed a piece of wood and placed it into the frame. He pounded in two nails before asking, “Everything okay with your nephews?”

  “I think so.” Thane didn’t look over at Derek. They had work to do, but more than that, he wouldn’t see anything in Derek’s expression that he couldn’t already read in his voice, not after knowing each other since they were kids. “They’re building sets for the school play. I thought I’d give them a hand, make sure the people in charge know what they’re doing.”

  “I’ll hold down the fort.”

  “Thanks.” He grabbed the next board and slotted it in place. Derek hammered in the nail and reached for another one, only to find the pouch empty.

  “Damn.”

  Thane pulled a nail from his tool belt and finished
bracing the board. They’d always done their best work as two.

  “HEY,” Derek said as Thane took off his hard hat and headed toward the truck. “If it turns out they need another set of hands, let me know. I can help out on the days you don’t or something like that.”

  “Thanks. I hope it won’t come to that. Kit was pretty enthusiastic about it yesterday, so it’s probably fine. I just want to see for myself.”

  Derek waved him off and headed back to work. Thane stowed his tool belt in the chest attached to the bed of his pickup and headed for Henry Clay. It was probably fine. The school wouldn’t let Barnes continue as the sponsor if there were safety issues with either the sets themselves or the building process, but Thane was a pretty good judge of people—he had to be or he’d have lost his business a long time ago—and nothing about Barnes inspired any confidence. He was too… mousy. Too meek, too plain, too unassuming. Thane would never hire him as part of a site crew, and maybe building sets wasn’t as complicated as building houses, but kids were still going to be walking on them and moving them, maybe even dancing on them, so they had to be stable.

  He gave the secretary at the school his most beguiling smile, assuring her he was expected in the theater and that he just needed directions. She simpered and didn’t even ask to see any identification before she gave him directions to the auditorium. He followed a group of kids into the dark theater. Onstage the lights blazed brightly, much the way they would during a performance, although no performance could go on with the mess spread out over the stage at the moment.

  “Time to get started,” a girl called. Emily, Kit had said. That wasn’t right. Evie… Ellie… no, Emma. Emma the stage manager. Thane stayed where he was, trying to get a feel for the dynamic in the room.

  Emma gave assignments left and right as kids came onto the stage. Most of them moved to take up their tasks right away, but a few, including Kit and Phillip, lingered on the stage, clearly unsure of what they were doing. Thane took a step forward to help, but before he could say anything, a boy had taken charge of the stragglers and started showing them something. Thane couldn’t hear what he was saying over the general hum of conversation as the students got busy, but the students listened to him attentively.

  As Zach—Thane finally remembered his name—finished up, Barnes finally made an appearance dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. He shuffled across the stage holding one end of a long, rectangular frame. Thane rolled his eyes. He couldn’t even walk with any authority. Thane didn’t know how he expected to be in charge of a group of kids working with power tools. Then again, despite what Kit and Phillip had said about him being the sponsor, he didn’t seem to be in charge. That role fell squarely on Emma’s and Zach’s shoulders.

  Figured. Every high school principal he’d ever known had been exactly the same, always pushing tasks—and responsibility—off on someone else.

  Deciding it was high time an adult showed a little initiative, he strode the rest of the way down the aisle into the pool of light from the stage.

  “Uncle Thane!”

  “Hello, Kit,” Thane said. “I thought I’d come see if you needed another pair of hands.”

  “Mr. Dalton, I didn’t expect to see you.”

  Thane looked up at Barnes, who had come to the edge of the stage and squatted down so he was closer to Thane’s eye level. If they’d been in a different situation—and if Barnes had been a different man—Thane might have thought it was flirting, what with Barnes’s crotch practically in his face, but Barnes was too much of a stuffed shirt for that. “You’re the one who suggested it.”

  “I didn’t say you were unwelcome, only unexpected. I’m sure Kit and Phillip would be happy to show you around if you’d like to see what we’re doing.”

  Thane wanted to insist Barnes show him around so he could better gauge what the other man knew, but Barnes’s invitation to be there had revolved around spending time with Kit and Phillip, not so Thane could assess his competence. He’d go with Kit and Phillip now and keep an eye on Barnes. He ran a full construction crew. He could manage to keep an eye on one person, even with his nephews distracting him.

  He vaulted onto the stage and turned to Kit. “What are you working on today?”

  “I’m helping to build the mission platform,” Kit said. “See? We’re laying out flats—those are the pieces we use to make walls. They’re rectangles, and we piece them together to make the shape we want, doors and windows and all, and then we screw them together. Then we stand them up and attach them to the platform. When the show is over, we can unscrew them and use them for the next one. It’s like playing Tetris, only in 3-D.”

  Thane nodded along as Kit showed him the rectangular frame with the thin lauan plywood as a veneer over it. It wouldn’t work for building houses, but he could see how it might work for a temporary set. He’d have to remind himself that this didn’t have to be up to code, just safe enough that it wouldn’t fall down around the kids’ ears as they were performing.

  BLAKE breathed a sigh of relief when Thane followed Kit across the stage and behind the curtains that hid the wings of the stage from the audience. He had a job to do, one that didn’t involve getting flustered in front of a group of students.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Barnes.”

  Blake looked up to see one of the new students to the tech crew—he hadn’t learned all their names yet.

  “Yes?”

  “Emma told me to start making legs for the platforms, but I’m not sure how to do that. Could you help me?”

  “Of course,” Blake said. “Tell me your name again. I didn’t get to talk with you yesterday.”

  “I’m Darcy.”

  “Okay, Darcy, let’s go see what we need to make the legs.”

  He followed Darcy back to the platform she was supposed to be working on. “Did Emma tell you how long the legs needed to be?”

  “She said this one should be six inches, but that some of the others would need to be higher. They’re for the sewer scene, and they need different levels for the dance.”

  “Let’s look at it, then. Can you help me flip the platform over?”

  Darcy grabbed one end while Blake grabbed the other, and they flipped it so the plywood was against the stage and the two-by-fours were on top. “Look at the corner.”

  Darcy moved to the corner where an extra piece of two-by-four formed a triangular brace. “This?”

  “Yes. That creates the hole where we want to put the leg pieces. They fit in that space and the brace helps add stability to the legs as well as to the platform itself. So what do we have that will fit in there?”

  “I think we could use more two-by-fours,” Darcy said.

  “One on each corner?”

  “You can’t just do a single two-by-four in each corner and expect it to hold any weight.” Thane’s derisive tone cut through the noise onstage.

  Blake bit his lip to hold back the retort. “I didn’t say it would,” he said slowly, gritting his teeth to keep his temper in check. “I asked Darcy to think about whether that would be enough. There’s more to tech crew than just hammers and saws, Mr. Dalton. I try to teach the students to think through problems as well.” He turned back to Darcy, ignoring the pounding in his temples. He wasn’t going to convince Thane of his way of doing things—he knew that already—but that didn’t mean he’d change the way he did things. “So, Darcy, what would make it more stable, since as Mr. Dalton pointed out, one piece of two-by-four per corner isn’t enough?”

  “What about two two-by-fours?” Darcy asked.

  “That could work. Where would you put them?”

  Darcy picked up a couple of boards and fitted them into the corner, trying several different configurations. She finally settled on having the two boards against the interior edges of the platform, two-thirds of the triangle created by the brace. “Like this?”

  “That works,” Blake said. “Now all you have to do is measure and cut the wood and then nail them together before you attach them t
o the platform. Think you can do that or do you need a hand?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Good. If you change your mind, get someone to help you. Me or one of the seniors who’s done this a few times.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Barnes.”

  “You’re just going to send her off like that to use the saws?”

  Blake took another breath. “Zach is in the shop all day today. He’ll supervise anyone who comes in to use any of the tools. They’re high school students. They can work without me constantly hovering over them.”

  “And when one of them gets hurt?”

  “If, Mr. Dalton,” Blake ground out. “If one of them gets hurt, we’ll deal with it, but I’ve been doing this for twelve years, and I’ve never had a student with anything worse than a bruised thumb from a hammer slipping. No amount of supervision on my part can stop that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check with Emma about what else needs to be done.”

  “I thought you were the sponsor. Shouldn’t you be the one keeping track of that?” Thane sneered.

  Blake stalked up to him, refusing to let the proximity ruffle him. “If I did, what would she learn about leadership? This is not a construction crew. This is a stage crew for a school play run by students for students. My role—my only role—is to mentor those who need it. Everything else should and does come from my student leaders. If you have a problem with that, you should reconsider coming to work because it will be the students telling you what needs to be done, when, and how. Are we clear?”

  Thane glowered down at Blake, reminding him how large the other man was in comparison to Blake’s own relatively short, slim stature, but he didn’t back down. He couldn’t. Thane would never respect him if he did.

  “Don’t expect me to stand by doing nothing if I see someone doing something dangerous.”

  “If it’s truly dangerous and not simply a miscalculation they can learn from—like Darcy’s single two-by-four—then by all means, stop them. If it’s a miscalculation, teach them instead.”