Shenandoah Summer

by John Muncie

  She couldn’t make him like the farm. It was as much a chore for him to be in Markham as it was for her to be in Washington. At least in Washington she had her job. In Markham, Darryl—as he’d told her many times—had nothing.

  She wished he could care more.

  She wished she could care more.

  She looked down and scraped her clogs against the gravel. No flashing lights, but she knew the starbugs were there, somewhere around her feet.

  CHAPTER 10

  Alyssa woke earlier than usual the next morning. In the bathroom, she stood in front of the mirror wondering how old she looked. Someone once told her she could pass for thirty. But that had been three years ago, at her fortieth birthday party.

  She stuck her tongue out at the face in the mirror. “Take that, you old bag.”

  Nonetheless, she knelt down and rummaged through the cabinet below the sink. Next to half a bottle of nail polish remover, she found an old tube of concealer.

  By the time Tug got to the barn, Alyssa was there waiting, her dark circles erased and a curry comb in her hand.

  “Here.” She handed him something that resembled a gear made out of black rubber. “This is a curry comb. For the horse, it knocks off the dirt. For you, it’ll show you how the muscles are connected. Do it in a circular motion. Start here.”

  She pointed to Theo’s mud-caked rump and watched as Tug began to make tentative circles on top of the muddy crust.

  “Tug, the object is to get the mud off. Do it harder. He won’t mind. In fact, he likes it. Didn’t they teach you currying in art school?”

  “That was an elective,” he said. “I opted for sculpture. How’s this?” He pressed the comb harder against Theo’s back end and rubbed, sending a cloud of brown dust between them.

  “Much better,” Alyssa said. “This should help you feel the density of his haunch muscles. Just imagine the thick bands underneath.”

  He did as instructed. “I see what you mean. Now all I have to do is figure out how to draw that feeling. But this is good, I’m starting to get the muscle memory in my hands of what it should look like.”

  Alyssa grabbed a brush and ran it across the star on Theo’s forehead. “Have you always wanted to be artist?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I was one of those kids who couldn’t stop doodling.” Tug continued to curry Theo as he talked. “But I’d have probably wound up a poli-sci major if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Miller, my third-grade teacher. One day she lugged out a big roll of brown paper, plopped it on my desk, and told me to put my doodling to good use. She needed a mural for the holiday pageant. So I drew three wise men. They looked more like Santa Clauses, but she loved it. Every Christmas for years she rolled out my mural and hung it across the front of her room.”

  Tug banged the curry comb against the wall to dislodge the dirt and hair. “God bless Mrs. Miller. She was the first person, other than my mother, to tell me I was good at something. And I believed her. I branched out from Christmas murals and doodling to comic books. I was hooked from my first Spider-Man. I even started my own series. I kept drawing straight through high school. I taught myself to do those fifteen-minute portraits and worked street fairs in Ithaca and Syracuse. That’s what paid for Pratt, mostly.”

  He paused. “I’m finished with this side. Can I walk around to the other? Does he kick or anything?”

  “Not so far,” Alyssa said. Tug froze.

  “I was just kidding,” she said. “Theo doesn’t kick. But it never hurts to be cautious with horses. Good luck, his other side’s even dirtier. He was a pig in his last life. Weren’t you, boy?” Alyssa buried her face into the slight dish between the horse’s eyes.

  Tug attacked the mud on the other side. “Your turn. How’d you get into the theater.” He gave the last two words a portentous, PBS-documentary-style pronunciation.

  “That’s easy. I was never not into it. I’ve been singing and dancing since before I could even remember, according to my parents. You were the kid who was always doodling? I was the one always staging talent shows. I’ve been forcing people to watch me perform since I could barely walk. And not just people. My dog was my first paying audience, except I had to pay him. I’d dress up in my grandmother’s nightgowns, high heels, and all the costume jewelry I could load on. Then I’d line the hearth with Milk Bones and whistle. He’d come running, and while he ate the bribe I’d sing ‘People’ into a hairbrush. If I went fast enough, I could just about make it through the whole song with an audience.”

  After Theo was decaked of his muddy veneer, Alyssa took Tug on another tour of Finally Farm.

  They walked to the pond by the two hills and then to the creek that flowed down from Limespring. He had lots of questions and she had lots of answers. Alyssa loved talking about her farm. Tug occasionally jotted down notes in his sketchpad to remind him of things he wanted to draw.

  Alyssa started with a tale about the camouflaged snapping turtle that burrowed into the mud by the creek to lay her eggs. “Right about there.” She pointed to the stream’s bank. “I used to walk barefoot down that creek until Odie showed her to me.”

  Odie was Odie Watkins, the farmer who ran his cows on her front pasture. “Odie’s so skinny his wife says if he stood sideways and stuck out his tongue, he’d pass for a zipper.”

  That led to a story about Odie wearing his only suit to help bury a neighbor’s dead dog, which led to a story about that dog chasing a coyote into old Mrs. Tomkins’s front yard. “She’s eighty-five years old and chased it away with a broom,” Alyssa said. “Imagine that.”

  Stories and stories, layered like millefiore glass. To Tug, it was like getting a private seating to a one-woman show.

  “What’s that?” he said as they walked by a piece of bright purple farm machinery with a row of lethal-looking blades jutting out the back. “It looks like a torture device from a drag show.”

  “That there,” she said in a thick low-country accent, “is a shit kicker, son. A man-yooooor spreader.”

  It turned out that Marius had found the manure spreader while trolling the countryside for parts for his next installation called The Gates of Hell. The farmer didn’t even know if it still worked, but Marius gave him $75 on the spot and asked Alyssa to pick it up for him.

  “Up till then, I’d been hauling out manure one wheelbarrow at a time to the front pasture. So when I saw it, I begged Marius to sell it to me. And Marius will do anything for a woman. He not only fixed it, but painted it purple.”

  Back at the barn, Tug gathered his drawing materials. “Thanks for the horse lesson and the tour. There’s a million things here I’d love to draw.”

  “Then do it,” she said. “Anytime you want.”

  They walked outside and Tug stopped for a moment. “You know, this place is like a mirror image of you.”

  Alyssa cocked her head. “Is that a compliment or an insult? I’ve been compared to Bette Midler and Meg Ryan, but never fifty acres and a manure spreader.”

  “Neither,” Tug said. “Just an observation. When I do a sculpture, it becomes part of me and I become part of it. That’s what you’ve done here. You and your farm are like this.”

  He laced his fingers together, and when he did, Alyssa clapped her hands.

  “Hallelujah,” she sang and fluttered her fingers in the air like a gospel singer.

  Tug was taken aback by her exuberance. But he liked it; he liked her unabashed glee. It was a welcome change from the oppressive irony of his New York friends. And there was something contagious about her excitement.

  “See you tomorrow?” He was surprised by the eagerness in his voice.

  “No,” she answered, “I’ll see you tonight. Practice, remember? Our first Follies rehearsal. Aren’t you glad Abbi volunteered you to be the Sultan?”

  CHAPTER 11

  Rehearsal was held in the Limespring dining room. Alyssa had invited both performers and crew members so that everybody could see how the show would come together.

  They s
at at the tables, discussing staging and sets for a while, then Alyssa handed out scripts to the would-be actors, with each one’s role individually marked in a different-colored highlighter pen.

  The first read-through was horrible. Marius declaimed his lines as if he were on a high school debating team; a writer from Boston sounded like Elmer Fudd; and a painter named Stephanie kept reading the wrong parts.

  “You’re the one in red marker,” Alyssa reminded her.

  Tug tried so hard to enunciate clearly that he ended up sounding like a robot. By the time it was over, his tongue felt like it was the size of a salami.

  Alyssa stood up and faced the group. “Wow,” she said. “Amazing.” She had a look of awe on her face, as if she’d entered Notre Dame cathedral for the first time. “That may have been the worst Follies reading I’ve ever heard.

  “Don’t worry,” she said after the nervous laughter died down. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be better than fine—you’ll be great. By Follies night, you’ll be funny and clever and sophisticated. Look, here’s the thing to realize: An actor’s most important gift is brains. There are no dumb actors. Everyone here is smart and creative. All I’m going to do is unleash the actor that’s already inside you.

  “Now let’s read through one more time and I’ll show you how it might appear on stage.”

  This time, as the actors read their lines, Alyssa acted out some of the parts. She ran back and forth in front of the tables doffing imaginary hats, swordfighting with invisible opponents, and dancing to unheard music. In the middle of a series of pirouettes she started singing Motown, “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” Toward the end she lost track of the action and, panting and sweaty, collapsed, laughing, on the linoleum.

  Like all the other newcomers, Tug was amazed. In the middle of her performance, he nudged Abbi, who was sitting next to him. “Jesus,” he whispered. “It’s like I’m going to be playing opposite Lily Tomlin.”

  “No way,” Abbi whispered back. “Alyssa’s a lot better.”

  Afterward, as they walked back to their cabins, Tug groaned. “I can’t believe you roped me into this. She’s great and I’m an idiot.”

  “Oh, relax,” Abbi said. “You’re going to be fine. Just remember what Alyssa said: ‘There are no dumb actors.’”

  “Not until now.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The next morning Tug arrived at Finally Farm as scheduled. Alyssa met him at the barn carrying two mugs of coffee and a plate of oatmeal cookies. She was wearing a huge orange turban that tilted over her forehead and covered one eye.

  “This is for you, O Grand Master.” She nodded forward and sent the turban into Tug’s lap. “I found it in my closet. It was either a Halloween costume for Roz or something from The King and I. Oh, and by the way, don’t worry about last night, everyone’s always terrible the first rehearsal. In Marius’s first year, he froze solid during the actual performance. I had to keep saying things like, ‘So, Hamlet, have you reached a decision yet?’ just to get him to utter a word. You’ll be fine. It’s a farce.”

  Tug tried on the turban. “Just don’t let me turn it into a tragedy,” he said.

  Over the coffee, he pumped Alyssa for acting tips and she kept reassuring him that the audience wasn’t expecting Sir Laurence Olivier. When their mugs were empty, she hitched her horse trailer to her truck and drove to Marshall, the closest town.

  “Hang around and draw if you want,” she said before she left.

  Tug strolled up and down the center aisle of the barn looking into stalls and rooms hung with horse gear. Eventually he placed a folding chair in the middle of the aisle and laid the sketchpad across his knees. He began to draw a line of shovels and rakes hanging on the wall.

  Usually, drawing focused him completely, but this time his attention drifted between the shapes before him and thoughts about his first week at Limespring. Now he understood why Abbi kept raving about the place. “It’s like a battery recharger for the soul,” she’d said. “You can’t not be creative there.”

  Tug didn’t know where the summer would lead him, but after only a week he was certain that by the time fall came his eye would be sharper and his way clearer. He hadn’t figured his Limespring fellowship would be this inspirational. And now there was this crazy farm with all its doodads and horses to draw.

  And there was Alyssa.

  He began packing up his drawing things around noon, just as she returned with a new orphan from the Rescue League.

  “Jesus!” Tug said when he saw the gray horse step off the trailer. “That thing’s as big as an elephant.”

  The horse limped behind her. “He’s a big boy, all right. Nearly eighteen hands. As big as War Admiral. Unfortunately, that’s where the similarity stops. He was a dud on the track. He’s farsighted and couldn’t see the other horses closing in on him.”

  “You can test a horse’s eyesight? That’s amazing. How do you get them to read the chart?”

  She pushed Tug’s shoulder. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t give a horse an eye test. I heard it from a friend of mine who’s a horse communicator. She said the horse told her he couldn’t see the other horses closing in and it made him very anxious.”

  Tug burst into a laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, not entirely,” Alyssa said. “It’s all part of the fever, horse fever. It burns out the rational side of your brain.”

  She led the limping horse into the wash stall.

  “Need some help with him?” Tug asked. “I’m receiving a message that he wants to be curried, it makes him anxious to be dirty.”

  Tug hadn’t planned to spend his afternoon at Finally Farm, but after they’d groomed Poli—short for Poltergeist for his gray, ghostly color—Alyssa invited him in for a sandwich.

  While she rummaged around her refrigerator, Tug studied the knickknacks, mementos, and art pieces that covered the walls and cabinet tops. Among them was a series of black frames, each containing a little three-dimensional cartoon person and an accompanying block of text glued to a piece of eight-by-ten canvas board.

  “These are great,” he said. “Sculpey?”

  “You got it,” Alyssa said. “My friend Carol made them. She calls them her ‘ladies.’ You’ll meet her at our Fourth of July party. She teaches art at Emerson, and more importantly, to me at least, she designs the sets and runs tech for all the plays. Grilled cheese okay?”

  “Sure,” Tug said. He leaned closer to Carol’s ladies to read the copy. “Who are they, anyway?”

  “People we know. Friends, mostly.”

  “I don’t think this one’s a friend.” Tug was examining the figure of a severe looking woman in a red power suit with snakes coming from the top of her head.

  Alyssa laughed. “Oh, you must be looking at the Shrike. No, she’s definitely not a friend. In fact, she’s ruining my life.”

  Over sandwiches and iced tea, she told Tug all about Emerson’s new headmistress.

  “I can probably stand it for two years,” she concluded, “but any longer and I’m shipping out—to another school, that is. I can’t imagine not teaching. It’s about twenty times more rewarding than performing. There’s a nobility to it. Sure, you give your audience a gift in performing, but in teaching you go so far beyond that. Your legacy continues and the creativity lives on in so many different ways and . . .”

  She covered her face with her hands. “Oh my God. I sound like I’m giving a career night speech. Stop me, I’m babbling.”

  Tug, who had a hunk of grilled cheese in his mouth, waved his hand in front of his face and a garbled “No, no I want to hear more” came out.

  He held his index finger up, swallowed, and continued: “You listened to me bellyache about Leonardo. This is a lot more interesting than that. Go on. Please.”

  “Okay.” She said it so quickly it made him laugh. She cleared her throat. “Career night 101. Teaching and Its Many Gifts. Where was I?”

  “Legacy,” Tug said between bites.


  “Rachel Levine, Jarret Colby, Mandy Rosenfelt, Alex Crafton,” Alyssa said. “I could go on and on. They’re my legacy. Them and many others. They all went through my drama program. I don’t know whether they’ll ever act again, but I do know they’ll enjoy and appreciate theater for the rest of their lives. And that’s my job, to perpetuate a love for theater and get these kids thinking.”

  She got up and walked to the refrigerator to get a pitcher of tea and returned by way of the bookshelf. She pulled out a slim blue volume, which she put on the table. It was the Emerson yearbook, class of 1999.

  She leafed through the pages, stopping near the middle. “See this kid?” Alyssa pointed to a picture of a gangly teenager who bore a slight resemblance to Christian Slater. The page was entitled, “Emerson Drama, All My Sons.”

  “That’s Alex Crafton. He’d never acted in his life. But in his senior year, he showed up to audition for one of the toughest shows we’ve ever put on. His reading was brilliant. Who knew Alex had such talent? I cast him in the lead as the son who has to confront his father about selling defective plane parts during World War II.

  “Then came rehearsals. His first one was pretty bad. Nothing like his audition. Right after the second rehearsal, which was even worse, he came into my office and asked if we could talk. He looked like an old man worried about funeral arrangements for his dead wife. I thought, ‘Uh-oh, he’s going to quit.’”

  She lightly brushed her fingers across Alex’s picture. “I couldn’t have been more wrong. ‘I’m confused by Chris,’ he said, so earnestly I almost hugged him. ‘If he feels so guilty about going into his father’s business, why doesn’t he do something else? And he knows his brother’s dead, why doesn’t he tell his mother to stop pretending?’ Alex wasn’t quitting, he was just wrestling with his character like all actors do! We talked for so long about guilt, duty, loyalty, and forgiveness that the night janitors had to clean around us.