by John Dunning
She laughed lightly but her cheeks were red. A moment later she said, “I want to talk to you sometime, Jordan. When you come up for air.”
“We’ll make a point of it.”
That was the lie he’d remember. It came back at him at odd moments of the day and would keep coming back, he knew, when he was far away and the time was distant, whenever these people should happen to cross his mind.
He did a final rewrite on the Bataan script, finished up at three, and sent it down to Kidd for a reading. It lacked the power of the opening show but its purpose was different, meant to inspire, not to anger, and it rippled with Tom’s character and was haunted by the specter of Holly. He wasn’t surprised when Kidd called up and told him it was his personal favorite of the five shows.
Now it was in mimeo . . . all of them ready to do, with one small exception.
At four o’clock he slipped into the studio and sat watching from the back row. Becky saw him at once but he gave her the hand signal to keep it moving and after a while she forgot he was there. Her direction was astute and she ran her show with confidence and authority. Rue stood at the microphone reading the role of the doomed Boer girl. One of the New York actors had taken the part of her brother, and there were several fresh faces in the group. More actors had arrived from the city: Rick Gary had sent them a tiny girl who looked younger than Rue and was superb in the flashback scene as her mother. Her name was Jane Shoemaker and she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach the mike, but in her voice she was the essence of motherhood. She actually spoke Dutch, giving them a good illusion of the Afrikaans, and Becky was having her double as the proxy voice of Margaret that opened the show.
He was content to sit through another reading, letting Becky handle the order and direction of the cast. That night over dinner she told him what had happened at the morning’s Hitler reading. “I had two actresses come down from New York to try for the role of Bela. Then Hazel showed up and I had to read her too, and she read that role so beautifully I couldn’t not take her, so she’ll be there tonight. I know she’s terrible to work with, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it, so shoot me or scold me or chase me off with a stick.” Jordan laughed and said he would handle Hazel.
Walking back to the station Becky was exhilarated. “Jesus God almighty, I love this! I could go all night and all day tomorrow, straight on into the weekend.”
“You may have to.”
But the casting went incredibly easy. Hazel was on her best behavior and the people from New York were all fine. Jordan watched from the front row and Livia sat beside him, offering an occasional comment and filling her own script with notes. Zylla had already roughed out a score: he sat beside Livia and hummed it as they read, breaking into a full vocal overture at one point and stopping the show with laughter and applause from the cast. And in this spirit of happiness and accomplishment Jordan took them to the Sandbar and bought drinks for everyone.
Where did the hours go? Suddenly it was a new day, full of challenges. He walked past the pit where the remains of March Flack were slowly being extracted with the help of an archaeologist from the university, and thirty minutes later he was immersed in his world. Becky was always there, the last to leave at night and the first to arrive in the morning, and they huddled in her office and went through the minutiae of each script—the cast assignments that were already definite, the actors who would be heard again this morning, a series of new changes as words were added and crossed out on the pages, the sounds the words made and the music that almost seemed part of the little room where they worked. Then came the real sounds: shuffling footsteps as the cast arrived and filed into the big studio down the hall. The day would be cluttered, noisy, nonstop. At eight o’clock they would hear more readings on the German script; at nine the first table reading with the final cast in place; at eleven the same on the Boer script, with readings on the Nisei to begin later this afternoon and tonight. Somewhere in another place Maitland was working with his Andersonville cast and was beginning to think about Bataan. Thus was it getting done. Such was life in radio.
( ( ( 14 ) ) )
FRIDAY. His busiest day yet. He spent all morning working on the casting for the Nisei. It must seem real, even though he would not be here to see it. Then the readings began and it was real. He cared who would be chosen, it mattered no less than the scripts he would air, and he wanted to hear each reading in its full context, not the piecemeal lines far more common to radio auditions. In the morning Jane Shoemaker had stood in for Susan Daniels, giving him a good effort as the Japanese wife. But she would be leaving at one o’clock for broadcast commitments in the city and they would not see her again until Tuesday, the day of the Boer show.
At noon the Negroes arrived. They stood in the hall, surprised to find the studio crowded with people and ablaze with lights. Jordan waved them in and they sat as a group, off to one side, watching with the rapt attention of gawkers at a fireworks demonstration. He told them he had more actors yet to hear . . . another hour, maybe two . . . but he was not worried about tonight. They would have plenty of time.
Still, it was a loss when Jane Shoemaker left. Becky, who would never make the world forget Sarah Bernhardt, would read those lines in a flat monotone from her table. But as he turned from the soundstage his eyes found the face of the one real actress in the room, Ali Marek, watching him intently ten rows back. Before he could secondguess himself he had stepped to the front and called her name.
She came without question. Whatever he asked, whatever he said: if he told her to slink up onstage like a reptile she would do it. At the microphone she leaned toward him and whispered something, covering the mike with her hand. He shook his head. “Don’t think of her as a Japanese. She’s just another desperate American. And it pays ten dollars, the same as rehearsal time.”
She smiled at that. As she began her reading, Palmer of the Times walked in and sat in the back row. She didn’t see him: her mind was riveted on the script and her eyes were sight-reading, two lines ahead of her voice. “You’re sounding good,” Jordan said. “Go ahead and reach for the Japanese inflection when you’re ready . . . soft . . . very soft.” She did, and she almost nailed it. “That’s fine,” Jordan said . . . with a little coaching she’d be able to pass on the air. He turned to Becky. “Call the next actor and take it from the top of page six.” A thin balding man of forty came in with the mimeo under his arm. He blinked when he saw the coal black woman at the opposite mike: then, calmly, he followed Becky’s direction and went into his lines. The part he was trying for was a guard at the camp and he looked as alien to the scene as she did. But he had what counted, a deep ballsy voice, nothing like the scrawny face that came with it.
All through the scene Palmer was writing furiously in his notebook. Oh, he is onto me now, Jordan thought: he smells blood and will not stop until he has me buck naked in his paper. But Palmer never approached him. Their eyes met only occasionally, and after a while Jordan thought of him as another Harford. A constant presence, a watcher in the distance.
By four o’clock the casting was done on the supporting roles for the Nisei, and the black cast got to work on the Freedom show that night. Palmer never moved—the man must have kidneys of steel to sit there that long—and he never seemed to miss a beat. Whenever Jordan worked his magic, if a soft word brought enlightenment to Eli or confidence to Emily, he knew if he looked around Palmer would be writing it down. His own self-confidence was at a peak: he had no doubt about the show tonight and no fears for its outcome. The table reading was easy and quick. Everyone knew the lines, they had been rehearsing all week in the city and could’ve done it without scripts. Eli was much better tonight, stronger and steadier, even daring to question the script in a few places. Jordan said, “Do it your way and let’s see how it sounds,” and in the new reading Eli decided, on his own, that the script had been better.
Then came the dress with full orchestra and sound, and an hour later the broadcast. Palmer sat through it all. In that
final carnage, as the blacks are slaughtered in their mad dash up the beach, he and Jordan did lock eyes and neither looked away until the music went up and out. Jordan broke the contact as people swarmed around him, and when he looked again Palmer was gone.
Congratulations to the cast for a solid professional job. They are radio actors now. For all the good it’ll do them.
In the dark lobby the switchboard was crazy with lights. “Hey, Jordan, want to answer a few phones? . . . see how the calls are running?”
“Very funny, Miss Hart. I’ve had enough self-abuse for one day.”
She offered to buy him a drink but he asked for a rain check. He had one more thing to do tonight. The most important thing of all.
( ( ( 15 ) ) )
SO how do you rewrite a script and leave its cues intact? How can you touch so little and still wreak havoc, like chuckholes in a road or a ghost flashing by, so that even the people who bring it to life will deduce only later that what they have read is the opposite of what they rehearsed?
How can you do this and preserve its artistic integrity? Don’t destroy it, just twist it—the more realistic it is, the more it will hurt. The one who knows it best, who lived it and knows every word, will go mad. Like that other night six years ago, only this time it’s me he’ll come for.
He expected a long night but the script answered its own questions. It was Margaret, his twin sister, who could hurt him the most.
He made his first line change on page three.
MARGARET: I loved a British soldier.
A large company of soldiers had camped on the farm for a month. And things happen with people, sometimes the unlikeliest things. This didn’t have to withstand the scrutiny of historians, it only needed to sound real.
MARGARET: I betrayed them all . . . Mamma, Poppy, Jan, Lar. I cared about nothing else when he was with me.
Cut the proxy voice at the open. Have her speak English throughout. Then, near the end, cut into the speech of Kruin, the old black man.
Margaret was never raped. There was no renegade British unit. The child she carried came from an act of her own choice. Her British soldier was an honorable man. He loved her. Promised to come back for her after the war. Never knew of her pregnancy. Her fate.
Done in a few minutes, the easiest rewrite in the history of radio.
What he had added replaced to the line the words he had cut. Everything the same, everything changed: almost all of it left intact. The cues for orchestra, and for sound, would remain the same from rehearsal to air.
He turned off the light and went to bed.
He opened his eyes at dawn and sat for a long time in quiet thought. In a while an image came into his head. It was Carnahan, standing at the post office, in the parking lot, waving good-bye with one hand and holding his hat in the other. He had had a picnic that day with Livia and her boys. He had a package to mail.
Dulaney sat up, fully awake.
Where was the package?
Carnahan stepped out of the car. At that moment he saw the Schroeders, following them into the post office parking lot. A moment later, when he waved good-bye, there was no package in either hand.
He had left it in her car.
( ( ( 16 ) ) )
LIVIA wore a thin bathrobe at six thirty and her eyes were still heavy from sleep. Her hair was wild and unbrushed, but even at that hour she was happy to see him. That would change quickly.
She went back through the house and closed the door where her boys still slept. She was already wary as she put on the coffee.
“I’ve got a hunch this isn’t a social call.”
“No,” he said. “I want to talk to you about Carnahan again.”
Now she was upset. The pleasure of finding him on her doorstep was waning fast. Anger was not far away.
“What do you want? . . . What more can possibly be said?”
“I was thinking about that package. I was dreaming about it.”
She didn’t ask what package. She gave him some coffee and sat across the table and looked at him as if they had never met.
“The package he had that day was meant for me.”
She said nothing.
“He left it in your car. He saw the Schroeders tailing you and he had only a few seconds to decide. I don’t think he knew even then how serious it was. So he left it with you, thinking he’d stall them off and come back for it later that night.”
“You’re not making much sense, Jordan. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He leaned forward and looked at her evenly. “My name’s not Jordan.”
She stared at him. Shook her head, angry now.
“Jordan Ten Eyck’s a name I made up when I first got to town.”
“Oh, that’s nice. That’s just great. Everything’s a lie. Wonderful.”
“What I told you about Carnahan and me is true.”
“How do I know that? I don’t even know who you are.”
“I think you do. You know I’m telling the truth and it’s starting to dawn on you now what my name is.”
“How would I know any of that? Do you think I’m a psychic?”
“I think it was written on the package.”
Another moment passed. “So what’s your real name?”
“Jack Dulaney.”
“So you say. But you’ve been lying to all of us since you got here. Why should I trust you now?”
Suddenly he knew what to tell her. “Miss O’Hara is Carnahan’s daughter. We were all friends together in New York three years ago. They came from Sadler, Pennsylvania. Holly came here looking for her father . . . because she believed he’d been killed.”
Her face was pale with shock. “Then he didn’t just disappear.”
“No.”
“Why didn’t she talk to me? Why didn’t she tell me who she was?”
He shrugged. “She’s a complicated lady.”
But he told her about that Christmas Eve. “She did talk to you then. You invited her inside. But she wouldn’t come. She stood out in the cold, watching while you had your Christmas party.”
“My God, that was his daughter? . . . Holly O’Hara is his daughter?”
He nodded.
“I’ve thought about that woman a hundred times since then. I couldn’t even see her face, but there was something between us, I could feel it. And she seemed so god-awful lonely. I couldn’t get her out of my mind.”
She shivered. “I want to talk to her. Where is she now?”
“I wish I knew.”
He let the moment stretch. Then, in a calm, measured voice, he said, “Listen to me, Livia. Listen very carefully and use the sound judgment that I know you have. Whatever’s in that package, it’s a life-and-death threat to someone. Four people have been killed because of it. As long as you have it, it’s a danger to you and maybe to your boys.”
“Oh God!” She shivered again and her voice was full of fear and rage. “Who are you? Jesus Christ, who are you?”
“I’m just like you. I’m a friend of his who wants some answers.”
“Are you a cop?”
He shook his head with a sad little laugh.
She waited a long time.
“He’s dead, isn’t he? She was right. He’s dead.”
He nodded.
She cried. So did he, a little.
“Don’t ask me any more than that,” he said. “I’ll try to tell you more later, if I can.”
She shook her head and turned away in tears. “Jesus Christ, they killed him! They killed him!” She got up, went to the sink, stared out at the dunes.
“Livia, help me. I need that package.”
Another moment. She seemed not to have heard. Then she walked away from the window. Poured herself some coffee and left the steaming cup there at the sink. Sat in her chair and said nothing for another minute.
“Livia?”
Her eyes darted up and she looked in his face. “When you talked to me before, I had a bad feeling about th
is. That night I went home and got it out of the closet. It had been in there unopened for more than six months and suddenly, I don’t know why, I wanted it out of my house.”
She sniffed. “Maybe I am psychic.”
She looked away and saw her coffee cup. Went to fetch it and stood there for a moment, not drinking it.
“I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I couldn’t just throw it away. I sat there for a long time just looking at it. Then I opened it.”
She came back to the table and sat. “There wasn’t much inside . . . only enough to give me the creeps. A few rolls of undeveloped film. A note. A spool of recording wire.”
“What did the note say?”
“He had overheard some people at Harford talking German one night. Not in rehearsal, nothing like that. This was a real conversation, an extended talk. There were three of them. I thought of the Schroeders right away, but who was the third man? He did manage to get that wire recorder going and recorded some of what they said.”
“But he didn’t say who they were?”
She shook her head. “Develop the film and you’d know. Get someone you could trust, who wouldn’t turn you in to the FBI, to listen to that wire and translate it for you. Then you’d know.”
“Did you do that?”
“No. I did something I’m afraid you’re going to find incredibly stupid. I wrapped it all back up and I mailed it.”
Her eyes were sad and defiant all at once. “That’s what he was going to do with it. So I did it for him.”
Dulaney felt the beginnings of a headache. The package was out there for real now, chasing him around the country.
( ( ( 17 ) ) )
THE thought of it depressed him as he drove down the beach. Then he turned into Harford and the feeling went away. He was no worse off than before: all he had to do was survive until Tuesday.
He had scheduled final readings this morning, a mix of all three shows as he filled in the smaller roles and added finishing touches to each piece. He worked across the noon hour and at two o’clock had a table reading for Monday’s opener. What he heard excited him. Hazel was superb. She had an almost flawless Polish dialect and she brought to the character a fire that Jordan Ten Eyck had barely surpassed when he’d written it. She was highly professional, taking his direction without argument and even stopping to help Rue with her Slavic tongue. Rue had a small part, a woman from the ghetto, the beginning of a busy week for her. On Tuesday she would be Margaret, the Boer girl, and Thursday she would play a Japanese child in the internment camp. Maitland was also using her in the closing show on Friday. Jane Shoemaker had won the Holly role and Rue would play the undrowned sister. Would come to the wedding to wish them joy and love and a long life together, just before he shipped out for the Philippines.