The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  “Nice,” I mumbled, agog. “You’ve got a lovely body.” She dropped her arm, hung her head, gave up, began to cry. I lifted the towel, wrapped it around her, tucked it in. “Well,” I said and patted her shoulder. “Guess I’ll just go on back to Boston.” She did not look up. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “Me and you could’ve been good friends,” I said sadly. Where had I heard that before? Yes: Naps. “Well, good luck to you,” he had said, so I said it too, now. “If you’re obliged to eat dirt,” he had said, “eat clean dirt.” So I said this too. Then I turned and opened the door.

  A door was opening across the hall and the head of Mrs. Austin was appearing around the edge of it. Quickly I retreated back into the room and whispered to Margaret, Your mother!” Think fast or die! I warned myself. I wriggled out of the seersucker coat and tossed it into the corner, then I forced Margaret to lie prone on the bench and I began to knead the back of her shoulders, keeping my rear to the door and my head down. I heard the door open and Mrs. Austin say, “Margaret, I’m going on into the pool. Will you be out soon?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Margaret said. The door closed, and Margaret began to giggle, grinning up at me. “You’re cunning,” she said, wiping away her tears.

  But then the door opened again and I quickly resumed my professional manipulations.

  “Margaret,” Mrs. Austin said. “What is that man doing to you?”

  “He’s giving me a massage,” Margaret said and then she could not resist adding, “What does it look like he’s doing?”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Austin said, and I waited with bated breath for the sound of the door closing again, but I couldn’t hear it. Instead I heard Mrs. Austin’s voice in protest: “Do you think that’s proper? You weren’t supposed to have a massage, and you lying there like that with hardly anything on. That won’t do. Now you just—”

  “Mother,” Margaret said irritably, “will you get out of here and leave me alone? I’ll have a massage if I want one.”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that!” the woman said, and approached and put her hand on my arm and said, “That’s enough, young man. She doesn’t really need a massage. You go on, now.” And although she craned her neck to address me head-on, I managed to keep my eyes averted, and so intent was she on depriving her daughter of a massage that she did not bother to recognize me, and I mumbled, “Yes, ma’am,” and slipped behind her and out through the door. I lurked around the corner of the corridor and waited. I could hear them yelling back and forth at each other for several minutes, incensed and petulant, and then I heard Margaret wail, “I’ll come to the pool when I get good and ready to come to the pool!” and Mrs. Austin stormed out through the door and slammed it and went stomping off down the hall.

  Then I went back into the room. Margaret was sitting up, trembling, her mouth quivering, her eyes burning into the floor. I sat beside her and put my arm around her. After a moment, when her body stopped shaking beneath my arm, she said, “Was that clean dirt? Did I eat it clean that time?”

  “You ate it clean,” I said.

  On the return ride to Little Rock, after a brief stop at the Hooper Street boarding house where Margaret picked up her suitcase, she sat in the rear seat with Dall and went quickly to sleep, and slept all the way to Little Rock, and we did not wake her until we arrived at the Arkansas Arts Center theater in the early afternoon. There would be time for a couple of run-through dress rehearsals before the opening curtain. Hugh Berrey, the co-star, and Agnes Galloway, Margaret’s understudy, were there waiting, but Slater had not arrived. Dall phoned him, and told him that he had found Margaret and brought her back. Then Dall had to go to work at the police station and he asked us to drop him off at his house. We did, and then I went home with Naps to his house and collapsed and slept all afternoon.

  Chapter twenty-eight

  “Get up and call it,” Naps’s voice woke me out of my long afternoon nap. Dressed only in his shorts and undershirt, he held in his left hand two hangers from which were suspended two tuxedos, one with a white dinner jacket, the other with a violent violet hopsacking dinner jacket with satin shawl collar. In his other hand he held a half-dollar which he was about to flip. “Call it,” he said. “Heads,” I mumbled, waking up. He flipped it, and it came down tails. “You wear the purple one,” he said. “Come on, we got to get dressed.” My watch said half past six.

  While I did not wish to question Naps’s taste (a glance at his three-closet wardrobe had convinced me that he possessed a certain sartorial impeccability, and I was happy enough that his sizes were the same as mine), I was still bothered by two slight details: firstly I was not convinced that formal evening attire would be required for the occasion, and secondly my brown elevator shoes would not go well with a purple dinner jacket. To the first objection Naps replied that he was confident that other gentlemen in the audience of this world’s premiere of a new Slater play would be similarly attired; and to the second objection he suggested that I call the Missouri Pacific baggage agent once more and attempt to retrieve my suitcase and the pair of black elevator shoes which it contained. So I did, but the baggage agent said my suitcase was still at large. Naps then considered but discarded the idea of padding the heels of a pair of his black shoes for me, and after trying unsuccessfully to persuade me that I could forgo the need for elevators on this one occasion, he got out a bottle of Dyan-Shine and covered my shoes with a thick coat of black polish.

  Then we dressed, and I admired myself in the mirror. The tux was a perfect fit, and although its gaudy color made me rather uncomfortable I felt that I looked considerably distinguished, as would befit a native son returning all the way from Boston to see his old girl friend star in a play. Naps said I owed him ten dollars. For rent of his tuxedo? I asked. No, he said, but he had phoned Vestal Florists and ordered four dozen red roses to be delivered to Miss Margaret after the curtain of the play, one dozen each from himself, from me, from Dall, and from Step-daddy Polk. “You think of everything,” I said admiringly, forking over my ten dollars.

  We had a quick supper with Tatrice, who was stunningly garbed for the play in a white cocktail dress. Making conversation, she asked me, “How many times have you seen THE RED SHOES?” Oh, dozens, I guess, I replied. Then I asked them if they had any idea why the play was given that odd title, unless the author was simply aiming for a long title like Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma’s Hung You, etc. Tatrice replied that she had heard something to the effect that the play was a kind of satire on the type of person who goes to see THE RED SHOES again and again. In that case, I commented, I should probably consider myself one of its targets.

  Naps and Tatrice had never seen a Slater play before—this despite the fact that both were college graduates (Arkansas A. M. & N. at Pine Bluff) and Naps, I had learned with some surprise, was a Phi Beta Kappa. So I took it upon myself, during the supper and during the drive afterward to the Arkansas Arts Center theater, to prepare them for the play by recounting my impressions of the two Slater plays I had seen before.

  The first, Slater’s initial effort written during the last years of the war, was called Christmas in Jail and was a long four-act piece about a small group of black and white shoplifters, young and old, who had been arrested on Christmas Eve and spent most of the following day talking to each other in their cell. All of it was rather on the icky side, a little too heavy with symbolic pathos and sentimentality. Cleveland, Ohio, had liked it; it had premiered with the community theater there in 1947 and had run a full three weeks before moving on to Philadelphia for a pre-Broadway tryout which flopped after two performances. It was a dozen years too early for its time, and it rested in limbo for that many years before the Broadway boom of Negro dramas caused it to be revived and added to the repertoire of little theater groups, one of which had presented it successfully in Boston, where I had taken Pamela to see it. Pamela thought it stank.

  The one other play of Slater’s I had seen, called The Pedagogic Demagogue, had premiered at the University
of Arkansas theater in February of 1955, had a sensational reception there (although I missed it then), and later opened off-Broadway at New York’s Circle-in-the-Square in the autumn of 1958, where I caught it just before it closed, after a one-week run, probably because, in the words of the Times reviewer, “It gives the impression of truthful reality and great meaning, but is actually untrue, senseless and perhaps without any meaning at all.” It was a kind of stage biography of the career of a state senator in the legislature of a Southern state (not Arkansas, Slater had claimed, although a little research was enough to show that the man was modeled closely on Senator Webbing of Lonoke County, who had terrorized the capitol back before the war and had finally been committed to a private sanitarium) who had such tremendous personal power and magnetism, such uncanny charismatic presence, that he could make anybody believe anything, that up was down, left was right, fire air, black white, rich poor, day night, or whatever he wished, and became eventually so charmed with his own oratorical skill that he set about to see just how far he could go in making people believe nonsense, and before long had brainwashed all the legislature and half the people of the state into accepting as truth all kinds of ridiculous junk, until, in the end, everybody was confused and half cracked and he alone remained sane and rational. It was intricate and involved, richly comic, rife with symbols and double entendres, and was rather bewildering as a whole—one critic was brave enough to admit that he too was left half cracked in the end.

  “What I’ve heard bout Mr. Slater,” Naps offered, as he drove the Lincoln into the Arts Center parking lot, “he’s kind of half cracked hisself.”

  I had never seen the Arkansas Arts Center before, except a color photograph of it on the cover of the Little Rock phone directory, and I was rather taken aback by its size and the ultramodern architecture of its lines, strongly suggestive, I thought, of one of the old Civil War ironclads—Monitor or Merrimac, I forget which. Erected on and around the shell of the old Fine Arts building with a generous donation from the Winthrop Rockefellers, it seemed almost ostentatious in this humble neighborhood of MacArthur Park.

  The lobby of the Arts Center was packed with a crowd that spilled over onto the sculpture courts and out to the parking lot. Immediately I began to spot familiar faces—old high school friends and people I had known at the University—but no one came up to speak to me, perhaps because I was unrecognizable in the purple dinner jacket. But I was relieved to notice that a number of the other men were wearing tuxedos, particularly one group which, to judge by the bored and condescending expressions on their faces, was probably the New York producer and his entourage. I caught a glimpse of a distinguished-looking gentleman, also in a tuxedo, who, Naps thought, was Winthrop Rockefeller himself. Naps and Tatrice kept to themselves at one end of the lobby—although the Little Rock theaters have all been integrated now there were no other Negroes present, and I observed a couple of weasel-faced businessmen, probably denizens of the Capitol City White Citizens’ Council, casting angry and resentful looks at my two colored friends. I spotted Mr. Polk, Margaret’s stepfather, standing alone at one side, and I waved to him, but he did not seem to know me. Hy Norden rushed up and glad-handed me, and gushed a babble of pleasantries, then said he hoped to see me out at his place for the party after the show, then he rushed on to glad-hand somebody else.

  Wandering outside for a brief breath of air, I passed one tall, magisterial personage, dressed in a conservative business suit and a porkpie straw hat and looking like nothing so much as a chief of police or county sheriff, and there was something so familiar about him that I moved up for a closer look. He saw me and grinned. “Got here on time, didje?” he said and his voice gave him away.

  “Dall!” I said. “Good Lord, I wouldn’t have recognized you.” I fingered the lapels of his coat, and told myself how perfectly he would seem to fit the role of police chief if he ever attained it. “Are you going to the play too?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said. “Been waitin for this a long time.”

  I asked him how he had got off duty, and he said that he was still on duty in a sense, and drew aside his coat to give me a glimpse of the lethal hardware strapped to his chest. But officially he was off duty and would have to work overtime next week to make up for it. Then he took me with him out to the parking lot, where there was a squad car with his subaltern Curly sitting in it, listening to the car’s radiophone. “Sort of a command post,” Dall explained. He then pulled me to one side and said in a hushed tone, “Don’t mention it to nobody, cause if word got back to headquarters, they wouldn’t be too awfully pleased.” Anyhow, he explained, he had had two other squad cars set up out at the southwest edge of town since early afternoon, on the two main routes to Hot Springs, Interstate 30 and at the junctions of Highways 5 and 70, and they had the license number and a good description of Mrs. Austin’s old Hudson, and when and if she tried to return to Little Rock, they were going to “detain” her, just in case she might try to get to the Arts Center to stop Margaret from going on stage. “The boys,” as Dall referred to his subordinate patrolmen, “is just doin this as a little personal favor for me.”

  Lights flashing in the lobby signaled the crowd to take their seats, and we went inside. We compared our tickets—which Margaret had given us—and discovered that we were sitting side by side down front among the best seats. Naps and Tatrice were sitting over at the far side, with an empty seat between themselves and the next patron. The theater was small and compact but, like the rest of the Arts Center, the last word in lavish functional modernity.

  Waiting for the curtain to go up, I read the playbill for How Many Times Have You Seen THE RED SHOES? (subtitled “A Play Around a Movie Around a Ballet Around a Fairytale, or, A Fairytale Within a Ballet Within a Movie Within a Play”), which contained biographical information on the author and cast. James Royal Slater, born November 22, 1915, at McGeehee, Arkansas, the son of James Lewis Slater, a journeyman joiner, and Lillie Royal, a singer; educated at Arkansas A & M, Monticello, later at Memphis State, later at the Sorbonne; since 1939 the husband of Ethel Sharpe Crittenden of Little Rock. Author of seven plays (list followed); Guggenheim Fellow 1948-49, Bollington Prize 1953. Introduced the Morgan horse to Arkansas in 1946, won numerous prizes at horse shows (list followed). Hugh Berrey, cast as “Floyd,” is the president of the Little Rock Haymakers, appeared in their memorable Hamlet of 1961 and their The Milkman Doesn’t Stop Here or Ring Twice of 1963. Educated at several universities and drama schools (list followed). Appeared in summer stock six consecutive summers at (list followed). Margaret Austin, cast as “Wanda,” was educated at Little Rock Junior College (now Little Rock University), and is making her debut in this production. Previous appearance: “Spirit of Christmas Past” in Dickens’ Christmas Carol, West Side Junior High School, December, 1949.

  There was a tap on my shoulder and I turned to see the patrolman Curly. He handed me a folded note and gestured for me to pass it to Dall. I nudged Dall and gave him the note, and he read it and smiled and passed it back for me to read. “Sarge,” it said, “Jack just called in. Caught your party on Asher Avenue. Was exceeding speed limit by 15 mph. And that aint all. Was operating defective equipment, no taillights, bad brakes, etc. Also: Use of abusive and offensive language to an officer. Also: Resisting arrest. Jack says they are remanding to HQ and can probably hold her an hour, maybe more. If not, will nab her myself if she shows up around here, and see if her abusive language is still working. Curly.”

  “Well now,” said Dall, settling back in his seat, “we can watch this here show in peace.”

  The house lights dimmed out and the curtain slowly rose.

  Chapter twenty-nine

  Mise en scène: a drive-in theater. Upstage there is a curved screen made of large panels of white gypsum board, on which, as the curtain rises, we see projected the lively but fulsome climax of what is known as a grade-C Western. We watch the Bad Men being pursued by the galloping Good Men, one of whom is
saying, “Let’s head em off at Eagle Pass!” his steadfast voice clearly audible to us. Against its husky sagebrush patois comes the small mid-American but otherwise regionless voice of a girl, whom we descry occupying one end of a carless car seat. “What a pretty pass,” she says. Then we notice her companion, a young popcorn-munching man upon whom her punning sarcasm is lost because of his absorption in the thrilling finale of the movie.

  Here in the first line of the play there seems to be a collision of interests, a tacit cultural incompatibility which may set the tone for the whole play. The girl, we later learn, is a dental technician whose days are a tedium of bridgework, of uppers and lowers. The young man is an air-conditioner repairman. They are far enough out of their teens to be no longer children; yet close enough to it to still enjoy the drive-in. Apparently they are a typical young middle-class American pair on a semi-romantic date. Beyond this superficial rapport, however, there appears a deep and irremediable rift, a clear suite of cross-purposes. Floyd obviously came here to see the cowpunchers, and now that the bad men have met their just deserts at Eagle Pass and the good men have gone riding off into the sunset, he is bored, his eyes are tired, he would like to get in a little petting. But Wanda patiently endured the Western because she wants to see the second show, which, through one of those common freaks of double-feature programing, is THE RED SHOES—“co-hit,” it is grossly advertised on a large flashing sign at the side of the stage.