by Fred DeVecca
“Trust me. We’ll pull it off.” He sipped his club soda before adding, “And I do miracles too. I can do anything.”
He made good films. I still wasn’t convinced about the miracles.
I was warming to the idea of this film.
“Actually, now you got me looking forward to seeing this thing, as weird as it sounds.”
“I know. I can’t wait. This is going to be the best thing I’ve done.”
“Molly’s soliloquy is like the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. “But, more than the sex, I see it as the most optimistic thing I’ve ever read. She brings Leopold back into her bed, she worries about his health, and she thinks about their first meeting, and she says ‘yes’ about a million times.”
“She says it one hundred twenty-one times. I counted. They’re all in that script you’re holding.”
“You do the whole soliloquy? All twenty-four thousand words of it?”
“Twenty-four thousand, two hundred seventeen words. I counted,” Mooney said.
“You are insane. How long is this movie anyway? What is this, a twelve-episode miniseries?”
“No, I’m pulling your leg. We just do the end of it. I guess you don’t get irony.”
“I get irony just fine, thank you. I just don’t know your sense of humor well enough yet to tell when you’re being ironic.”
Then I cleared my throat, and in my best Irish brogue, recited the last few hundred words of the soliloquy from memory.
“You mean that part?” I asked him.
“Yeah, that part.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You’re not bad. We’ll get you in this film too.”
I thought, There’s no way in hell they’ll do that, and then I asked, “And a ‘shout from the streets’—what does that mean?”
“Jesus. You mean you don’t know? You seem to have the damn book memorized.”
“No. Just the good parts.”
“It’s right in there. Dedalus challenges a student’s bullshit argument using God as an excuse for anti-Semitism by saying that God is the shouts from the hockey game going on in the streets below them. God is in the common man. God is the common man. God is man. Man is God. God is everywhere. God is a shout from the streets.”
“That’s the kind of talk that got me thrown out of the monastery, Mooney. That’s subversive. But you’re smarter than you look. You’re winning me over. I like subversive.”
“I’m not telling you I believe that crap. I’m just telling you what’s in the film. It makes a good story.” He laughed. “And we’re going to have singing and dancing in there too. That’s all in the book. That’s what happens in pubs—besides general bullshitting, which is also in the film.”
“Singing?”
“Yeah. Like all those traditional Irish and English songs you guys sing. That stuff.”
“Dancing?”
“Morris dancing will work.”
“That’s English, not Irish.”
“Well, the story is no longer set in Ireland, remember. And I’ll make it work. The word ‘Moorish’ is in the soliloquy—that’s what Morris dancing comes from, right?”
“So some say.”
“Your team want to be on the big screen?”
“I’ll have to talk to the guys.”
“Do that. Seriously.”
“Okay, I’ll do that.”
“Good. I have a good feeling about this project.”
“Yeah, a modernized, Americanized, lesbian, musical version of Ulysses, all set in Shelburne Falls. With dancing. Folk dancing. Morris dancing! And people sitting in bars discussing man and God. What could possibly go wrong with that? Sounds like Oscar material to me. Blockbuster stuff! Boffo box office!”
“Irony?”
I nodded.
Mooney replied to my nod, “Well, It’s a crazy idea … but it just might work.”
“It just might.”
The sodas were almost gone. Mooney looked at me.
“Good, I’m glad you’re on board. You are on board, aren’t you? You never really gave me an answer. I’ll call you ‘security consultant’ in the credits. What do you say?”
It was simply too good a setup, and I couldn’t resist.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes I will. Yes.”
Chapter Nine
Mayday … Mayday … Mayday
April ended with the usual springtime monsoons. When they passed, May blossomed in its gentle greens and purples and all was well with the world.
There was hope in the air, and I felt blessed. I had compelling work to do—to watch over a person I felt might need to be watched over—and I had love sprouting in my life for the first time in many moons. Still, I felt some unease. For all Mooney’s generosity and interest in me, both professionally and personally, there was something disturbing about him, and I decided to approach everything concerning him with caution. The dude scared me.
The first of May—Mayday—found me awakening well before dawn, donning my Morris whites, ribbons, and bells, meeting the Shelburne Falls Morris Men at the foot of the Hill of Tears for the trek, in full darkness, to its peak. There we would—as we had done each Mayday morning for the past thirty-five years—dance up the sun for no one besides ourselves.
Oh yeah, and for the two women walking dogs who met us there twenty years ago and have made it their own tradition too, now well into their third set of dogs, to make the Mayday climb.
Through the morning haze and wispy clouds, the first spears of sunlight reached heavenward. I stopped to record the oo-wah-hoo of a mourning dove as Danny began playing our traditional opening dance.
We did a couple rounds of dances. Satisfied that we had once again caused the earth to brighten, we walked back down the hill and found ourselves in front of McCusker’s. After a few more dances, we returned to real life. We had been up since 4 a.m., and although it was still only late morning, it had already been a long day.
Clara and Sarah crossed the street from their home to watch and were joined by a few customers coming out of the store holding newspapers and coffee cups. Sarah, for some inexplicable reason, had fallen quite in love with Morris dancing and had insisted on going to school late just so she could see us.
We ran through some of our standard repertoire and then finished our dancing day with the whole team joining in on a massed “Nutting Girl.” “The Nutting Girl” is normally done as a jig; that is, it is done by fewer than the six dancers who would normally be in a standard set—generally by only two. Today we got everyone in it, all twelve dancers, for a grand end to our Mayday. We liked this configuration. It was powerful and beautiful, and we agreed we would perform it this way instead of as a jig, at least for a while.
As we all joined in on the final “and what few nuts that poor girl had she threw them all away,” we heard the usual polite applause from the small crowd, and a two-pinkies-in-the-mouth whistle from Sarah. Walking off, I literally stumbled into two figures standing at the foot of the dance set—Mooney and the eponymous Nutting Girl herself, both smiling and clapping.
VelCro was dressed in her usual sunglasses and scarf/veil, strands of red hair creeping out the bottom and sides. She was wearing her Shelburne Falls Pretty Country-girl Milkmaid costume too. She even wore an amazingly cute floppy straw hat.
Mooney had cleaned up his act since the last time I’d seen him. His scraggly beard was gone, and his hair was shorter—no more ponytail. In this newly shorn springtime look, he seemed scrubbed, shaved, showered, shiny, and ready to go.
He greeted me with the words, “We shoot in two weeks.” And then, “I liked that last dance. I want you to do that in the film.”
“Won’t work,” I said. “That one takes all twelve of us, and I’m going to be otherwise employed, remember? You hired me for something important.” I looked at VelCro, because she was that important thing I was talking about. She smiled back.
“How long did that dance take?” Mooney asked. “Three minut
es, tops? I can spare you for three minutes.”
VelCro piped up, “I think I’ll survive for three minutes.” And then, as if she had just recalled who I was, “Hello there, Mister Theater Man.”
I replied, “Hello, Miss VelCro.”
“Why don’t you call me Julie? My friends call me Julie, and I hope that we’ll become friends. That VelCro stuff, that’s just for the press and publicity and all that stupid stuff.”
“Okay. And you can call me Frank. Hello, Julie.”
“Are you a Francis?”
“Yes.”
“I think I prefer that. Is that okay?”
“Sure.”
“Hello, Francis.”
Now we were friends officially, but I think we were friends already.
Then I responded to Mooney. “Nope. You hired me to watch her. I can’t watch her when I’m dancing.”
“I’ll dock you for the three minutes. No need to feel guilt.”
“It’s not the money. It’s not the guilt. It’s the job. Do you want me to do my job or not?”
“I want you to dance. That’s part of your job now, okay? You’re officially hired as a dancer.”
Dancer and detective. I allowed as how I’d think it over.
Clara and Sarah came over to join us. Sarah was alternately staring at Julie expectantly and shyly shuffling her feet and gazing down at the sidewalk. I introduced Mooney to them, which generated only a weak handshake from Sarah. When I said, “And this is Julie,” Sarah let out a poorly contained gasp and an “Oh, my God! I totally love you,” followed by no handshake at all. Sarah had been instantly shuttled into another universe and had no idea how to react.
Julie was pure class. With a smile that stretched across her mostly concealed face, she said, “Thank you, Sarah. I get that sort of thing all the time. Normally I hate it.”
Sarah replied, “Normally? You don’t hate it now?”
“No. You seem nice.”
Sarah smiled back. “I am nice.”
Then it dawned on Sarah: there was something weird going on here, even weirder than the world’s biggest star standing a block away from her house: that famous person seemed to be on friendly terms with the boring old dude who’d been hanging around with her mother.
“Wait a minute,” Sarah finally managed to spit out. “You know Frank?”
“Yes, of course. He’s my friend. And he’s also a Theater Man. Also, he seems like a duck.” She smiled when she said this and I had no idea what she meant.
“A duck? I’ve always thought of him as more of a parakeet. The day I met him, he helped us find my parakeet.”
“Well, the day I met him, I was watching a bunny up on a movie screen, and yet I do not see him as a rabbit.”
“Well, he’s far more birdlike than hare-like,” Sarah replied. “And yeah, I can even see the duck stuff. He’s all calm and fluffy and soft on the surface, but underneath, those legs are churning and flailing away and going frickin’ crazy. Yeah, he’s definitely a duck.”
Julie was really smiling now. “Yes!” she said. “That is exactly what I mean! I can’t believe someone else sees that too.”
“I see lots of stuff,” Sarah said.
“Me too. Sometimes too much stuff,” replied Julie. “It’s like a curse.”
The girls were clearly bonding here.
“That’s probably why you’re such a good actor,” said Sarah.
“What do you mean?”
“Because that’s the kind of stuff you have to draw on, right? To do character, emotion? The people you see, everything in your environment? The whole world. The whole universe. You see the whole universe, everywhere.”
“I see the whole universe in everything—people’s eyes, the sky, animals, birds, a peanut, a walnut ….”
Sarah responded, “You know that William Blake poem? The one where he talks about seeing the world in a grain of sand, seeing heaven in flowers, holding infinity in his hand?”
“Yes!” Juliana said. “Exactly! That’s perfect. That’s exactly what I see.”
“I see it too,” said Sarah.
“So, you act?”
“Me? No. Come on.”
“You were in that play in seventh grade, honey,” chimed in Clara.
Sarah silenced her clueless mom with a glare, the sort of look that passed between them often.
“Well, maybe you should. You kind of get it. Better than almost all the people I talk to. Nobody else quotes Blake to me.”
Sarah looked down at the ground, kicked the dirt a bit. “I’m not beautiful like you, though.”
“You are too.”
“Oh, my God!” Eyes wide, she cast about as if for confirmation. “VelCro, the most beautiful girl in the world, just said I’m beautiful!”
Sarah, despite her youth, did appreciate irony. She was being funny and everyone laughed. The girls had connected big time, over Sarah’s humor and some shared understanding of the nature of the world.
We all chatted a bit more, and the Morris guys scattered back to their respective houses. Sarah and Julie hugged shyly and soulfully, and I walked Sarah and Clara across the street to their home.
Sarah could not believe what had just occurred. She had a new friend and it just happened to be the most famous girl in America.
She babbled, “She’s gorgeous and so talented, and smart too. I never knew she was that smart. They never talk about that side of her. And that girl has done everything. She’s had sex with Brenden Lassiter,” who was, apparently, a current rock star heartthrob.
“Sarah!” Clara scolded.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I just can’t believe this. Wait till I tell Stacey. She’ll die.”
It was then that I left Sarah and Clara—to die, or whatever else they were going to do next. I was tired enough to die myself, having been awake since 4 a.m. and jumping up and down dancing for much of that time. I was ready to trudge up the Hill of Tears.
After giving me a hug, Clara said, “Happy Mayday” and laughed.
I asked why she was laughing.
“I can’t make up my mind if I think of Mayday as an ancient Northern Hemisphere spring festival or as an emergency procedure word.”
I said, “Say it once, it’s celebration. Say it twice, I guess it’s still a celebration. But say it three times, it’s distress. As a distress signal, it’s always said three times to avoid mistaking it for a similar phrase that’s less ominous. It’s the repetition that makes it dangerous. But in any case,” I concluded, “Happy Mayday!”
“Happy Mayday,” said Clara, stepping on my line.
Which was followed, a little too quickly, by Sarah also saying, “Happy Mayday.”
That made it three times. Three Maydays in quick succession.
I tried to write them off as mere echoes while I put one foot in front of the other and trudged up the hill.
But I couldn’t.
Three Maydays. A distress signal had been sounded.
Chapter Ten
Our Jewell of the Deerfield
Mooney came to that week’s Morris practice to run through with the guys what he wanted us to do in the film. He brought along his director of photography, Dexter. And he brought along Julie, who seemed to be his constant companion. Safely out of the public’s gaze, she took off her veil and sunglasses and stood there open and fresh and unhidden and oh so vulnerable.
We practiced on the stage in my theater. In this private spot, I was able to gaze upon Julie without her disguise. Under her frumpy public costume, she was wearing a loose-fitting blue t-shirt and the baggy sweatpants. But nothing hid that angelic face.
It was one of those moments when you realize that life is not fair and that some people are just from a whole other planet than the rest of us. She had a level of celestial beauty on a different scale from any other beautiful person you see in the real world. But it was another sort of charisma too, difficult to define. It took your breath away.
We did the twelve-man “Nutting Girl” dan
ce over and over and over as Dexter kept framing us in his viewfinder, trying different angles, talking over lighting designs with Mooney. Meanwhile, the guys did their best to not trip over each other while staring at the stunning Julie.
That was the only dance we did that night, and by 8:30, quitting time, Mooney was satisfied with what he had.
As we were about to depart for the pub, Mooney came up to me and stage-whispered in my ear, “Julie doesn’t want to get all disguised again. She’s comfortable here. Let’s stay.”
“The guys will be wanting some beer,” I told him.
He pulled out three twenties. “Send someone out for a few six packs. Let’s hang out here.”
So Stanley ran out to Good Spirits, and soon was back with a supply of IPA and chips. We settled in, some guys sitting in the front row and some plopping down on the stage itself.
Danny was playing tunes on his accordion, and the singing began. Mooney joined in wherever he could, Dexter chimed in gamely, and even Julie participated. She opened a beer and sipped from it. This made me nervous. She was of age, sure, but I had the feeling alcohol didn’t mix well with her—I had already witnessed her in destructo-mode. I let it go, of course. Things seemed peaceful, the vibes were pleasant, and I wanted to give her a chance.
Everybody loosened up, and the guys were gently flirting with her. She was sharp enough to give it back to them, and the banter flew around the old hall. She was flirting in a harmless way, witty and cute, revealing yet another surprising dimension.
We have bats in the hall. I’m not sure how many. When they fly around during a movie, I tell people they’re computer generated. One woke up and darted about, to everyone’s delight.
As the beers started to kick in, we were surprised to see Clara and Sarah come in. They were about the only other people in the world who were also welcome here at this time, and we were all glad to see them.
Clara sat next to me in the front row of seats, and Sarah made her way to the stage. She sat cross-legged next to Julie, who welcomed her with a hug. I warily spotted Sarah take some sips from Julie’s beer. The singing continued and the two girls gradually drifted off into their own private party, giggling and whispering in some secret world of innocent young womanhood.