Sing Them Home

by Stephanie Kallos

  “I’d trust Doc Jones with my life,” Harold whispered to me tonight at supper. “We’ve all seen him perform all kinds of miracles—he can reattach amputated limbs, for God’s sake!—but bless his heart, give the man a hammer and nails and he’s a menace.”

  So Llewellyn and Harold started meeting, sharing ideas, considering design options. Thank goodness for Harold’s interference. L.’s original idea was little more than a large piece of plywood affixed to the front porch steps at an angle that would have required me to defy gravity.

  All the supplies—lumber, hardware, everything—were donated. The Schlakes wouldn’t let Llewellyn pay for anything. They also outfitted every child who showed up with their own tool belt and set of tools.

  Harold drew up the plans, cut the lumber, wrote out step-by-step instructions, assembled a crew of skilled volunteer carpenters (almost every man in Emlyn Springs was here) and delegated all the tasks so that everyone—from my famously unhandy husband to the smallest child—would have something important to do, and the build could happen in a single day.

  Wauneeta Williams and Kay Ellis took dozens of photos—they both have one of those instant cameras that spit out a picture right away—and while the men and children were involved in construction, the women assembled a big scrapbook documenting the whole day of “ramp-raising” from start to finish. The scrapbook includes not only photos, but the “blueprints”: Llewellyn’s initial drawings, all manner of sketches on small bits of notepad paper and cocktail napkins (clearly, many of L. and Harold’s planning sessions took place over martinis at the country club), supply lists scrawled on prescription notepads …

  Llewellyn has been telling me for years that I’m much more beloved by this community than I realize. I guess today he’s proven right—although I can’t help but feel that their real loyalty is to the good doctor’s wife.

  It doesn’t matter, though. So many people came to help: Roy Klump, Myron Mutter, Ezra Krivosha, Ellis Cockeram, Owen Lloyd, Bud Humphries, Harlan Beck, the Ellises, and of course dear Doc Williams, all were here, and surely many more I’ve forgotten, so I’m thankful for the photo record. Many thank-yous to write.

  Even Estella Axthelm was in attendance, possibly because she couldn’t bear the idea of being left out of a community photo. But still, she came.

  There was a potluck supper laid out on tables in the front yard and we were blessed with a clear, fine, humid-free evening. By 7:30 or so—after enduring the mortifying experience of having the entire group watch and cheer as I made my inaugural trip up the ramp—everyone cleared out, leaving us blessedly alone again.

  After the grand exit, Bonnie wanted to play her favorite card game: spit. We’d gone a couple of rounds and were just starting to get into the spirit of things when the phone rang.

  It’s so rare that the six of us are together. You could see everyone looking crestfallen—even Larken, who’d moaned and complained about having to play a stupid card game with her family.

  “I’ll get it,” she sighed, getting up from the table and making her way to the phone. “Dad, are you home?”

  He peeked over the tops of his playing cards and—surprising us all—shook his head.

  The phone call was for me as it turned out, Clara Vance calling to apologize for not being able to come and help today—one of her children was sick with a fever—and wondering if we got the apple pie she sent over.

  I wheeled back toward the kitchen. Viney and Larken and Gaelan were making popcorn and pouring drinks.

  Bonnie was sitting in Llewellyn’s lap, looking at the scrapbook.

  Llewellyn—sounding like the world’s most experienced carpenter—was pointing at the pages, talking earnestly about ramp construction, geometry, rises and treads and building codes and how human bodies are wonders of construction, too, capable of so many amazing things, when Bonnie interrupted him.

  “Daddy,” Bonnie asked, her face troubled, “why do you say that?”

  “Say what, Bon-bon?”

  “That you aren’t home. You know, sometimes when the phone rings? I don’t understand.”

  “It’s confusing, I know, Daddy saying he isn’t home.”

  And then she looked him in the eye and said, very seriously, “It’s a lie, too. Because you are.”

  Chapter 28

  The Return of Little Miss Emlyn Springs

  The official launch of Fancy Egg Days occurs with the premiere of Our Little Wales.

  This evening’s performance constitutes the first run-through with costumes, lights, scenery, sound effects, and the wind machine they borrowed from the University of Nebraska. Merle Schlake and his son Harold drove all the way up and back this morning to get it.

  The audience is small—the big crowds will arrive for the weekend performances—and the prevailing mood is very informal:

  In addition to the playwright and the director (high school English teacher Fiona Hughes), there is Bonnie Jones (Fiona wanted to cast her as Eleanor Thomas, the famous Welsh singer who visited the opera house before it burned down in 1911, but Bonnie is five months pregnant and so lending her talents as a prop mistress), her sister Larken and several residents of the St. David’s Home for the Elderly. The play-wright’s mother is also present, but against her son’s wishes, so until curtain time she is hiding in the girls’ bathroom.

  The lights are turned off, revealing a general illumination on the playing area. A single figure, dressed in the nondescript clothing of a school janitor, is leaning against the proscenium.

  “Good evening, folks,” he begins, addressing the audience directly. “This play is called Our Little Wales. It was written by Eli Ellis Weissman and produced by the Emlyn Springs Cultural Committee. In it you will see Mr. Brody Canaerfan as Emlyn Halopeter, Mrs. Bess Simpsom as Julia Halopeter …”

  As Gaelan continues to introduce the characters, they file in behind him. “The Labenz boys, Allan, Peter, and Dylan, will be representing the fine young men of Emlyn Springs who over the years have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country …”

  What power there is in this ability they have, the dead are thinking admiringly, to stand together. They should use it more often.

  “And finally,” Gaelan says, gesturing toward stage right, “this is our accompanist, Mr. Morgan Geraint Jones, otherwise known as Blind Tom.” He checks behind him to make sure all sixty-three cast members are in place, and then turns back to the audience and says, “In Emlyn Springs, there’s nothing more important to us than music, so before I tell you some of the other things you need to know about us and our little Wales, we’re going to sing a song. Blind Tom, could you start us off?”

  Blind Tom plays the opening bars of the Welsh national anthem, they sing, and then the play begins.

  The performance is not without gaffes, line flubs, and technical difficulties—the most obvious being the inaugural use of the wind machine at the end of Act One. This occurs shortly after Brody Caenaerfan, in his big moment as Emlyn Halopeter, stands center stage, plants his feet wide, shields his eyes, and looks into an imagined distance with a growing look of intense horror. He utters the cue: “OH GOD IN HEAVEN! IT’S … A … TORNADO!” and the wind machine is turned on.

  Whatever is not nailed down or weighted by sandbags is sent flying. The papier-mâché stump lifts off the floor, tips sideways, and starts careening across the playing area before it exits stage right. Mrs. Julia Halopeter suffers a terrible embarrassment when her dress flies up over her head, revealing undergarments that have not been purchased from a nineteenth-century haberdashery. The Halopeter children start to cry. The team of cardboard horses, in an effect more grisly and realistic than anyone intended, are severed from their sticks, torn into pieces, and scattered in tattered shreds throughout the gym.

  Someone backstage eventually realizes what is happening and the Beaufort wind scale is suddenly reduced from 6 to 0.

  The Custodian reenters, shoos the distraught actors from the stage, and—using a broom and dustpan�
�begins to clean up the playing area.

  “Why is it,” he muses, “that nobody believes us when we talk about the extremes of Nebraska weather?”

  The audience laughs, the actors and crew are reassured, and Gaelan goes on to announce a fifteen-minute intermission.

  There are a few more technical mishaps—minor in comparison with what’s come before—and it does take the better part of three hours to bring the audience from prehistory to the present—several of the elderly audience members fall asleep—but when it’s all over, the cast and crew are greeted with riotous applause.

  “AUTHOR! AUTHOR!” everyone shouts, but the playwright is hunkered down behind his clipboard.

  It is only after the Custodian steps into the audience and speaks a few coaxing words that Eli finds the courage to join the cast and crew on stage and accept his standing ovation with a smile.

  Alvina Closs has lived in Nebraska her whole life and she’s never seen a sky like this.

  Gaelan has told her the names of clouds as set forth by that Quaker fellow in the early 1800s, and these clouds do not fit any of those categories. They’re diverse and disorganized-looking, as if several weather systems have butted up against one another and are fighting for supremacy. One part of the sky’s canvas has an undulating, edged appearance, like drifted snow or sand dunes; another part has the look of human organs lit from within: balloon-shaped and placental, having a veined appearance, or like marble, or like the oxygenated lingulae of the lungs. Small bursts of light suddenly flare within these structures, now and then, here and there.

  “Look at that,” folks are saying, looking up for a few moments from time to time, but then they’re distracted by whatever next big thing has been arranged for their entertainment, and there is so much to choose from: the band concert, the 4-H style show, the Saddle Club horse exhibition, skating and comedy and juggling acts, the Welsh spelling bee, the Fancy Hen egg-laying contest …

  Viney sips her Pineapple Protein Booster Smoothie. She’s minding the cash box while Bonnie takes a bathroom break. BJ’s Brews has reopened for this week only; it’s operating out of one of the many tents that have been set up in McClure Park, full of vendors selling food and drinks and crafts. Viney’s angels didn’t make it to the craft fair this year. They’re at home, pouting.

  “Look at that sky,” someone says again. They point, they interrupt their conversations to check the progress of the front, but when they’re reassured by a rolling-in patch of blue (“See over there, this isn’t gonna last long …”) they go back to watching the tractor pull, or buying another hot dog from the Knights of Columbus, in the meanwhile keeping a close eye on the time because the culminating event of Fancy Egg Days—and none of them want to miss it—is this afternoon’s Little Miss Emlyn Springs Pageant. And tonight there’s the dinner dance with live music in the Masonic Lodge basement, followed by fireworks at the park.

  What a week it has been! Everyone agrees it’s been the best Fancy Egg Days ever. The Welsh delegation arrived four days ago and have been wined and dined and shown around town. It’s clear that they’re impressed and interested in collaborating on this idea of the former mayor’s; surely they’ll return to Wales with a favorable report. Who knows what might happen? This could be the start of a whole new life for their community, and Llewellyn Jones’s long-held dream of an enlivened Emlyn Springs might finally come true.

  Alvina Closs takes no joy in any of it.

  It will be a year next week, she reflects.

  “Hi, Viney!” Bonnie calls. “You about ready to close up shop and head inside to the pageant?”

  “You go on in, sweetie,” Viney says. “I’ll take care of everything.”

  “Well, don’t be too long, okay? I can’t wait to see Larken’s face!”

  Viney watches Bonnie walk across the park toward the community center, weaving between the tents, gracefully maneuvering through the dense, jumbled crowd of tourists and townsfolk. Up until now they’ve been a disorganized, milling throng, indistinct in their T-shirts and flip-flops, straw hats and baseball caps and sunglasses. But as Bonnie passes them, they start to amass, organize, and flow in her wake, as if drawn by the force of her beauty and happiness. They’re going inside.

  That’s fine. Let them go.

  Alvina Closs will spend a while longer with her eyes fixed on the sky.

  “I need everyone to take their seats again, please,” Don Parry croons. Dressed in his signature red, green, and black plaid tuxedo (accented with a bright red cummerbund), Mr. Parry has been the master of ceremonies for the Little Miss Emlyn Springs Pageant since before Larken was crowned.

  Why is it, Larken wonders, that certain men never age? As she regards Don Parry’s tanned, unlined face, she wonders if he doesn’t have access to dark magic, a kind of Picture of Dorian Gray enchantment working on his behalf. Maybe there’s a painting hanging in that RV he drives all over the place. Or maybe there’s a dark arts version of London’s portrait gallery somewhere that’s filled with wall after wall of grotesque, aged likenesses of men like Mr. Parry: Bert Parks, Dick Clark, Alex Trebec, Regis whats-his-name, Clint Eastwood, Warren Beatty.

  Last night, she once again sat through the three-hour performance of Our Little Wales. Today, she’s been on her butt for another three hours watching the Little Miss Emlyn Springs Pageant—but her front-of-the-house position at the judge’s table with Hazel Williams and Owen Lloyd has required her to keep a perpetual smile on her face.

  Don Parry continues. “The judges have reached their decision and are ready to chair the winner. He gestures broadly to the offstage area. “Alyssa, Heather, Nicole, Kirstin, and Toree, will you all please come out and line up at the front of the stage?”

  Jon and Esmé are here. Their visit is a surprise. This morning, while serving pancakes at the Elks’ breakfast, Larken felt a pair of small arms encircle her middle. After Esmé’s sweet ambush worked its magic—this was a tactical move instigated by Jon, obviously—Jon announced that they drove down from Lincoln for the closing festivities. They’re staying the night at the King’s Castle Motel.

  Larken didn’t ask why. She didn’t inquire after Mia’s whereabouts. She’s happy to see Esmé. Jon remains unforgiven.

  “Once again,” Don Parry resumes as the girls get in place, “I’d like to thank all the sponsors who made this possible and commend them for their generosity. That said, and before I announce the first runnerup and winner, you girls should know that each one of you will be receiving a monetary prize. The twenty-five-dollar entrance fee that each of you paid has been matched by every one of our sponsors and placed in a Certificate of Deposit at the State Bank of Emlyn Springs. This program, “Nest Eggs for Fancy Eggs,” was the brainchild of one of our pageant judges and a former Little Miss Emlyn Springs, Larken Jones. Let’s give Miss Jones a hand, shall we?”

  Larken stands briefly, turns, smiles, and nods to acknowledge the applause. She spots Viney and Bonnie and Blind Tom, but Gaelan, stinker, must have left. Then she resumes her seat.

  The five contestants—coifed, hair-sprayed, rouged, and lipsticked, wear the outfits they wore during the final competition category: the talent segment.

  It’s been an embarrassment not of riches but mediocrity. Much of the afternoon has made Larken cringe in sympathy, but the talent presentations were especially hard to watch: Heather Pike and Nicole Cockeram each performed karaoke numbers; Alyssa Critchfield did a gymnastics routine that basically consisted of an endless back-and-forth of cartwheels and round-offs, Kirstin Penkava did a kind of dance of the veils using U.S., Nebraska, and Welsh flags, and Alyssa’s older sister, Toree, played an arrangement of Debussy’s Claire de Lune on her alto sax. They were uniformly dreadful.

  And yet she’s been surprised, never expecting to feel so much for these girls and their folks. These are not foolish people, deluded people. They know that, in the grand scheme of things, their daughters are undistinguished, ordinary, but that their efforts on this day deserve reward, bec
ause it takes courage to put ordinariness in the spotlight. No one grimaced when a flat pitch was sounded, no one shifted cynically in their folding chairs when the twentieth cartwheel was turned, no one sighed and rolled their eyes when they heard another tepid and unoriginal extemporized response to the question, What are your hopes and dreams for Emlyn Springs?

  The girls are in place, holding hands, their faces flushed and shiny. Behind them, garlands of Mylar stars undulate against a dark blue velvet curtain.

  The Chair is brought in by four men and placed on the raised platform at the back of the stage. The mirror ball that is suspended overhead spins slowly for these girls whose dream this is, casting revolving patches of light on all of them. Don Parry announces the runner-up, Kirstin Penkava, and presents her with a bouquet of flowers.

  “And now,” Don Parry proclaims in his showman’s voice, “let’s welcome last year’s winner, Little Miss Emlyn Springs 2003, Kelly McAllister, to crown her successor!”

  The drum is rolled, the audience grows quiet, and in this expectant moment Larken suddenly hears her own long-ago voice, feels it even in her body: And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep …

  “And the winner is …”

  As Kelly McAllister lifts the crown from her head and places it on the heavily moussed and styled curls of Toree Critchfield, the muscles of Larken’s arms tense and release in sympathy, she feels as though she, too, is divesting herself of some small but significant weight.

  After a long cloak is settled on Toree’s shoulders, she sits in her chair. Then, Bud Humphries, Harold Schlake Jr., Harold Schlake Sr., and Joe Pappas flank her on four sides and, in one smooth motion, lift her up and start carrying her around the room.

  The audience applauds, the cameras flash, Wauneeta Williams plays the piano, Don Parry sings.

  Larken is about to join Jon and Esmé when Hazel steps up onto the stage, takes one of the microphones, and starts gesturing to the audience to shush and sit down. She’s holding what looks like a framed photograph.