Folk of the Fringe

by Orson Scott Card

  The speech ended. Parley came down in the darkness. Onstage Toolie was playing Joseph Smith and Scarlett was playing his mother. Marshall moved through the darkness wearing brilliant white that caught every scrap of light that reached him; he was going to appear as the angel Moroni. Parley came down the steps and turned, a few steps toward Deaver, into the darkest shadow. He bent over, resting his head and hands against the edge of the stage, the edge of the flatbed truck. Deaver watched him for a while, fascinated, knowing that Parley was crying, unable to bear knowing it. A man shouldn't have to wait until he wasn't any good before he retired. He should be able to quit while he still has some fresh accomplishment in him. But this—to have to stay on and on, failing again every night.

  Deaver didn't dare speak to him; had he and Parley even spoken yet? He couldn't remember. What was Parley to him? An old man, a stranger. Deaver took a step toward him, another, reached out his hand, rested it on Parley's shoulder. Parley didn't move, not to move away, not to show a sign that he felt the hand and accepted it. After a while, Deaver took his hand away and went back around the truck to watch the show from the side, where he'd been before.

  It took a while to get back into the pageant, to follow what was happening. Dusty was onstage in blackface, to be the slave that Lincoln freed; Marshall made an imposing Lincoln, fine to look at. But Deaver also kept looking at the audience. He'd never watched a crowd like that before. The sun was long gone, the sky black, so all he could see was the people in front, where the light from the stage spilled back onto their faces. Mouths open, they watched the stage, unmoving, as if they were machines waiting for someone to switch them on. And now, onstage, Lincoln's hand reached out to the young slave and lifted him up out of bondage. "O happy day!" cried Dusty. The music picked up the refrain. O happy day! The Tabernacle Choir singing it.

  Then Lincoln reached out both his arms to embrace the boy, and Dusty impulsively jumped up and hugged Lincoln around the neck. The audience roared with laughter; Deaver saw how, almost with one movement, their heads rocked back, then forward again; they stirred in their seats, then settled. The comic moment had released the tension of their stillness. They relaxed again. Then burst into applause at something they saw; Deaver didn't even bother looking at the stage to see what it was. The audience itself was a performance. Moving, shifting, laughing, clapping, all as one, as if they were all part of the same soul.

  Toolie played Brigham Young as he led the Saints across the plains to Utah. Deaver vaguely remembered that the settlement of Utah was before the Civil War, but it didn't seem to matter—it worked fine this way in the show. To Deaver it seemed a little strange that a show called Glory of America should have an equal mix of Mormon and American history. But to these people, he realized, it was all the same story. George Washington, Betsy Ross, Joseph Smith, Abraham Lincoln, Brigham Young, all part of the same unfolding tale. Their own past.

  After a while, though, he lost interest in the audience. They only did the same things—hold still, rapt; laugh; clap; gasp in awe at some spectacle. Only a limited sort of entertainment for someone watching them. Deaver turned back and watched the stage again.

  It was time for the rocket. Even though it actually looked like a missile, and nothing at all like the Apollo launches, it was still something to watch Marshall put the helmet over his head and climb into the missile. All wrong—one man, not three, and riding in the rocket itself. Every school in Deseret taught better than that. But everyone understood. There was no way to put a full-size Saturn rocket with the letter NASA and USA on it, and the man getting in was supposed to be Neil Armstrong. A large puff of smoke represented the launch. Then the door opened again, Marshall came out; the music was soft, a high, thrilling violin. He opened the rigid American flag on its little stand and placed it on the ground in front of him. "A small step for a man," he said. "A giant leap for mankind."

  The music reached a towering climax. Deaver's eyes filled with tears. This was the moment, America's climax, the supreme achievement, the high-water mark, and no one knew it at the time. Couldn't those people back in 1969 see the cracks, feel the crumbling all around them? Not thirty years later it was all gone. NASA, the USA itself, all gone, all broken up. Only the Indians to the south were making nations anymore, calling themselves Americans, saying that the white people of North America were Europeans, trespassers—and who could tell them no? America was over. It grew two hundred years, feeding and devouring the world, even reaching out to touch the moon, and now the name was up for grabs. Nothing left but scraps and fragments.

  Yet we were there. That little flag was on the moon, the footprints unstirred by any wind.

  Only gradually did Deaver realize that these things he was thinking were all being spoken; he heard the whispered words in the trembling voice of Scarlett Aal. "The footprints still are there, and if we go back, we will recognize them as our own."

  Deaver glanced at the audience again. More than one hand was brushing a tear away. Just as Deaver's own hand went up to his cheek.

  Now the collapse. Cacophonous music. Parley as the evil Soviet tyrant, Marshall as the bumbling fool of a President, together they mimed the blundering that led to war. Deaver couldn't believe at first that the Aals had chosen to show the end of the world as a comic dance. But it was irresistibly funny. The audience screamed with laughter as the Soviet tyrant kept stomping on the President's feet, and the President kept bowing and apologizing, picking up his own injured foot and hitting it himself, finally shaking hands with the Russian, as if making a formal agreement, and then stomping on his own foot. Every mimed cry of pain brought another roar of laughter from the crowd. This was their own destruction being acted out, and yet Deaver couldn't keep himself from laughing. Again he was wiping away tears, but this time so that he could see the stage at all through the blur of his own laughter.

  The Russian knocked off the President's hat. When the President bent over to pick it up, the Russian kicked him hard in the behind and the President sprawled on the stage. Then Parley beckoned Dusty and Janie, dressed as Russian soldiers, to come over and finish him off.

  Suddenly it wasn't funny anymore. They both held submachine guns, and jammed the butts again and again into the President's body. Even though Deaver knew that the blows were being faked, he still felt them like blows to his own body, terrible pain, brutal, unfair, and it went on and on, blow after blow after blow.

  The crowd was silent now. Deaver felt what they all felt. It has to stop. Stop it now. I can't bear any more.

  At the moment when he was about to turn away, a drum roll began. Toolie entered, and to Deaver's astonishment he was dressed as Royal Aal. The plaid shirt, two pistols in his belt, the grizzly beard—there was no mistaking it. The audience recognized him at once, and immediately cheered. Cheered and leapt to their feet, clapping, waving their arms. "Royal! Royal! Royal!" they shouted.

  Toolie strode down to where the Russian soldiers were still pounding the corpse of the President. With both hands he thrust them apart, knocking them down. Then he reached down to the President's body—to lift him up? No. To draw out of his costume the gold and green beehive flag of Deseret. The cheers grew louder. He carried it to the flagpole, fastened it where the American flag had been. This time the flag rose slowly; the anthem of Deseret began to play. Anyone who wasn't standing stood now, and the crowd sang along with the music, more and more voices, spontaneously becoming part of the show.

  As they sang, the flag of Deseret suddenly flowed outward, disappearing, as the American flag moved in behind it. Then the American flag flowed out and the flag of Deseret replaced it. Again and again, over and over, the flags changing. Even though Deaver had helped Katie set up the effect and knew exactly how it was done, he couldn't keep himself from being caught up in the emotion of the moment. He even sang with all the others as they reached the final chorus. "We'll sing and we'll shout with the armies of heaven! Hosanna! Hosanna to God and the King! Let glory to them in the highest be given, hencef
orth and forever, amen and amen!"

  The lights went out on the stage; only a single spot remained on the flag, which had come to rest as the old American flag. It could have been the end of the show right there. But no. A single spotlight now on stage. Katie came out, dressed as Betsy Ross. "Does it still wave?" she asked, looking around.

  "Yes!" cried the audience.

  "Where does it wave!" she cried. "Where is it!"

  Marshall, now dressed in a suit and tie, wearing a mask that made him look pretty much like Governor Monson, strode into the light.

  "O'er the land of the free!" he cried.

  The audience cheered.

  Toolie, still dressed as Royal Aal, stepped into the light from the other side.

  "And the home of the brave!"

  The music immediately went into "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the lights went out completely. The audience shouted and cheered. Deaver clapped until his palms stung and kept on beating his hands together until they finally ached and throbbed. His voice was lost in the crowd's shouting—no, rather the crowd's voice became his own, the loudest shout he had ever uttered in his life. It seemed to last forever, one great voice, one single cry of joy and pride, one soul, one great indivisible self.

  Then the shouting faded, the clapping became more scattered. The faint audience lights came on. A few voices, talking, began among the crowd. The applause was over. The unity was broken. The audience was once again the thousand citizens of Hatchville. Little children were gathered up in their parents' arms. Families moved off together into the darkness, many of them lighting lanterns they had brought with them for the trek home in the night. Deaver saw one man he recognized, though he couldn't think why; the man was smiling, gathering his young daughter into his arms, putting his arm around his wife, a little boy chattering words that Deaver couldn't hear—but all of them smiling, happy, full. Then he realized who the man was. The secretary from the mayor's office. Deaver hadn't recognized him at first because of that smile. It was like he was someone else. Like the show had changed him.

  Suddenly Deaver realized something. During the show, when Deaver felt himself to be part of that audience, like their laughter was his laughter, their tears his tears—the secretary was part of that audience, too. For a while tonight they saw and heard and felt the same things. And now they'd carry away the same memories, which meant that to some degree they were the same person. One.

  The idea left Deaver breathless. It wasn't just him and the secretary, it was also the children, everybody there. All the same person, in some hidden corner of their memory.

  Once again Deaver was alone on the boundary between the pageant wagon, and the town, belonging to neither—yet now, because of the show, belonging a little bit to both.

  Out in the crowd, Ollie stood up from behind the light and sound control panel. The girl from the orchard—Nance?—was standing by him. It made Deaver sad to see her, sad to think that she would translate all those powerful feelings of the pageant into a passion for Ollie. But there was nothing to worry about. The girl's father was right there with her, pulling her away. The town had been warned, and Ollie wasn't going to have his way tonight.

  Deaver walked around behind the truck. He was still emotionally drained. Toolie had the door of the truck open and was peeling off his beard and putting it in a box by the light from the cab. "Like it?" he asked Deaver.

  "Yeah," Deaver said. His voice was husky from yelling.

  Toolie looked up, studied his face for a moment. "Hey," he said. "I'm glad."

  "Where are the others?"

  "In the tents, changing. I stay out here to make sure nothing walks away from the truck. Ollie watches out front."

  Deaver didn't believe anyone would steal from the people who brought them such a show as this. But he didn't say so. "I can keep watch," he said. "Go in and change."

  "Thanks," Toolie said. He immediately closed the box, shut the cab door, and jogged off to the tent.

  Deaver walked out into the space between the tents and the truck. Because he was supposed to be keeping watch, he faced the truck, scanning across it. But his mind was on the people in the tents behind him. He could hear them talking, sometimes laughing. Did they know what they had done to him?

  I was on both sides of this tonight, thought Deaver. I saw it, I was in the audience. But I also raised the flag the first time, made it wave. I was part of it. Part of every part. I'm one of you. For one hour tonight I'm one of you.

  Katie came out of the girls' tent, looked around, walked over to Deaver. "Silly, wasn't it?"

  It took a second before Deaver realized that she was talking about the show.

  "Of course the history in it is pure nonsense," said Katie, "and there isn't a genuine character in the whole thing. It isn't like real acting. Watching that show, you wouldn't think any of us had any talent at all." She sounded angry, bitter. Hadn't she heard the crowd? Didn't she understand what the show had done to them? To him?

  She was looking at him, and now she finally realized that his silence didn't mean he agreed with her at all. "Why, you liked it, didn't you," she said.

  "Yes," he answered.

  She took a little step backward. "I'm sorry. I forgot that you—I guess you haven't seen many shows."

  "It wasn't silly."

  "Well, it is, you know. When you've done it over and over again like we have. It's like saying the same word again and again until it doesn't mean anything anymore."

  "It meant something."

  "Not to me."

  "Yes it did. There at the end. When you said—"

  "When I said my lines. They were memorized speeches. Father wrote them, and I said them, but it wasn't me saying it. It was Betsy Ross. Deaver, I'm glad you liked the show, and I'm sorry I disillusioned you. I'm not used to having audience backstage." She turned away.

  "No," Deaver said.

  She stopped, waited for him to say more. But he didn't know what to say. Just that she was wrong.

  She turned around. "Well?"

  He thought of how she was this morning, coming so close to him, holding on to him. How she went back and forth between real and fake, so smooth he could hardly tell the difference. But there was a difference. Talking about Katherine Hepburn, saying how she loved that movie, that was real. Flirting with him, that was fake. And tonight, talking about the show being silly, that was phony, that was just an attitude she was putting on. But her anger, that was real.

  "Why are you mad at me?"

  "I'm not."

  "All I did was like the show," said Deaver. "What was so wrong about that?"

  "Nothing."

  He just stood there, not taking the lie for an answer. His silence was too demanding a question for her to ignore.

  "I guess I was the one who was disillusioned," said Katie. "I thought you were too smart to be taken in by the show. I thought you'd see it for what it really is."

  "I did."

  "You saw Betsy Ross and George Washington and Neil Armstrong and—"

  "Didn't you?"

  "I saw a stage and actors and makeup and set pieces and costumes and special effects. I saw lines getting dropped and a flag that went up a little bit too late. And I heard speeches that no real human being would ever say, a bunch of high-flown words that mean nothing at all. In other words, Deaver, I saw the truth, and not the illusion."

  "Bullshit."

  The word stung her. Her face set hard, and she turned to go.

  Deaver reached out and caught her arm, pulled her back. "I said bullshit, Katie, and you know it."

  She tried to wrench her arm away.

  "I saw all those things too, you know," said Deaver. "The screwed-up lines and the costumes and all that. I was backstage too. But I guess I saw something you didn't see."

  "It's the first show you ever watched, Deaver, and you saw something I didn't?"

  "I saw you take an audience and turn them into one person, with one soul."

  "These townies are all alike anyway
."

  "Me too? I'm just like them? Is that what you're saying? Then why've you been trying so hard to make me fall in love with you? If you think I'm one of them and you think this show isn't worth doing, then why have you been trying so hard to get me to stay?"

  Her eyes widened in surprise, and then a grin spread across her face. "Why, Deaver Teague, you're smarter than I thought. And dumber, too. I wasn't trying to get you to stay. I was trying to get you to take me with you when you left."

  Partly he was angry because she was laughing at him. Partly he was angry because he didn't want it to be true that she was just using him, that she wasn't attracted to him at all. Partly he was angry because the show had moved him and she despised him for it. Mostly, though, he was so full of emotion that it had to spill out somehow, and anger would do.

  "Then what?" he demanded. He talked low, so that the others wouldn't hear him in the tents. "Suppose I fell in love with you and took you with me, then what? Did you plan to marry me and be a range rider's wife and have my babies? Not you, Katie. No, you were going to get me hooked on you and then you were going to find some theatre somewhere so you could play all those Shakespeare parts you wanted, and if that meant me giving up my dream of being an outrider, why, that was fine with you, wasn't it, because it doesn't matter to you what I sacrificed, as long as you got what you wanted."

  "Shut up," she whispered.

  "And what about your family? What kind of show can they do if you walk out? You think Janie can step in and do your parts? Is the old lady going to come back on stage so you can run away?"

  To his surprise, she was crying. "What about me, then? Doing these stupid little backwater shows all my life—am I supposed to be trapped here forever just because they need me? Don't I get to need anything? Can't I ever do anything with my life that's worth doing?"