The Fires of Spring (40 page)

“I guess that marionette show changed my life,” he said. “Because look!” His eyes danced with excitement. “I can hide back here! Nobody can tell how big I am or anything else. I can have as many voices as I like and as many characters. I can make them do impossible things.” Quickly he unwound the mended doll and sent it flying through the air, looping the loop, and shouting for a ham sandwich. David noticed the Vito’s dolls were fun because they were always getting into trouble or eating or making love or dancing or singing or having a wonderful time.

Chautauqua played for seven days in each town. First Day was noisy with the band and a comedian. The Swiss bellringers filled the Second Day with music and fun. Dressed in Alpine costumes and long moustaches, they laboriously spelled out hymns and polkas. A pretty girl of nineteen played the little bells until the comedy number was given, whereupon the comedian would lift her and her bells and swing them together. It was good clean fun. Third Day brought the acrobats and an inspirational talk on the good life. Vaudeville and a gala concert filled the Fourth Day. Then, on Fifth Day, came an accordionist to fill time until, in the evening, the Great Man spoke. In the past the Great Man had been William Jennings Bryan or Russell H. Conwell or Robert La Follette; but in this dying year a worn-out schoolteacher tried vainly to fill the spacious shoes that had graced Chautauqua in the fine years up to 1924. The Sixth Day brought Vito’s marionettes and the play. All week long each entertainer had been required to say, “I never laughed so much as I did at the play you’re going to see on last night.” An intense excitement was generated, so that by the time the curtain finally went up on Cyril Hargreaves’ troupe the town was prepared to believe that the great days had returned, and gradually this excitement pervaded David, for he knew that when he kissed Mona in the last scene of the play, there would never again be another Chautauqua in that town.

This sense of doom stayed with him, especially when it
fell the players’ turn to provide Sunday worship, for Chautauqua was founded on Christian principles and each act conducted church service if they were in a town on Sunday. That was the Seventh Day, and when David heard the mournful old hymns sung in the tent that would soon be dying upon the grass, his heart welled up in longing for Mona, who held her hymn book as properly as a virgin in a church choir afraid to look upon the organist.

“You have a real soft spot in your heart for Chautauqua, don’t you?” the Gonoph asked one evening.

“Yes, I do!” David admitted, grinning at the formless woman.

“I like it, too,” she sighed. “Some of the best parts I ever had were in Chautauqua. I like fat parts with long speeches. Stars don’t impress me no more, because they hog the show. John Drew, Ethel Barrymore, Minnie Maddern Fiske, I traveled with them all.”

“What was John Drew like?” David asked.

“He swore!” the pasty woman said reproachfully. “Once he accused Mrs. Fiske of coming onstage drunk and she told him to go to hell.” She clucked her tongue, and that was all David learned about John Drew.

“Did you enjoy touring with Ethel Barrymore?” he pursued.

“She has a very low voice,” the Gonoph replied.

“How about Walter Hampden?” he asked.

“He made me sick!” she confided. David tried to discover why, but the pudgy woman kept her secret, shaking her head in disgust.

“Didn’t you enjoy touring with the stars?” he pressed.

“Well, yes and no,” the woman confided. “It had its good points and it had its bad points.”

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

“Well, generally speaking, the bigger the star the poorer the part I got. I was usually a maid. Not a comic, you understand. Just the maid. That’s why I like average company best. Just an ordinary company like this one. No stars. That’s when I’ve had some really fat parts.” She came and sat with David, tapping him on the knee. “Now I’m not boasting, you understand. But this part of Mrs. Hardy is just about the fattest part in the play.” She tapped him again for special emphasis and whispered, “Have you noticed how much I’m onstage! That’s how you can tell who has the fat part! Lots of actors say they like a part where they stay offstage and are talked about. Then they rush in, beat their
breast, and storm out. Everybody claps. But they don’t fool me a bit. They only kid themselves when they say that. They’re sore because they’re not onstage themselves.” She tucked in her blouse and smiled complacently. “Have you noticed that I’m onstage more than Miss Meigs? That should tell you something!”

David was appalled by the Gonoph’s incapacity to see herself as she was. He did an ugly thing and asked, “Why did Cyril take those two speeches from you and give them to the telephone?”

Instead of being humiliated by this question the Gonoph smiled complacently and resumed her whispered confidences, leaning upon David. “Don’t you get it?” she asked. “Miss Meigs is very jealous of me. She knows I used to be where she is now. I’m sure it was her idea, David. I can just hear her pestering Mr. Hargreaves at night, bargaining with him. I guess in the end he just had to give in. After all, I know him well enough to understand that he’d do anything to protect his regular summer loving.”

She punched David knowingly in the ribs and gave a superior, condescending smile. “But don’t put me down as being bitchy!” she protested. “I’m probably the last woman in the world jealous of Miss Meigs. After all, when I knew Mr. Hargreaves he had his own teeth!”

Day after day she came to the tent with her murky rationalizations, and, disgusting as she was, David found her a source of warm and continued interest. For she spoke, unknowingly, of the vast lands that comprise America. Names fell from her fat lips that were music to David’s ear: “We were playing in Sioux City.” “Miss Barrymore said that the entire city of Denver …” “It was on a rainy night in Great Falls.”

“Did you ever play in Texas?” David asked.

“Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth and El Paso,” the dumpy woman recited.

“What were they like?” he asked.

“Hot,” she said.

But the litany went on! Kansas City, Albuquerque, Reno, Aberdeen, Memphis, Baton Rouge, Columbia. The Gonoph could characterize any city in the country in a single word. San Francisco was hilly. New Orleans was Frenchified. And Omaha was railroads. There were no people in these distant cities, and no meaning in their lives. But even the names of the cities were beautiful to David.

“What city … Now consider them all!” he said. “What one did you like best?”

“Providence, Rhode Island,” she said immediately.

“Why?” he asked.

“I was born there,” she replied. “And Father stopped drinking for a while.”

David found only one subject on which the Gonoph could discourse intelligently. Love had an endless fascination for her. She would sit on the marionette boxes and talk for hours about friends of hers who had fallen in love under strange circumstances. She called it “finding their hearts’ desire,” which was a line from a play she had known years ago.

“Well, there was this girl I was telling you about,” she said one night. “We were playing together in something.” She never remembered the names of plays. “We had a Saturday date in Pueblo, Colorado. Some friends stopped by to drive us down to Albuquerque. The young man who drove this girl’s car was real nice. They stopped off in Santa Fe. My car drove right on through. Well, when her car got to Albuquerque she had found her heart’s desire.”

“They get married?” David asked.

“Sure they got married!” the Gonoph replied angrily. “She had her heart’s desire, didn’t she? I get Christmas cards from her! She’s got three kids!” She tucked in her blouse with violent little stabs. “Of course they got marriedl What do you think?”

“Didn’t you ever find your heart’s desire?” David asked quietly.

“No!” she said abruptly. She ruffled the pages of the book she was carrying. “It’s like Proust says. Sometimes you never find your heart’s desire.”

“Proust?” David asked. “Do you read Proust?”

The Gonoph, who was used to startled looks when she mentioned the name of the great French novelist, smiled weakly and replied, “Oh, yes! I like his work very much. He seems to have more depth than most modern writers.”

David stopped what he was doing and looked at this amazing woman. He had once tried to plow through Proust’s involved sentences and had given up; and now here was this disorganized, frowsy woman reading the man with pleasure.

“What do you suppose the Wild Man does with his pigeons?” she asked, returning to topic number one.

“That’s his business,” David replied.

“I’d like to know!” the Gonoph mumbled. “I’ve found it a
safe rule that whenever there’s a boy and a girl together, there’s apt to be trouble.”

“That’s the Wild Man’s affair,” David insisted.

“How about your little dwarf?” the Gonoph persisted. “Do you suppose he could have a baby if he wanted to?”

“Look, Emma!” David cried. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“He’s your friend!” she argued.

David shrugged his shoulders and refused to talk with her any further. He rose and lifted the marionettes into the truck. Quickly the Gonoph ran to his side and helped him with the boxes. “There’s no point in getting sore!” she said.

“Don’t try to lift those boxes, Emma!” David said patiently.

The drab woman stood aside and leaned against a stay rope. She watched David’s muscles ripple along his arms as he hefted the stage into the truck. Then she spoke in a quiet voice. “Have they said anything to you about it?” she asked.

“About what?” David asked, shoving the stage into place.

“Oh, about you and me.”

David could scarcely believe what he had heard. With his back still to the Gonoph he replied, “What do you mean?”

“Oh,” she replied indifferently. “Wild Man’s been teasing about me being in love with you.” David gulped and gave the stage a final push. “Not that I mind a bit of teasing!” she added.

“Emma!” David finally cried, turning to her. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“Oh,” she said in embarrassment, pushing on the rope like a schoolgirl. “People like to guess. They’ve been talking about the way I come out to the tent every day.”

It was a warm evening. The sun still hung among the trees that lined the western edge of the field on which the tent stood. On the other side of the stage a group of boys finished lining up the wooden chairs for the evening performance. This was the last night Chautauqua would ever pitch its tents in that town, and there was the lonely quietness of death about the place.

David studied the misshapen Gonoph and smiled. “If they’re talking so much, I don’t think you ought to come here any more,” he said softly.

“I got to come somewhere!” the Gonoph replied.

The answer stopped David for a moment. It was not what
he expected. Finally he recovered and said, “Well, then you come here,” he said. “I like to talk with you.”

A slow smile spread over the woman’s big face. Her yellow horse teeth showed between fat lips and she sighed. “I’m glad!” she said. “Because you’re the nicest man on Chautauqua this year. You’re really a very nice man!” She reached across the dead grass and the dust and patted David on the arm. All that night she followed him with her big cow eyes, and onstage she muffed two lines watching him. When the curtain fell the Wild Man laughed at David and said, “I see you got yourself a girl!” David thought of three funny answers but offered none of them.

“Sure looks that way!” he agreed.

They were in a small Pennsylvania town called Jersey Shore when David discovered that the Wild Man was something special. His full name was Wild Man Jensen. He was about twenty-three years old and had played halfback at the University of Illinois. He drove the marionette truck while David and Vito slept on bunks built in the rear. He was in the play, too. He had a small speaking part, a local politician who was badgering Judge Hardy. More important, he ran the telephone when David was onstage, and was property man, as well.

The Wild Man was big, already turning to fat. He had a rough, handsome face and a puppy-like manner. He was usually unkempt, knocking about in a football sweater, but each afternoon about five he would start brushing his hair and polishing his shoes. “Where do you go every day?” David asked him in Jersey Shore.

“Usually,” the Wild Man grinned, “I go out to dinner with the best-looking pigeon in town.” He turned to stuff the shoe polish into the truck when a freckled boy peered around the edge of the tent and motioned a strikingly beautiful girl of seventeen to follow him.

The girl walked up to David and asked, “Are you Mr. Jensen?”

“Hey! Hey!” the Wild Man protested. “I’m Jensen! He just works here!” The girl laughed and held out her hand.

“I’m Lucretia Davis,” she said.

In Clearfield, David discovered how the Wild Man arranged such attractive dinner dates. David was inside the truck that day, making up the bunks when he heard the Wild Man hail a young boy who was straightening chairs.

“Sonny!” Jensen began very quietly. “You live here in Clearfield?”

“Sure!” the youngster replied.

“Who’s the prettiest girl in Clearfield?”

The little boy thought a moment. “I guess it would be Sue Tucker,” he said.

“She really beautiful?” Jensen checked.

“Oh, she’s gorgeous!” the boy replied.

“You know her?”

“Sure I know her! She lives on our block.”

“All right, son! I believe you,” Jensen said quietly. “Now here’s fifteen cents. And in this pocket there’s ten cents more! All you got to do is go find Sue Tucker and tell her exactly what I say. You go up to her and say, ‘Sue! I just been down to Chautauqua. There’s a fellow there acts in the play. He ain’t so good-lookin’ but he played football at Illinois. He asked me where a good restaurant was. He ain’t had a meal at home for the last two months.’ That’s all you say, sonny. Then if Miss Sue Tucker says the right thing, you get the extra dime.”

The little boy ran off to find Sue Tucker. When he was gone David poked his head out of the truck and cried, “Fine business!”

The Wild Man looked up from the box on which he was shining his shoes. “A guy’s got to have his pigeons!” he drawled.