American Elsewhere (85 page)

Gracie is waiting for her on the edge of the mesa when Mona returns. She says, “I’ve been thinking—should we go down?” She nods toward the flaming ruin miles below.

“To Wink?” asks Mona.

“Yes. There could be people that need our help, or things we need, or… I don’t know. Anything.”

Mona thinks about it. “No,” she says.

“Why not?”

“I think that’s all gone now, Gracie. I think it all burned, or… worse. I think we need to leave it alone.”

“But we should at least see,” says Gracie. “We should at least go down and look for…”

“For what?”

“I don’t know, but… but it can’t
all
be gone. I… I had a boyfriend. He was
good
to me. I just…” She trails off.

“I’m sorry, hon,” says Mona. “But from what Parson and Mrs. Benjamin said, I think it’s all gone, or close enough to count. I think… I think we need to let it go.”

Gracie stares out at the valley. “Then what do we do?” she asks helplessly. “What do I do now?”

“You’ve never been outside Wink before, right?”

Gracie shakes her head.

“Well, would you like to go?” asks Mona.

“To… go outside?”

“Yeah. To go outside and see.”

“What is there to see?”

“Everything. Everything that’s out there.”

Gracie stands up and looks north, as if imagining the horizon extending and extending, past the mesa and past the borders of Wink. “So it all keeps going?” she asks.

“Yeah,” says Mona.

“It just doesn’t stop?”

“It just goes,” says Mona, and she extends her hand to the young girl, “until it doesn’t.”

Gracie takes her hand and pulls herself up. She looks both excited and a little frightened by the idea. “We can just go? Right now?”

“Right now. We don’t need anyone’s say-so. We don’t have to wait. We can just go.”

Gracie reflects on this. Finally she nods and says, “All right, then.”

They drive.

They drive far and fast, the great red machine singing joyously as it eats up the miles. They cruise over mountains, over drifting peaks drizzled with wildflowers, over waterfalls cheerily spewing white-water diamonds onto the rocks. Thousands of curves, thousands of bridges, thousands of slopes and twists and turns. Enough pines and grasping trees to outnumber the stars.

They pass cars. They pass motorcycles. They pass great rattling trucks. They pass vegetable vendors and crafts stores and highway patrolmen parked on the side of the road. They pass parking lots and highway junctions and stoplights and ghost towns. Strangers and strangers and strangers.

A man sits on his porch, smoking and playing solitaire, and as they pass he raises a hand in a lazy wave. “Who was that?” asks Gracie.

“I don’t know,” says Mona.

“You don’t?” says Gracie.

“No. I don’t.”

Gracie stares back at him, amazed, perplexed.

They drive and drive and drive until evening. The sky changes from the great, trumpeting blue they have seen since dawn into a regal, courtly purple that comes blooming up from the horizon. Every crevice and pothole is filled with deep violet hues: it is as if some
painter has spent so much time working on the sky they did not notice the colors dripping to pool on the earth.

Then, slowly, the stars come out.

“Slow down,” says Gracie.

“There’s a speed limit,” says Mona.

“Just for a bit.”

Mona
tsk
s. “Okay.”

Mona slows down. Gracie sticks her head out her window and looks up. “Wow,” she says. “There are so many. I never saw them all, not all of them. Because of the lightning.”

“I guess you wouldn’t have.”

Gracie’s awe is infectious. Mona waits for a straightaway and leans out her own window.

Thousands of them. As if someone smashed a jewel on the fundament of sky.

It is all like a dream. Like a dream she had long ago and forgot, of a dark road through the mountains, and a million lights ahead and all that lay beyond them, waiting for her, waiting for them, waiting for everyone to see.

“What will we do tomorrow?” asks Gracie.

“I don’t know,” says Mona. “Something.”

And they drive.

If you enjoyed

AMERICAN ELSEWHERE,

look out for

THE TROUPE

by Robert Jackson Bennett

Vaudeville: mad, mercenary, dreamy, and absurd, a world of clashing cultures and ferocious showmanship and wickedly delightful deceptions.

But sixteen-year-old pianist George Carole has joined vaudeville for one reason only: to find the man he suspects to be his father, the great Heironomo Silenus. Yet as he chases down his father’s troupe, he begins to understand that their performances are strange even for vaudeville: for wherever they happen to tour, the very nature of the world seems to change.

Because there is a secret within Silenus’s show so ancient and dangerous that it has won him many powerful enemies. And it’s
not until after he joins them that George realizes the troupe is not simply touring: they are running for their lives.

And soon… he is as well.

Friday mornings at Otterman’s Vaudeville Theater generally had a very relaxed pace to them, and so far this one was no exception. Four acts in the bill would be moving on to other theaters over the weekend, and four more would be coming in to take their place, among them Gretta Mayfield, minor star of the Chicago opera. The general atmosphere among the musicians was one of carefree satisfaction, as all of the acts had gone well and the next serious rehearsals were an entire weekend away. Which, to the overworked musicians, might as well have been an eternity.

But then Tofty Thresinger, first chair house violinist and unofficial gossip maven of the theater, came sprinting into the orchestra pit with terror in his eyes. He stood there panting for a moment, hands on his knees, and picked his head up to make a ghastly announcement: “George has quit!”

“What?” said Victor, the second chair cellist. “George?
Our
George?”

“George the
pianist
?” asked Catherine, their flautist.

“The very same,” said Tofty.

“What kind of quit?” asked Victor. “As in quitting the theater?”

“Yes, of course quitting the theater!” said Tofty. “What other kind of quit is there?”

“There must be some mistake,” said Catherine. “Who did you hear it from?”

“From George himself!” said Tofty.

“Well, how did he phrase it?” asked Victor.

“He looked at me,” said Tofty, “and he said, ‘I quit.’ ”

Everyone stopped to consider this. There was little room for alternate interpretation in that.

“But why would he quit?” asked Catherine.

“I don’t know!” cried Tofty, and he collapsed into his chair, accidentally crushing his rosin and leaving a large white stain on the seat of his pants.

The news spread quickly throughout the theater: George Carole, their most dependable house pianist and veritable wunderkind (or
enfant terrible
, depending on who you asked), was throwing in the towel without even a by-your-leave. Stagehands shook their heads in dismay. Performers immediately launched into complaints. Even the coat-check girls, usually exiled to the very periphery of theater gossip, were made aware of this ominous development.

But not everyone was shaken by this news. “Good riddance,” said Chet, their bassist. “I’m tired of tolerating that little lordling, always acting as if he was better than us.” But several muttered he
was
better than them. It had been seven months since the sixteen-year-old had walked through their doors on audition day and positively dumbfounded the staff with his playing. Everyone had been astonished to hear that he was not auditioning for an act, but for
house pianist
, a lowly job if ever there was one. Van Hoever, the manager of Otterman’s, had questioned him extensively on this point, but George had stood firm: he was there to be house pianist at their little Ohio theater, and nothing more.

“What are we going to do now?” said Archie, their trombonist. “Like it or not, it was George who put us on the map.” Which was more or less true. It was the general rule that in vaudeville, a trade filled with indignities of all kinds, no one was shat upon more than the house pianist. He accompanied nearly every act, and every ego that crossed the stage got thoroughly
massaged by abusing him. If a joke went sour, it was because the pianist was too late and spoiled the delivery. If a dramatic bit was flat, it was because the pianist was too lively. If an acrobat stumbled, it was because the pianist distracted him.

But in his time at Otterman’s George had accomplished the impossible: he’d given them no room for complaints. After playing through the first rehearsal he would know the act better than the actors did, which was saying something as every actor had fine-tuned their performance with almost lapidary attention. He hit every beat, wrung every laugh out of every delivery, and knew when to speed things up or slow them down. He seemed to have the uncanny ability to augment every performance he accompanied. Word spread, and many acts became more amenable to performing at Otterman’s, which occupied a rather obscure spot on the Keith-Albee circuit.

Yet now he was leaving, almost as abruptly as he’d arrived. It put them in a pretty tight spot: Gretta Mayfield was coming specifically because she had agreed to have George accompany her, but that was just the start; after a moment’s review, the orchestra came to the horrifying conclusion that at least a quarter of the acts of the next week had agreed to visit Otterman’s only because George met their high standards.

After Tofty frantically spread the word, wild speculation followed. Did anyone know the reason behind the departure? Could anyone guess? Perhaps, Victor suggested, he was finally going to tour with an act of his own, or maybe he was heading straight to the legitimate (meaning well-respected orchestras and symphonies, rather than lowly vaudeville). But Tofty said he’d heard nothing about George making those sorts of movements, and he would know, wouldn’t he?

Maybe he’d been lured away by another theater, someone said. But Van Hoever would definitely ante up to keep George,
Catherine pointed out, and the only theaters that could outbid him were very far away, and would never send scouts out here. What could the boy possibly be thinking? They wasted the whole morning debating the subject, yet they never reached an answer.

George did his best to ignore the flurry of gossip as he gathered his belongings, but it was difficult; as he’d not yet made a formal resignation to Van Hoever, everyone tried to find the reason behind his desertion in hopes that they could fix it.

“Is it the money, George?” Tofty asked. “Did Van Hoever turn you down for a raise?”

No, answered George. No, it was not the money.

“Is it the acts, George?” asked Archie. “Did one of the acts insult you? You’ve got to ignore those bastards, Georgie, they can be so ornery sometimes!”

But George scoffed haughtily, and said that no, it was certainly not any of the acts. The other musicians cursed Archie for such a silly question; of
course
it wasn’t any of the performers, as George never gave them reason for objection.

“Is it a girl, George?” asked Victor. “You can tell me. I can keep a secret. It’s a girl, isn’t it?”

At this George turned a brilliant red, and sputtered angrily for a moment. No, he eventually said. No, thank you very much, it was not a girl.

“Then was it something Tofty said?” asked Catherine. “After all, he was who you were talking to just before you said you quit.”

“What!” cried Tofty. “What a horrendous accusation! We were only talking theater hearsay, I tell you! I simply mentioned how Van Hoever was angry that an act had skipped us on the circuit!”

At that, George’s face became strangely still. He stopped gathering up his sheet music and looked away for a minute. But finally
he said no, Tofty had nothing to do with it. “And would you all please leave me alone?” he asked. “This decision has nothing to do with you, and furthermore there’s nothing that will change it.”

The other musicians, seeing how serious he was, grumbled and shuffled away. Once they were gone George scratched his head and tried not to smile. Despite his solemn demeanor, he had enjoyed watching them clamor to please him.

The smile vanished as he returned to his packing and the decision he’d made. The orchestra did not matter, he told himself. Otterman’s did not matter anymore. The only thing that mattered now was getting out the door and on the road as soon as possible.

After he’d collected the last of his belongings he headed for his final stop: Van Hoever’s office. The theater manager had surely heard the news and was in the midst of composing a fine tirade, but if George left now he’d be denied payment for this week’s worth of performances. And though he could not predict the consequences of what he was about to do, he thought it wise to have every penny possible.