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Stone Lake: part 22

June 17, 2016 at 9:45PM

A Star Tribune serialized novel by Richard Horberg

Chapter 8 continues

The story so far: Dave Meyers' wife finally joins him in Stone Lake.

It was Patty Porter's role, as the junior high English teacher, to direct the class play, with Allen and Evelyn Wilson, the librarian and part-time English teacher, as her assistants. Patty chose a play called "Barney Comes Home" by Mary Madeline Parker. Patty said she knew the play well: it was the same one her high school class had given — in which she'd had a small part — five years ago.

"This is no time to try anything new, right?" Allen said to her, a little wryly.

"That's the way I look at it. Besides, it's a good play. It has lots of characters in it."

With the approval of Arnold Magnuson, she had sent off for enough copies so that the entire cast, plus the director and assistant directors, could have a script, the cost to be defrayed by ticket sales. The larger the cast, Patty explained to him, the more tickets would be sold, the audience consisting largely of parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents of the cast, bound up and delivered.

"Barney Comes Home," Allen realized when he received his copy, was a very conventional high school class play. Setting: the living room and adjacent patio of an American family. The cast: father (hapless but rising to the occasion when necessary), mother (still attractive and charming at 40), Joey, their son (interested in hockey and football and, lately, girls), their younger daughter, Susan, (bratty but cute), and an assortment of friends, neighbors and relatives, most of them a little quirky but lovable. The plot: assorted domestic problems (like a box of mixed chocolates) involving all of the above. The one thing missing appeared to be Barney, the family dog, whose disappearance all the characters verbally regretted at one time or another and who, at the end, barks happily off-stage.

An entertainment at best, Allen thought when he had finished reading it. He sighed. Nevertheless, he was glad to get some experience in producing a play, since he would have to direct the senior class play in the spring. When his turn came, he hoped to choose something of more significance.

"Hamlet," maybe. Or "Cyrano."

Patty, as director, selected the cast, held rehearsals and blocked out the scenes. Evelyn Wilson coached the students, helping them learn their lines and speak them convincingly — no easy task. Which meant that Allen was left to supervise the stage crew — building sets and finding appropriate furniture. "I've never pounded a nail in my life," Patty said. She claimed that Allen was a godsend.

Rehearsals were held three times a week, on a bare stage at first, starting a month before the play was to be given. Allen was given a list of properties needed — living room furniture and accessories, together with a large wooden lawn chair for the patio. He also had the task of constructing flats.

Several students volunteered for the set crew, among them little Jimmy Kvist, who Allen immediately named his assistant. They constructed the flats by nailing 2-by-2s together in 6-by-10 sections, strengthened with diagonal braces, then stretching and stapling canvas over them. One of the flats needed a window, for which Jimmy collected the necessary frames from the lumber yard. Then they were painted — beige, Patty advised, so as not to be a distraction. The two flats that showed an outdoor scene Allen painted himself — mostly trees and sky in muted colors.

Week by week, Allen watched rehearsals from the basketball floor. Tom Campbell, a tall and lean young man with an unlikely mustache under his nose, played the father; a girl named Carol Hazlitt, the mother; a boy from Patty's junior class, the son; and JoAnne Winner, the little sister. Allen was dismayed at the apparent inability of most of them to learn their lines. Rehearsals were interrupted by laughter and horseplay, followed by angry tirades from Patty. Allen was sure the cast would not be ready for the opening curtain. The play would be a disaster.

Gradually the stage crew accumulated the necessary props and, according to Patty's instructions, arranged them on stage. From time to time, before the cast arrived in the evening and after they had left, Allen found himself in conversation with Patty and Evelyn Wilson, the librarian, backstage. One evening he asked Patty what methods she used in teaching her junior high English classes.

Patty answered promptly. "Crossword puzzles," she said.

"Crossword puzzles?"

"I have dozens of them. You know — like a four-letter word naming a person, place or thing."

Allen hesitated. "A preposition?" he suggested.

"Oh, you're no better than my students."

He asked her if she had crossword puzzles for literature as well as grammar. She did.

"The author of 'Moby Dick' in eight letters," she said.

"God," Allen answered.

She laughed. "You think you're pretty smart, don't you."

"I wish I were."

Patty was wearing a ragged white sweater, badly knitted, with loops and ends of yarn sticking out everywhere. She lit a cigarette and shook out the match furiously. "God," she said, "this job is driving me crazy. This town is driving me crazy."

"I thought you liked it."

"Oh, that was just for show."

Allen asked what she didn't like about the town. She sighed deeply and gave him a fixed gaze. She told him the town was dead, the people robots, Main Street impossibly dull, the meals tasteless, the school board hopelessly out-of-date. "The average educational attainment in this town is probably sixth grade," she said. "The collective IQ can't be more than 80. The style is Traditional Primitive, the taste is Neanderthal, the drive-level is zero. Absolute zero. The scientists claim that Absolute Zero is impossible. They've never been here."

He laughed. "How about your students?"

She crushed her cigarette out on the floor. "Oh, there's a little hope there, I suppose. A glimmer of life once in a while. Last week one of my kids did a perfect crossword puzzle on sentence structure."

"Last week I had a perfect waffle at The Food Box," he said.

"Really? I tried to order an omelet once and they didn't know what it was."

He gathered from what she said that she wasn't coming back next year. But when he asked if she intended to return, she sighed heavily and said she didn't know.

As for himself, he didn't know either.

"At least we have a decent superintendent," he said.

To which she had to agree.

Allen also had occasional conversations with Evelyn backstage, who in his previous brief encounters with her had seemed to him a quiet, content and perfectly capable librarian. Sometimes, it was true, she had a dreamy look in her eye. Sometimes she looked tired — even, perhaps, tragic. He remembered how when she first saw Dave Meyers her eyes had brightened momentarily — with hope, he thought. Then she learned that he was married. Did she have any expectations, he wondered, of him? Oh, but he was far too young.

Tomorrow: Chapter 8 continues.