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Stone Lake: part 53

June 23, 2016 at 12:45PM

A Star Tribune serialized novel by Richard Horberg

Chapter 18 continues

The story so far: Allen hatches a plan to give Jean a sense of purpose.

The Stone Lake basketball team, despite its small size, was having a remarkable season.

It won the sub-district tournament easily and appeared on its way to winning the district as well, after which it would travel to Thief River Falls for the regional.

But in the final district game, despite the fact that the Stone Lake Warriors had beaten the Dell Plain Pioneers easily early in the season, they inexplicably lost to the upset-minded Pioneers by a rather large margin and dropped out of contention.

Girls fled the gym with tears in their eyes.

Coach Worthington, too, took it hard. "It was lack of focus," he said to Allen. "Too many distractions. Next year I'm going to lock them all up in a barn and keep them there — like horses. Next year we're going to the finals in Minneapolis — mark my words — and win it all."

Allen did not think the one-act play contest had been much of a distraction. To tell the truth, exciting as the games were, he was glad the season was over — even though it meant that he would no longer be able to walk Helen home at night. The best thing was that the cast would have no excuse to skip rehearsals and could concentrate on polishing their lines.

On the day of the contest, he got out of bed with a sense of weary relief, like a prisoner who has been too long awaiting execution. No matter how the play fared, there would be no more sleepless nights. His relief, however, was temporary. Late in the morning, it began to snow very heavily and blizzard warnings were issued. Shortly after noon, the principal of the school at Benson called and told Superintendent Magnuson that the contest had been postponed.

Another rehearsal, no better than the others.

"What's the matter with you guys?" Allen asked them, at the end of his patience. "Do you want to embarrass yourselves? Do you want to be the biggest flop of all time?"

The cast assured him that they would be okay.

"We don't want to reach our peak too soon," Royal Knudson said.

Allen was not sure that they had a peak.

Two days after the snowstorm, when all roads were passable, the contest took place. Shortly after lunch, the cast and crew loaded all the stage sets and furniture into the back of Royal's pickup and drove the 10 miles to Benson.

Superintendent Magnuson had given Allen enough money from incidental cash to buy them all supper, which he did, although he privately thought that they might perform better if they were hungry.

One of Allen's chief concerns was that Jimmy Kvist was so much smaller than the other two priests that he could hardly be convincing as an actor, even with a knife in his hand. Nothing to be done about that. Fortunately, they had been able to make Bruce Dunne resemble something like a statue by putting him into a heavily starched pair of long underwear died copper green with a matching mask over his head. With the help of the man who ran the hardware store, they had also solved the problem of screwing the ruby into his head by inserting an electric socket into the mask with wires running to a battery in his inside pocket. At dress rehearsal, Allen thought that Bruce looked the most convincing of the cast members. Unfortunately, he had only a moment on stage. As for the ruby, a bulb painted red, it actually lit up when in place and looked okay. And the knife? One of the cast members had been to a magic store in Bemidji and found a knife with a blade that retracted into the handle when pushed against a wall or someone's back.

At the gym door, programs were passed out. Three other schools were competing: Benson was putting on a melodramatic comedy by Connie Winters called "Pure as the Driven Snow." Clarksville had chosen a period comedy by Lorraine Sommers called "An Evening with the Prince." Crookston's choice was a farcical comedy by Loretta Lyons called "A Day Without Rain."

At least, Allen thought, Stone Lake was going to do something different, a dramatic play by a rather famous playwright, Lord Dunsany. Still, he feared the worst. He had read somewhere that it's easier for actors to perform well in a good play than a bad one because in a good play the author has done much of the work for them. All the same, he thought that maybe his play was too good for his cast, and that the other schools had been wise in selecting scripts that were obviously high-school oriented.

The Benson gymnasium proved ludicrously small. Allen had been told that basketball games played there could be viewed only from a few dozen seats placed behind the backboards, and that overflow crowds had to stand along the walls of the court with their feet inbounds.

There were no overflow crowds for the one-act play contest.

"A Night at an Inn" was scheduled third. Caught between his desire to find a place in which to do one last desperate rehearsal and his desire to see the other plays, Allen did a little of both. First, the cast rehearsed a crucial scene in the men's room. Then he watched parts of the other two performances from a corner of the gym.

When the curtain came down on "An Evening with the Prince" and the sets were dragged away, Allen helped move the furniture on stage. They had brought a couple of old pictures to hang on the flats, a moldy rug, kitchen chairs from somebody's garage, several empty bottles to put on the table and a pair of candles to place on the chest of drawers. All was ready. Allen asked Bruce to screw the ruby into the socket on his head one more time to make sure it really lit up. It didn't. Everybody looked at each other. Then it flickered a little bit, went off and came on again. Checking the wires, Allen told Bruce to try it again just before he went onstage and to hope for the best.

The curtain rose.

Tomorrow: Chapter 18 continues.