Surviving the Applewhites (12 page)

J
ake had found a crumpled cigarette in the bottom of his duffel bag and gone out into the woods to smoke it, Winston tagging loyally along. It hadn’t helped. He realized with considerable shock that he didn’t really like the taste smoking left in his mouth, that he’d
never
liked it. After two drags he crushed out the cigarette. He swore. He kicked the trunk of a tree. He imagined a house—Mrs. Montrose’s house—going up in flames. The Traybridge Little Theatre blowing up and then settling in a cloud of dust like those buildings they
showed being demolished on television. Winston had flopped down a considerable distance away and was eyeing him warily.

“Okay, okay,” he said to the dog. “I probably wouldn’t do those things even if I could.” The dog came no closer. “Let’s walk.”

When the two of them got back, having wandered the whole of Wit’s End, the barn doors were open and the cars had been moved out into the driveway. Zedediah, riding the lawn mower, was coming out, while Archie and someone Jake had never seen before were going in, carrying a stack of two-by-fours. Cordelia and Lucille, both with handkerchiefs tied over their hair, were coming from the main house carrying brooms, mops, and buckets. Jake felt a kind of electricity in the air that was how it must be when an army was getting ready for an all-out assault.

“Go to the schoolroom and get your assignment,” Cordelia called to him. “I think you’re supposed to help Archie and Hal.”

Archie and Hal? That stranger whose back he had seen going into the barn must have been Hal—out of his room and into the daylight. He stood for a moment, watching the barn doors, and soon the two came out again. Hal was just about Jake’s size, dressed, as Jake was, in black—black boots, black pants, and a black turtleneck. His long, reddish brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he sported a goatee that was
a scragglier replica of Randolph’s. Hal Applewhite, fifteen-year-old sculptor, looked like a cross between his father and his older sister, except that he had a really bad case of acne. Whatever was going on, Jake thought, it must be big to bring Hal out. Very, very big.

Over the next ten days it turned out to be bigger than Jake could have imagined. The show
would
go on, if it took everyone’s dying breath to make it happen. Every member of the cast agreed to stay with the show. For most of them what changed was little more than geography. Instead of going to Traybridge for rehearsals, they now came to Wit’s End. What changed for the Applewhites was something else again.

Jake had thought that he knew something about the Applewhites and passion. But nothing had prepared him for what happened when all of them, all at the same time, became totally obsessed with the same thing. What had seemed like hard work before now looked like a sort of happy, restful vacation. Gone was any consideration of larks and owls. Work went on day and night. Sleep was relegated to a nap here or there. Jake gave up on his hair altogether; he needed every moment of sleep he could get. He barely had time for showers, let alone for gelling his hair into points.

The whole of Wit’s End was transformed. The barn became command central, where the basic work of creating a theater from scratch went on. Trucks delivered rented folding chairs; rented, borrowed, or
scavenged lighting and sound equipment; and lumber. Lots and lots of lumber. At one end of the barn a stage was built, and the loft became the light and sound booth. Wisteria Cottage became the costume shop, with Jake’s room serving as dressing room and costume storage. Jake was given a cot in Zedediah’s cottage, where he and Winston shared the living room with Paulie. The wood shop, of course, was the scene shop. Rehearsals were held in the dance studio. Destiny was moved in with Hal to free up his room, and Govindaswami and Bernstein doubled up in Dogwood Cottage so that Sweet Gum Cottage could be turned into a kind of dormitory to house the people who showed up to lend a hand. It seemed that Randolph knew an almost infinite number of theater people who were between jobs at any given moment. They came in waves, staying for as many days as they could spare and seeming every bit as obsessed while they were there as the Applewhites.

Govindaswami continued to cook, but no longer did work stop for meals. He took the food to the barn, to the wood shop, to Wisteria Cottage, to wherever people were at work, with the help of Destiny and his red wagon. The delivery man from the lumberyard, who happened to arrive one day when shrimp vindaloo was being set out on a plank between two sawhorses, fell instantly in love with Indian cuisine. He ate two plates full and then came back when his delivery shift
was over to help, bringing two friends with him. In return for all they could eat of whatever dinner was being served, the three of them came back for four days in a row to build risers to accommodate folding chairs for an audience of one hundred and fifty.

There was something for everyone to do, including Destiny, who became a kind of message and delivery service, scurrying all over Wit’s End with his wagon, talking or singing nonstop as he went. Sybil and Jeremy took over marketing and publicity, writing press releases and churning out advertising circulars that labeled the production “The most exciting piece of musical theater ever to appear on a North Carolina stage.”

Jake did a little of everything. One moment he would be helping to build the stage, the next he would be hanging lights or running cables. For two days he and Zedediah scoured the countryside for props, and he found himself learning what could have been found in an Austrian household in the 1930s and what could not. It took half a day of going from antiques shop to flea market to used furniture store to find the right sort of telephone for the von Trapp living room. The owner of the shop where they finally found it had read about the production in the newspaper and agreed to let them borrow it in return for a pair of tickets to opening night.

Mrs. Montrose had called the Traybridge paper to
announce the cancellation of the show a moment after she’d spoken to Randolph. The reporter had called Randolph to get his side, and the story had been growing ever since. It was picked up by newspapers across the state, and then television news reporters began showing up with camera crews and getting underfoot. Two versions began to emerge, each with its own hero and its own villain. One had Randolph Applewhite as a crusading New York radical attempting to destroy the grand old traditions of the South while Mrs. Montrose staunchly defended them. The other called Randolph a symbol of the broadening culture of the New South and Mrs. Montrose a throw-back to the bad old days.

“They’re turning it from an artistic story into a political one!” Randolph complained.

“Publicity is publicity,” Bernstein said. “The important thing is to fill the seats!”

One gray and drizzly afternoon Jake was coming out of the barn with a light that had a broken clamp when a reporter stopped him. “You’re the kid who burned down a school in Rhode Island, aren’t you? Did you have anything to do with the fire at the Traybridge Little Theatre?”

“No comment,” Jake said, and ducked back into the barn.

E
.D. looked up from the computer screen as one of the five butterflies currently residing in the schoolroom fluttered past her to land next to another on a slice of overripe cantelope. It sank its long tongue into the soft orange flesh. Two others were drinking from a saucer of sugar syrup on Jake’s desk. Since the incident with Destiny’s hair, coloring of any kind had been banned from the butterflies’ food supply. Destiny’s ears had faded to a pale lavender.

The Butterfly Project, and the time when it had
been so important to her, seemed very far away. It had been twelve days since the show and the barn (now called Wit’s End Playhouse) had completely taken over their lives. She couldn’t even remember what her curriculum notebook would have had her doing this week.

She yawned. Tonight was the first dress rehearsal, and she’d been up since five-thirty. It was raining, which would cause trouble if it kept up all day. The way they’d had to build the stage, actors who had to exit on one side and come back onstage from the other had to run around the outside of the barn. No one had thought that would be a problem, because it hadn’t rained more than about fifty drops in two and a half months. This part of North Carolina was in the midst of the worst drought in living memory.

But Zedediah had said that one thing he’d learned for certain in seventy years of living was not to trust the weather. On one of his prop runs he had bought two dozen umbrellas and stationed a dozen at each exit so an actor could grab one on the way out, run around, and drop it off on the way in. The stage crew, the prop crew, and the dressers, most of whom had been recruited from Traybridge High School, also had to run around the barn from one side of the stage to the other, but they were not going to be allowed to use the umbrellas. They had no costumes to protect. E.D. was writing a notice to explain the rain plan now.

She ran over her to-do list for the day one more time and smiled. It was actually beginning to look as if this impossible idea would work. If it did, she would have had a whole lot to do with it, not just because it was her idea in the first place, but because from the moment her father agreed to doing the show in the barn, she had focused everything she had on getting things organized and keeping them that way. She had found out from the adults what needed to be done to get both the barn and the show ready for opening night and then made a series of charts and sign-up sheets and schedules. These had taken over the schoolroom where the maps and papers and the butterfly chart used to be. Now one wall was devoted to barn renovation. Another was for the actors, with rehearsal schedules, costume fittings, and lists of each actor’s personal props. A third was for tech crews. She had a master list in a notebook she kept with her, and she kept all the charts and schedules updated so anyone could check them anytime.

The fourth wall she had reserved for clippings and Internet printouts from local newspapers. The story kept changing shape. At first it had been about her father and Mrs. Montrose. Then Jake got to be in the middle of it. One local weekly told how working on the show was turning a delinquent around. But the Traybridge paper, under the headline “Can Traybridge Support Two Theaters?,” suggested that the theater
being built at Wit’s End “by northern newcomers” was intended to put the Traybridge Little Theatre out of business. It speculated on the possible connection between the burning of a school in Rhode Island and a “fire of uncertain origin” at the Little Theatre.

Jake said bad press didn’t bother him, but Randolph had fumed about the unfairness of the second story and the TV news reporters who picked it up. “We never even
thought
of making a theater till they canceled us!” Lucille, who was both heading the costume crew and taking ticket orders on the phone, said that right after the story appeared there was a huge increase in the number of ticket orders. Publicity, as Jeremy had said, was publicity. Sybil added that not only were news stories good advertising, they were free. The ads running in the very same papers were costing a lot of “Petunia Grantham” money.

Whether it was the free publicity or the ads, tickets were selling better than anyone had expected. With only three days to go till the opening, they had two sold-out houses and decent-sized audiences for the other performances. Almost half the opening night seats would go to the media and to people who had donated props or costumes or helped with the show, and at least a third of the others were going to families of the actors. It didn’t bring in much money to have that many complimentary tickets, but it guaranteed a full house for the most important night of the run, the
night the network people would be there.

This was the day the television crew was arriving, and Jeremy had been such a wreck when he came into the kitchen for breakfast that Govindaswami had told him he wasn’t going to be allowed to eat till he’d spent at least half an hour meditating. Then Sybil had insisted that everyone take a little time from their other jobs to clean the house. “I won’t have the world think that the author of the Petunia Grantham mysteries lives in a pigsty.” Now the house was at least moderately presentable. The Applewhites wouldn’t look like slobs as long as the cameras stayed away from the closets.

The barn was almost ready. They’d been rehearsing on the newly built stage for three days now. Zedediah was overseeing the last of the construction work. And Hal, with help from Cordelia, was painting the sets.

A butterfly landed on E.D.’s hand, and she waved it gently away. They had no fear of humans at all, these butterflies. Outside she heard a car pull to a stop. After a moment, Winston began barking. That must be the television people, she thought. Hurriedly she printed out the notice about the umbrellas and went to pin it up on the wall. As she did, she heard someone come into the schoolroom behind her. She turned her head to see who it was and was so startled that she stabbed the pushpin into her finger. She yelped.

“That bad, huh?”

Jake was standing there in his usual black T-shirt and black pants. But that was all that was usual about him. Gone was the eyebrow ring, gone were all the earrings. And gone was the scarlet hair. He had a dark brown crew cut now, so short his scalp showed through. Behind him Winston stood, making low growling sounds.

“So what do you think?” Jake said. “Could I make it in the SS?”

W
inston was so unsettled by the change in Jake’s appearance that he wouldn’t come close enough to be petted. A patch of hair at the back of his neck and another at the base of his tail stood up, and he stayed about two feet away, following Jake as always but growling suspiciously the whole time. An hour later, when the television people arrived in a van bristling with antennae and satellite dishes, the dog was still so edgy that he didn’t just bark at the van. When the crew got out, he actually rushed at them, snapping
at sneakers and pants legs. Jake had to go find some liver treats and lure him into the schoolroom.

The liver treats helped. In no time Winston was stretched at his feet in his usual way, his nose on his outstretched paws, snoring softly. Jake watched from the window as cameras and lights and cables and sound equipment were unpacked and carted into the house. He was just as glad to be safely away from the action. He’d told everyone he didn’t mind bad press, but it wasn’t absolutely true. He wanted to be known as an actor now, not the bad kid from the city, and you never knew what the media would say about you.

Jeremy Bernstein had come running the moment he heard the van in the driveway. Jake watched him introduce himself, shaking hands with everyone who got out of the van. It was obvious he didn’t know any of these people, and they had no idea who he was or what he was doing there. It wasn’t really clear what the title of associate producer meant. It looked to Jake as if Bernstein was mostly in the way, darting around among the crew like an enthusiastic puppy. Destiny arrived, too, and had the good sense to stay back and just watch, though Jake could tell by the way his mouth was working steadily that he was talking the whole time. Asking questions, probably. Nobody seemed to be answering them.

Eventually a limousine arrived and a man with a clipboard got out and called to Bernstein. That had to
be Jeremy’s friend. The two of them conferred for a while, and then the man with the clipboard opened the limousine door and held it while a short-haired blond woman in a red suit got out. Marcia Manning. Jake had seen her on TV so often it seemed as if he knew her. Except that on TV she always seemed perky and sweet and friendly. Even without being able to hear what anyone was saying, he could see that there was nothing perky or sweet or friendly about her now.

She pointed here, gestured there, and people who were doing one thing when she got out suddenly started doing something else. The man with the clipboard began flipping through his papers, looking more and more harried. She spoke to Bernstein and he rushed into the house and returned a few moments later with a bottle of water, which she snatched from his hand and began drinking as she made her way up the steps and onto the porch.

Jake was in the barn, helping to set up folding chairs, when E.D. came to find Winston. “The wicked witch of the west wants them to get pictures of all the animals,” she explained. “Mom says you’d better come, too. The camera guys are all spooked about Winston since he tried to bite them. Is he okay? Has he gotten over your haircut yet?”

“Liver treats,” Jake said, and followed E.D. back to
the house, Winston in his usual place a few steps behind.

“All the adults have been interviewed already and gone back to work,” she told him as they went. “Mom’s interview was the longest, and Dad’s all grumpy. They aren’t going to interview us kids, except Cordelia. I think the wicked witch has us classified with the animals. Sort of like decorations for background shots.”

There were enough cables snaked across the floor in the living room to make walking treacherous. Some very large, very bright lights were focused on the couch and the overstuffed chair, where Marcia Manning was sitting looking over some note cards. A blue-jean-clad man was dabbing at her face with a large makeup brush. Paulie’s t-perch had been brought in and set up behind the couch. Paulie was busy eating peanuts and dropping their shells on the floor. Jeremy and the man with the clipboard hovered in the background, whispering to each other.

“Where’s that girl with the dog?” Marcia Manning asked, batting away the man with the makeup brush. She caught sight of E.D. “Oh,
there
you are!”

When she saw Winston, she squealed. “He’s perfect! Just perfect! Everybody loves basset hounds. Here, dog. Get over here in the light, dog.” Winston started toward her. When she reached toward him, he sat, well out of range of her red painted fingernails. She waved toward the corner of the room. “Come over
here, little boy—” Jake saw Destiny now, sitting cross-legged on the floor. “What’s-your-name—you with the lavender ears.” Destiny got up and came toward her with an expression on his face Jake had never seen before. He looked cowed. Almost frightened. “Pat the doggie for us,” the woman said, her voice suddenly high and sing-songy. “Nice doggie. Get him to wag his tail.”

She pointed to a cameraman. “Get a good angle on that. See if you can get the parrot in the shot, too. All the trouble they’ll have bleeping the bloody parrot out of the interviews, we should get him in whenever we can—he’s great background color.”

Then she noticed Jake. “Who’s this?” She waggled a hand at the man with the clipboard. “Chuck? Who’s this? Anybody know who this is?”

“Jake,” Destiny said. It was the first word he’d said. What had these people done to him?

“The delinquent? No, no. Can’t be.” She checked her notes and turned to Chuck again. “You said the Semple kid has scarlet hair and body piercings.”

Chuck flipped through the papers on his clipboard. “That’s true. We got some footage from some local news program when he burned the school.”

“Didn’t look anything like this, did he?”

“You could ask me,” Jake said to her. “I do talk. The answer is yes. It’s me. Jake Semple. The actor.”

“Well,
that’ll
wreck the visuals,” she said. A man
with a camera on his shoulder had started toward Jake, and she waved him off. “No point getting him looking like that—and scrap the interview, Chuck. We’ll just run the old footage if we need something.”

Chuck threw down the clipboard. “I don’t suppose you care what
I
want, Marcia.” A cameraman picked up the clipboard and handed it back to him.

“Of course I do, Chuckie dear. I respect every pearl that falls from your mouth. But right now you should go out and get some tape of the goats. Before it starts raining again. I’m going to get some coffee.”

She got up and headed toward the kitchen, where Jake could hear Govindaswami clattering dishes and humming cheerily to himself. Chuck swore and Paulie repeated his words and added a few of his own. “Smart bird,” the man said, as Jeremy led him and one of the cameramen outside.

“That lady told me to shut up!” Destiny said.

“It’s a good thing for her it wasn’t during Mom’s interview,” E.D. said.

“How’s it been going?” Jake asked.

E.D. shrugged. “She asked lots of questions about what everybody does—the furniture and the poetry and the books. And the Creative Academy. Dad talked about
The Sound of Music
, of course. And the barn. But I don’t think it’s going the way Jeremy and the producer guy planned. It’s sort of like she’s just getting a whole lot of talk and a whole lot of pictures and
somebody’ll have to figure out what to do with it all later. Dad says he’s going to demand to see the edited tape before they air it, but Jeremy doesn’t think that’ll happen.”

Marcia Manning came back from the kitchen, holding a big mug, which she waved at the few crew members who were still in the room, fussing with equipment. “The kitchen guru says you can all come get coffee.” The makeup man started toward her with his brush. “Later, Henry! Can’t you see there aren’t any cameras?” She sank onto the couch, leaned back into the cushions, and kicked off her shoes, cradling the coffee mug in both hands. She looked at Jake, E.D., and Destiny. “Scram, kids. I need a little private time. And take the mutt with you.” She closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh.

E.D. opened her mouth to say something, but Jake shook his head at her. He pointed. One of the butterflies had fluttered in from the schoolroom and was heading toward the couch. It swooped up and then down again, circled the woman’s head twice, and then landed delicately on one of the hands that held the mug.

There was a bloodcurdling shriek from Marcia Manning, quickly picked up and repeated by Paulie. The coffee mug leaped upward, sending coffee toward the ceiling and then back down onto woman and couch. There were more shrieks and curses as
Winston launched himself onto the couch, landed on Marcia Manning, and put his front feet on her shoulders as he snapped at the butterfly that was circling her head. The butterfly flew off toward the kitchen.

“Get this monster off me!” she yelled.

But Winston had already jumped down and was following the butterfly, making little leaps as he went.

“Chuck! Henry! Get in here! Where the—” Paulie joined Marcia Manning in a stream of high-pitched curses.

Jake grabbed E.D.’s and Destiny’s hands, and the three of them bolted for the schoolroom. They slammed the door behind them and sank onto the floor with laughter.