The story thus far: After splitting with his wife of eight years, Lee points to a spot on a map and ends up in River Bend, where he is arrested, wiped out financially by his wife, and forced to live on an avocado for a week. He lives in a room above a diner, and his paltry wages are garnished to pay for crimes and parking tickets. Everywhere he goes, he sees notices for a play at the Willow Lane Theater. He goes to the play. Read the archives. It's all much more exciting in the original. Catch up. Sheesh.

Installment Five
"The Dick"
(Steve, we had this conversation in installment four. We can't call it that. I know, Geoff, I'm just being petulant. You would never say "petulant". Oh, yeah. What would I say? "Poop". Oh, yeah.)

"A Haunting Darkness"
(Poop.)

The theater was dark. Not only was "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" not playing that night, but the lights were out. Lee Harris had never expected to be walking down the aisle in a darkened theater toward the stage carrying a box of powdered paint pigment. The play was good. Perhaps not great, but good, and the experience of being in the audience for it had been a completely unexpected thrill for Lee. When the final lights had dimmed after the artful curtain call, he had found himself slumped in his chair, completely drained in a strangely wonderful way, like after good sex. Or a nice hamburger. Or bad sex. After the applause, and the theater lights had come back on, when the people had begun filing past him toward the exit doors, his reverie slowly began to fade. He'd discovered his program, now mangled almost beyond repair, in his right hand where he had been worrying it during the entire last act. He'd tried to smooth it out on the back of the seat in front of him when the index card asking for volunteers fell to the floor.

Lee picked it up, then reached into his jacket's inside pocket and pulled out a pen to fill it out. As he wrote his name he noticed, engraved on the side of the pen, the words "Welcome to Jakarta", but that has nothing to do with this story. Where the card asked for Lee's address, he simply put "Twain's". Where it asked for phone number, he wrote "Twain's". For "who to contact in case of emergency," he put "Twain". Under "what capacity you'd like to volunteer," he wrote "Anything that doesn't smell like Twain's". He had still been in a slight daze when he dropped it on the counter in the lobby on the way out. (Jeez, that's a lot of quotation marks. "?")

The box of powdered paint pigments smelled bad, but not at all like grease. He had to be careful as he walked down the aisle toward the stage. He'd already squashed his hand between the release handle on the door to the theater and the box. The steps, he remembered from being at the play, were uneven and long and he had to feel his way slowly in the dark to find their edges. Peter had told him there would be a ghost light, and he looked around, wondering where and what it was. He didn't want to appear ignorant, so he hadn't asked. He'd often heard that old theaters were supposed to be haunted, if you believed that sort of thing. Which he didn't. What little light shining into the cavernous room from the one bare bulb on a pole on the stage merely cast inconvenient shadows that made walking even more treacherous, and the box he was carrying made looking at his feet impossible. He slipped on something and was just able to catch his balance on the back of one of the seats, almost dropping the box. He envisioned himself in a multicolored cloud of paint pigment powder, which slowly settled to reveal the ghost light descending menacingly from the rafters toward him. After he regained his balance and his heart slowed back to normal, he felt around with his foot, and heard paper crunching. He had slipped on a discarded program. Why did they print them on slick paper?

The seat back squeaked when he pushed against it to stand up straight, sounding almost like Excalibur, the small rat dog he and his wife had. He hadn't thought of Excalibur since he'd left her. Damn stupid, vicious animal. The dog, too. The Jerk probably actually liked the stupid thing. The dog, too. (That's enough, Steve. Woof.) Shortly before he'd split, Lee had bought several books on black magic. After reading them, he hadn't been able to sleep for a week, so he burned them. But not before creating a wax doll. It looked more like Buddy Hackett than it did the Jerk. How could anybody stick a pin in Buddy Hackett? Now, of course, Beverly was sleeping with the Jerk (the dog, too? No, Steve. No? No), and Lee was sleeping with his clothes on. Sans Santeria.

Lee had liked Peter right away when he finally met him. Peter was big and gregarious and funny and smart. He'd seen him a few times at the diner, most notably the time Twain had explained who Lee was by showing Peter the crime sheet from the paper that first day, but met him formally when he'd come in with Lee's volunteer card two days after he'd seen the play. Peter was wearing an unfortunate pair of blue jeans, sneakers and a polo shirt which accentuated his spare tractor tire midriff. His beard and hair were scruffy, but he exuded an expansive geniality that instantly put people at ease. Kind of like a young Santa Claus. Or an old Spanky. Or fudge.

"I thought this must be you," Peter had said when Lee rounded the corner from the hall.

"Who?" Lee asked.

"Our new volunteer. I'm Peter. From the theater."

He put out his hand and Lee shook it, restraining from saying, "You're a poet and don't even know it." Instead, he offered Peter a cup of coffee, and they sat at a booth to talk.

After carefully measuring out one and a half spoons of sugar for his coffee, and filling it the rest of the way with cream, Peter waved the index card and asked, "You actually live here?"

Lee nodded.

"At Twain's."

Lee nodded again.

"Where?"

"Upstairs."

Peter laughed. His laugh was even more robust than he was, and it filled the room. "I've been up there," he said. " It's one of the best places in town to search for bizarre or unattainable props. It's a gold mine, but there isn't any place to live."

"I'm just another prop, I guess."

"I once found a G.I. Joe™ up there, but I would never have expected to find Joe™ himself."

Lee laughed out loud, which felt really good. He used to laugh on a regular basis, sometimes several times in a single day, but in all the time since he'd split with Beverly he'd laughed only a few times and then only cynically. They talked for a long time. They talked about why Lee had come to town. They talked about why Lee had stayed. Peter remembered the newspaper Police Sheet Twain had shown him the first time he had seen Lee, who had been wearing ill-fitting overalls, a tee shirt and not much else at the time. Lee turned red at this.

And they talked about the theater. About the shows they produced. About what Lee might end up doing, and when he could come and do it. About the politics, and the people. And about Stella.

"Stella," Peter said, "is the type of person who spells theater with an 're'." He raised one eyebrow without lowering the other. (Can you do that? No. Can anyone? Yeah, Speed Racer's dad, Pop. He's a cartoon, Steve. So?)

"She likes to be the centre of things," he continued. "She also thinks she must still have money in her account because there are still checks left."

Lee laughed again. It still felt good.

"What does she do there?"

"The books."

Stella, it seemed, was Peter's co-worker in the front office. Peter was over the artistic side and Stella the business. They both worked on the advertising, and both answered only to the board. They had been working together for years, and the relationship, which had started off well, had slowly progressed into one of mutual annoyance and scrutiny. Peter warned him that Stella always tried to take over all the volunteers as soon as they arrived.

"She's supposed to be over the box office people, the people who man the counter at intermission, that sort of thing," Peter said, "but anyone who wants to work in back, building sets or sewing costumes, usually has to do something for her first. I usually just let her," he said with a sigh. "It makes life much easier, and it makes her feel so in charge of everything. Which she needs, poor dear. 'Twas ever thus."

"I really don't care what I do," Lee said.

"As long as it doesn't smell like Twain's" Peter said, and Lee laughed. "And it leads to acting."

"Oh, no. No, no, no." Lee was horrified at the thought. "No. No, no, no, no. I'll just watch the actors. No. I'll let them act. I'll stay in the background and watch. No. Uh-uh."

"I'm surprised," Peter said. "Handsome guy like you should want to flaunt it. Ah, well. They also serve who only sit and watch."

"Wait."

"What?"

"They also serve who only sit and wait."

"I know. I was making a joke."

"I know."

They set a time and day when Lee would come to the theatre to get his orientation, cleared the schedule with Twain, and Peter had gotten into his filthy two-door, four-speed sedan, which sputtered happily as he drove off. There was a large gray patch of bird dropping (Poop! That's right, Steve) on the trunk, and Lee was reminded of his first car in college. Poor guy, he thought. Living the college life at his age. Yeah, and I'm sleeping on a fucking couch. I'm such a loser. Lee also noticed, as Peter drove away, that there was no trunk lock, but that has nothing to do with this story. (We've already said that in this installment, Geoff. Like you never repeat yourself. Never. Poop.)

Besides seeing the play, this was the first time he had been in the actual theatre. Lee heard a strange creaking. He stopped, his feet on two different levels, and listened as hard as he could to determine what it might be. Maybe it was the ghost light, he thought, a surge of tingling electricity shooting down his spine. His heartbeat was too loud and he could no longer hear the groaning. No. It had just been a creaking. It was just an old, big building shifting on its old barn-like or brothel-like foundation. He would have to ask Peter if the theatre was, indeed, haunted. Not that he believed in that sort of thing. He'd ask after he got to know him better, and wouldn't feel so silly. And he would make sure Stella was nowhere around. Lee thought about his first day there, which was preferable to thinking about the bats that were certainly flocking above his head, sent by the moaning ghost light to tangle in his hair and suck the blood from his brain. I gotta get my hair cut, he thought.

Lee had been surprised when he met Stella. She was, perhaps, in her mid-thirties, and had kept herself up well. In fact she was a knockout, in a snooty sort of way. She wore a simple pristine skirt and blouse that showed off her figure in just a way to suggest that, if she caught you thinking about her sexually, she might call a cop. Or taunt you. Or both. He got the feeling that she might want to taunt him, which was intriguing. When Peter introduced her, she had actually presented her hand, duchess-like. Peter had whispered "Little Hollywood" in his ear, and he'd needed to turn his head so she wouldn't see him laugh.

He got very mixed signals from her. He had the sense that she was flirting with him, but also sometimes felt like she didn't like him very much. One of the first things she had said to him, rather about him in his presence, was "Oh, good. Another opinion." It had puzzled him. When she found out that he lived over the diner, she had smiled patronizingly, and said "You'll get on your feet, soon, I'm sure."

As Peter had predicted, the moment the preliminaries were taken care of, Stella had said, "The play closet needs organizing." Peter sighed, and led him down the hall that separated the office from the theatre to a dank, dusty old closet that smelled of mildew, and showed him the boxes of old, used scripts that needed to be put back in their places.

The boxes were on the floor, and the scripts had just been tossed in haphazardly. He reached into one and pulled out a script. It was Death of a Salesman. He was surprised that they had done that. He'd read it in college, and had always wanted to see it. The cover was slightly worn. He opened it and there were brightly colored highlighter markings on some of the lines. This copy must have been used by the actor who played Charley, because all his lines were colored in yellow, and the line right before all his were in pink. There were little pencil marks in the margins that said things like "talk louder here" and "look sad."

Cool, he thought. He had never thought about how actors worked. This was cool. The copy right under it was very worn; the cover almost gone. Nothing was highlighted, but there were long passages of notes by all of Willie's scenes. They said stuff like "to relive the past, obstacle: my son. The car is bright. Confusion is visceral." None of this made any sense at all to Lee, but it was inexplicably compelling, and he closed the script and placed it reverently on the shelf labeled "M" for Miller. (Is that like "T" for the Tillerman? Yes.)

The closet was a thin wall away from the office, and he could hear Stella and Peter talk as he worked. Some of the sounds were too muffled to make out, and, being muffled, it was sometimes difficult to identify who had said some of the sentences. They fought over some duty, poorly done, but Lee couldn't quite tell what it was.

"That's my job, and you know it." That was Stella. The voices were muffled, but he could tell that it was her.

"Then why don't you do your job?" Peter.

"I resent that." Stella again.

"I work harder than anyone around here," (that, he couldn't identify,) "you do your job, and I'll do..." And then they must have moved away from the wall because it got really muffled for a while.

"...you always have to be the first boss?" That had been Peter. Of course, it would have had to have been him.

"You just like him because he's cute." That had sounded like Stella, but he must be wrong.

They continued to go back and forth about who would need Lee more and what he might be good at or what he may want to do. The voices got louder and more heated and Lee's heart beat strongly in his chest as he listened. Suddenly, he heard one of them say, "Bitch" (it had sounded like Stella), then stomping and a door slam.

He was already, on his first day volunteering, being made into some sort of pawn in some sort of power struggle, and it made him feel strangely satisfied. Like after good sex. Or a ride in the back of a cop car. Or fudge. He was the boy that Oberon and Titania battled over. Like the boy, he wanted to be the indirect cause of magic and mayhem. He was intrigued that he could be the cause of, or at least exacerbate, a rivalry. He liked watching. He didn't like mixing, but if things were mixing, he really liked watching.

As he started again walking down the levels toward the stage, he bumped a theatre seat in a row that didn't seem to align comfortably with the edges of the other rows. He swallowed his cry, not wanting Peter and Stella to think he couldn't accomplish so simple a task as bringing a box backstage, to a room mysteriously called "Roger's Room", without injuring himself beyond repair. As he held his lips tightly together, he heard an actual groaning behind him. Not a creak, a groaning. A definite groaning. The electricity was now rushing up his spine and down his arms, and the edges of his vision sparkled with strange spots. He whirled around. Nothing but darkness. He didn't want to be consumed from the inside out by the ghost light before he could heroically complete the task of bringing the crucial box of powdered paint pigments back to Roger's Room and win the war.

The night after the "play closet" day, he'd talked to Twain about his experience at the theatre. Mostly, he'd talked to him about Stella.

"She's a nice lady," Twain had said. "Not evil. Just thoughtless." Then, as he'd gone behind the counter, he'd said, "Lousy tipper."

That was a creaking groan. A definite creaking groan. He was reminded of the time when he was very young and he and his friend, Randy Fredricks, had taken a walk deep in a woods and came upon a deserted, dilapidated old house. As they explored it, Randy had filled his head with ghost stories and tales of the murder and eating of children, and he'd turned around and found Randy gone just before he heard a loud, harrowing scream, and he had screamed and almost soiled himself. Randy came into the room laughing like an idiot. He'd never forgiven Randy. Peter didn't seem the type to play such a cruel game.

"Peter?" he whispered very quietly. "That ain't funny, man."

The darkness in the theatre seemed almost alive. It pulsated around the edge of the light and breathed around him oppressively. Visions of waxen Buddy Hacketts lurching drunkenly toward him with pins in their melting flesh floated in the darkness. He shouldn't have burned those books. He tried to think of other things. He was successful: His obituary floated in front of him in the darkness. "Newcomer to town disappears while taking a box of paint pigments to Roger's Room at the Willow Lane Theatre, the latest victim of the legendary ghost light. The pigments had been of the powdered variety. He is survived by his dog, Excalibur."

He turned and looked again at the light bulb on the pole on the stage. It seemed no more than forty watts, and actually made the stage look darker around the corona of dim light. He suddenly started to laugh as he realized that that was the ghost light. His laughter echoed in the empty room and the echo sent another shiver up his spine.

"Idiot," he said after a moment and continued toward the stage.

After Twain had given his opinion of Stella, he casually mentioned that there was some guy asking about him.

"Who?"

"A dick," Twain had said. "Wanted to know if I remembered you using a credit card here."

Lee was nonplused. (Without plus? Look it up. Fine... Oh, baffled.)

"What did you tell him?"

"That your credit was denied."

"Does he know I live here?"

"He didn't ask."

"He must have seen my car."

"He didn't say."

The dick also hadn't said what he wanted, where he was from, or who had sent him, and Twain hadn't asked. Twain could be the most frustrating person Lee had ever encountered. Except perhaps Beverly. Or even Stella. Okay, he knew a lot of frustrating people. He couldn't believe he was important enough to warrant a dick snooping around about his bad credit.

The stage was about chest high. He set the box on it, in front of the ghost light. He was proud to know one more thing about theatre, and he hadn't had to ask. He looked up at the dim light which almost hurt his eyes in the darkness. He realized that was a rather stupid move, because now he couldn't see anything. He closed his eyes, waiting for them to adjust again to the darkness, just as the theatre creaked again, but he knew nothing would come floating out of the darkness to nibble casually on his kidney. He felt his way along the edge of the stage until he found one of the sets of stairs, which, he knew from watching the play, were on either side of the jutting stage, a bit away from the aisles. He found them with his knee. He felt along them until he found the bottom one, and climbed. He could see the box in front of the ghost light. It was all he could see, so he had no trouble negotiating his way there. He picked it up and walked past the light. Stella had told him to go to the left backstage exit, and when he'd looked puzzled Peter had actually explained how to get backstage between the edge of the set and the proscenium arch. He'd had to ask about "proscenium arch". It was the portal that separated the stage from the audience. He was becoming a true theatre maven.

He made his way across the front of the stage, found the edge of the set and went behind it. He was surprised that he could actually see. There were ropes hanging at the back, and he could see the curtained doorway that led out into one of the dressing rooms. Stella had told him that the one on this side was the men's dressing room, and that Roger's Room was off to the side through that. Neither Stella nor Peter had known who Roger had been. It was called Roger's Room, had always been called Roger's Room, and probably would be called Roger's Room into perpetuity. His shin rammed into something, and the sudden pain sent blinding red light to his eyes. This time he did let out a shout. It echoed, coming back to him larger than it had begun. All he needed was Stella coming back and accusing him of an inability to perform even the most basic of errands. Worse, Peter agreeing with her. He wanted to see their rivalry through, not become unusable due to extreme klutziness before anything juicy happened.

Just as he got past the object that obstructed the very slender pathway backstage, a slight breeze disturbed the air. He knew it wasn't a ghost, or bats, or sentient lights, but his shiver was not because the breeze was cool. Or unhip. He could see a little streak of light from under the curtain, so he hurried toward it. Nothing else could be in his way, now. He could see the floor. No ghosts. Or wax men. Or Beverly. Or dicks.

He pulled the curtain aside. He breathed in sharply and his heart leapt two inches to the right, cutting off the sound that tried to escape his chest. He couldn't breathe in or out for several heartbeats until a short, high-pitched, reflexive scream of terror escaped his head, bounced off the walls of the huge dark space behind him and echoed tauntingly in his ears.

We hope you've enjoyed the Free Preview of Weeping Willow.
If you have and want more, buy the book. You'll make yourself glow just like the picture.

And of course, it's available in both hard cover and paperback.