Читать книгу Rabble on a Hill - Robert Edmond Alter - Страница 8

The last alley brought them to the stage entrance of Benny Frazer’s theater. The door safely closed behind them, Shad blew out his breath and said: “I don’t know as how I think too highly of actors, by and large, but I’d certainly rather be here than in Boston’s Stone Jail!”

In the lanternlight Nat was able to examine the complete Shad Holly, and there seemed to be no end of him to examine. First off, he was probably the biggest man in America (Nat thought so, anyhow). He was six-four at least, not counting his boots and hat, and he had to weigh over 260. He was maybe fortyish, and his face was perfectly round and sunset pink and aglow with sweat. His eyes were small, angry, curious, lively eyes, and all in all he looked like a mighty rampant man.

He removed his hat, which anyone could see at a glance had once belonged to a British officer, and wiped at his brow with a great bandana that looked like a soiled French battle flag.

“That’s a fine hat,” Nat said. “How’d you come by it?” Shad seemed a trifle vague about the acquisition of the hat. As best as he could remember he’d stopped at a tavern in Providence on his trip north and there had been a batch of British officers in there raising the old Nick, and when they somehow or other got the impression that Shad was a Loyalist, they filled him up with free ale, and when he left the tavern he went to the table where he’d parked his coonskin cap among all the officers’ hats and—his wits being a mite befuddled—he must have picked up the wrong hat by mistake.

“I often wonder what that major looks like in his dress uniform with my coonskin cap on his head,” Shad mused, brushing at the silver lacework on the cocked hat.

He was, he told Nat, in the Pennsylvania militia, and the Committee of Communications had sent him up to Boston in February with some vital information for the Boston Committee of Safety.

“How is it you’re still here?” Nat wondered. “I thought they sent you fellas back and forth.”

“Why, any fool knows trouble is comin’ atween the British and the Americans. And most of us knows that when it does come it’ll be started by these here Yankees. And, boy, I aim to be right here handy when it happens!”

Old Elijah Simp, the gnarled, bent-nearly-double property man, came hurriedly by them with his peculiar crab-wise shuffle, shaking his head.

“Best look spry, Nat,” he warned. “Old Benny’s throwing a fit backstage on account you’re late and Ralston hasn’t showed up yet.”

That was bad. Nat and Ralston were supposed to present a new act that night: the Robin Hood and Little John jousting scene. It had already been advertised; and now no Ralston. But it was no great surprise to Nat. Ralston Morbes was an avowed Loyalist, a Tory. He was probably embroiled in some mischief or other out in the streets.

“Come on, Shad. I’ll tuck you away in one of the dressing rooms.”

But they never made it. With a mighty “Ah-ha!” Benny Frazer descended upon them, his gravy-spotted velveteen waistcoat flapping about his narrow concave torso, a curl of his wig loose from its pins bobbing up and down by his right ear. He wigwagged his pipestem arms at Nat melodramatically.

“So. So. We’ve decided to make our appearance, have we? We’ve elected out of the goodness of our heart to give our fellow performers the benefit of our estimable presence! So good of us! So generous we are! And where is our boon companion Master Morbes, pray tell?”

Shad blinked at the scarecrow of a man, and turned to Nat.

“Say, just how many of you is he talkin’ about?”

“I don’t know where Ral is, Benny,” Nat said. “There’s trouble in the streets tonight. My friend Mister Holly and I ran into some of it.”

Benny snatched his floppy wig from his bald head and threw it spamp against the back wall. Not satisfied with that, he took a running jump at it and landed on the powdery old moth nest with both feet.

“Gads and all the goldfish of Greeves!” he wailed. “Ruin! Utter, undeserved, unappeasable ruin! And a full house out front for once! And no Robin Hood. They’ll tear the stage down! I know they will. I’ve seen it happen before. I——” His voice slammed to a halt and he studied Shad like a beady-eyed bird of prey.

“The size of him! Mark you the size of him! The perfect Little John!” Benny came hop-hopping over to grab Nat. “Nathaniel—man that I’ve raised from childhood—we will switch parts, sweet lad! You will play Robin, and this monster—that is to say, this gentleman will play Little John!”

Shad’s eyes were beginning to glimmer and glower. “Now hold on here. What is all this Robin and Little Johnny talk, anyhow?”

Benny went after the enormous Shad with fluttery, eager fingers.

“Why, you’ve heard of Robin Hood the famous bandit of Sherwood Forest, surely! Nat here was supposed to play Little John to Ralston’s Robin Hood. Ah-ha! But now we will give him Robin’s part and you will be our Little John!”

Shad’s face clamped down like a public house closing for the night.

“Now look here, toothpick! I don’t usually mind folks referrin’ to my size, but there’s one thing I ain’t, and that’s little!”

“But you don’t understand, dear sir,” Benny hastened to assure him. “Little John is a name meant in jest. Little John was in truth an enormous man. His name was but a joke——”

“And that’s something else I ain’t is a joke,” Shad said dangerously. “Now I don’t mind helpin’ you fellas out, ’cause Nat here helped me tonight. I’ll be this Rob-bandit Hood fella, if you want. But I ain’t about to go around pretending I’m some dwarf called Johnny! And that’s flat!”

Benny snatched at his head for his wig but found only baldness.

“Benny,” Nat said, “if he’s willing to give us a hand, let’s not argue about it. Besides, I’ve already learned Little John’s part.”

“The part! The part!” Benny looked around in a state of wild distraction. “He must learn the part, and not a moment to spare! The curtain rises! The manuscript! Who in the name of all the foul fiends has pilfered the manuscript? Who——”

Old Elijah nudged his elbow and calmly handed him a few dog-eared sheafs of paper. Benny snatched them up and turned back to Shad.

“Now then, good Master Holly. Listen attentively! The lines are few and simple. Should your memory suffer a lapse, a hesitation, a dislocation, simply cry ‘What news?’ ”

“What news?” Shad echoed blankly.

“Yes. Robin was forever crying ‘What news’ to everyone he encountered in the forest. Don’t ask me why. Now then; Nat’s on stage when the curtain ascends and he says: ‘Here I am Little John the brave! I am the mumble-mumble and so on . . . and I shall cross me over this instant.’ ” Benny pointed at Shad. “That’s your cue.”

“My who?”

“Cue! Cue! You enter now.” Benny ducked his nose back into the script, reading: “ ‘What news?’ cried Robin. ‘Whence comes this gangling creature I see towering over me? Speak your name, varlet!’ ”

Benny pointed at Nat, still reading: “ ‘Little John is my name, little man,’ spake Little John. ‘And I desire to cross yon log——’ ”

“Hold on here,” Shad cut in. “Is that spake kin to a spade or a stake? How does a fella go about spakin’ hisself?”

Benny crumpled the script in despair. “It means spoke! SPOKE!”

“Just wanted to know, brother,” Shad said mildly. “That’s all.”

The balky curtain rose slowly before Nat, showing him the glare of the footlights in their tin reflectors. Beyond the blaze of tallow candles the small sea of expectant faces was but an indistinguishable glimmer of dark flesh with here and there the spark of an eye. He wet his lips apprehensively. He was very dubious about the outcome of the scene. And, to make matters worse, the audience had had to wait twenty minutes while Shad learned his lines, had his grease paint applied, and was helped into costume; now they were turning unruly.

They scoffed rudely at the sight of Nat standing before them in tight green-cloth pants and jerkin and a silly little scotch cap surmounted with a turkey feather. He grounded the butt of his seven-foot “yew” staff and leaned slightly toward the hooting audience.

“Here I am Little John the brave! I am the tallest, broadest, strongest yeoman in all of merry old England! I——”

“Which makes you a dad-gasted Tory!” a disembodied voice yelled from the audience, and a rotten tomato near-missed by Nat’s ear with a hum and went splamp! on the painted backdrop behind him. The audience roared with appreciative laughter.

Yes—he was very dubious about the outcome.

“I see before me a stream with but a single log for a foot-bridge, and I shall cross me over this instant.” Nat turned to the “stream,” an old dead log about seven feet long chocked on a pair of blocks concealed behind wooden “bushes.” On the upstage side of the log (where the audience couldn’t see it) was a huge, shallow tin pan of water. Literary legend and Benny’s script had it that Little John was supposed to knock Robin off the log and into the water. Which suited Nat. He’d had his bath last Saturday.

Now, having spoken Shad’s cue, he hesitated. No Shad, or Robin.

“I shall cross me over this instant!” he repeated, hopefully.

The audience started to hoot again. “Do you need some help, Tory?” “Which instant was you talkin’ about, Johnny? Next week’s?”

All at once a monstrous parody of Robin Hood was literally propelled upon the stage from the wings by Benny, old Elijah, and three or four other grinning thespians.

Shad Holly, his sausage-tight cloth suit perceptibly bursting on his massive body (half the buttons having already popped off), his face whitened with grease paint and a thick up-curled paper mustache glued to his upper lip, the feather in his cap gone awry and bobbing down in front of his face, lurched toward his end of the log and promptly dropped his staff on his toes.

Nat figured the people over in Charlestown could hear the roar that issued from the audience. “Hi, Little John! Did you say you was the tallest or the smallest!” “Say, ain’t you two merry men kind of twisted around?” “Why don’t you fellas hang signs to yourselves so we’ll know which’s Robin and which’s Little-tiny John!”

One look at Shad’s stricken face assured Nat that his huge friend’s mind was a complete blank. Shad had been struck dumb by that well-known thespian ailment, stage fright. He looked so utterly gargantuan in his ridiculous costume and with that strained expression of baffled bewilderment on his great moony face that the audience continued to greet him with volley upon volley of raucous laughter.

“I shall cross me over this instant?” Nat repeated helpfully.

Shad picked up his staff, sucked in his breath, and cut loose.

“What news, cried Robin!” he bellowed.

“No no!” Nat hissed. “Not Cried Robin: just What news.”

“What news!” cried Shad. “Fence comes this spaking creature I see towering over me?”

The audience went wild again. Nat “towered over” Shad about the way a toadstool towers over a grizzly bear. And then it got worse.

“Spake your vame, narlet!” Shad roared.

With a sense of impending disaster Nat stepped up on his end of the log, saying: “Little John is my name, little—[he dropped his voice at that word, but the audience caught it with another howl]—man. And I desire to cross yon log!”

Shad, according to direction, hauled himself up on his end of the log and immediately the blame log began to shift in its blocks, and he started wobbling precariously, wig-wagging his staff in both hands to reëstablish his center of equilibrium.

“Fffff-fine,” he stammered desperately. “Bbbb-but fff-first let’s joust a bit!”

Joust heck! It was all either of them could do to maintain his balance on the side-rolling log. Purely by accident the left end of Shad’s staff swung around and fetched Nat a good one on the right hip. Shad snatched and grabbed at the pole and the other end came slicing around and caught Nat on the left shoulder. Nat lost his temper and let Shad have one in the stomach with the end of his staff, and Shad said “Oooff!” and what little balance he had left went south. Shad started side-running on the log, all in the same spot, his left hand taking mighty grabs at the empty air for support and finding none, and all at once over he went and 260-some pounds landed in the tub of water.

A silvery wave of water sprang up like a tree covered with ice and descended upon Nat with a splashing crash, and then his balance shattered and he went over backward and prat-first into the tub and on top of Shad, and the high end of his staff caught in the backdrop and the whole thing came down over their heads and engulfed them in splashing, wet, shouting darkness.

By now the audience was half crazy. Some of them had laughed so much they were kicking around on the floor wailing “My stomach! My stomach! My sides are splitting!” One man had a heart attack and another laughed himself into a stroke, and still it didn’t stop because now part of the backdrop had come into contact with the footlights and the tallow candles started eating it up, and all at once and to his utmost horror Nat heard Benny’s muffled voice crying: “Fire! Fire! the giddy backdrop is afire!”

Thrashing, slipping, shoving at the smothering backdrop (which was like fighting a pillow—punch it here, it pops out there), Nat blundered into Shad in the darkness.

“What news?” Shad wanted to know.

“Look out, you fathead! I want out of here!”

“You want out! You want out!” Shad bellowed. “What a you think I want to do? Cook myself in here like a potato in its jacket?”

Then, on hands and knees, he finally found a triangular opening in the backdrop and heaved it up, shouting: “Me first! Me first!” His burly, tousled head emerged just in time to catch a bucket of water flush in the face from that energetic self-appointed fireman Benny.

“Blaugh!” Shad roared, spitting water and blue words all covered with water, and by this time the man who had been having the heart attack had already had it and somehow lived through it, while the fellow who had laughed himself into a stroke was trying to explain to the rest of them that he thought the left side of him was paralyzed, but none of them could hear him because by now they all looked as if they had had strokes or fits or something.

The curtain, somehow, came down on the jousting scene between Robin Hood and Little John.

Benny departed for the night beside himself with joy. He had the comic hit of the century on his hands. All he needed was for Shad to show up every night, and twice on Saturday, and go through the same madcap performance he had just presented, and Benny would be able to retire within two years, buy himself a plantation in Virginia, plus a raft of slaves, and live like a Southern gentleman for the rest of his life.

Shad—needing a place to spend the night—had been strangely reticent about the proposal. He had given a non-committal grunt in answer to Benny’s urgent entreaties.

“You fellas always live like this?” Shad wanted to know, after everyone else had cleared out and he and Nat had the little theater to themselves. His question had an incredulous tone.

Nat grinned. “It’s never been quite as frantic as tonight. But this has been the way I’ve lived all my life. My parents were actors, and I was born backstage.” He paused, staring into the middle distance.

“My parents were both carried off by the pox in ’sixty-three. Benny and the rest of the troupe have taken care of me ever since.”

Shad looked at him soberly for a moment. Then he said: “Makes us alike in a way, Nat. I never even knew my folks. Senecas got ’em when I was a babe. Senecas brought me up, part way. I’m blood brother to the Laurel Ridgers; that’s a tribe down in Pennsylvany.”

Shad, Nat discovered, hadn’t been boasting when he’d said he was a friend of George Washington’s. Nat was interested; everyone had heard of the famous militia colonel. Everyone seemed to like him too: patriot, loyalist, even the English held him in great respect.

“Shucks yes,” Shad said. “Me’n’ Georgie started the French’n’ Injun War together, down in Jumonville’s Glen. Then we fought together at Fort Necessity a month later. And the next year we come back with Braddock——”

“You were at Braddock’s massacre, Shad?” Nat marveled.

The huge fellow nodded, his face grim.

“Yeah. Me’n’ Georgie—we took our lickin’ there.”

Nat could see that the old battle was still a sore spot with Shad, so he switched away from it. “What have you been doing in Boston?”

Shad became animated. “Well, I tolt the Committee I wanted to stick around till something busted open, and Sam Adams and Hancock and that Dr. Warren said they’d fix me up. So they put me to work under this here Revere fella. You know Paul? Well, he’s got a batch a fellas workin’ for him—agents, they’re called. And I’m one of ’em! We mosey around town and we listen and look, and what we hear’n’ see we tote back to Revere and he passes it on to Warren, who passes it on to Adams and Hancock.”

“I see,” Nat said. “Revere is a sort of clearing house for military information. But look, Shad, I’ve heard some pretty mean tales told about Adams and Hancock. What kind of men are they, really?”

Shad pawed at his beefy face. “What have you heard—that Hancock’s a smuggler?”

“Well, it’s true enough, isn’t it? He was convicted, and the court placed a one hundred thousand pound fine on him. And the Loyalists say that if he can’t overthrow the King’s government, he’ll be tossed into quod; that it’s a case of rebellion or prison for him.”

Shad nodded. “Yes, and I suppose you heard about Adams too, eh? How he was made tax collector of Boston, and got kicked out of his job because he couldn’t account for ten thousand pounds he’d supposedly collected?”

“Yes, I’ve heard.”

Shad shrugged. “Natty, when you’re my age you’ll understand that people ain’t never what they are believed to be, that the best of us make mistakes. Sure, Hancock was a smuggler. Just like half the folk along the Eastern coast. And why? ’Cause there ain’t no other way to beat the import and export taxes that fat old King is forever placin’ on us, that’s why. Free trade, that’s all we want! But that fatboy king won’t give it to us.

“And Adams? Well, in the last ten years Adams must have held twenty jobs; and he’s lost every one of ’em. All right, so the Loyalists call him a thief; but out of those twenty jobs what does he have for it? Nothing. He’s as broke as you or me. Where’s all the money he’s supposed to have stolt?” He hunched forward on his stool.

“I’ll tell you, Natty. I wouldn’t give a hoot in Hades if Hancock was the biggest smuggler and Adams the greatest thief in America! That ain’t what’s important about those men. The important thing is that they got the guts to speak their minds out when they see that something is wrong. And people listen to them! Because they got that certain something that draws folks to ’em like a magnet. Folks need a leader, Nat; they always have. Folks need somebody to stir ’em up. And that’s what Adams and Hancock are—rabble-rousers. And if they can talk peawits like you’n’ me into fightin’ for our independence, then I say let ’em go to it!”

Nat looked at his new friend speculatively.

“Shad, is that why you’re willing to fight for independence—because an Adams or a Hancock talked you into it?”

Shad pawed at his face and glanced at his sweaty reflection in the makeup mirror, almost with a look of embarrassment.

“Well, no, it ain’t. But then I ain’t like most folk. Most folk warn’t with me’n’ Georgie when we fought for our land agin the French’n’ Injuns. I got a stake in this here land, Natty. I lost friends because of it. Their blood is in it, like tap roots. Ain’t no European king gonna take that away from me!”

Nat looked at himself in the mirror, thinking: I wish I could have been there with him. I wish I’d had friends like that.

Nat had a cot in the dressing room, and Shad said that was all right: he’d sleep on the floor with a blanket, because, by grab, he’d slept on much worse in his time. So they blew out the fish-oil burning lamp and settled down for the night. But not for long.

About midnight they heard the alley door slam and then the tramp of boots coming backstage toward the dressing room. Nat sat up and struck a tinder and got one of the lamps going again.

Ralston Morbes, slim and elegant in tight-fitting black, stood in the doorway with his walking stick, surveying them with cold, hostile eyes. He was a weakly, handsome man with about as much warmth and friendliness as an iceberg. He liked to affect the airs of a romantic man of mystery.

“So,” he said to Nat acidly, “you finally found a way to accomplish your purpose, eh?”

“What are you talking about, Ral?”

“You know well what I’m talking about! I’ve just come from seeing that prize nitwit Benny at the inn. He says I’m through. He says this fat bumpkin here is replacing me. And he says I have you to thank for it, as the bumpkin is your friend.”

Shad sat up and blinked at Ralston like a sleepy baby. Then he rubbed his eyes and looked again. Ralston returned the look frigidly.

“Did he say fat bumpkin?” Shad asked Nat.

“Yes. Listen, Ral, what happened between you and Benny has nothing to do with me. I merely brought my friend here tonight and——”

“Save your lame excuses, Towne,” Ralston snapped. “I’m not in the slightest interested. I don’t need this tuppence job! I don’t need any of you. Pack of ungrateful rebels; I should have washed my hands of you long ago. I have my own friends!”

“Are you sure he said fat bumpkin?” Shad persisted.

“Yes,” Nat said distractedly. “Ral, if you’d——”

“That’s what I thought he said,” Shad muttered. “I just wanted to make sure, because it makes a difference.” He rubbed at his moist face and blew out his breath and hauled himself up from the floor.

Ralston struck a sophisticated pose, leaning negligently on his stick. He studied Shad with arctic distaste.

Shad hulked toward him. “You’re a mighty pretty man,” he commented. “But your mouth ain’t so pretty. Something ort a be done about it. You hadn’t ort a go about callin’ folks fat.”

Ralston raised his stick and jabbed Shad’s expansive middle with the end of it. “Stand your distance, my man. Or I’ll break this over your stupid thick head.”

Shad blinked at the stick planted in his navel.

“You say you want that stick broke, brother?” He removed the cane from Ralston’s hand as though he were taking it from a baby. Then, holding it in both hands, he snapped it in two like a matchstick—not over his knee: just between his hands, in midair. He tossed the pieces over his shoulders and started lumbering toward Ralston again like a huge, trained walking bear.

Ralston lost his poise. He fell back a step.

“Stand away! Keep away from me, you great sweaty beast!”

Shad reached out with his left, caught up some of the black finery covering Ralston’s chest, and yanked the elegant actor in close to him, seemingly all in one quick, effortless movement.

Nat left his cot. “Shad! Don’t hurt him.”

Shad looked back at him with a shocked expression.

“Hurt him? My goodness, Natty, I ain’t about to hurt the poor skinny fella. All I was fixin’ to do was reset the slant of his hat.”

He caught the brim of Ralston’s buckled hat in both hands and yanked straight down—Ralston’s head popping through the crown like a jack-in-a-box—saying: “There. Now that didn’t hurt him none, did it? Then I was planning on spinning him about like this——”

He struck Ralston’s right shoulder with his flat hand, and Ralston, as helpless as a top, spun into an abrupt about-face, and Shad caught him by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants, saying: “Then I was going to walk him backstage, somewhat like this——”

Nat, following, would have sworn that Ralston’s kicking feet never once touched the floor.

“—till I found one a them buckets Benny uses for fires,” Shad continued, stopping by a row of filled buckets and picking up one of them and upsetting it with an appalling splash of water over Ralston’s head.

“Then I was gonna turn him just so and aim him for the alley door and give him a little start on his way, like this——”

He planted a huge booted foot in Ralston’s backside and propelled the helpless, drenched, bucket-headed man toward the door. Ralston, all arms and legs and no visible head, collided against the closed door, the bucket flying off, and collapsed in a soggy, dizzy heap on the floor. Shad rubbed his hands together energetically.

“Now you see? That’s all I was gonna do. I wasn’t thinkin’ to hurt him for a minute!”

The bedraggled, outraged actor lurched to his feet, got the door partway open, and clung to it as though for support. His eyes were no longer cold. They had the glassy hot look of a starved tiger.

“You’ll pay!” he hissed. “Every one of you rebels will pay. And I’ll be there on the day of reckoning. Towne, you hear? I promise you—I’ll be there!”

He slammed the door. He was gone. Shad shook his burly head and sighed. “Fella like that’s just as fancy-lookin’ as sugar. But I bet he could be mighty mean with a knife—if your back was turned.”

Which reminded Nat of the dead man in the alley. They returned to the dressing room to study the powder horn. It was just an ordinary cow horn reconverted to hold powder. They emptied the powder out, and that didn’t tell them anything. Then Shad gave the horn a shake.

“Something still in there.” So they broke the horn open.

They found a small, tightly rolled piece of birchbark. Shad grunted and carefully unrolled the strip of bark. To Nat, the hieroglyphic-like inscription it bore meant less than Latin.

“Injun,” Shad muttered. “I can read Mingo like you’d read a tavern notice, but this ain’t Mingo.” Then, perusing the strip closely, he said “Hmm!” and “Huh!” and finally “Ha!”

“Look here, Natty. See that word? ‘Androscoggins.’ That’s an Abenaki word. Tell you what. We got a fella on the committee, Jessie Greene, who’s made a study of Injun lingo. He keeps a wholesale winery at the foot of Hancock’s Wharf, and we been meeting Revere there in secret lately. I could take it over to him and see what he thinks it is.”

Nat hesitated. “I promised that man I wouldn’t let anybody else have it.”

Shad nodded understandingly. “Sure. Well, I’ll just slip over there tomorrow morning and see the boys, tell ’em about it. You can’t tell: it might just be something important.”

Nat cut the greasy rawhide thong from the horn and attached it to the roll of birchbark, then looped it about his neck and shoved it inside his shirt.

Yes, he thought. Important enough that a man killed to get it, and a man died to keep it.