Little Did I Know: A Novel (43 page)

My heart stopped. Without opening the envelope, I knew it was bad news, and that whatever was written inside was his map to a rocky road.

Dear Mr. August:

It has come to my attention that members of your acting troupe have been involved in illegal and unacceptable behavior. These actions violate the law as well as breach the moral clauses that are contained in and are an essential element of your lease on the Priscilla Beach Theatre as countersigned by The Barrows Foundation.

Therefore, in my position as Chairman and as a Director of the Board of the foundation I inform you of the following:

You and your employee Alan S. Kopit will be charged with aggravated assault and attempted manslaughter on the person of Mr. Johnny Colon, who is an employee of my foundation.

Your employee Ms. Ellie Foster will be charged with soliciting and prostitution in Plymouth County.

Due to my knowledge of these pending allegations, I refer you to Paragraph 8B in the lease referenced above. Once I commence proceedings, these charges will put you in default of your lease and you will have forty-eight hours to vacate the premises or face additional civil and criminal action.

I urge you, in the interest of the storied history of the Priscilla Beach Theatre as well as to preserve your own reputation and those of your coworkers that you vacate as is instructed in the agreement.

                             Regretfully,

                             Dr. Anderson Barrows

I read the letter twice to be sure it was real. Afterward, I jammed the demented missive into the envelope and stuck it in my pocket. My brain was racing at breakneck speed and my heart beat through my chest. My face was hot and my breathing spotty.

I ran to the Mustang, intending on paying a visit to Barrows despite its being three in the morning. Veronica shouted to me when she saw me. I turned toward her and she did not have to ask if something was wrong.

“Where are you going? What’s happened?” she implored while ineffectually grabbing my shirt in an attempt to calm the beast.

“That fuck,” I shouted at her as if she had written the note. “That sick fuck. Here, read this.”

Veronica needed only to see the first lines and the signature to know that Barrows was seeking the long-promised revenge he had proffered from a hotel bed years ago. I was behind the wheel now and all that stopped me from heading to the Barrows mansion was Veronica holding the door, knowing that if she let me go, our lives would never be the same.

“Stay here with me,” she pleaded. “Nothing good can happen if you go to see him now. It’s what he wants. You’ll end up with Eddie!”

I pushed her away with all my might. She lost her balance and fell to the ground. I should have stopped there and helped her to her feet, but rage was my master.

She pleaded yet again. “Sam, he’s old. He’ll be over soon. Please don’t go there. Please stay with me!” she screamed as if keening. “This will destroy us . . .”

I didn’t hear the rest of what she shouted. I was driving toward Route 3 at close to a hundred miles an hour. The deep, jagged cliffs to my right invited a drop of hundreds of feet to the ocean below. They were shrouded in fog, and if I mishandled a curve on this country highway, I would find my way to hell.

I
drove the Mustang straight through the security gate of the Barrows compound. I grazed the gatehouse itself, leaving behind the littered debris of the silly white booth meant to keep the estate grounds safe. For the first time there were actually guards at the gate, perhaps due to the late hour, but more likely because Barrows expected a guest tonight in fact looking forward to a visitor. The heavy-set guards looked confused as I raced toward the great house like I was on the Bonneville Salt Flats.

I reached the house and jumped from the car before it reached a full stop. Within seconds I was pounding on the front door. Lights switched on to follow. Instantly the grounds were awash in light from the hundreds of windows now alive and wrestled from slumber. Barrows answered the door, dressed in a silk robe, perhaps the one he wore when he used Veronica years ago. I pushed my way in.

“It’s late, young man,” he said, eerily calm.

“Late?” I shouted. “It’s late for you, you sick fuck. What are going to do, call the cops? Try to hurt me? Well, bring it on.”

“Perhaps both,” he replied, still calm.

Suddenly I realized his demeanor was too practiced. I heard Veronica saying, “Nothing good can happen if you go to see him now.” I shut off my ranting as quickly as an angry gust of wind extinguishes a flame. I took a deep breath. I was a fighter who, although wounded, still had many punches to throw.

We stood face to face. The massive living room was silent but for the ticking of the grandfather clock and the crashing of the waves hundreds of feet below. The huge windows looked out into darkness, acting as mirrors in a spook house. There were six of him and six of me in this face-off.

Again he referenced my youth and suggested that a more wizened man would not have allowed these problems to get the better of him.

“My youth is not the problem here, doctor. It is your envy of youth that will bring you down. You think this letter scares me one bit? Trumped-up, bogus accusations manufactured by or paid for by you, a bitter old man who scars his family’s legacy and the very greatness of our nation with your aborted dalliances and flights of perverted fiction. You don’t have the courage to step out into the light. You’re a sniper who hides in the shadows and hopes to hit his mark. What drives you to do such things? You’re a predator who looks to inflict pain on strangers simply because their lives are the future and yours is seen through a splintered rearview mirror.”

Barrows appeared to be listening. He was correct in his assessment of youth. My naivete was my Achilles heel. I believed in doing the right thing, but in a street fight there are no rules.

“I didn’t like you the first day we met,” he said darkly. “And I told you so. You weren’t ready to carry the burden of leadership or to understand that passion and charm and biceps wouldn’t suffice. You didn’t listen. Now you call me names and throw around recriminations. What are you but an insubordinate neophyte?”

“Don’t misjudge what you read in my eyes, old man. Disdain is a great motivator. So is revenge. I came to Plymouth to reawaken the ghosts in your theater, to make—”

“I know!” he shouted. “To have it sing again. To tell a joke, to make a difference. You make me sick with your precocious rhetoric. You sound like a prissy faggot.”

“What are you going to do to me, Barrows? Break my heart by telling me you fucked my girlfriend when she was seventeen? Tell the world that your strong-arm fucker Colon was assaulted by me and the five-foot-six Alan Kopit? You have played emperor for too long. Your ‘subjects’ are weary of your antics and ready to pistol-whip you for pleasure. You should be using your gifts and your prestige to do good to carry on the Barrows name that was cherished for three hundred years. Instead, you look like the heavy from some forties noir B movie. The truth about you will be revealed, and all your evil pettiness will cascade over this town. Your scandal will destroy you. I’ll fight you with all the power of my youth. Your obituary will end up next to the want ads. The next day, they’ll wrap fish with it, and the day after that, it will be garbage.”

Suddenly, a siren sounded outside the open door and a swirling neonblue police light painted the walls, flashing color and consequence throughout the giant room. The two security guards I had nearly run down just minutes ago arrived and unceremoniously began to pull me from the house. The squad car was at the ready waiting just outside the front door. I had to make Barrows listen or all would be lost and the possibility of goodness destroyed. I wrestled myself away from the guards and ran to the far side of the room.

“Dr. Barrows, please listen to me!”

“I have been, August, and you make me ill. Your disrespect, your threats. You are merely an unhappy, petulant boy talking as if you could make me fear you. Ha!”

“I’m sorry, sir, truly sorry. But you must hear me. Just months ago when I came to your home I said you didn’t know me, who I was and how hard I would work. That I would restore the glory of your building if you just let me. And I have, doctor. I have. PBT sings again and you can hear it loud and long as it ascends into the night sky to join the stars and the moon and makes the constellations grin. Every night the applause fills the air and people go home with a smile in their heart.

“And, sir, you haven’t seen it, you haven’t been by to see it’s magic. Aren’t we meant to do
something
with our lives, to touch people, to make the difficult day seem less long and allow it to end with the hope that tomorrow will be a winner. I don’t know why, but there’s more to PBT than just the shows we are putting on, people come for more than the singing and dancing. They’re coming from all over because we are a community and they want to be part of it. Isn’t that what you want?

“Barrows is Plymouth and Plymouth has something in PBT that makes its people happier. The families who frequent your stores and whose children attend your schools and work each day here in this town so it is a place to be proud of, they need to be embraced by you, doctor. They are your people and you must allow them to soar. Don’t look to close the theater down. Please. But if you do, before you do, come see what we have done.

“Not only have the ghosts been reawakened, but in doing so the town has a bounce in its step. I see it every night. The audiences stay long after the curtain has fallen and they have their kids meet the players, and they take pictures and ask for autographs, and it makes them joyful. It simply makes them happy.

“I’m not asking this for me. I’ve learned most of what I need to know about myself this summer. And I need to learn a great deal more. I was wrong to shout at you and act the way I did. But it comes from a deep-rooted passion for what I think is good and necessary. I do respect you, Dr. Barrows, and all you’ve accomplished. You said to me that young people have a sense of entitlement that makes you wonder where our youth is headed.

“But if you stop us then what can we accomplish? You said that we all want to go to heaven but none of us wants to die. That is not true, sir. It is not true. The fifty young people I’ve brought here and who work your building will go to heaven, for all good reasons. Plymouth is the ocean and the sunsets and history and you. It is also PBT.”

All he said was, “Good night, Mr. August.” I continued my plea.

“Dr. Barrows, you were young once and I’m sure you had a dream, something that made you get up each morning and attack your days. It wasn’t about money, you had that. I imagine it was about leaving your fingerprint on this planet. That’s why your name adorns the buildings that are the lifeblood of Plymouth. You would have fought for that dream just as I’m doing now. Youth is many things, one of which is that it makes memories to last a lifetime. Please remember when you were my age and how every breath was life and death. If you do, you’ll join our community and not look to shut it all down. But to be part of it and that, sir, is winning.”

“Go home and get some rest, Sam. I am sure you’ll need it,” was all he had to say.

Then the guards pushed me outside and into the back seat of the police car. The siren wailed once, and the sedan spit gravel and headed toward the front gates.

I thought again of Veronica’s sobbing words of warning, and regretted with all my heart that she had turned out to be right.

“So, Sammy, are you hungry?” the driver asked. I leaned forward and saw that it was Officer Tommy at the helm of the squad car. To his right was a familiar and happy face giggling and pulling on a Lucky Strike.

“It’s late, but the doughnut shop is still open. What will it be, glazed or chocolate sprinkles?” JB giggled.

W
e sat on the beach and watched the sun make its appearance. I thought it ironic how the night sky changed into dawn, surprising you even as you watched it all happen. It made me think of the past hours. One moment I was holding my girlfriend close keeping her safe, the next I was a reckless young fool who had put all I had worked for and all those I loved in jeopardy. Whatever drove Barrows, he had indeed bested me. The impatience of my youth and need for a quick resolve; a knockout punch had left me vulnerable to his sage and calculated need to prove that his age and wisdom were the stronger of the two of us. I had never imagined him a foe, but as the realization came into focus I regretted that he was such a formidable one.

Officer Tommy, JB, and I had headed straight for the beach. Veronica was there waiting, less emotional than when I had left her, yet still shaken and looking wan. We sat watching the tide come in and listened to the calming sound of the waves beating the sand, all rhythmic and in time as if conducted by Poseidon himself.

We had eaten the doughnuts, some sprinkled some glazed. JB smoked and Veronica leaned against me wearing an old woolen blanket to shield her from the predawn chill. I went through what had happened several times, my story evolving from brazen anecdote to one of budding concern; it now found its place as a series of scenarios all ending badly.