June answered, “Yes, several times I did.”
“All right, and what is it?”
“I just was pointing out how timely your drum practice was.”
Ida looked to Bob with a weary face. She said, “Did we ruin your powwow, or what’s the problem?”
“I don’t believe you helped, I’ll say that much.” June paused. “Do you wish to know how my media-seeking campaign has gone?”
“All right.”
“It went well, in spite of Bob’s drumming. Not that it was Bob’s fault. Bob? It’s not your fault. It’s Ida’s fault.”
“Okay,” called Bob.
A silence, then June said, “I believe I’ll print off those handbills now.”
“Yes, well, thank you for your numerous updates.” Ida shook her head and refocused her attentions on the audition. “What I’m after,” she told Bob, “is ten seconds of clean playing in a middle register. Take two breaths, deep ones, and try again.” Bob breathed and breathed and gave Ida twenty seconds of straight, solid playing. She raised her hand, and Bob stopped. “That’s very good,” she said. “Do you think you could do it with an audience present? You will be offstage, in the wings, but an audience is very there, you know, and so can cause inhibition. I suspect our numbers will not be high, but often the small audience is the more pronounced, the more there. This tension is the very thing lacking in cinema, you see, and this is the reason I detest the medium with such exuberance, with such, such—”
From the next room there came two unique sounds, one after the other: the first was a clanking and grinding, metal working against metal; next was the noise of the dogs, whom Bob had not heard bark before but who were now both barking loudly and dedicatedly, this in reply to the clanking and grinding. Ida and Bob exited the bathroom to find June working a hand crank on a small printing machine set up atop a dresser, and blue handbills seesawed through the air while the dogs jumped and barked and behaved generally in high emotion while the pages drifted down upon them and their pointy black witch hats. Over the noises of the printing machine’s grindings and the barking of the dogs, June called out to Bob, “It’s the one thing that makes them passionate beyond reason.” He picked up a handbill from the floor:
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT!
The TRIUMPHANT RETURN of BELOVED VETERANS of the STAGE
JUNE & IDA and their TRAINED CANINES, PAL & BUDDY
shall ENTERTAIN w/ UNCANNY VERVE and UNLIKELY ACCURACY A DISSECTION of our COMPLICATED POSITION
JUNE & IDA TRANSLATE this PRECARIOUS MOMENT w/ LEVITY, BREVITY, GRAVITY, and ETCETERA!
Ida took the handbill from Bob and read it. “It has a sly something,” she admitted, and June continued working the hand crank and the handbills continued their snowing down and the dogs continued to leap about and shout, and a large faux cauldron was leaking the faux smoke of dry ice which moved in a lateral stream across the room and toward the open window. Along the coastal road, Bob noticed, there was a convoy of National Guard vehicles moving south.
BOB WAS GIVEN HIS DAILY DOLLAR AND THE HANDBILLS; HE WAS instructed to move about the town and pass these to whomever he might and to generally, so much as he was able within what Ida called the limitations of his secluded personality, induce the public to attend the coming performance. He was asked to bring the dogs, and to undress and tidy them before leaving; he proposed that their outfits could not but pique the public’s interest, which Ida and June did recognize as true and wise, and so Buddy and Pal remained in costume for the length of their outing. When Bob stepped onto the porch of the hotel he saw a second convoy passing on the highway, and in the same southerly direction as the first; each of the covered trucks was tightly packed with glum-faced National Guardsmen, rifles sticking up between their legs. A group of fifty citizens was gathered along the side of the highway, watching and waving at the caravan.
The sheriff stood beside his patrol car, which was parked out front of the market across the road from the hotel. After the caravan passed, the sheriff blew his horn and spoke into a PA mic run through a speaker atop his vehicle: “I’d like a word, please,” he said, and the men and women walked all together to stand before him. Bob shuffled himself into the crowd, following along with the rest. There was a lot of chatter coming up, and the sheriff took off his hat and waved it above his head. When the crowd quieted, the sheriff put his hat back on and spoke into the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, good day, hello. As you’ve probably figured out for yourselves, we’ve got a situation on the stovetop in Bay City, and you’re going to want to avoid that location for however long it takes for things to cool off down there. I don’t know how long that’ll be, but tonight’s looking iffy, and you’d do well to sit tight and await, as they say, further instruction. I don’t believe there’s very many among us interested in taking part in any disturbances; what I’m thinking of, what I’m hoping to avoid — what I’m asking of you, neighbors, is that you curtail any impulse to rubberneck or lookie-loo. You think you could do that for me?”
A voice called out: “But what’s it all about, Sheriff?”
The sheriff said, “Few different things that’ve been going on for some time. There’s two different lumber camps set up in the hills above Bay City, couple hundred men to a camp, and they’re pretty much on top of one another out there, and with no law around to keep them on the right side of mischief. Bay City has very little to offer on the order of nightlife, nowhere for the boys to blow off steam, and they’ve been getting a little weird out there. Started out they were playing practical jokes, right? One camp against another, but nothing too terrible. Then, over the months, the jokes’ve become less funny, and as you may’ve heard there was an incident yesterday in one of the camps involving some heavy machinery that did look more than a little like sabotage, and which did result in one fatality, and another man got his back broken. Both of these fellows have or had wives and children, and the entire affair is sitting poorly with certain of the lumbermen. Also it happens that there’s an ongoing scuffle about lumber contracts and title disputes, namely, who gets to chop down all those giant firs behind the Gustafson property. This is more to do with the higher-ups than the men on the ground but the negotiations have been pretty mean I’m told, and that type of venom has a way of trickling down, right? Right. Tonight’s the night I figure it’s all going to come to a head one way or the other. Any rate. The intelligence we’ve got says they’re planning a showdown in the center of town.”
Another voice: “Man on the radio said it was going to be a riot, Sheriff.”
The sheriff said, “Yeah, I heard that too. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes true. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t. They got eight or nine truckloads of soldiers polishing up their rifles in Bay City as we speak. If those lumber boys want trouble, it will be made available to them.”