Copyright

  www.darkprintspress.com.au

  Dark Prints Press Novella Series presents...

  Vaudeville

  Copyright © 2012 Greg Chapman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Dark Prints Press Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Vaudeville – Greg Chapman

  ePub ISBN: 9780987197641

  For Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry (CiP), please refer to the National Library of Australia.

  To Anthony Bowman, a friend taken too soon.

  ~ One ~

  One year had passed since Anthony Moore’s father was found hanging from an oak tree in Keaton Woods.

  Anthony lost not only a father, but a piece of his soul. The entire town of Keaton became a void, its citizens orbiting aimlessly around a black hole that was born screaming from that one tree. Anthony understood why the people of Keaton felt his father’s death as profoundly as he did; Dominic Moore was a decent man, pleasant, kind, always willing to offer help to anyone who needed it.

  Dominic was the sole breadwinner in the Moore family, working at the steel mill in the outskirts of town. He worked hard and every paycheck went back into the mortgage and onto the dinner table.

  Anthony remembered the time his father took him to the steel mill; he was about eight years old. It was loud, deafeningly loud. The smell of engine grease was thick and huge machines sliced through sheets of steel like they were butter. Anthony remembered the smiles on the faces of the men his father worked with; they were all like his father – strong, dependable and a little bit mischievous. That day was the greatest day of Anthony’s life and he would never forget it. By showing Anthony how to crush cans and bend steel with the push of a button, Dominic forged a kinship with his son that could never be broken – even in death.

  Yet it was that same day, four years on, when the bond was severed; when Anthony experienced the worst day of his life.

  He was at school, learning about the forefathers, when Sheriff Dawson came a calling. At first, Anthony’s classmates thought he was in trouble, that he’d stolen something from the general store or thrown a rock at a window. The Sheriff stood in the doorway to the classroom, ten gallon hat in his hand, pale-faced. Never had the children dreamed of the horrible tragedy he was about to tell.

  ‘It’s yer daddy,’ the Sheriff told the boy in the schoolyard.

  Those three words; they carried the same weight as the three other words he’d often heard his mom and dad say to each other.

  Flash-forward one year where Anthony sat in his bedroom, staring at the only photograph he had of the two of them together. Their smiles could have lit up the world. Again, the boy’s thoughts were wrenched back to the remainder of the Sheriff’s painful monologue:

  ‘Yer daddy,’ he muttered. ‘He’s at the hospital, son.’

  Anthony had asked if his father was okay; if there had been an accident at the mill.

  ‘No, son – he wasn’t at the mill. He’d gone out into the woods.’

  This didn’t make sense to Anthony and he asked why.

  ‘No one really knows why, son,’ the Sheriff said. ‘They found him in the woods and he was hurt... real bad.’

  Anthony asked for his mother, wondering why she wasn’t at the school to tell him herself.

  ‘Yer momma’s with yer daddy. She asked me to come get ya.’

  Anthony noticed tears in the Sheriff’s grey eyes. Since when did a Sheriff cry?

  ‘Sorry, son... it’s just such a shock. Yer daddy... was a damn fine man.’

  Was?

  ‘You need to come with me now, Anthony,’ the Sheriff said, holding out his hand. ‘Yer momma needs you.’

  So much had changed since that day, but his father was still dead. His mother didn’t need her son anymore. The void – the all-swallowing loss – had claimed his childhood, too. Anthony reached into an old shoebox and retrieved a second photograph. It was the same image, but it hadn’t been cropped. In it were Anthony and his father, smiling, embraced in a bear hug against a wheat field bathed in sunshine. To their left, his mother, Madeline, glowing and raven-haired, shared in the embrace. Her smile could have lit up the entire universe.

  Madeline Moore hadn’t smiled once in a whole year.

  ‘Anthony?’

  The boy quickly slipped the photographs back into the shoebox and scampered over to his wardrobe. He stretched up on his tiptoes to place the box on the top shelf and covered it under a blanket.

  ‘Anthony!’

  He ran to his bedroom door and closed it behind him.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m here, momma!’

  ‘Get down here!’

  Madeline’s sweet voice died not long ago, replaced by a grating resentment towards life; a voice torn apart by the bitter taste of prolonged grief. Anthony ran down the stairs to the kitchen where he found his mother seated at the dinner table, glass in her right hand. Anthony could smell the contents of the glass from where he stood.

  ‘Where have you been, boy?’ she said, looking at him through threads of her tainted-grey hair. The skin around her eyes was swollen.

  ‘In my room, momma,’ Anthony said.

  ‘In my room.’ A slight grimace passed Madeline’s lips before she parted them to take in more of that foul liquid. When she’d swallowed, she said, ‘You spend too much time in your room.’

  ‘Yes, momma.’

  Madeline put the glass down, the chink of its contact with the table echoing in the silence.

  ‘I need you to go the store,’ she said. ‘We need bread and milk, baloney and eggs for dinner.’

  ‘Baloney? Again?’ Anthony squirmed. He instantly knew he’d made a mistake.

  ‘Do you want to cook now?’ Madeline’s eyes suddenly narrowed, spiteful. ‘Do you want to take over the running of this household? You’ll have to become a man before that happens! Walk a mile in your father’s –’

  She cut the tirade short, turning her gaze to the banister in the living room – to the silver urn that rested there – and back to the vacant glass. She stood up from the chair; Anthony saw she was still wearing her dressing gown.

  ‘You get down to that store and you get what we need.’ She tossed a twenty dollar bill on the table. ‘And you bring me back the change.’

  ‘Yes, momma.’

  Like a hare fleeing the crosshairs, Anthony grabbed the money and ran for fresh air, for salvation in the sunshine.

  *

  Madeline emptied the glass and scanned the kitchen for the bottle. She had to numb the pain and quiet the voice in her head; the voice that had called to her each and every day.

  She stood and turned to the kitchen cupboard, remembering she always kept a spare bottle on the top shelf. She pushed aside the plain flour and pasta and glimpsed the sheen of dulled glass at the back, her fingertips meeting its cold touch.

  You need to stop.

  She winced as the voice bled into her mind. It’s just your conscience – has to be, she told herself. She pulled the bottle from its resting place and unscrewed the lid in desperation. Please, God, let me wash it all away.

  Is this how you cope now, by drowning your sorrow?

  She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed the liquor in one gulp, like a child forced to take medicine. In a few minutes the voice would begin to fade, the vodka eroding her pain like a wave to a cliff face.

  You need to listen.

  Am I going insane? Is that why I yell at Anthony all the time and scold him for the slightest thing? She poured another glass, turned back to the dinner table and slumped into the chair. The morning sun was glinting off its surface, almost as if it was mocking her.

  She had to stay mad at Anthony; it was for his own good. He needed to grow up and take charge because deep down she wasn’t sure she had the strength to go on. Her gut twisted with failure and it rose to contort her face with tears. She didn’t want to yell at Anthony, but she didn’t know how else to talk to him. She didn’t want to drink, but she didn’t know how to stop the voice. Mother and son would just have to stay apart if they were to survive.

  The tears pulled her down and she dropped her head into her arms, letting the tremor of mourning take her. She cried for her son, herself, and especially her husband, because deep down, she knew they were all dead and gone without him.

  ~ Two ~

  Keaton’s town centre was only four blocks from Anthony’s home. Nine hundred and ninety people lived in Keaton and everyone knew everyone; literally one big happy family. Keaton was the perfect nesting ground: lush and green in spring, apple blossoms floating; a wonderland of ice and snow in winter; blazing hot in summer; fall a pastiche of golden corn fields and hills cast in bronze. It was perfection, simultaneously wild and tamed; a balance of fair and harsh that the people respected and lived by.

  And even when Keaton’s children died, the landscape went on.

 
Keaton had land for agriculture and land for industry. The steel mill was the major economy, employing about two hundred and fifty people. The remainder tilled the fields, growing corn, wheat, and apples for the town with plenty left over for distribution interstate. The manufactured steel was exported across the globe and the mill’s one claim to fame was that some of its steel had been used to rebuild bridges ravaged by war in the Middle East.

  On this day Anthony went into town, a Sunday, Victory Street was particularly busy, with people at the hardware store, the bakery and the deli. Anthony smiled at old Mr and Mrs Reynolds as they came out of the bank; Anthony used to swim in the stream at the back of their acreage. He saw people gossiping outside the post office and a dog sitting and panting in the back of pickup truck, waiting for its master to return. To an outsider, everything would have looked just fine in Keaton.

  Anthony was making a path for the general store, admiring all these sights, when he heard a voice call from the road:

  ‘Well, hey there, Anthony.’

  The boy turned and saw Sheriff Dawson at the wheel of his police cruiser, smiling at him from behind a pair of aviator-style sunglasses.

  ‘Hi Sheriff,’ Anthony said as he approached the cruiser. Deputy Thomas Burke was in the passenger seat.

  ‘Hey, Anthony,’ the Deputy said, with a slight nod.

  ‘Hello, Mr Burke.’

  ‘What you doin’ today?’ the Sheriff asked.

  ‘I’m running some errands for momma.’

  The Sheriff frowned. ‘How is yer momma these days?’

  Anthony paused and glanced at the sidewalk. ‘She’s okay.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m okay, Sheriff.’

  Even with the sunglasses, Anthony knew the Sheriff was looking right through his lie. The Sheriff reached out his broad right hand to scratch at the boy’s hair.

  ‘Well, you get on now, you little scamp – yer momma will be wondering where you got to.’

  The cruiser drove away and Anthony hoped he was convincing enough not to warrant a visit from the Sheriff at home – his momma wouldn’t appreciate that one bit. Anthony went into the general store and smiled at the dentist, Mr Ogilvy, Barbara Bentley the librarian, and the Cole family who were all crowded around the pastry counter choosing a birthday cake. He went straight to the main counter and found Mrs Davis, the co-owner, smiling down at him, her jowly face so welcoming.

  ‘Why, it’s Anthony Moore,’ she said. ‘It’s so good to see you.’

  Anthony blushed. He fished the twenty dollars from his pants pocket and placed it on the counter. ‘Hello, Mrs Davis. I’d like to buy some milk and bread and baloney and a dozen eggs please.’

  Mrs Davis nodded and put down the copy of Reader’s Digest she’d been engrossed in. ‘Okay, then. Will that be all you need?’

  ‘Mm-hmm.’

  As Mrs Davis walked off to collect the groceries, Anthony made a cursory glance around the store. All eyes were upon him. He only knew them all by name, but they could have known him inside out – they had seen into his soul. Yet their gazes were not judgemental, just mournful. He’d love to see them all smile again; even Mrs Davis’s smile seemed... forced. If only they could be happy, then maybe he could finally let go.

  On the walls were old photos of the store being built, a newspaper clipping of Mr and Mrs Davis celebrating their forty-fifth wedding anniversary, and a giant-sized map of Keaton and its surrounds, complete with a cartoon of the elusive and apparently mystical catfish of Grantham Lake. But there was one item that always piqued Anthony’s interest – a small and yellowed photograph that depicted a group of Civil War soldiers camping beside a vast woodland, presumably Keaton Woods. The straight-faced soldiers were interesting enough, but it was the object in the distance behind them that really fascinated Anthony – a large wooden caravan with the words All-American Travelling Troubadours painted on the side.

  As he gazed at it, Mr Davis finished up a sale and approached the boy.

  ‘How’s your mom doing? I haven’t spoken to her in many a while now.’

  The boy sighed; would telling him the truth make everyone stop asking? No, he had to make them smile.

  ‘She’s good,’ he said.

  ‘Aw, that’s good to hear,’ the old man chuckled lightly. ‘You looking at my photos, are you?’

  ‘I like the one with the soldiers,’ Anthony said.

  ‘Interesting isn’t it? There were many Confederate soldiers here during the Civil War. They were planning on making Keaton a fort town, did you know that? But then all of sudden the war was over.’

  Anthony pointed at the caravan. ‘Do you know anything about that?’

  Mr Davis picked up the photo frame and scrutinised it over his half-moon glasses. ‘Gee, I don’t know. Looks like a caravan that performers used.’

  ‘Performers – like circus performers?’

  ‘Or actors and the like. They were pretty popular in the 1800’s.’

  ‘Wow,’ Anthony said.

  Mrs Davis appeared then, a large brown paper bag in her arms.

  ‘Here you go, Anthony, all sorted.’

  Mr Davis put the photograph back in its place and checked the items. ‘Anthony was just telling me his mom’s doing well.’

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ Mrs Davis said. ‘You tell her Hi from us.’

  Mr Davis gave Anthony the bag and the change. ‘Now you just wait a minute there.’ The old man reached around the counter and plucked a Wagon Wheel biscuit off the shelf. He placed it reverently inside the grocery bag and gave the boy a wink. ‘On the house,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely, Donald,’ his wife said.

  ‘Thanks, Mr Davis,’ Anthony said.

  ‘My pleasure, son. Now, you get on home, you hear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Anthony was grateful for the Davis’s kindness and smiles, but deep down he knew they were smiles of sympathy. Didn’t they know he was smarter than that? He was almost fourteen – not a little boy anymore. They didn’t have to lie to him.

  He was so deep in thought, his eyes gazing wantonly at the Wagon Wheel inside the grocery bag, that he never saw the figure walking towards him. A collision was unavoidable. Thankfully, the man caught the paper bag before it hit the pavement. The man, all dressed in black, seemed to bleed into the shadows of the day. Anthony had to look twice before he realised it was Reverend Harris.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry Anthony – I didn’t see you there,’ he said.

  Anthony took the shopping bag back like it was a newborn baby.

  ‘Well, it’s certainly been a long time since I’ve seen you, Anthony Moore,’ the Reverend said. Well, not since...’ He cleared his throat. ‘How are you, son?’

  ‘I’m okay – and momma’s okay, too,’ Anthony said with a hint of annoyance.

  ‘That’s good, that’s good.’ The Reverend adjusted his collar. ‘We haven’t seen you and your mother at church for a while.’

  ‘No, Reverend.’

  ‘We’d love to see you – perhaps this Sunday?’

  ‘I’d have to talk to momma,’ Anthony said, looking to get past the Reverend.

  ‘Do you think I should come and visit – just to say hello?’

  Anthony shrugged and saw a look of desperation in the Reverend’s eyes; was he looking for salvation too?

  ‘Could you make her laugh?’ the boy asked.

  The Reverend chuckled nervously. ‘Laugh? What do you mean?

  ‘She hasn’t laughed in a long time; hasn’t even smiled.’ He stared at the pavement again. ‘I don’t think God’s word can help her anymore, not unless there’s a joke in the Bible?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ the Reverend said, looking like the boy had slapped him across the face.

  Anthony strode away, crossing the road, his arms tight on the bag of groceries. ‘Sorry, Reverend, but I have to get home.’

  ~ Three ~

  The only thing that tormented Anthony about his father’s death was the one lingering question: why did he take his own life and leave his family behind?