A Free State Read Online Free PDF Page A

antiquity, and terra-cotta busts of Shakespeare and Marlowe, yet upon entry one attended animal shows, witnessed acrobatics and buffoonery of every type. And, finally and triumphantly, the performances of the Virginia Harmonists.
    Mulligan and I selected the other members with an eye toward a balance of personalities that would provide variety and contrast. Powell was a simple fellow with a happy character; he had attended the university for one term and found himself unsuited for the academic life. I was perennially amused by his transformation into a tambourine-thumping whirligig onstage. Burke was our tragedian, master of monologues and tragic arias and hilarious anecdotes delivered with a doleful countenance. He set type for the Clipper in the small hours, after our show had finished for the night, and he was forever buttonholing me for advances on his weekly pay.I never learned how he spent the extra money. Eagan, our fiddler, was handsome, thin, aloof, and mean. Of the members, he was the one with whom I felt the least affinity. Mulligan had pressed to include him on the basis of his instrumental finesse, which was unarguable.
    Each had answered one of the advertisements we had placed, or had heard by word of mouth. Mulligan and I conferred on their respective musical and personal assets and deficits, and we agreed upon our final choices, but I handled all the details of salary, hiring, and conducting rehearsals to shape ourselves into a show troupe. All except Powell were older than myself, yet none seemed to bristle at my leadership, except for Eagan, who had an unerring nose for the exception to almost any judgment I would make. But generally, and certainly during our first two years, the troupe was harmonious in all ways.
    On a typical evening, we would arrive at the theater around six o’clock to start preparing for our seven-o’clock show. I would arrive first, light the dressing room lamps, make sure costumes were in order. One by one, the men would straggle in. As if we were all waking up slowly, there would be muttered greetings, a general air of preoccupation, perhaps a small detonation of jovial abuse now and again, as we began the evening’s transformation.
    â€œLong night, Burke?”
    â€œI fell asleep at the letter box and awoke with the letter ‘E’ embossed in multiple upon my cheek.”
    â€œKolb’s has added a bean pot at no charge starting at four in the afternoon.” This was a favorite tavern, just across from the theater.
    â€œSomething to soak up the brew.”
    â€œMulligan, is that a beard you’re raising or has your jaw grown mold?”
    Tuning his banjo, Mulligan impassively replied, “The greasepaint will cover it.”
    Eagan always entered looking the most dapper of us all and set purposefully to prepare himself for the evening, perhaps asking something on the order of, “Douglass, are we keeping ‘Boatman’ at the top of the second half? Have you determined?”
    Slowly our street clothes were supplanted by our costumes. We had made the transition from the harlequinade of the earlier performers to full evening dress, but each with some exaggerated comic element—an outsized collar, mismatched cummerbund trailing behind, trousers cut three inches short to reveal red stockings. As we donned the stage garb we slowly joined our stage selves, discussing some bit of stage business that needed tightening or slight variation, mentioning the previous night’s performance, sharing this or that story.
    But the application of the burnt cork effected the true transformation, as if a lid were being lifted from a sarcophagus and some slumbering spirit were raised from the underworld. Each of us seemed to contain some other being who was allowed to emerge only once the face had been blackened. We would regard one another as if encountering our true souls, kept under wraps during daylight hours.
    â€œ Good evening, Brudder Neckbones