“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