“He’s your father.” That was her explanation for so many things. “You ever listen to that goddamn thing? ‘ Tempus Fugit!’ He can tempus my fugit.” “All right, darling, lower your voice.” Mummie knew that Marjie Fletcher was seated nearby, and Daddy, of course, knew it, too. sonofabitch thinks he can pay my son to renounce his heritage!” (Mummie referred to this as “addressing the jury,” though never to Daddy’s face.) I was trying to go over my lines, but I was distracted by Daddy as he yelled at my mother about Mr. I was costumed in Rit-dyed green tights and one of Daddy’s old white shirts, cinched at the waist with my webbed Boy Scout belt. I wondered if she’d be upset, but she smiled at me pleasantly as I waited by the playhouse for my entrance. His wife, Marjie (whose name did sound a little common once I’d thought about it), arrived on her own with a tray of Rice Krispies treats. Fletcher didn’t come to Jack and the Beanstalk when it opened the next day. The nail-polish manifesto stayed intact, and Mr. Fletcher’s offer-his “five-buck bribe,” as Daddy described it to Mummie-was never discussed again. Some Yankees were fine, he said-the genteel ones from New England-but common was just plain common. They’re just common.”Ĭommon was worse than Yankee in Daddy’s book. “Hell, no.” Daddy thrust a Triscuit into his mouth and chewed ferociously. I hesitated a moment before asking: “Are they Yankees or something?” “How did he even know about the goddamn thing?”
Even when he wasn’t mad at you, he sounded like he might be. Daddy’s scattershot anger could be unnerving. “Fred Fletcher said that? That he would pay you?” I shrugged. When he heard my story, his face balled up like a big pink fist. He was sitting on a stool at the counter between our kitchen and family room, where, almost every night, he sipped bourbon on the rocks and scarfed Triscuits and cheese from a wooden salad bowl. The next day, though, Freddy showed up with a strange proposal. We played our beanstalk scene for him, the one where I climb a bamboo pole to the roof of the playhouse, and he seemed impressed. He was bald and smoked cigars and reminded me of Dennis the Menace’s next-door neighbor in the Sunday funnies. Fletcher came by our rehearsals after his morning at the station. Freddy and I cranked out flyers by the dozens and got giggly drunk on the sweet purple fumes as we passed them out door-to-door on Gloucester Road. His father was in show business-an announcer down at WRAL Radio-so, amazingly, the Fletchers had their own mimeograph machine at home. Freddy couldn’t act worth a damn, but he offered other advantages. I played Jack, and Freddy played the bean seller and the Giant. My brother and sister were too young for the theater, so my costar was Freddy Fletcher from down the street. I already knew this was not especially suited to a production of Jack and the Beanstalk, but I was determined to make the best of what I’d been given. Above the porch, above everything, Daddy had emblazoned a message with my mother’s red nail polish: SAVE YOUR CONFEDERATE MONEY! THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN. For me, it was also a playhouse in the theatrical sense, since there was a porch along one edge that worked wonderfully as a stage. With the leftover lumber my father built a playhouse in the backyard that was big enough to hold all three of us kids. When I was six, we moved across town to a nicer neighborhood called Budleigh, where our new L-shaped ranch house aspired to colonial charm with dark-green shutters and a superfluous cupola like one you might find on a Howard Johnson’s.