“Did you hear about that one Jewish family? Every single person was killed,” says Anderson.
“Everyone but the mother,” Perry corrects him, and Jack thinks he might be sick.
“Can’t they be buried in the Hebrew Cemetery?” asks Burke.
Anderson gives him an icy stare. “Are you volunteering to sift through the remains and figure out who’s who?”
Jack cringes at the very idea, and when Twaits says, “Since when did anyone care what the Jews wanted?” he cringes again.
“Joseph Marx is on the monument committee. So, somebody cares, apparently.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” says Twaits, “but I fail to see how burying them in a burned-out theater is going to bring them closer to their God.”
West explains, “I think the idea is that, eventually, the ruins will come down, and a monument to the dead will go up in their place.”
Jack would hate to see West part with the property, but he likes the idea of building a monument that does not prioritize one man’s god over another’s.
“I see no advantage to selling,” Anderson says.
West bristles. “Besides retaining a shred of my dignity?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is it not dignified to want to make a living doing the one thing we’re good at?”
“I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t attempt to make a living,” says West. “Just that Richmond might not be the place to do so. At least for now.”
“Do you know what I would suggest?” asks Anderson. “Not letting the worst actor in the company be the one who gets to decide where we do and don’t perform.”
The next thing Jack knows, West has lunged at Anderson, and the two are rolling around on the floor like they’re a pair of wrestlers in the ring. All the men in the room are on their feet in a flash, and there are shouts from all sides, urging them to stop or maybe to keep going—it’s hard for Jack to tell. West is bigger and stronger than Anderson, but Anderson is quick and knows how to move. They roll this way and that, grabbing at each other’s hair and skin, their earlobes and their eyebrows—anything they can hold on to. At one point, they come so close to the hearth that Lydia screams for them to watch out or they will burn the tavern down, too.
All of a sudden there is a loud whistle, and Jack hears Ritchie’s voice above the din. “What the hell is the meaning of this?” he yells as he moves into the middle of the fray, then motions for Twaits to help him pull the two men apart. The pair does not seem inclined to separate, and Jack worries that Ritchie will be clobbered in the process of convincing them otherwise. The headline will write itself:EDITOR ATTACKED TRYING TO INVESTIGATE THEATER FIRE. It is all the troupe needs.
Finally, West and Anderson are in separate corners of the room, and everyone takes a deep breath. West’s mouth is a bloody mess, and when Ritchie releases Anderson, he sinks to the floor.
Ritchie casts his eyes about the room. “Would someone care to tell me what the hell this is about?”
No one says anything.
“Mr. West?”
West clears his throat, and for one blissful moment Jack feels certain he’s about to tell Ritchie everything. But, after a long pause, all he says is “It was nothing.”
Ritchie presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I am astounded by how quickly this company manages to forget that we are here because a substantial percentage of the city is dead.”
“We are extremely sympathetic,” says Anderson quietly.
“Then act like it.”
“What would you have us do?”
“My list is long, but why don’t you start by finding Green.”
GILBERT
Gilbert waits until Elliott andDella are halfway up the hill before he turns to Cecily. “You got to get out of here now,” he whispers, “while everybody’s looking the other way.”
“But what about Mama?” Cecily says. “You heard what Elliott said.”
“Your mama won’t talk.”
