Green’s chin starts to shake, and the next thing Jack knows, he’s got his head down on the bar and is sobbing uncontrollably.
Jack’s seen Green cry plenty—when the role calls for it, any of the actors can summon tears—but he’s never seen him like this. Tentatively, he extends a hand and pats Green’s heaving back. “You’re not a fool.”
At that, Green’s head lurches up, and he stares at Jack through bleary eyes. “Am I not?”
Jack doesn’t know what to say. At the theater, Green has always come off as a man who knows what he wants and how to get it. He’s a natural leader, who doesn’t ask more of the troupe than he is prepared to give of himself. He expects the actors to show up on time, to be sober, and to come to rehearsals with their lines memorized. But he’s not unreasonable. He understands that his actors are human beings, so he is quick to offer an advance or even, on occasion, a bonus, if the need is warranted. Earlier this month, when the actress Elizabeth Poe’s end was near, it was Green who insisted on not just one benefit performance but two, so that there would be money for her burial but also for the support of her two small children.
Jack wishes he had a handkerchief to offer him. “I’m so sorry. For everything.”
Green wipes his eyes with the palms of his hands. “It’s not your fault.”
“I could have refused to hoist the chandelier into the flyspace. Ishouldhave refused. It’s just that I admired you, and I didn’t want—”
Green cuts him off. “You need not say anymore.”
There is something protective in Green’s desire to stop Jack fromflagellating himself, and it reminds Jack of the Skelton article. “Was it you? Who went to Skelton?”
“Skelton?”
“The article. In theAmerican Standard. That spells out what happened with the chandelier.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jack wants to push Green on this, even though he’s clearly in no condition to be pushed on anything. “You might not have known you were even talking to Skelton,” says Jack. “Did you speak to anyone that night? About the fire and how it started?”
Green stares into his tankard. “How should I know? I wasn’t in my right mind.”
He has a point.
They sit there in silence for a few moments, each of them lost in his own memories.
“Mr. Green,” Jack says finally, “I know this is the last thing you want to think about, but all the actors are being interviewed, over at the Washington Tavern, and Thomas Ritchie, who’s heading up the inquest committee—well, he wants to talk to you.”
Green shakes his head. “I can’t talk to anyone,” he says. “Not now. Not like this.”
“Yes, that’s what we told him,” says Jack, “but he is quite insistent.”
“Well, tell him to bugger off.”
Jack swallows. “Mr. Placide has certainly tried that.”
Green laughs, and for a brief moment, it is almost possible for Jack to forget that he is speaking to a grieving father.
“You should know that Mr. Placide is telling the committee, and anyone who will listen, that the fire was started by a mob of angry slaves.”
Green rears back in his chair. “But that’s not true.”
“Right.”
“So, why is he doing it?”
Jack struggles with what to say. “I think the general consensus is that if we admit to raising the chandelier into the flyspace—and to knowing that the chandelier was suspended from a broken pulley—we will hang.”
“Did anyone even see any Negroes near the theater?”
“Just the ones inside, watching the performance, like everybody else.”
Green is quiet for a moment, then he shakes his head in disbelief or disgust, Jack isn’t sure which.
