“Can I borrow your mattress?”
He cranes his head. “Hell no!”
“You don’t even know what I need it for.”
Sy crosses his arms, like there is nothing Gilbert can say that will convince him to part with it.
“Sy,” says Gilbert as calm as he can, “folks are jumping out of third-floor windows.”
“Black folks? Because from what I could see, it looked like Black folks got out just fine.”
“You mean you was already down there?” Gilbert asks, disgusted that a man who makes a good living playing white people’s parties can’t summon enough sympathy for them to stick around and make himself useful.
“You think they’re coming to save you when you burn up?” Sy asks.
“It ain’t about that,” says Gilbert, who knows they don’t have time for a debate.
“What’s it about, then?”
Gilbert needs something quick. “Doesn’t the Lord say we got to do unto others like we—”
Sy just shakes his head, like he can’t believe the words coming out of Gilbert’s mouth. “MyLord says to get your own damned mattress.” Then he shuts the door in Gilbert’s face.
JACK
By the time Jack andPerry flee the carpenter’s gallery, the fire is raging out of control.
“Get out!” yells Green over the roar of the flames.
Everyone knows to exit via the stage door, and within a minute or maybe less, Jack has flung his arms over his head and is following Perry past the prop table and the drop curtain and out into the cold December night.
No one in the troupe runs very far. They gather a few dozen feet from the stage door and stare up at the back of the building in a kind of shocked awe.
“The cashbox!” says Placide, and he sprints toward the building.
“You’re crazy!” Anderson shouts after him as they watch Placide slip back into the theater through the stage door. “No amount of money’s worth dying for.”
The performance that evening was for Placide’s benefit, which means he keeps the proceeds after everyone else is paid out. Since it was a sold-out show, there is likely five hundred dollars in the cashbox, more if no one in the box office skimmed anything off the top. Five hundred dollars isn’t worth dying for, but it sure is a lot of money.
For several long moments, the troupe watches the stage door. The box office manager delivered the money to Placide during the intermission, but what Placide did with it after that is anyone’s guess. Jack counts the seconds that pass in his head. Ten, then twenty. When he gets to thirty, he looks over at Lydia, and realizes she has begun to cry.
“Should someone go in after him?” asks Mrs. Placide, who has never seemed especially fond of her husband, but apparently does not wish him dead, either.
None of the men move.
Charles Young, who is a devout Catholic, begins to pray.
“Come on, Alex,” says Anderson under his breath, and, as if summoned,Placide bursts through the stage entrance seconds later, carrying a small metal box under one arm.
For a brief moment, there is much rejoicing. Placide is alive, and he has saved the night’s earnings! But it doesn’t take long for everyone to realize that the money is the least of their worries.
The green is complete bedlam. People have begun to pour out of the front lobby and around the side of the building, where they look up at the fire’s progress in quiet reverence. “It’s so much worse than I thought,” Jack overhears one woman say to another.
“Is everyone here?” Green asks. “We all made it out?” The players cast their eyes around the group wildly, as if they can’t quite believe the answer is yes.
“Robertson’s not here,” says Anderson.
“I saw him in the pit,” says West. “He was trying to convince the ladies in the boxes to jump.”
