A TRAGEDY AND A TRIUMPH
This might be as good a place as any to include a poem I wrote that mentions all of my children. The occasion for it, a policeman shot down in the line of duty, is described in the poem. Our home in Bowman Acres in Greenfield, the one we brought Tammy and Danny home to when they were born, was beside a creek that ran along the side and back of the yard. On the other side of that creek was a much larger house, home to the hospital administrator and his family, the Morrises. Barry Morris was the director of A Delicate Balance, in which I played Tobias, the main character. This event followed closely upon the death of my father, Earl McKinley Rhoades of South Bend, Indiana, at the age of eighty-five.
BED CHECK
The day is done.
Each task is set in its place–
Completed
To be done tomorrow
Put off–
And I can take my rest.
I climb the stairs and know that all is well
But, just the same, out of habit,
I check each bed to see that my little world is quite secure:
Tammy looks serene but takes her mask of seriousness
To her land of dreams.
Lori leaves it all behind and seems to sing.
John looks pale–he wasn’t well today.
(He’s hardly ever ill, but this new flu is relentless.}
Danny sleeps untroubled
As if remembering that tomorrow he’ll be master of a new cat–
His only birthday wish since ‘Shakesbeard’ went to sleep a week ago.
Margaret waits up for me, and she shuts out the light.
As she drifts off to sleep, I sift through troubled thoughts.
I tiptoe into the baby’s room
To look at tiny Lori, first and only then–
My first "bed check" upon awakening in the night
And wanting reassurance.
She seemed a miracle, breathing all alone
Her faultless motor never missed a beat.
Knowing all was well and full of pride and joy,
I went to bed again. Soon I slept.
But tonight, though everything is right here,
I can’t escape my thoughts.
I see Jerry and Barry’s father but a few years past
Checking the beds in the house next door,
And I snap to wakefulness!
His children are grown and have lives of their own;
Yet one bed must be forever empty, a hero’s bed.
How dare anyone murder the boy next door!
(Though we have moved, he will forever be the boy next door.)
This villainy haunts my bed-check hour!
I scarcely know I’ve slept, but somehow in the magic of slumber,
I am a boy again, in a house long since torn down,
And I awake and am afraid at night.
I slip to the floor to run to the safety of another bed nearby
And stop and see I am a man, at home now, standing,
All the glory of my day set aside, grieving
For I cannot, even in my dream
Run off to my daddy’s bed. He’s gone!
His bed forbids me come to it.
What was it about my father?
He was there! That’s what it was!
He was always there: like Tammy, too serious; like Lori, serene;
Like John, rarely sick; and like Danny, the master of his world.
O grieving Earth,
What loneliness wells up in you at bedtime!
O divine kingdom,
What treasures we give up to you
O Thou merciful God,
Refresh me now and let me sleep,
And Mama too, and Barry, and all those
Who, in the freshness of parting,
Cannot sleep at bedtime.
* * *
Probably the most successful play in the new auditorium at Eastern Hancock was Hello, Dolly! Shortly after the sold-out run of that musical, I attended a school board meeting for the first and only time during those thirty-seven teaching years. I suppose if I had not happened in, I might never have known their feelings. What item of business they were discussing when I entered, I will never know, because when the president realized that I had taken a seat among the visitors, he said, "Gentlemen, Mr. Rhoades is here." Whereupon they all rose and passed me around their conference table to congratulate me upon a spectacular performance. The architect, I think of him as Gloria and Mary Camplin’s father, had once told me that he regretted that he had not been able to give me a "working stage."
My reply had been, "I hope you’ll come to Hello, Dolly! to see how we make that ‘non-working’ stage work." Students had helped me hang pulleys to I-beams and build wagons to make the show move the way it was designed to. My counterweight, as I recall, was a paint can full of cement, of which I had read in a stagecraft book. I wouldn’t advise that!
I should not move on from there without remembering Susie Davis. She was Dolly. She was the reason the show was sold out. As a freshman she had tried out for the children’s play, The Sleeping Beauty. She had talent; I could see that. After the others left, she asked me if maybe there could be a part for a fat fairy. I didn’t react, but I thought there was. Her older brother, Jerry, a bright kid who could sing and act and was soon to be Fagin in Oliver, was a senior. I asked him what he thought about Susie’s idea. He said, “Why not? If she’s up to it.”
I told him that I thought that anyone who was acting all the time really ought to have some training. What I meant was that Susie was a natural comic and people liked her. She threw the shot put too. So she became the yellow fairy (the most unbecoming color for a large person). Once she began to lose weight in preparation for Dolly (her determination, not mine) during her senior year, I brought out and showed her that fairy costume to inspire her. It really was very large. Anyway, as each fairy arrived, she was announced by a page at the top of a “cake” staircase that I had had the students carpet. As music played, each fairy did a graceful turn and then floated (fluttered?) down the staircase, flitting as a fairy might. When the yellow fairy appeared, she did an awkward, bumbling turn and fell down the staircase as all the fairies, now posed on the steps, caught her to let her seem to bump each step of the way.
On Saturday night she told the other fairies, “Don’t catch me. It’ll be funnier if I am not supported.” It was certainly hilarious, really proved her sense of comic timing and began a career of endearing clowning that gave her terrific audience reactions to something as simple as a lifted eyebrow. What she hadn’t taken into account, and what I certainly didn’t dream was a possibility, was that in the center of that staircase, hidden in the fabric that covered it, one side of a long staple was waiting to dig into her leg. It left a scar about fourteen inches long. It was the worst accident I ever experienced during one of my plays, and I learned to look for every possible accident before it could happen. Anyway, Susie was also an artist, and she and Rick Ray led the after-school scenery group in a delightful romp that brought a rough vision of beauty and color to the stage.
