April The High School Play
The high school put on Our Town the second weekend in April, which surprised no one and pleased everyone, because in Wheatland the plays that survive are the ones about towns that resemble the one performing them, and the plays that do not survive are the ones that do not. Mrs. Cates the drama teacher has known this for twenty years and selects accordingly.
The gymnasium
was the auditorium that weekend,
as it is on the weekends
when it has to be,
the folding chairs set up
on the free-throw line,
the basketball hoops
cranked up into the rafters
and looking down
on the proceedings
like two indifferent judges.
The curtain
was a curtain
borrowed from the funeral home
because the funeral home
has the best curtain in town
and is willing to share it
for a weekend
as long as nobody dies
during the run.
Nobody died.
The program was mimeographed
the old way, on purpose,
because Mrs. Cates
believes in a certain look
and the look is 1978
and nobody argues with her
because she is right.
The coach had been drafted, over a long series of small refusals, to play the Stage Manager. He is the only man in town with the voice for it, a baritone earned from thirty years of calling plays across a field in the wind, and Mrs. Cates had not asked him so much as announced him, and he had not agreed so much as failed to decline.
On opening night
he stood at the edge of the stage
in a cardigan
he did