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Vince Knowles lowered his head, and when he raised it and spoke his next line, his voice was thick
and hitching. It was a simulacrum of sorrow he’d never approached in even his best rehearsals. “No,
Lennie, I want you to stay here with me.”
“Then tell me like you done before! Bout other guys, and about us!”
That was when I heard the first low sob from the audience. It was followed by another. Then a
third. This I had not expected, not in my wildest dreams. A chill raced up my back, and I stole a
glance at Mimi. She wasn’t crying yet, but the liquid sheen in her eyes told me that she soon would
be. Yes, even her—hard old baby that she was.
George hesitated, then took hold of Lennie’s hand, a thing Vince never would have done in
rehearsals. That’s queerboy stuff, he would have said.
“Guys like us . . . Lennie, guys like us got no families. They got nobody that gives a hoot in hell
about them.” Touching the prop gun hidden under his coat with his other hand. Taking it partway
out. Putting it back. Then steeling himself and taking it all the way out. Laying it along his leg.
“But not us, George! Not us! Idn’t that right?”
Mike was gone. The stage was gone. Now it was only the two of them, and by the time Lennie was
asking George to tell him about the little ranch, and the rabbits, and living off the fat of the land, half
the audience was weeping audibly. Vince was crying so hard he could hardly deliver his final lines,
telling poor stupid Lennie to look over there, the ranch they were going to live on was over there. If he
looked hard enough, he could see it.
The stage lensed slowly to full dark, Cindy McComas for once running the lights perfectly. Birdie
Jamieson, the school janitor, fired a blank cartridge. Some woman in the audience gave a little scream.
That sort of reaction is usually followed by nervous laughter, but tonight there was only the sound of
people weeping in their seats. Otherwise, silence. It went on for ten seconds. Or maybe it was only
five. Whatever it was, to me it seemed forever. Then the applause broke. It was the best thunder I ever
heard in my life. The house lights went up. The entire audience was on its feet. The front two rows
were reserved for faculty, and I happened to glance at Coach Borman. Damned if he wasn’t crying, too.
Two rows back, where all the school jocks were sitting together, Jim LaDue leaped to his feet. “You
rock, Coslaw!” he shouted. This elicited cheers and laughter.
The cast came out to take their bows: first the football-player townspeople, then Curley and
Curley’s Wife, then Candy and Slim and the rest of the farmhands. The applause started to die a little
and then Vince came out, flushed and happy, his own cheeks still wet. Mike Coslaw came last,
shuffling as if embarrassed, then looking out in comical amazement as Mimi shouted “Bravo!”
Others echoed it, and soon the auditorium resounded with it: Bravo, Bravo, Bravo. Mike bowed,
sweeping his hat so low it brushed the stage. When he stood again, he was smiling. But it was more
than a smile; his face was transformed with the happiness that’s reserved for those who are finally
allowed to reach all the way up.
Then he shouted, “Mr. Amberson! Come up here, Mr. Amberson!”
The cast took up the chant of “Director! Director!”
“Don’t kill the applause,” Mimi growled from beside me. “Get up there, you goof ball!”
So I did, and the applause swelled again. Mike grabbed me, hugged me, lifted me off my feet, then
set me down and gave me a hearty smack on the cheek. Everyone laughed, including me. We all
grabbed hands, lifted them to the audience, and bowed. As I listened to the applause, a thought
occurred to me, one that darkened my heart. In Minsk, there were newlyweds. Lee and Marina had
been man and wife for exactly nineteen days.
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