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CHAPTER 14
1
The memorial assembly was held at the end of the new school year’s first day, and if one can measure
success by damp hankies, the show Sadie and I put together was boffo. I’m sure it was cathartic for the
kids, and I think Miz Mimi herself would have enjoyed it. Sarcastic people tend to be marshmallows
underneath the armor, she once told me. I’m no different.
The teachers held it together through most of the eulogies. It was Mike who started to get to them,
with his calm, heartfelt recitation from Proverbs 31. Then, during the slide show, with the
accompanying schmaltz from West Side Story, the faculty lost it, too. I found Coach Borman
particularly entertaining. With tears streaming down his red cheeks and large, quacking sobs
emerging from his massive chest, Denholm’s football guru reminded me of everybody’s second-favorite
cartoon duck, Baby Huey.
I whispered this observation to Sadie as we stood beside the big screen with its marching images of
Miz Mimi. She was crying, too, but had to step off the stage and into the wings as laughter first
fought with and then overcame her tears. Safely back in the shadows, she looked at me reproachfully . .
. and then gave me the finger. I decided I deserved it. I wondered if Miz Mimi would still think Sadie
and I were getting along famously.
I thought she probably would.
I picked Twelve Angry Men for the fall play, accidentally on purpose neglecting to inform the
Samuel French Company that I intended to retitle our version The Jury, so I could cast some girls. I
would hold tryouts in late October and start rehearsals on November 13, after the Lions’ last regularseason
football game. I had my eye on Vince Knowles for Juror #8—the holdout who’d been played by
Henry Fonda in the movie—and Mike Coslaw for what I considered the best part in the show:
bullying, abrasive Juror #3.
But I had begun to focus on a more important show, one that made the Frank Dunning affair look
like a paltry vaudeville skit by comparison. Call this one Jake and Lee in Dallas. If things went well, it
would be a tragedy in one act. I had to be ready to go onstage when the time came, and that meant
starting early.
2
On the sixth of October, the Denholm Lions won their fifth football game, on their way to an
undefeated season that would be dedicated to Vince Knowles, the boy who had played George in Of
Mice and Men and who would never get a chance to act in the George Amberson version of Twelve
Angry Men—but more of that later. It was the start of a three-day weekend, because the Monday
following was Columbus Day.
I drove to Dallas on the holiday. Most businesses were open, and my first stop was one of the
pawnshops on Greenville Avenue. I told the little man behind the counter that I wanted to buy the
cheapest wedding ring he had in stock. I walked out with an eight-buck band of gold (at least it looked
like gold) on the third finger of my left hand. Then I drove downtown to a place on Lower Main Street
I had bird-dogged in the Dallas Yellow Pages: Silent Mike’s Satellite Electronics. There I was greeted