At which moment, Nolan burst back out, holding high the half-empty flask. “Doone’s handicapped!”
“Handicapped! Fine! Clannery, go check the contestants, be sure they sit opposite each other in the fourth row, as agreed, caps on, coats half buttoned, scarves properly furled. Report back to me.”
Clannery ran into the dark.
“The ticket takers?” I said.
“They’re inside, watching the fillum,” said Timulty. “So much standing is hard on the feet. They won’t interfere”
“It’s ten-thirteen,” announced Clancy. “In two more minutes to– “
“Post time,” I said.
“You’re a dear lad,” admitted Timulty.
Clannery came hot-footing out. “All set! In the right seats and everything!”
“’Tis almost over! You can tell–toward the end of any fillum the music has a way of getting out of hand.”
“It’s loud, all right,” agreed Clannery. “Pull orchestra and chorus behind the singing maid now. I must come tomorrow for the entirety. Lovely.”
“Is it?” sad Clancy, and the others laughed. “What’s the tune?”
“Ah, off with the tune!” said Timulty. “One minute to go and you ask the tune! Lay the bets. Who’s for Doom? Who’s for Hoolihan?”
There was a multitudinous jabbering and passing back and forth of money, mostly shillings.
I held out four shillings.
“Doone,” I said.
“Without having seen him?”
“A dark horse,” I whispered.
“Well said!” Timulty spun about. “Clannery, Nolan, inside, as aisle judges! Watch sharp there’s no jumping before time.” In went Clannery and Nalan, happy as boys. “Make an aisle, now. Mr. Douglas, you over here with me.”
The men rushed to form an aisle on each side of the two closed main entrance-exit doom “Fogarty, lay your ear to the door!” This Fogarty did. His eyes widened. “The damn music is extra loud.”
One of the Kelly boys nudged his brother. “It will be over soon. Whoever is to die is dying this moment. Whoever is to live is bending over him.”
“Louder still!” announced Fogarty, head up against the door pond, hand twitching as if he were adjusting a radio.
“There! That’s the grand to-to for sure that comes just as FINIS or THE END jumps on the screen.”
“They’re off,” I murmured.
“Steady!” said Timulty. We all stared at the door. “There’s the anthem!”
“’Tenshun!” We all stood erect. Someone saluted. But still we stared at the door.
“I hear feet running,” said Fogarty. “Whoever it is had a good start before the anthem–“
The door burst wide.
Hoolihan plunged to view, smiling such a smile as only breathless victors know.
“Hoolihan!” cried the winners. “Doone!” cried the losers. “Where’s Doone?”
For, while Hoolihan was first, a competitor was lacking. The crowd was dispersing into the street now. “The idiot didn’t come out the wrong door?” We waited. The crowd was soon gone. Timulty ventured first into the empty lobby. “Doone!” No one there. “Could it be he’s in there?”
Someone flung the men’s room door wide. “Doone?” No echo, no answer. “Good grief,” cried Timulty, “it can’t be he’s broken a leg and lies on the slope somewhere with the mortal agonies?”
“That’s it!” The island of men, heaving one way, changed gravities and heaved the other, toward the inner door, through it, and down the aisle, myself following.
“Doone!” Clannery and Nolan were there to meet us and pointed silently down. I jumped into the air twice to see over the mob’s head. It was dim in the vast theater. I saw nothing.
“Doone!” Then at last we were bunched together near the fourth row on the aisle. I heard their boggled exclamations as they saw what I saw: Doone, still seated in the fourth row on the aisle, his hands folded, his eyes shut.
Dead? None of that. A tear, large, luminous and beautiful, fell on his cheek. Another tear, larger and more lustrous, emerged from his other eye. His chin was wet. It was certain he had been crying for some minutes.
The men peered into his face, circling, leaning. “Doone, are ya sick?” “Is it fearful news?”
“Ah, God,” cried Doone. He shook himself to find the strength, somehow, to speak. “Ah, God,” he said at last, “she has the voice of an angel.
“Angel?”
“That one up there.” He nodded. They turned to stare at the empty silver screen.
“Is it Deanna Durbin?”
Doone sobbed. “The dear dead voice of my grandmother come back-“
“Your grandma’s behind!” exclaimed Timulty. “She had no such voice as that!”
“And who’s to know, save me?” Doone blew his nose, dabbed at his eyes.
“You mean to say it was just the Durbin lass kept you from the sprint?”
“Just!” said Doone. “Just! Why, it would be sacrilege to bound from a cinema after a recital like that. You might also then jump full tilt across the altar during a wedding, or waltz about at a funeral.”
“You could’ve at least warned us it was no contest.” Timulty glared.
“How could I? It just crept over me in a divine sickness. That last bit she sang, “The Lovely Isle of Innisfree”, was it not, Clannery?”
“What else did she sing?” asked Fogarty.
“What else did she sing?” cried Timulty. “He’s just lost half of us our day’s wages and you ask what else she sang! Get off!”
“Sure, it’s money runs the world,” Doone agreed, seated there, closing up his eyes. “But it is music that holds down the friction.”
“What’s going on there?” cried someone above. A man leaned down from the balcony, puffing a cigarette. “What’s all the rouse?”
“It’s the projectionist,” whispered Timulty. Aloud: “Hello, Phil, darling! It’s only the Team! We’ve a bit of a problem here, Phil, in ethics, not to say aesthetics. Now, we wonder if, well, could it be possible to run the anthem over.”
“Run it over?” There was a rumble from the winners, a mixing and shoving of elbows.
“A lovely idea,” said Doone.
“It is,” said Timulty, all guile. “An act of God incapacitated Doone.”
“A tenth-run flicker from the year 1937 caught him by the short hairs is all,” said Fogarty.
“So the fair thing is-” here Timulty, unperturbed, looked to heaven. “Phil, dear boy, also is the last reel of the Deanna Durbin fillum still there?”
“It ain’t in the ladies’ room,” said Phil, smoking steadily.
“What a wit the boy has. Now, Phil, do you think you could just thread it back through the machine there and give us the FINIS again?”
“Is that what you all want?” asked Phil.
There was a hard moment of indecision. But the thought of another contest was too good to be passed, even though already-won money was at stake. Slowly everyone nodded.
“I’ll bet myself, then,” Phil called down. “A shilling on Hoolihan!”
The winners laughed and hooted; they looked to win again. Hoolihan waved graciously. The losers turned on their man, “Do you hear the insult, Doone? Stay awake, man!” “When the
girl sings, damn it, go deafly!”
“Places, everyone!” Timulty jostled about. “There’s no audience,” said Hoolihan. “And without them there’s no obstacles, no real contest.”
“Why,” Fogarty blinked around, “let’s all of us be the audience.”
“Fine!” Beaming, everyone threw himself into a seat.
“Better yet,” announced Timulty, up front, “Why not make it teams? Doone and Hoolihan, sure, but for every Doone man or Hoolihan man that makes it out before the anthem him on his hobnails, an extra point, right?”
“Right!” cried everyone.
“Pardon,” I said. “There’s no one outside to judge.”
Everyone turned to look at me.
“Ah,” said Timulty. “Well. Nolan, outside!” Nolan trudged up the aisle, cursing.
Phil stuck his head from the projection booth above. “Are ya clods down there ready?”
“If the girl is and the anthem is!”
And the lights went out. I found myself seated next in from Doone, who whispered fervently, “Poke me, lad, keep me alert to practicalities instead of ornamentation, eh?”
“Shut up!” said someone.
“There’s the mystery.”
And there indeed it was, the mystery of song and art and life, if you will, the young girl singing on the timehaunted screen. “We lean on you, Doone,” I whispered. “Eh?” he replied. He smiled ahead. “Ah, look, ain’t she lovely? Do you hear?”
“The bet, Doone,” I said. “Get ready.”
“All right,” he groused. “Let me stir my bones. Jesus save me.”
“What?”
“I never thought to test. My right leg. Feel. Now, you can’t. It’s dead, it is!”
“Asleep, you mean?” I said, appalled.
“Dead or asleep, hell, I’m sunk! Lad, lad, you must run for me! Here’s my cap and scarf!”
“Your cap-“
“When victory is yours, show them, and we’ll explain you ran to replace this fool leg of mine!” He clapped the cap on, tied the scarf. “But look here-” I protested. “You’ll do great! Just remember, it’s FINIS and no sooner! The song’s almost up. Are you tensed?”
“God am I!” I said.
“It’s blind passions that win, boy. Plunge straight. If you step on someone, do not look back. There!” Doone held his legs to one side to give clearance. “The
song’s done. He’s kissing her-“
“The FINIS!” I cried.
I leaped into the aisle. I ran up the slope. I’m first, that I thought. I’m ahead! It can’t be! There’s the door!
I hit the door as the anthem began. I dammed into the lobby safe. I won! I thought, incredulous, with Doone’s cap and scarf like victory laurels upon and about me. Won! Won for the Team! Who’s second, third, fourth? I turned to the door as it swung shut. Only then did I hear the shouts and yells inside.
“Good Lord!” I thought, six men have tried the wrong exit at once, someone tripped, fell, someone else piled on. Otherwise, why am I the first and only? There’s a fierce silent combat in there this second, the two teams locked in mortal wrestling attitudes, asprawl, akimbo, above and below the seats, that must be it!
I’ve won! I wanted to yell, to break it up. I threw the doors wide. I stared into an abyss where nothing stirred. Nolan came to peer over my shoulder. “That’s the Irish
