Pity Him Afterwards

“Well, then, when I got out of high school, I went to— Oh. You want the name of the high school?”

“It isn’t your childhood I’m mainly interested in.”

“Oh. Well... College?”

“You went to college?”

“Yes, sir, sure. Monequois College, Monequois, New York. Drama and American Lit, combined major. Then I was drafted — right after I got out of college, I mean. I was drafted, and I went to Texas for basic training and then to New Jersey, and then to Rhode Island. Then when I got out, I went to New York to take drama classes. I had this introduction from my drama teacher at Monequois to Jule Kemp. The teacher, you know. And I studied with him ever since.”

“Have you had professional acting jobs?”

“Well, Jule doesn’t like the students to do that, you know, but I did get a couple jobs. I was in a show on weekends, for children, on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. I was the Foolish Knight; I get lost, and eat the poisoned apple, and all sorts of things. And I got a couple of daytime television jobs; I was on a soap opera for three weeks once — I was this Army buddy of this character, he brings me home from camp and there’s all this trouble — and I was in a skit on a quiz show. I dressed up in an Arab costume, and I meet Death, and he talks to me, and the answer was Appointment in Samarra.”

“Are you in Actor’s Equity?”

“Oh, sure. I apprenticed two summers ago at Southern Tier Playhouse in Binghamton, New York.”

“Why didn’t you go back there this summer?”

“Oh. Well, it doesn’t have a repertory company like this, you know, it’s all package shows. The year I was there we had Tallulah Bankhead and Arthur Treacher and Victor Jory and—”

“All right, fine. What about last summer?”

“Oh, I stayed in New York last summer. I had this very good job with a suntan-lotion company. Bronzo, it’s called. I went around to five-and-tens and department stores and everything, and I put on displays for this suntan lotion. It was pretty good lotion, too.”

“Have you had other jobs in New York, besides acting jobs?”

“Oh, sure. I worked for a moving company — you know, furniture movers. Scappali Brothers. And I work for the city every time there’s a snowfall, you know, I shovel snow. And I had a job for a while at this settlement house on East Fifth Street, I taught drama to this bunch of kids, we put on Our Town. It was pretty good.”

“Good,” said Sondgard, smiling. The contrast between Rod McGee and Will Henley went deeper than physical appearance. Here was the eager boy, the willing worker, the one who in college wound up on every club’s Entertainment Committee, who never got a single mark higher than B or lower than C, who loaned his money indiscriminately, and who at a get-together in a professor’s home would leap to help the professor’s wife with the refreshments. Not out of calculation, but simply because that’s the way he was.

Sondgard asked the next question for the record only, expecting a negative answer. “Have you ever been in trouble with the police? Parking tickets and such excepted.”

“Oh, no. Not till now. I mean — I guess I’m not really what you’d call in trouble now either, am I? But I mean I’ve never even talked to a policeman before, except maybe ask directions or something.”

“All right, fine. Now, this afternoon. You spent the entire time at the rehearsal, is that right?”

“Oh, sure. Listen, do you think we’ll be able to go on? I mean, I know that sounds awfully heartless, with Cissie just dead and all, you know, but we’ve all been talking in there and we were kind of wondering, you know...”

“I imagine the play will go on.” Sondgard smiled. “The show must go on, remember?”

“Sure, I know. But a couple of us were thinking maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know, I guess it doesn’t make any difference.”

“Just a minute.” Sondgard was finding Rod McGee the most difficult of them all to interview. The boy kept going off on tangents, and it took a bulldozer to bring him back. “About this afternoon,” Sondgard insisted. “You say you spent all your time at the rehearsal?”

“Oh, sure. We started at—”

“Yes, I know what time you started.” But as soon as he said it, Sondgard was sorry, afraid he’d sounded harsh. Rod McGee was certainly friendly and co-operative, and it wasn’t his fault if he was too eager to be orderly. More softly, Sondgard said, “But I was wondering if you spent every minute in that room there. You didn’t leave at all to—”

“Oh, to go to the bathroom!” It burst out of him, and he was sparkling again. “Oh, sure! I’m sorry, honest, I didn’t know what you meant. Oh, sure. I went to the bathroom twice.”

“What times?”

“A little after two, I guess, and maybe around three-thirty, quarter to four.”

“Did you see anyone else in the house either time?”

“No, I didn’t. You think it was a prowler, huh?”

“It might have been.”

“Some of the others say you think it’s one of us. That would be a real mess, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, it would. Now, did you happen to notice—”