The Community Theater

Tom Briggs unlocked the door at nine in the morning on a Tuesday in October. The lock stuck, as it always did, and he had to jiggle the key twice before the tumblers gave way. He stepped inside and the smell hit him—the same smell it always had: damp wood, old carpet, the ghost of popcorn that had been sold here thirty years ago and had long since stopped being sold anywhere.

He walked through the auditorium, counted the broken seats out of habit—fourteen, down from seventeen last month, because he had finally gotten around to removing the three that were beyond saving—and went to the back office to turn on the heat. The thermostat was set to fifty-five. It would climb to fifty-seven if the furnace behaved. It usually did, on Tuesdays.

The Millersville Community Theater had been built in 1962 as a conversion of a Methodist church that had moved to a newer building on the highway. The old building kept its stained glass and its high ceiling and its stage, which had been a pulpit. Tom had worked here for eighteen years, first as an usher, then as a part-time technician, then as the sole employee when the last two staff members retired and the board decided that one person at eight hundred dollars a month was enough.

He made coffee in the electric kettle, sat at his desk, and opened the newspaper. The front page had a story about the president visiting Asia and a story about a factory closing in Columbus. Inside, on page six, there was a two-paragraph mention of the theater's upcoming production of "Our Town," which had been announced three weeks ago and would open in November if the board approved the budget, which they probably would, which meant Tom would need to order new stage lights, which cost money they did not have.

He finished his coffee. He swept the auditorium floor. He checked the fire exits. He went home.

Mary Ellen came on Thursday. She lived three streets over, in a two-bedroom apartment she rented from her sister. They had been married for twelve years and divorced four years ago, and the divorce had been amicable in the way that divorces are amicable when neither party has much money to fight over. They still saw each other. Not romantically. Just—neighbors. People who knew each other's coffee habits and knew that Tom's knee hurt when it rained and that Mary Ellen's mother needed help with her groceries every other week.

"I brought soup," she said, holding up a Tupperware container. "Chicken and rice. From the grocery store. The deli section."

"Thanks." Tom took it. "How's the supermarket?"

"Slow season. Holiday stuff doesn't start until November. I'm working thirty hours a week now, down from thirty-five." She set her bag down on the office chair and looked around. "You need to fix that leak in the ceiling. It's getting worse."

Tom looked up at the ceiling. There was a water stain the size of a dinner plate, brown and spreading, in the corner of the office. A bucket sat beneath it, catching drips that came maybe twice a day. "I know. I'll put a tarp over it."

"You put a tarp over it last month."

"I'll put a new tarp over it."

Mary Ellen sighed, the way she always sighed when Tom did something inadequately and she was not sure whether to be amused or annoyed. She probably was both. She had always been both about him.

She helped him check the stage lights. Twelve of them worked. Eight did not. The replacement bulbs cost twelve dollars each. Twelve bulbs times eight bulbs times twelve dollars equals one hundred and forty-four dollars, which was more than the theater's lighting budget for the quarter. Tom made a mental note to call the supplier and ask if they had any floor models or display units at a discount. He would probably not follow through.

Sarah Jenkins came on Saturday. She was twenty-nine, worked part-time at the Millersville Gazette as a copy editor and occasional feature writer, and drove a Honda Civic with a bumper sticker that read I PUT THE FUN IN FUNCTION. She had been assigned to write a piece about "local landmarks at risk" and the Community Theater had made her list.

She found Tom in the auditorium, sitting in the front row and reading a paperback novel. He was on page 147. He had been on page 147 for three days.

"Mr. Briggs?" she said. "I'm Sarah Jenkins from the Gazette."

"I know who you are. You write about the high school football games."

"I do. And sometimes the human interest stuff. The pet of the month. The senior citizen who turned ninety." She sat down next to him. "I'm writing a piece about the theater. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?"

Tom closed his book. "Sure. What do you want to know?"

"Everything. How long have you worked here? What's the worst thing that's ever happened in this building? Why do you think people should care about keeping it open?"

Tom thought about this. "I've worked here eighteen years. The worst thing was the fire in 1974. It was small—just the curtains and some seating in the back. Nobody got hurt. The insurance covered the repairs. As for why people should care—" He looked around the auditorium, at the cracked seats and the water-stained ceiling and the stage where he had watched hundreds of high school productions and community plays and church pageants over the years. "Because it's here. Because it's been here for sixty years. Because when it's gone, there won't be anything left that's just for us."

Sarah wrote this down in a small notebook. She asked a few more questions—about the budget, about the board, about the upcoming production of "Our Town"—and then she left. Tom went back to page 147 of his book.

Old Man Henderson called on Monday. He was seventy-eight, lived in a trailer park on the edge of town, and remembered the theater from before Tom was born. He called because Sarah had given him a number to call "if anyone remembered anything interesting about the place."

"Interesting" was not the word Tom would have used. But Henderson had his own definition.

"I was here for the show in '75," Henderson told him over the phone. "The one after the fire. They reopened with a musical. Something about a train. I don't remember the name. The actress—tall girl, dark hair—she fell off the stage. Broke her leg, I think. Maybe her neck. I don't remember exactly. It was a long time ago."

"Her name was Carmen," Tom said. He did not know how he knew this. The name just appeared in his mind, like a word at the tip of his tongue that he had been searching for without realizing it. "Carmen Vega. She was from Columbus. She moved away after the accident."

"How do you know that?"

"I don't. I'm just guessing. Vega is a common name."

Henderson was not convinced, but he did not press the issue. He talked about the fire instead—how the smoke had filled the auditorium, how people had evacuated, how the fire department had arrived in twenty minutes and put it out in ten more. "Nobody died," he said. "Nobody was hurt bad. Just some property damage. The theater was closed for a few months while they repaired the damage. Then it reopened. Then it slowly stopped reopening. Year by year, fewer and fewer shows. By the nineties, it was maybe two or three a year. By the two thousands, it was one a year if you were lucky. Now it's zero. And it's going to be zero forever."

"Maybe," Tom said.

"Maybe not," Henderson said. "People still come here. Not for the shows. For the memory of the shows. The theater is not just a building. It's a place where people did things. Where they saw things. Where they laughed and cried and clapped and went home and talked about it over dinner. That's not nothing."

Tom hung up the phone and sat in the office and thought about what Henderson had said. It was not nothing. But it was not enough, either. Memory does not pay for new stage lights. Laughter does not fix a leaking roof.

He went to the hardware store on Friday and bought three buckets—larger ones, to replace the ones that were cracking—and a roll of plastic sheeting. He spent Saturday morning putting the sheeting over the leak in the office ceiling and positioning the buckets beneath it. The water dripped into the first bucket, filled it, overflowed, and began pooling on the floor. Tom mopped it up. He moved the second bucket into position. The water dripped. It filled. It overflowed. He moved the third bucket.

By noon, the office looked like a crime scene. Buckets in a triangle, plastic sheeting stapled to the ceiling, a wet floor sign in the center of the room. Tom sat on his desk, eating a sandwich he had made that morning and forgotten to eat, and watched the buckets fill and overflow and fill again.

He thought about calling the board. He thought about writing a grant proposal. He thought about asking Mary Ellen if she knew anyone who might want to donate money to a theater that nobody went to anymore. He thought about all of these things and then he thought about something else instead: the weather, which was turning cold, and whether he should buy a heavier blanket for the office, and whether the grocery store on Route 9 had the kind of soup he liked.

Sunday passed. Monday passed. The buckets continued their slow work: catch, fill, overflow, repeat. On Tuesday, Tom came in at nine, unlocked the door, walked through the auditorium, counted the broken seats—fourteen, same as last time—and went to the office to check the buckets.

Two of them were full. One was half-full. The plastic sheeting had sagged in the center, forming a small pouch that collected water like a lily pad. Tom reached up and pulled the pouch downward, sending a cascade of water onto his head and shoulders and the top of his head. He stood there for a moment, dripping, and then he laughed. Not a happy laugh. Not an unhappy one. Just a laugh. The kind of laugh that comes when something is so absurdly, mundanely, relentlessly itself that the only reasonable response is to make a sound and move on.

He changed his shirt. He emptied the buckets. He restapled the sheeting, tighter this time, and added a fourth bucket in the center of the room, directly beneath the sag. Then he sat down at his desk, opened his paperback to page 148, and began to read.

The radio was playing country music. A woman's voice, thin and reverb-heavy, sang about a truck and a woman and a highway. Tom read his book. The buckets dripped. The rain continued.

Outside, Millersville went about its business. Cars passed on Main Street. The high school football team practiced on the field behind the gym. The grocery store sold chicken and rice from the deli section. Sarah Jenkins edited an article about a local dog who had won a ribbon at the county fair. Old Man Henderson sat in his recliner and watched the news. Mary Ellen stocked shelves at the supermarket and counted her thirty hours for the week.

Inside the Community Theater, Tom Briggs turned a page. The radio played. The buckets dripped. The rain fell on the roof that leaked, on the town that had stopped caring, on the building that had been a church and then a theater and was now a building with a leaking roof and fourteen broken seats and a man who read books on Tuesdays and emptied buckets on Saturdays.

Nothing happened.

That was the point, in a way. Nothing dramatic. No fire. No fall. No ghost. No villain. No revelation. Just the slow accumulation of small failures and small tolerances and the kind of life that happens when nobody is watching and everybody is tired and the only heroism available is the act of showing up and unlocking the door and turning on the heat and hoping that the thermostat will climb to fifty-seven.

Tom finished his book. He turned off the radio. He locked the door at five in the evening and walked to his car, which was parked in front of the theater in a space that was marked RESERVED but had not been reserved by anyone in ten years. He got in, started the engine, and drove home.

Behind him, the Community Theater stood dark and silent, its windows reflecting the streetlights, its walls holding the memory of applause and silence and the sound of a curtain rising and the sound of a curtain falling and the sound of nothing, which is the loudest sound of all, if you listen long enough.

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