Michael leader of entertainment and karaoke arts of the town of Donnell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The morning after the first singing, Michael walked around the covered stage and counted what was missing. The roof had held. The machine was dry. But the crowd had spilled onto wet grass, and the wind had cut sideways through the open sides. He knew the next storm would drive them off. He needed walls and a wider floor before the weather turned. He went to the sawmill first. Jim's father was sighting a beam again, one eye shut. Michael asked for enough lumber to close in three sides and double the deck. The old man set the beam down and asked who would pay. Michael said the town would, in pledges, the way the doctor had been paid. That afternoon Michael walked house to house with a folded sheet of paper. He wrote each name down and each promise beside it. A sack of flour. Two days of labor. A jar of nails. Silver from the households that had it. By dusk he had marks from twenty-nine roofs. Twelve doors had stayed shut. He stood in the road and folded the paper small. He went back to the sawmill and laid the list on the plank table. Jim's father read it slow, moving his finger. He said the lumber would come, but only what the pledges covered. Not walls on three sides. Two. And half the floor Michael wanted. Michael took what he could get. For four days he worked with the blacksmith's apprentice and two farmers. They set new posts around the deck. They doubled the floor to the east, where the wind came weakest. They raised plank walls on the back and the north side, joined tight to the roof. The west and south stayed open to the yard. Michael painted the sign board above the back wall a plain cream and left it blank. On the fifth evening he plugged in the battery and set the microphone at center stage. Neighbors came in from the road. The teacher came. The forester came. More people fit now, shoulder to shoulder on the wider deck and along the two closed walls. A boy sang first. A woman took the microphone next and did not forget her verses. At full dark the wind shifted. Rain came in sideways from the open south side and swept across half the crowd. People pressed toward the closed walls. The microphone kept working under the roof, but the singers on the wet side stepped down and stood in the yard with their collars up. Michael watched from the steps and did not stop the song. He had walls now, and a bigger floor, and a stage that could hold the town on a dry night. He did not have a building. Winter was six weeks off. He folded the pledge sheet again and put it in his pocket. In the morning he would go back to the twelve doors that had stayed shut.