tickets for the next night. It was all he talked about that Sunday in
church. Not doctors, or the Illuminati, or Y2K. Just the play over in
town, where his youngest daughter was singing the lead.
Dad didn’t stop me from auditioning for the next play, or the one
after that, even though he worried about me spending so much time
away from home. “There’s no telling what kind of cavorting takes place
in that theater,” he said. “It’s probably a den of adulterers and
fornicators.”
When the director of the next play got divorced, it confirmed Dad’s
suspicions. He said he hadn’t kept me out of the public school for all
these years just to see me corrupted on a stage. Then he drove me to
the rehearsal. Nearly every night he said he was going to put a stop to
my going, that one evening he’d just show up at Worm Creek and haul
me home. But each time a play opened he was there, in the front row.
Sometimes he played the part of an agent or manager, correcting my
technique or suggesting songs for my repertoire, even advising me
about my health. That winter I caught a procession of sore throats and
couldn’t sing, and one night Dad called me to him and pried my mouth
open to look at my tonsils.
“They’re swollen, all right,” he said. “Big as apricots.” When Mother
couldn’t get the swelling down with echinacea and calendula, Dad
suggested his own remedy. “People don’t know it, but the sun is the
most powerful medicine we have. That’s why people don’t get sore
throats in summer.” He nodded, as if approving of his own logic, then
said, “If I had tonsils like yours, I’d go outside every morning and
stand in the sun with my mouth open—let those rays seep in for a half
hour or so. They’ll shrink in no time.” He called it a treatment.
I did it for a month.
It was uncomfortable, standing with my jaw dropped and my head
tilted back so the sun could shine into my throat. I never lasted a whole
half hour. My jaw would ache after ten minutes, and I’d half-freeze
standing motionless in the Idaho winter. I kept catching more sore
throats, and anytime Dad noticed I was a bit croaky, he’d say, “Well,
what do you expect? I ain’t seen you getting treatment all week!”
—IT WAS AT THE Worm Creek Opera House that I first saw him: a boy I