Typecasting Read online

  Then he smiled. He couldn’t help himself. Here came a pair of his own kind, walking down Main Street holding hands. They were both close to Nicole’s age. The boy wore an outsized baseball cap with JSA on the front, so they were college kids. They didn’t give a damn about feeling isolated, or anything else except each other. They walked past him and Louise without even noticing them.

  They were lucky. They didn’t know how lucky they were, which was another way of saying they were young. Still smiling, Bill glanced down at the top of his wife’s head. Twenty-odd years ago now, he’d felt that way about her. He still did, even if experience tempered romance now. Louise wouldn’t know what he was thinking. She would have had her own dark moments down through the years. Man or woman, big or little, you couldn’t very well reach middle age without them.

  She suddenly waved. “There’s Nicole!” she said. Sure enough, up Main Street from the direction of campus walked their firstborn. Being no more than an inch taller than Louise, she didn’t stand out that much from the little people around her. Jefferson’s settlers mostly came from northwestern Europe, and ran tall for their kind. Some of them also had a trace, or sometimes more than a trace, of sasquatch blood. For that matter, Bill thought—though he wasn’t sure—one of his great-grandmothers was a little person. Whether that story was true didn’t matter to him one way or the other.

  Nicole waved back. She hurried toward them. Her last few steps were a trot. She hugged Louise and then Bill. “Sometimes I forget there are people as big as you, Daddy,” she said.

  “Here I am, such as I am,” Bill said. “Sometimes I forget there are people bigger than I am. I was looking up to the Yeti Lama every which way last summer. He’s the only really holy person I ever met—and he’s six inches taller than me.” Maybe that had to do with the great-grandmother he’d never met. Maybe yetis averaged taller than their North American cousins. Or maybe the Yeti Lama was just a great big fellow and Bill not so much.

  His daughter pointed toward Gepetto’s front door. “Let’s eat,” she said. “They do pretty good burgers, and their wontons are great.”

  “Works for me. I bet I could eat one ton of them all by myself.” Bill pronounced the weight so it sounded like the Chinese dish. Louise and Nicole both groaned. They knew that, tall as he was, he had a low taste for puns. He had to work hard not to let it out where it could alarm his constituents.

  “Governor Williamson!” exclaimed the middle-aged woman at a lectern who seated people. “You’ll want a table set up for big people, won’t you?”

  “Yes, please, if you have one,” he said.

  “We sure do. Right this way.” She scooped up menus and led them to a table and chairs that suited their size. No trouble with the Equal Accommodations Act here—and Bill wouldn’t need to worry about where to put his knees.

  The waitress who took their orders was short even by little-people standards. Bill needed a moment to notice that; all little people, even basketball players, seemed short to him. He saw she was cute right away. Living in the wider culture his whole life made him as much aware of attractive little-people females as his own kind. He was happy with Louise, so he’d never done anything more than notice. The waitress’ head hair almost matched his own russet pelt, which was interesting and uncommon among her kind.

  When the food came, they spent a while giving the hamburgers and wontons and fries and shakes the attention they deserved. After a while, happily replete, Bill asked, “How’s the play coming along?”

  Louise shot him a warning glance. Like most such, it arrived too late. Nicole’s face clouded over. “Pretty bad,” she said. “You know I’m one of the best at the school.”

  “Uh-huh.” Bill nodded. He did know that. Quietly and without any fuss, he’d made it a point to find out. He also knew it would do his daughter less good than she hoped once she left the friendly confines of Jefferson State Ashland. He ate a few more french fries. Then he said, “So?”

  “So we’re doing The Tempest, right?” Nicole spoke to him as if sure he was none too bright: the tone that always did so much to endear the rising generation to its elders. “So I was hoping they’d cast me for Miranda. But the director isn’t a JSA guy. The Shakespeare Festival brought him in—he’s from Pittsburgh, for crying out loud.” She stopped, too disgusted to go on.

  “So what part did he give you?” Bill asked, fearing he knew the answer before he heard it. And he did.

  “Caliban!” His daughter spat out the name with so much venom, several little people’s heads whipped around. In a slightly—but only slightly—softer voice, she went on, “Talk about stereotyping! My God!” She made as if to clap her hands to her head. But her fingers were greasy, so she didn’t.

  “You see what I mean,” Louise said.

  Bill nodded unhappily. “Who’s playing Miranda, then?” he asked.

  “Jackie van Herpen,” Nicole replied.

  “She any good?”

  His daughter turned her right thumb toward the floor. Vespasian couldn’t have done it with more imperial hauteur. She said, “I suppose she’s pretty, if you like brainless blondes.”

  Some men, little and big, did. Quite a few, in fact. Bill found another question: “Is the guy from, uh, Pittsburgh sleeping with her?”

  For the first time since naming Shakespeare’s mooncalf, Nicole smiled. “I don’t think so,” she said. “He’s gay as gay can be.”

  “Okay. Good, even.” Most of the time, Bill didn’t care who went to bed with whom, or why. But if the director was balling his Miranda, no way in hell he’d change his mind about casting. Since he wasn’t, he might—possibly—listen to reason (which, to Bill, meant doing what he wanted). “What’s his name, and how do I get hold of him?”

  “He’s Reggie Pesky, and he’s at the Angus Bowmer Theatre, the small one—that’s where we’ll perform.” Nicole suddenly looked anxious. “Maybe you should call over there and meet him somewhere else. Out of his territory.”

  Bill nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense, but I’ll do it anyway.” Nicole stuck out her tongue at him. He went on, “Remember, just because we talk, there’s no guarantee of anything. All I can do is try.”

  “I know, Dad.” Nicole sounded confident, though, and why not? Wasn’t her father nine feet tall (and then some)? Wasn’t he governor of Jefferson? Didn’t all that mean he could do anything?

  As a matter of fact, no, Bill thought. Nine feet tall or not, he was only human. And a recalcitrant Legislature had taught him a governor could only do so much. Of course, Reggie Pesky was a theatre guy, not a politician. He might not grok that. If he didn’t, Bill had no intention of enlightening him.

  * * *

  Sitting in a sasquatch-sized chair in the Columbia’s lobby, Bill pretended to read the Ashland Daily Tidings. In fact, he barely noticed the words on the newsprint. He’d spent the afternoon at a different kind of reading. He hadn’t dug into Shakespeare since English Lit in college. He wondered why not. The old boy knew a trick or three, sure as hell.

  Reggie Pesky walked in at six o’clock sharp, on time to the minute, which made Bill think well of him. He recognized the little man at once from Nicole’s description: longish yellow hair, blue eyes, very pale skin, broad cheekbones, snappy clothes. Bill would have bet dollars to dimes the director hadn’t been born with the moniker he used these days. By his looks, something on the order of Riszard Paweskowicz seemed more likely.

  But that had nothing to do with the price of beer. Bill stood up. He wanted to intimidate a bit, or more than a bit. Pesky was fair-sized for a little man; he stood close to six feet. That put his eyes on a level somewhere near Bill’s diaphragm.

  “Hello, Mr. Pesky. Thanks for coming by.” Bill’s voice, deeper than deep, was another polite weapon. He held out his hand. The way it engulfed the director’s was one more.

  “I’m delighted to meet you, Governor Williamson. Your daughter is very … impressive. You’re even more so.” Reggie Pesky stared at his hand as if deli
ghted to get it back again.

  Bill didn’t think Nicole was wrong about which way he swung. “Call me Bill,” he said. “I’m just trying to get along, same as anybody else.”

  “Then I’m Reggie, of course,” Pesky said.

  “Shall we get something to eat? The restaurant’s pretty decent—I’ve stayed here before,” Bill said. His wife and daughter would have dinner somewhere else. Bill wanted to talk to the director with his governor hat on, not his daddy hat.

  In they went. As at Gepetto’s, a couple of tables were large enough to let sasquatches eat comfortably. A busboy brought Pesky a tall chair so he could sit at one with Bill, the way a child would have got a booster seat at a regular table. The expression on the little man’s face was a caution.

  Reggie Pesky ordered a Bombay Sapphire and tonic, Bill a triple scotch. He liked beer better, but he needed half a gallon for a buzz. Pesky raised a pale eyebrow. “Your bar tab must be hell,” he said sympathetically.

  “Now that you mention it, yes,” Bill agreed. “My grocery bill, too. Being big ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  The director hoisted his eyebrow again, in a slightly different way this time. Bill thought he knew what that meant. Gay sasquatches from Jefferson had joined their little brethren in the move to San Francisco. Their … attributes were in great demand among a certain set there. A rather smaller set of little women admired straight sasquatches for similar reasons.

  When the drinks came, Bill and Pesky clinked glasses. Bill savored his smoky single malt. “I’m so glad I came to Jefferson,” Pesky said. “This is the first chance I’ve had to work with sasquatches. Yunz are remarkable people.”

  “Yunz?” Bill wondered if he’d heard right.

  “Did I just say that?” The director looked astonished at himself. He seemed to play a tape back in his head, because he sighed. “Good God, I guess I did. It’s … Pittsburgh for y’all, is what it is. They call people who talk that way yunzers. My folks sure as hell did—do—but I thought I outgrew it years and years ago.” He laughed and sipped his drink. “Shows what I know, doesn’t it?”

  “We’re more like other people than we’re different,” Bill said.

  “Well, I tell people the same thing, and most of the time it’s true,” Pesky replied. He, no doubt, wasn’t talking about his size or how hairy he was. Bill nodded anyway. Reggie Pesky went on, “Sometimes it isn’t, though. Sometimes the differences matter.”

  Before Bill needed to answer that, the waitress came up and said brightly, “Would you gentlemen care for another drink? And are you ready to order, or do you need another few minutes?”

  Bill looked a question at the director. Pesky bobbed his head up and down. “I’d like another drink, yeah,” Bill said. “And I’ll have the sasquatch-sized prime rib, rare.” Reggie Pesky ordered a fresh gin and tonic and broiled salmon.

  “Thank you.” The waitress beamed at them. “I’ll bring the drinks right away, and I’ll have your dinners for you as soon as they’re up.” Bill watched her backside work when she hurried away. Pesky forgot about her as soon as she wasn’t standing there any more. Sure enough, there were differences, and then there were differences.

  The drinks came as fast as promised. Reggie Pesky smiled when Bill sipped from his. “I’d fall over if I had two that size,” he said.

  “There are little men who drink more than I do,” Bill said. “Some of the old-timers in Yreka … They start putting it away right after breakfast, and they quit when they go to bed. You never see ’em falling-down drunk, though. They just go along like that, full of antifreeze—”

  “Till their liver conks out,” Pesky put in.

  “Uh-huh. Or till lung cancer or emphysema gets ’em, ’cause they mostly smoke like chimneys, too.”

  Pesky grinned crookedly. “We’re cheerful, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, at least,” Bill said, which made the little man chuckle. The governor added, “And here’s the chow.”

  Up strode the waitress, a large tray on her left shoulder. With the deftness of long practice, she supported the tray with her left hand while using her right to set plates on the table. “There you go,” she said. “Do you need anything else right now?”

  “Don’t think so,” Bill said. She lowered the tray and hustled off to whatever she had to do next.

  Reggie Pesky eyed Bill’s slab of prime rib with undisguised admiration. “They got all of that from one cow?” he said.

  “Looks like it.” Bill cut off a bite, dipped it in the au jus, chewed, swallowed, and smiled. “A cow that died happy, too.”

  About halfway through dinner, Pesky paused and said, “I just wanted to let you know what a pleasure it is working with your daughter, Governor.”

  Bill had heard that tone of voice before. It was the tone of a man who knew which side his bread was buttered on. Bill said, “That’s part of the reason I invited you to dinner tonight.”

  “I thought it might be,” the director said. No, he was no dope. Well, he wouldn’t have the slot he had if he were. He continued, “She understudies Miranda very well. I’ve been impressed. I know I said that before, but she has talent.”

  “Thanks.” Bill picked his words with care: “If she’s so good, why didn’t she get the part?”

  Reggie Pesky looked at his drink and seemed disappointed to find it empty. “A couple of reasons,” he said after a moment, also plainly thinking about what came out of his mouth. “Probably the most important is that here in Jefferson I have a chance I probably never would anywhere else—the chance to do The Tempest with a Caliban who doesn’t need makeup.”

  “What makes you say that? Caliban’s not a sasquatch. Shakespeare never heard of sasquatches. We hadn’t run into white people yet,” Bill said. “Caliban’s a cross between a woman and a devil. He can look like anything you want him to. Saying he looks like a sasquatch, isn’t that the worst kind of typecasting?”

  Pesky blinked. “I never dreamt you—or Nicole—would take it like that. It’s not how I meant it.”

  The alarming thing was, Bill believed him. “You know, I think you could get away with that kind of casting in Boston or Philadelphia, maybe even New York.” He made a point of not mentioning Pittsburgh. After a bite from one of his baked potatoes, he continued, “This is Ashland, though. Little people here are used to sasquatches. They see them all the time. They take them for granted, as much as they do with, say, black people or Vietnamese.” He exaggerated, but by less than he would have anywhere else in the country.

  “Mm.” Reggie Pesky also did some eating. If he needed time to think, Bill would give it to him. Pesky blotted his lips with his napkin. He was very neat, very precise. “There is also a certain difficulty with suspension of disbelief, you know.”

  And with that they came down to it, as Bill had guessed they would. “I’ve got two things to say, Mr. Pesky.” So much for first names. “The first one is, it’s called acting. You must have seen the movie with Olivier playing Othello.”

  “Oh, sure.” The director nodded.

  “Does he look like a Moor to you?”

  “He looks like Olivier with shoe polish on his face.”

  Bill laughed. “Okay, we’re on the same page. Is it a good performance?”

  “If you like chewing the scenery the way the Brits did a generation ago, maybe.” Pesky realized he couldn’t stop there. He grudged a nod. “Yes, it’s a good performance.”

  “All right. The other thing is, you don’t believe Nicole can make people believe she’s Prospero’s daughter?”

  “It’s … a stretch,” Pesky said.

  “Says you. The thing is, Prospero may honest to God be the kid’s three-times-great-grandfather.”

  “Run that by me again?” the director said.

  “There’s a family story that says one of my great-grandmothers—Nicole’s great-great—was a little woman. I don’t know that that’s true, but I don’t know that it’s not, either. A lot of sasquatches here in Jefferson h
ave little people in the woodpile, and the other way around. And I have no idea who great-granny’s father was. Maybe it was Prospero, if his revels weren’t then ended.”

  “A lot of people, I’d think they were making that up to bullshit me,” Pesky said. “I believe you. Don’t know why, but I do.”

  Life’s too short for bullshit. Bill believed that. He didn’t think Pesky would believe him. And, just because he disliked bullshit, that didn’t mean he didn’t use it now and again. It was an indispensable lubricant in the working politician’s toolbox.

  He tried a different tack instead: “How good is the girl you’ve got doing Miranda now?” He knew what Nicole thought of Jackie van Herpen. He also knew his kid might not be completely objective.

  “She’s okay.” Pesky might or might not be praising with faint damn. After glancing around to make sure no one but Bill could hear, he went on, “Miranda should be pretty, and Jackie’s what they call a double-breasted mattress-thrasher. Most of the guys in the audience will notice.”

  The they and the most distanced him from the people he was talking about. Bill felt even more distanced himself. To little people, and especially to little people who weren’t used to them, sasquatches’ size and hairiness and heavy features were off-putting, to say the least. Nicole was a fine-looking girl … if you had the eyes to see it. A gay little man from Pittsburgh wasn’t likely to.

  “This is Jefferson, you know,” he said, going as far as he thought he could in that direction without getting offensive. “Audiences here don’t look at things the way they do where they haven’t grown up with us.”

  Maybe he went too far anyway. “Mr. Williamson, if you were a sasquatch who sold shoes or drove a truck, you’d never have the nerve to rattle my cage about casting,” Reggie Pesky said. “Because you’re governor, you think you can throw your weight around, the same way you would if you were a—what do you say?—a little man. Some things don’t change, do they?” He put a twenty on the table. “Even at hotel prices, this’ll cover mine and the tip. See you.” He slid off the tall chair and walked away.