Free Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton

around him. At a table in front of the theater’s stage, a pretty blonde and a thin, pale-faced boy watched the clock for the time to start. Also at the table, reading while he smoked a cigarette, was a dark young man who looked older than everybody else. As Martin watched, the man’s cigarette burned down, a bridge of ashes arching over his book, until Martin was sure it would fall and singe the pages. At the last moment, the man took it out of his mouth and flicked it into an ashtray to his right. His dark eyes evaluated the gathering audience. Martin looked away before the man’s gaze reached him. The blonde called the meeting to order.
    The girl named Margaret who had signed Martin up slipped into the seat beside him. “Hiya, playwright,” she said.
    As the blonde went over preliminaries, Martin asked Margaret, “Who’s that fellow in black?”
    â€œDeke Armstrong,” she whispered.
    He tried the name out in his mouth.
    â€œHe saw action in Korea,” Margaret said. “He’s brilliant onstage. He played John White in The Lost Colony this summer.”
    The thin boy took the floor. “We’re holding auditions for Tartuffe in three weeks. I have scripts for anyone interested. If you want to work on costumes or scenery, see Bess after the meeting.” He pointed to the blonde. “The other thing we’re putting on this semester is a series of student-written one-act plays. Submit them to Deke before September fifteenth if you want your work considered. No suicides or people waking up at the end of the play to discover it was all a dream, please.”
    Martin blushed. The play he’d written for Mr. Samuels, Fortunate One , featured a suicide. He started to rewrite it in his head.
    â€œAnd now, to get us all in the dramatic mood, Deke Armstrong has agreed to do a reading for us from Shakespeare’s King Lear .”
    With so many people fawning over him, Deke could have been pretentious. Martin watched him, ready to snort and poke Margaret in the ribs as a homely substitute for Liza if Deke seemed too impressed with himself. But Deke gave an easy smile and rose. “Let’s see if I can do the Bard justice.”
    â€œ ‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!’ ”
    Except for his own play and occasional movies in Whelan, Martin had never seen a dramatic performance. Deke’s smooth voice reading old words, the way his jaw muscles flexed as he read, riveted Martin. At the end of the passage, when Deke spoke the last lines and closed the book, Martin couldn’t move.
    That night he dreamed that the Playmakers were hazing him in a fraternity initiation. He ran naked with his pledge brothers through a canopy of hands and feet that kicked and punched. He slipped on cold grass and looked up to see Deke. Deke’s hands on his shoulders lifted him up, then slammed him back down hard on the ground. Deke’s hands didn’t rest on him any longer than any other brother’s hands, but the shock that went through Martin at Deke’s touch was like nothing he had felt before. He woke up alone in his bedroom at Mrs. Bowen’s, embarrassed at his physical response.
    He reworked Fortunate One and left it in Deke’s mailbox in the Playmakers office. In October the temperature dropped into the thirties. Martin excused his thin coat by telling people he was warm natured. On a miserably cold day, as he walked through a wind tunnel between class buildings, he heard someone call his name.
    â€œOwenby! Hold up.” Deke finished a conversation with another student and walked over to Martin. Martin hadn’t thought Deke knew his name. “Your play,” Deke said.
    Deke had the play in his hand. Martin could see the flimsy watermarked paper he had used, the lower case e ’s from Mrs. Bowen’s typewriter all filled in with ink. Deke had read his play.
    â€œYou have potential.” Deke walked beside him,