The Walk-On

By Larry O’Neal

The walk-on has no lines. He has one purpose: to deliver a message from Southshore Swaggart—a handwritten invitation to brawl etched out in cigar ash on one side of a linen napkin—to Ugly Lou on the twenty-third pier at the Sunscape Fishery Plank. The walk-on character has no name and he's had to supply his own costume. His only motivation is to find Ugly Lou and give him the message. No conversation. He has no lines.

         Ugly Lou is a big man. And he's ugly because of a trawling accident he refuses to discuss. The audience is left to plumb the depths of its own imagination to reconstruct the harrowing details. Was it the wicked North Wind on a ravaging sea? The poison kiss of an island siren? A giant squid? Ugly Lou rakes his big salty hand through a frayed and faded haversack filled with the morning's catch of clams and Pacific scallops. He picks one out and bites it apart like a cracked walnut, slurps out the slimy mollusk and swallows it whole, the way a real son of the sea would. Ugly Lou sings "Cockles and Mussels." When the walk-on doesn't hit his cue, Ugly Lou sings the song again, louder. Then he eats a scallop.

         Carlton St. Turge plays the part of Ugly Lou. He's a veteran of the Tacoma Community Theater and just returned from back surgery. Two slipped discs, severe rug burn. Doesn't want to discuss it. He won a local Tony for his portrayal of Gregor Mendel's father in TCT's production of Getting into Your Genes, a musical-comedy about the history of genetics. Backstage, Will Killoch, the nervous stage manager, plays a ten-minute recording of plovers cawing and cooing in the background over a wash of salt-sea surf lapping up to the amber beach. He borrowed the disc from the Swasey Branch of the Tacoma Public Library. It's due back on Monday. It's actually a self-hypnosis recording designed to relax you and help you quit smoking subliminally. When the disc ends, Will has to restart it. No one can remember the walk-on's name. Tina Culbert (Saucy Ramona the Bareback Bar Back, the female lead) thinks it might be Jimmy. Or John. She met him once at a cast party. Well, saw him there eating olives straight from the jar. With his fingers. Gawd. Jerry? It wasn't an unusual name. Pretty sure it started with a J.

         It's imperative for the walk-on to deliver the message. Without it, Ugly Lou can't accept the gauntlet from Southshore Swaggart and rally his ragtag faction of North End mollusk fishermen to rumble with and defeat the Southshore Gang. Ugly Lou can't discover the long-lost treasure of Saucy Ramona's late father, later revealed to be the whaling legend Keelboat Kendall, and finally express his true feelings for the lonely barmaid, thus freeing her from the oppression of the saloon and its demanding patrons, learning that true beauty is on the inside, and freeing himself from the haunting sea-demons of his past. It's an allegory. A parable. The playwright said so.

         The TCT Players are all onstage. They've already doubled up on parts. Charlie Gant's playing Salmon-Eye Sweeney, Double-Knuckle the Drunken Barber, and a Port Authority ombudsman who whistles a lot and breaks up the brawl in act three. Will Killoch can't go on in the walk-on's place. He has stage fright and has to man the CD player. They need the walk-on.

         The walk-on is at the multiplex cinema. He's watching a new sci-fi thriller about a secret platoon of cyber soldiers who can transcend virtual reality and cause nightmares to come true. It stars a guy from Star Trek: Enterprise. The walk-on sips from a large cup of Pepsi though he's not really thirsty. He squeezes two fingers into a long box of Dots, trying to reach the last three stuck at the far end of the container, though he's not really hungry. He doesn't think about the girlfriend he doesn't have. He doesn't think about the napkin in his jacket pocket, the one with the cigar ash message from Southshore Swaggart. He doesn't think about Ugly Lou. He doesn't think about the allegory. He thinks there are wormholes in the space-time continuum and that he will one day be able to transcend both space and time and walk invisible through girls' locker rooms.

         Everyone has a line except the walk-on. Even Shelly O'Day, the young daughter of the play's director, says, "The Sea giveth and the Sea taketh away, sir." And Ugly Lou answers, "Aye, youngun. A right harlot she be."

         Ugly Lou paces the stage apron and pretends to shoo the sandpipers from the shore. He ad-libs. "'Spectin' that messenger boy'll be 'round directly." He peers into the wings stage left like he's surveying the key for the Flying Dutchman. He's good. He's won a local Tony. The audience members suspect something is amiss. They begin to imagine what may have happened to the messenger boy: Murdered by a miscreant father? Drowned in the unforgiving sea? Kidnapped by ne'er-do-wells?

         At great personal risk, the sci-fi movie's virile hero telepathically transcends into the antagonist's nightmare and plants a virtual reality chip that impels the villain to destroy the VR databank controlled by the evil corporation and free the brainwave-enslaved minions. The databank explodes. There's fire and debris and lightning and the latest CGI special effects. The walk-on thinks it's way cool. It could happen this way. The movie ends. He doesn't stay for the credits. He doesn't care about the grips and gaffers and caterers and score composers and the fact that no animals were harmed in the making of this movie. He's a computer-generated image, a pliant tube of water that can seep around the exiting crowd and penetrate the crevices of a foreign embassy. He's the ultra-sleek bullet spinning out of the barrel of a pistol in super slow motion, two hundred frames per second. He's a fiber-optic nerve mass of intrigue and fearlessness. There's nothing he can't do. His fingers are sticky and smell like Dots.

         Carlton St. Turge's back starts to aggravate him. Was his return to the stage premature? It could be the inflamed vertebra or it could be another kidney stone. God, not another kidney stone. The pain knots up the left side of his lower back like a plum with a flaming arrow through it. He sweats through his pancake makeup. He knows there's a patron goddess of theater but can't remember her name. If he could, he'd pray to her to end this awful suffering and get out of this interminable second act. All he can think of is Terpsichore, but the Muse of Dance can't help him now.

         A voice breaks the tense silence. "Ugly Lou. I just heard word from Southshore Swaggart. Seems they aim to brawl with us.  If'un we ain't cowards. I say we take 'em on!" It's Charlie Gant in the role of Salmon-Eye Sweeney. He's like an angel sent from the corona of St. Elmo's Fire to lift the capsized play back on its tack. The North End mollusk fishermen snarl and say, "Yeah!" Carlton St. Turge says, "Oh Jesus, Charlie. My goddamn back."

         The audience's imagination revs on borrowed cylinders: There’s a hidden gunman just off the pier. It's Southshore Swaggart himself. He'll saunter onto the pier, musket still smoking, and proclaim the wharf his. With Ugly Lou out of the way he'll be free to four-flush the local tradesmen and search for the hidden treasure of Keelboat Kendall. There'll be no inner beauty revealed tonight. Ugly Lou will die beside his beloved and accursed sea. It's theater of the absurd. It's seaside Ionesco. There is no redeeming purpose in the human experience. Man is a victim of his own experiences. The audience wrings its hands and shuffles its collective feet. Ugly Lou collapses on the pier as the unseen plovers squawk all around him.

         The walk-on takes the bus home. He attempts to transform himself into a tiny firing neuron and leap into the mind of the businessman seated in front of him. There is no struggle, no exchange of dialogue. Even in his sci-fi fantasies the walk-on has no lines. He concentrates. He focuses. But the bus stops and the businessman steps off. The walk-on is a burning CGI image with nowhere to go, no nightmare to infiltrate. His heartbeat is a MIDI-arranged rhythm track produced by drum machines and sequencers and groove boxes. No actual musical instruments were harmed in the making of the soundtrack to his life.

         His apartment is decorated with posters of movie stars and one-sheets of his favorite sci-fi flicks. There's a table with no chairs and a scattering of bills and junk mail atop it. But tonight he does not live here. Tonight he is a synthetic neuron, firing on its own for the first time. He's his own secret weapon in the cyber-world war on corporate evil.

         When the walk-on finds the linen napkin in his jacket pocket he forgets about corporate evil. He remembers the play and that it has already started. Without him. He looks at the clock and feels faint. He's nowhere near the Tacoma Community Theater and he knows it. He holds the prop in both hands, a message overripe for delivering.

         Carlton the actor is on the apron, facedown, center-stage, a single fresnel flood framing him and making him appear even paler. He clutches at his back, trying to smother the fire. Tina Culbert rushes to his side, tries to assess the extent of Carlton's malady. The audience waits to hear famous last words, poignant advice from the tragic hero, something from which to draw a conclusion, a dramatic arc to propel the story into the third act. The audience doesn't know whether to applaud or vomit at the distressing and inevitable truth so it does neither. Tina shouts to Will Killoch to call an ambulance. He's got a cell phone with a case that makes it look like the Tardis from Doctor Who.

         The EMT driver runs the red light on South J Street pulling out of St. Joseph's and swerves to miss the bus that the walk-on rides. The ambulance lights throw a brief but unpleasant red glow on the windows of the offices and storefronts it passes. There's the shrieking siren that blares atonally as the ambulance overtakes the bus and the howl becomes incorporated into the soundtrack. The walk-on wishes the bus could run red lights and speed to get to the theater. There's a chance, he thinks, that he can get there just in time to deliver the message.

         Walt Prusk portrays Southshore Swaggart. He's the villain who'll incite the brawl in the third act. But he's out there early, in act two, trying to help lift Carlton off the ground and onto a gymnastic mat used by the Ruff N' Tumblers preschool gymnasts on Saturday mornings. There's also a trampoline leaned up against a wall backstage. Walt knows CPR but it isn't necessary. He also knows the kicker for the Seahawks. Went to high school with his dad, way back when. Carlton St. Turge moans and can't stop grabbing at the small of his back. There's a piranha attached that he can't bat off.

         Mrs. Valentine Hupner watches from the front door of the auditorium. She's sold tickets all night and wonders if they have a refund policy. Most of this money was going to fund the next production, Annie Get Your Gun, and she wants desperately to play the role of Annie Oakley and sling those fine guns. She's been learning the songs and practicing sharp shooting tricks at the rifle range for weeks now. Gotten tips from the pros. The audience sighs and feels Ugly Lou's pain. Now that's acting, they think. Even when the house lights come up the audience refuses to pull its attention away from the play. The need for quality drama has not been fulfilled, but strangely enough, no one wants a cigarette.

         Charlie Gant takes the apron and assumes yet another role, that of stage announcer. "A thousand apologies," he says, —he's classically trained—"but due to the unfortunate circumstances we'll have to suspend the remainder of tonight's play. But please return the last weekend of next month for our spirited interpretation of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. Thank you all for attending and take care driving home."

         There's a queasy sense of unconsummated drama that abrades the audience as it reluctantly stands and cleaves into lines for the various exits, the restrooms, the drinking fountain, the snack counter. The theater patrons hesitate and bump knees into each other as they turn to the stage to see how the tragedy plays out. When the siren blares from right outside the front doors and the walls go intermittently red and blue, the audience pauses. It feels like the third act has finally arrived. Just in time.

         Enter Rick and Robin, two brave and swarthy EMT workers with stethoscopes around their necks and great hair. They cut through the crowd like surfers shooting the tube. They're tan and swift and serious and may have their own TV series soon, something like Surfs Up! or Beach Rescue Now! They've thought a lot about it and are working on a treatment. They've had headshots printed. They know a guy who knows a guy, an agent. Rick and Robin glide over the proscenium and insert something in Carlton's ear. They roll him on his side and press on different areas of his back and say things like, "Stat!" Carlton moans like the deep dark mystery of the ocean depths. Loud.

         The audience watches the pier, now awash with activity.

Shelly O'Day can't stop crying and reciting, "The Sea giveth and the Sea taketh away, sir. The Sea giveth and the Sea taketh away, sir," despite her mother's comforting. The EMTs shred through the crowd once more and return with a gurney. Face-of-the-Wave. Toes on the nose. Full on. They slam the lip, get a little tailslide action and go vertical onto the stage where they roll the beached actor onto the stretcher and rip through the crowd once more. The other TCT Players follow in the wake of the gurney, cascading through the doorways and into their cars.

         The Sunscape Fishery Plank is nearly deserted. The audience sits down again in the folding metal chairs and thinks, That's more like it. Now we're cookin'. Yeah.

         The last man standing on the pier is Charlie Gant, still dressed as Salmon-Eye Sweeney. He speaks eloquently into a microphone, imploring the audience to leave. "There's nothing more to see here. Please exit to the front of the theater." The audience wants more. It's unsatisfied. It thirsts for dénouement, the falling action of this undulating plot line. "Mrs. Hupner will be happy to refund the cost of admission, given the unfortunate circumstances," Charlie Gant says. But Mrs. Hupner is gone from the ticket table and nothing will stand in the way of her dream of bringing Annie Oakley to life on the TCT stage. Soon even Salmon-Eye flops out of his costume and wriggles out the Actor's Entrance and into his Lincoln Towncar. Crushed velvet interior. New sound system. Check out the bass boost. Serious subwoofer action.

         The walk-on pushes his way to the front of the bus as the ambulance shrieks by in the opposite direction. At the next intersection he steps off the bus without thanking the driver and runs awkwardly across the government center lawn and around the back of the Tacoma Community Theater building and up the Actors Entrance steps. He hopes he's not too late and that he can find his costume quickly. The walk-on doesn't listen for the patter of the actors reciting their lines. He's in the men's dressing room, slipping into his faded dungarees, never releasing the linen napkin with the cigar ash message. Then he's down the hallway and into the backstage area and past the trampoline and in the wings stage left. Then he's on the pier of the Sunscape Fishery Plank with a napkin in his hand and peering past the lone key light, blazing down from the heavens, into an unforgiving sea of audience faces.

         He looks stage right. He looks stage left. He looks upstage and downstage for someone to whom he can deliver his message. He looks into the expectant faces of the theater patrons who ache for some sign of redemption, some word that will allay their fears and anxieties and reinforce the notion that life is good and worth living. There's a hidden treasure out there for each of us, right? We just need to know where to look. See with our hearts, not just our eyes. Right?

         At that point in the plot the walk-on experiences the epiphany. It's a lightbulb moment that slaps him on the forehead and makes him feel seasick. He realizes he's not a fiber optic nerve mass of intrigue or a synthetic neuron or a computer-generated image able to infiltrate government agencies and peoples' nightmares. And he never will be.

         He's filled with blood and guts and Dots, and some of them feel like coming out about now. There are no wormholes in the space-time continuum and he's never wanted to be invisible more than at this very moment. The walk-on is a victim of his own experiences, and right now they don't add up to squat. He unfolds the linen napkin, hoping for some instruction, some guidance, some direction. But the napkin is just a napkin. It's a prop in a play. There's no invitation etched on it with the ashy end of a cigar. It didn't come from Southshore Swaggart. And there's no one to give it to.

         The walk-on feels like his soul is being gnawed on by the widening eyes of the transfixed audience. He feels like a girl in a locker room being leered at by deviants. Then the walk-on breaks the rules. He compromises the author's vision and writes himself a line. He steps to the apron and squints beneath the key light. He says, "Sorry I'm late. Where is everyone?"

         The audience waits and watches, mentally timing the seconds between the contractions of the walk-on’s pregnant soliloquy.

         "Right here, boy!" comes a voice from the wings. "Yee Ha!"

         There's the sound of a gunshot and the walk-on spins to see Mrs. Valentine Hupner striding out to center-stage in complete cowgirl garb. She fires a prop pistol into the rafters again and cocks her western hat down over one eye and twirls the pistol around her finger as the cap smokes.

         Mrs. Hupner says, "Hey, y'all. I'm Annie Oakley, rootinest tootinest sharp shootin’-est cowgirl the Old West has ever knowed! Many a fella has fallen to my charms and I can pick a plug nickel out of a hummingbird's beak at five hundred yards! You betcher britches!"

         Mrs. Hupner prances around the walk-on, waving her pistols in the air and singing that there’s no business like show business, how everything about it is appealing.

         She sings the entire number without accompaniment and wraps it up with a big finish, then fires off another round of blanks at the ceiling and takes an extravagant bow. The audience's eyes widen and alight with glee. They smile, satisfied with the formula. Conflict, crisis, resolution. There is closure. All the world's a stage and all's right with the world. Damn, these folding metal chairs are murder on the backside. Are there any snacks left?

         The walk-on drops the napkin and wipes his sweaty palms on his ragged and faded dungarees. He won't try out for the next production. Those spotlights are really hot.     

         Mrs. Valentine Hupner blows away the imaginary wisps from the barrels of her six-guns and winks coyly at the walk-on. Sure as shootin'. There's no business like show business.

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