River of the Brokenhearted Read Online Free

the exit. When they came back upon the theatre the next night, one brought his own revolver, to “pay Tommy back,” and was talked out of it by my grandfather, who said he would only be “killing the air—and Tom would remain Tom.”
    This was not laughed at by my grandfather, for why would he laugh at those things that were natural, in support of what to most was unnatural? But he wrote a piece in the paper about how these sights were possible, on what small frames in a band of film they sat. As the months passed along, and winter came again, and more people were informed about trains seeming to come out of the air and pretty girls showing their corsets, more people came—and into this mix were the young women who had idols like Clara Bow and lovers like Valentino.
    The silver screen brought our forefathers a view of New York, London, and Boston that many had never seen, and showed the Keystone Kops running about ragtag streets far away, and Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle. The benches were replaced by seats and a carpet, and a refreshment stand was built. The price of admission was ten cents and the Regent became known as the dime.
    The Dime flourished as few things did, and gave my grandparents the life they wanted. And it influenced people more than they would like to admit. The blacksmith because of his proportions became known as Pond Street Fatty, after Arbuckle, and a young girl who had a peek-a-boo hat believed she was the spitting image of Clara Bow, and to her beau, who cut hair in the square and shaved my granddad clean, she was.
    But Mr. Elias bided his time, thinking that at death’s door Grandfather would find it too taxing to run an enterprise such as a theatre and sell out. Yet night after night my grandparents played their instruments wildly and brilliantly against the backdrop of silent actors cavorting on the screen. To those early goers to our theatre, my grandfather seemed possessed. And after six luckless months Mr. Elias, who had opened his own little theatre, called the Biograph, went to visit the house of his opposition.
    The afternoon was sweltering and light shadows flitted on the wall as the blinds blew forward in a gust of July wind, and my grandfather swiped at motes of silent dust every now and again. My grandfather was dressed in a wide-lapel suit and a housecoat, with his pockets bulging with strange collectibles, pins, buttons, Boer War medals, that he rubbed for good luck. Mr. Elias, holding his hat, his pin-striped suit also of a variety found in the 1923 summer catalogue, watched him with some dismay, and thought, as he admitted later, the old boy was bonkers. Mr. Elias humoured this insanity as best he could, and was to comment later that “all the Kings are insane—and George was the most insane of them all.”
    “It’s horrible about your illness,” he said after a time.
    “My illness—what’s so horrible about it? In illness you’ll sometimes find—as in war—a horrible beauty is born.” My grandfather gazed at Elias with a peculiar expression. Then he shoved a teapot forward for Elias to have tea.
    “You’ll probably find, Joey,” he said after a moment, glancing through the drawn venetian blinds as he spoke, “it will not be any more horrible than yours will be—when it comes, which it will. Would you like a cupcake?”
    Elias went home very distressed at the situation but willing to make some kind of an offer to amalgamate the two theatres under his control.
    “Ah, that I were in England now that spring is here,” my grandfather was overheard to have said that afternoon. Elias took this as a sign that the old man wanted to get the hell back to a place where he could be buried.
    So while King was still alive, invalid though he was, Mr. Elias visited him on three more occasions. It was during that long, awful summer, when noise and light and heat bothered my grandfather excessively, that Elias was at the door. He was willing to buy the theatre for a fair