Bagpipes in Town Square By Angie L. Lovell, Newnan

We are in the final stages of production and the theatre is buzzing with nerves and exhaustion. This is my first show with the Newnan Theatre Company, a local amateur theater group, and it is likely to be my last. There was a time when I belonged on stage, but it has been years and as opening night draws nearer I find that I am less comfortable as someone else than I once was. I’ve had visions of opening night and me with no lines in my head and a spotlight full on my face. We are a week out and are doing our first full run through tonight.

Sitting in a closet on-stage, a built-for-this-purpose closet, I am listening for the lines, waiting for my cue to pop my head out and look sharply around before ducking back into hiding. This is the middle of the second Act and we are nearing the end. The crescendo is rising, culminating in a frustrated and high energy speech by Kay. She falters, stumbling over the words and losing a line. The crescendo slows. She creates a new line swinging back into the rhythm of her speech, beautifully done, an audience would never know. Cues are given and I poke my head out, looking wide-eyed around the room as the door to the room begins to open. I feign surprise and dart my head back in. The action moves closer.

My fingers and toes are solidly cold. The theatre is an old warehouse, haphazardly refinished to suit the needs of a live theatre company. The warehouse has been partitioned by temporary walls to create three separate staging areas and the heating unit, which was designed to keep raw materials at a constant enough temperature that they would not spoil, is doing a poor job of making the building comfortable for people.

The closet door is pulled open and I fling my eyes wide and hand out a jacket. The door is closed again. Tom, the director, chuckles in the audience, and I smile. He has seen us go through this show a hundred times, and yet, he is still struck by something enough to laugh. We are going to be just fine on opening night. The door is opened again and I am pulled out onto the stage, by an indignant Mark Sullivan, playing my father. The show goes on.

After we work out a few last minute details on the final bows we all separate out to go to our changing rooms. We are exuberant. Words bubble from our mouths and we hug each other with the conviction that we are going to make it after all. The energy is frenetic and the exhaustion that accompanied us into the building tonight is not escorting us home.

Tyler is sitting on the front row when I come out after changing from my costume back into my warm cable-knit sweater and jeans. My jacket is spread over his legs and I am surprised to see him here. Tyler is my stepson and he is absolutely one of my favorite people. He is my bonus child and I love the little boy he is, all of nine years old and still affectionate and loving. There will be a day when he will no longer want to sit with Daddy in his chair to watch a movie, or when he will no longer welcome a warm hand to hold. I know the day will come when he doesn’t want to be tucked in anymore and he’ll come to think we are the most embarrassing people he knows, but for now he thinks we are great and he’s always up for a hug. “Hey Ty. What you doing here?”

“Daddy got called for a case.” Daddy is a nurse in a cardiac cath lab, and sometimes he gets called away at unexpected times, to assist with procedures.

I squeeze his shoulder to my side and we make our way through the theatre and into the lobby. “It’s good to see you.” We are still a little tentative with one another, still learning each other.

“Good to see you, too.” We step out into the night and climb into my car, fastening seatbelts and waiting for the heat to come. “You were good,” he says, sounding a little shy.

“Thank you. How much did you get to see?”

“I came in while you were in the closet.” He has blue eyes and they look dark in this light. His pale skin is translucent, absorbing the light from the streetlamp across the parking lot.

“Oh. What did you think of Kay, the redhead?” She is a beauty, with a grace and energy that is infectious. Her scene while I am in the closet is the high point and she does it magnificently.

His lips part in a smile, showing two large front teeth surrounded by his much smaller milk teeth. “She was crazy.”

“And how.” I make my eyes wide and smile, laughing. We turn right out of the parking lot and make another right followed by a left, heading toward the downtown square, which has maintained its vitality even with the addition of department and discount stores in new Newnan. It shifted and became less of a necessary shopping excursion and more of a destination excursion. It is the thriving pulse beat of the town. There are shops and businesses along the streets facing into the historic courthouse. People come to the square to enjoy the atmosphere, the lights, and the beauty of a historical town preserved. The town offers Friday night carriage rides during the spring and summer and for the price of a few dollars you can travel through time and remember the town before it burgeoned.

As usual, there are folks milling about, and I do not think anything of the small gaggle of people collected at the courthouse. “What is that?” Tyler asks, rolling his window down slightly. Then I hear it, what Tyler had already heard – the haunting chains of a bagpipe. The hair on the back of my neck stands erect and I pull quickly into a parking spot. People are not strolling tonight, they are converging. “Those are bagpipes,” I say, and we leave the car and follow the sound. The thick notes hang heavy on the air, the tones merging and overlapping, the chanters holding the sound and enveloping the town square. We are drawn inward, toward the source until we come to rest on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse.

He is a young man, maybe just 30, standing in the haloed glow from the street light, with the bagpipes curved around his torso, and the pipes extending above his head. He is standing in the hollow of the courthouse entrance, and there are 20 or so people standing off to the side. Tyler and I join them, slightly to the side, away from the crowd, so he can see the man playing. A young lady is sitting on the concrete bench nearest the man, and they are together. They are somehow encapsulated more closely by the music than the rest of us. He is here, playing for her, which is evident in the way he turns to see her and watches her as he plays. Tyler reaches up and takes my hand and I feel a knot rise in my throat. I have heard bagpipes before and the hearing of them on such an unexpected and intimate turn takes my breath away.

Not a word is spoken. We stand together, a throng of strangers, friends and family, transfixed by the rhythms and tones of an instrument that is foreign to us. It calls to old soldiers and their mothers and sisters. The statues around the courthouse come to life and those remembered by them stand amongst us. It hastens those long dead out into the twilight of their hometown. Tyler leans his head onto my arm. He feels it, too, this odd melancholy that is almost memory.

The young man plays on, and his woman watches, listening to what he does so beautifully. The rest of us are shades in the night. I nudge Tyler and we step away, letting the bellows blow us out into the fog. We stop a little away to settle on a concrete bench and he nestles onto my lap, where it is warmer, and leans into me. I rest my chin on his head and close my eyes. We sway slightly, with the rhythm and hum. The hollows in my soul shift and turn, merging around the small warmth that is this little boy, who is no part of me, but so much a part of me. A dense mist settles along the walls and steps of the courthouse, roiling in the shifting air. The pipes rise and the drones bellow, echoing back from the storefronts, reverberating and marching slowly down the streets and out into the Newnan night, leading the soldiers home. NCM