“Theater Velno”
by Renee LaBonte-Jones

Mr. Velno used to have the kind of bold and beautiful voice that made all us children sit real still and listen when he sang in the church choir, before a mean old raccoon caught sight of him one September night and ripped most of his throat out.

Some of us were real sorry we had missed the sight. We figured we’d never get the chance to see something like that, unless we were on the receiving end of things, and of course no one ever wants to be there. The folks who did see it, Dan Hall’s older brother Johnny and his sweetheart Carol Moore, said they didn’t think they’d ever forget it. Carol said any time it was brought up that she didn’t think she could bear to wear red again as long as she lived. When we asked her why she said “I didn’t think blood got as red as that. Only blood I’d ever seen before was more like burgundy, but Mr. Velno was bleeding turkey red.”

Most of us were only sorry that it happened to Mr. Velno, who we liked, but couldn’t happen to someone like the Widow Kemp or Mr. Leedey, who we very strictly did not like at all. Not that we had any sort of power to dole out righteous punishment in the form of rabid raccoons.

He fascinated us. The doctor made a big show about how amazing it was that Mr. Velno managed to live even if they couldn’t save his voice, considering the amount of blood he’d lost and the fact the raccoon was rabid. As if that wasn’t mysterious enough, the incident had happened in the graveyard, when Mr. Velno had been passing through on his way to pay his respects to his buried mother. We thought somehow that was impressive and mystic. Felt right, felt soaked in some kind of meaning we couldn’t exactly spell out.

Mr. Velno had that kind of face and that kind of walk and that kind of voice— that is, before he lost it— that belonged over in Switzerland where he’d come from back before the turn of the century. Some people didn’t know that’s where he came from though, and thought he was a little too German to be in our clean American town. During the First World War, long before any of us children were around to see it, he’d get stones thrown at him sometimes when he’d walk down the street. We guessed it was pretty lucky for him that he didn’t have a voice no more by the time the second war broke out, because without his accent people weren’t so quick to make that mistake.

He had a round, almost jolly look about him, like he could’ve been Santa Claus if only he would grow a beard. But he kept his face clean shaven, at first as a preference, and later because it seemed most of that part of his face and body was scar tissue and wouldn’t grow hair anyway.

It became a kind of tradition for us kids to use Mr. Velno’s habits as a way to tell the future.

We used Mr. Velno to decide things like “Is Mercy’s Great Aunt Tillie going to die of pneumonia this year?” Mercy’s Great Aunt Tillie came down with pneumonia every October like clockwork, and we were all tired of being told she was expected to die of it only for her to pull through and live until the next October when the cycle would begin again. So we sat on Mercy’s porch and waited to see if Mr. Velno went into the Five and Dime or not, because it was a Tuesday and that was the day he would go if he was going to go at all. He walked right on past. And so we figured Mercy’s Great Aunt Tillie would not die. And she didn’t— not then anyway.

We used Mr. Velno to decide things like “Is Steven going to take home the history prize at school again this year?” and then we’d sit on Steven’s porch and wait to see if Mr. Velno left the butchers with three packages under his arm or not, because Mr. Velno usually went into the butchers and ordered a pound of ground beef, a cut of brisket, and pork chops. He came out as expected, carrying three brown paper-wrapped packages under his arm. And so we figured Steven would take home the history prize that year after all. And he did— I took the geography prize, but we hadn’t even thought of using Mr. Velno to predict that.

So it was an imperfect science, if we could call it a science at all. But we used it faithfully.

When the Widow Kemp died and it was revealed she hadn’t left a cent to her only son, none of us were the least surprised, because Mr. Velno had gone to prayer meeting twice the week previous. And when Darla Roberts refused Gregory Irvington’s marriage proposal, none of us were the least surprised because Mr. Velno hadn’t gone out to smoke his pipe the evening before.

The very last time we used Mr. Velno to tell the future was the only time we ever really felt guilty over it. It was also the only time we got it wrong.

One of the town’s old gossips, Mrs. Harrison, said to us that she wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Velno didn’t live through the winter: “Not if this frost keeps up,” she nodded, because he’d been looking so ashen and gray lately, except for the bright pink and white of his scars.

So we sat on Mr. Velno’s porch and waited to see if he would stop by for lunch, because it was Saturday and he usually stopped by his house for lunch in between playing cards with Mr. Templeton in the morning, and visiting the public library in the afternoon. When we didn’t see him stopping by, we figured he had gone straight from Mr. Templeton’s to the library, and took that to mean that he would see the end of winter, in spite of all Mrs. Harrison’s talk.

It wasn’t until the next day that we learned Mr. Velno had died after all. That he’d never left for Mr. Templeton’s in the first place, which is why we never saw him stopping by for lunch.

And some of us would later claim with iron sincerity in our eyes that we had heard an old and eerie echo of his bold and beautiful singing as we sat waiting on his porch, but of course that couldn’t be true. At the time, we hadn’t even known that he was dead on the other side of the door while we sat there. At the time, we hadn’t even thought about his singing for years. Those of us who made that claim were, for the most part, the same ones who were sorry we had missed out on witnessing the raccoon attacking him to begin with, even if it meant we could never bear to wear red again as long as we lived.

Mr. Velno was buried only a stone’s throw away from where the mean old raccoon had found him that hazy September night about four years before. Somehow, no one thought about that when they did the burying.