The City of Rossford

“Do you ever think about being more famous?” Todd Meradan began, sitting down across from Fenn. “Do you ever think about more movies, or wish you had done more films? Bigger films?”

“Bigger than this one?”

“Fenn!” Paul said.

Todd smiled ruefully, “I’m used to it.”

“You can just edit the shit out,” Fenn told him.

“I think I will,” Todd told him.

“Ask him the question again,” Paul Anderson said, sitting down beside Todd. “You always ask different questions. Those weren’t the ones I got at all.”

“Well,” Todd replied, “your life has been a considerably different one.”

Paul shrugged. This was true enough.

On the coffee table between Fenn and Todd was a canister that read: Modern Actors, a documentary away from the Silver Screen.

“I guess I’m surprised I ever did a movie at all,” Fenn said. “And no, I don’t ever wish I had become extremely famous. That would mean lots and lots of people would identify with me, and I don’t think that many people can. That would make me easily accessible, and whatever I did would appeal to either some large group or some small group that had decided it was special. I’m not for anybody,” Fenn shrugged. “Not really.”

“Some actors say they went into it to make people happy. To entertain.”

“Oh, I have no objection to happiness and entertainment,” Fenn said. “I like to make people happy, or at least be around happy people. You know. But… ”

Fenn stopped.

“You know? I think there has to be something in you that wants to be liked, that really wants big attention. There has to be something in you that really thinks the world out there is a big important world and you’ve got to make yourself really loveable for it. To succeed in that grand way.” Fenn shook his head.

“I could never be like that.”

The phone rang and Paul got up to answer it.

“You are the only guys I know,” he said, “who still have a landline.”

Todd shrugged. “A stage actor and a film maker. We’re antiquated like that.”

“Hello,” Paul said. Then, “Fenn.”

Fenn got up and crossed the living room entering the kitchen which was just receiving the noon light.

“Hello?” he said. Then, “Oh… shit. Hell… Well, alright. I’ll be there. In a minute.”

Fenn hung up the phone.

“Todd,” he said. “That was Tom. We gotta go. Our kid’s in trouble.”

Dylan Mesda looked a lot like his natural father. At the age of ten he had rosy cheeks, dark eyes, a diminutive build, thick, dark, wavy hair and a worried expression. He was sitting on the steps of the little porch to the complex that made up Saint Barbara’s school. As the old Land Rover swung into the parking lot, the little boy stood up and waved. Fenn came out of the car first, followed by Uncle Paul and then by Todd. Todd was simply Todd.

Fenn never ran. Fenn was never shaken. Fenn was the steady thing you called on. Dylan always referred to Tom as Dad. He thought of Fenn as his father, because he was. But his word for Fenn was often Fenn. It said everything.

“What’s the problem?” Fenn said simply.

The little boy stood up in blue dress pants, a short sleeved white shirt and navy tie, crossed his small arms over his chest and said, “I had to leave. I had to get out because I was going to be violent!”

Fenn picked up his son so that they were on eye level, the little boy’s feet swinging in the air a little.

“You, my little man, are about to become violent. You’re trembling.”

“I’m mad, Father. I’m just… What are you carrying?”

“It’s a barbecue lighter.”

“Why?” the little boy looked up at him.

Fenn shrugged. “Cause you never know what’ll happen, Son.”

Fenn put the boy down, and took the little hand in his larger one while they went into the school.

“It’s Tommy Peterson. He’s really giving me a rough time.”

“At the science fair?”

“Yes,” Dylan was pulling him down the hall. “He keeps saying my volcano isn’t a really volcano like his is a really volcano and dropping things into it. He keeps shoving me. And I’m tired of shoving him back. And I know you said I should just punch him, but…”

“Yeah,” Fenn sympathized, “it’s not always a good idea.”

“Especially if he’s twice my size.”

As they entered the gymnasium and Dylan was taking Fenn past the experiments, Paul pointed to a very large, sullen boy standing near what Fenn regarded to be a volcano of inferior quality and said, “Is that him?”

“Yeah,” Dylan said.

“Goddamn,” Fenn said, “you weren’t joking.”

“You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Dylan reminded Fenn, but it seems as if he were only saying it because he knew he should.

“Okay,” Fenn said, as they approached the volcano watched over by three zealous girls. “Shit fuck.”

Dylan clapped a hand to his face and threw his head in the air.

“Pure actor,” Todd noted to Paul.

“Thanks guys,” Dylan told the girls.

One little girl said, “We weren’t going to let Fatty Peterson mess with your stuff while you were gone.”

She clapped Dylan on the back and led the other little girls, in their plaid jumpers away.

“I like her,” Todd noted.

“Future lesbian?” Paul raised an eyebrow.

“Possibly.”

“Oh, what’s this!”Tommy Peterson said, lumbering away from his project.

“It’s not enough you had to have girls guard you? Now you need all your daddies?”

“I’m actually more of an uncle—” Paul began.

“I’m warning you, Tommy!” Dylan started.

“Well, I’m warning you—” Tommy Peterson said, and just like that, he touched the little knob at the base of Dylan’s volcano.

“Ah!” the boy shrieked and ran around it. “Help me, Fenn! Help shut it off!”

But it was too late and the volcano was erupting. It was beautiful, and Dylan had built a little Pompeii. Kids were gathering around as helpless Latins who looked like plastic cowboys and Indians were done in by steaming lava.

“You ruined it!” Dylan shouted.

Fenn touched his son on the shoulder and said, “He didn’t ruin it. He just precipitated it. Be calm and keep putting the dry ice in.”

Dylan, immediately stoical, now obeyed, face scrunched while kids gathered around clapping, for the sight was amazing.

“Go get a teacher so they can grade this,” Fenn said to Todd. “It won’t be Dylan’s fault if someone’s not here to see it.”

Now the volcano was bubbling to its end and Tommy was laughing.

“Didn’t expect that, did you?” he said.

“You son of a—” Dylan started, but then Fenn tapped him again and he was the one who spoke.

“You think that shit’s funny?” Fenn said to the kid, and all the other children around became suddenly quieter.

Tommy Peterson said, “I think it’s as funny as Dylan having a Black father.”

And that was when Fenn Houghton took out the long barbecue lighter, leaned over Tommy Peterson’s volcano, and quickly, wordlessly, set it on fire.

The boy screamed as his mountain erupted into flames and Fenn looked down at him and said, “But was it as funny as that?”