“The details and concerns regarding the construction of this amphitheater are not religious issues as some in the community have made them. Whether it was Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad or the Tooth Fairy that spoke to Mr. Carmel that night, the focus needs to be on the building’s influence on the Brandywine and Boulevard communities, not on the source of the owner’s inspiration.”

The newspaper--lit by morning sun with crisscross transom shadows striking the text--covered the dining-room table like a war map. Will’s fists knuckled the sheets in place and he hovered over them like a Confederate general. “She turned my article into a fucking opinion piece. She slanders everything this project means to us.”

“Robin is normally sweet,” Sarah said. “It’s just one article... and she says good things too.”

Will scanned the text, then read aloud, “William Carmel will reap the seed he sows. If he continues to push this ‘Voice of God’ justification, he will be forced to deal with the plethora of ramifications. He has already pronounced his own shed as ‘holy ground’ and is transforming the structure into a sideshow attraction on the same theological playing-field as the discovery of the Virgin Mary on a Pop Tart.” Will’s fingers pulled at the paper, then crumpled it. “She’s contradicting herself. She says we shouldn’t focus on religious issues, then attacks me for one. Bullshit.”

Sarah kissed his shoulder.

Will broke concentration long enough to return the peck on her cheek, then continued. “Morgan Demfield is a Brandywine resident who attended Boulevard’s Big Blue’s Piano Bar the evening Mr. Carmel announced his vision: ‘He said the voice was an angel, but everyone knows that God wouldn’t put his will in the hands of a known drug-addict. If that man heard anything at all that night, it was the voice of a demon.’ Mrs. Demfield has petitioned the Brandywine Association on several occasions, claiming that nothing good can come from the stage.”

“It’s just a stupid article in a small-town paper,” Sarah said.

“It’s blaspheme.” With a quick snap and swipe of his hand, the newspaper fluttered to the ground.

“I don’t want to fight about this.” 

“This isn’t a fight.”

“I know we’ll have arguments, Will. They’re common in periods of change. But I want to get through this phase as lovingly as possible.”

A kiss and a hug quarantined further dispute and Will agreed to keep his stress on the construction site.

Digging commenced atop the hill, turning the plateau into a volcano with a diamond shaped hole and twenty-foot piles of sand around the perimeter. Will left the dirty-work to the professionals and focused his attention on the vacant buildings on the Boulevard side of the hill. In the early nineties, the white brick buildings contained a Chinese restaurant and adult book store; both went out of business in the winter of ‘97 and the lots never found new entrepreneurs. Although they weren’t for sale, Will convinced the owner that the property was worthless, and finally negotiated a deal to purchase the two-acre lot for twenty-grand less than budgeted. Within a week, the same machines that dug the hole dismantled and removed the vacants and a team of tree-cutters tore a straight path through the foliage barrier from the newly flattened lot to the base of the hill. A white gravel road appeared a week later. 

The wise man may have built his house on the rock, but Will argued that the wisest man built his house on the sand... with a fifteen-foot concrete foundation. Cement trucks made the circuit up and down the hill with their rotating receptacles filled to a third of their actual capacity.

A flimsy, chicken-wire fence came next with “no trespassing” signs attached every fifteen feet. The gravel road now connected the Carmel property directly to the pedestrian chaos of Boulevard so precautions had to be taken to prevent spectators, vandalism, and frivolous lawsuits. 

William held Janie’s fingertips as she teetered on the foundation wall. “I like this feeling,” she said on careful tiptoe then nodded to a group of onlookers like ants at the bottom of the hill. “I like feeling superior to those people.” 

Will helped her down and gave her a wad of one-dollar bills to spend at the roach coach that arrived daily to feed the diligent workers. He watched her at the front of the lunch-line in her thin tangerine blouse and black skirt; a Monarch butterfly surrounded by dusty Silkworm moths. She reached up to grab the foil-wrapped burger from the woman in the lunch truck, then quietly observed the crew from her perch on the lumber pile. By the end of August, the roach coach would be replaced by a permanent concession-stand built into the right-wing exterior wall. A back room would remain unfinished for later conversion into a kitchen when the stage began to turn a profit.

“Complaints are coming in.” Jaxon approached Will with extended hand, dressed like a horse’s ass with his signature suit, yellow hardhat, and empty clipboard. 

Will shook his hand with exasperated enthusiasm. “Please please please tell me all about it, Mr. Silverman!”

“I’ve received letters from--”

“From that Demfield bitch?”

“--from several anonymous residents. They’re--”

“What are the complaints?”

“--they’re complaining about the noise--”

“My crew barely makes a peep.” 

“Unfortunately that’s not what--”

“I’m the closest house to the site and I don’t hear a thing.”

“If you could just push your start time back an hour--”

“How about this: I’ll move the start time up an hour. I’ll handle each complaint personally, and you don’t bother me again while I’m working.”

Jaxon left without another word.

The children were the first to believe, pulling their parent’s shirt tails and dragging them to see the construction. William would beckon them closer and answer their questions about the cranes or the skeletal bandshell or the cement slab for the orchestra seating. Their wide-eyed faith was inspiring. Doubt always had a difficult time with kids; somehow, the younger a person is, the more immune they are to that nagging part of the brain called logic; that part of the brain that faithful adults consciously bury. Faith like a child, he mused.

Teenagers were the most hostile; passing through immaturity on their way to false maturity during their higher-education years where they would believe anything and everything except facts and miracles; facts being a little too logical, and miracles being a little too dangerous. Faith was at a constant struggle with apathy in these developing minds. The result was a look of blind superiority as they rolled past on skateboards or in cars with expensive rims and thumping bass.

Adults often felt the same as the teenagers, but William assumed their disbelief came in the form of quiet chuckles around the dinner table or masked in anonymity in Letters to the Editor. “This man’s claims are silly at best and dangerous at worst. His story about hearing voices is a page ripped from The Son of Sam’s diary. I won’t slander his name with that comparison, but the similarities are apparent. I would love to have a civilized discussion with Mr. Carmel regarding psychosis, but I’m afraid it would have to be conducted through a Plexiglas wall. --Anonymous.” Or Will’s personal favorite, “The religious expectations placed on this glorified bandstand will only disappoint. If God comes down to Earth to direct plays of bible stories with cherub performers and a seraphim orchestra, that might meet the hype. --Anonymous.”

Luckily, the haters and skeptics remained in the shadows as Will’s supporters made themselves known. Boy Scout leaders approached him and offered thirty sets of hands to assist with any side projects. Will put the boys to work on the hill itself, patching up tread marks and divots with fresh sod and spraying a nitrogen-based fertilizer to strengthen the blades and enrich the color to a sparkling green. In return, Will let the boys camp out at the fringe of the chicken-wire fence and accompanied the leaders and groups of five on flashlight tours of the structure.

Others showed their support with food. The roach coach lost a day of business when Jim Vandyke drove his 4x4 onto the paved VIP lot behind the theater and unloaded two cylindrical meat smokers and four coolers of unpackaged, raw meat. The smell of charred beef remained on the hill for two nights. When Jen Rogers heard about Will’s insomnia, she rushed over a platter of triple-fudge brownies and a prescription bottle of Ambien. Sarah accepted the dessert and repeatedly and politely denied the meds. When Jen refused the refusals, Sarah finally accepted a palm-full of the pink pills “to get Will through the week” only to toss them in the toilet the moment she was alone. One morning, William arrived on site to find six people holding hands with bowed heads, praying in the morning mist. The fifty-foot bandshell stood behind them like a silent apparition in the fog. The prayer group released hands and walked away, then returned the following week with fifteen people, then again with thirty. William never asked about their intentions and when they opened their eyes and released hands they would simply smile, nod “hello”, and descend the hill.

Will blamed Robin-The-Reporter for making it acceptable to publicly insult his faith. The first attack arrived at night as he cleared the stables for his side project.

“Uh, Dad?” Janie said softly as if any hint of enthusiasm would scare away the friends at her side.

“Uh, Janie?” William mimicked, barely looking away from the assortment of unorganized tools. “What do you want, honey?”

“You need to see this.”

“I’m working. Can it wait?”

Meg and Becca covered their mouths to stifle laughter, but Janie didn’t sound as joyful. “No,” she said and lifted a photo of a naked woman with her knees by her ears and fingers spreading herself wide. “I don’t think it can.”

The picture got his full attention. He stood and barreled toward the girls and snatched the paper from Janie’s hands. “What happened?”

Meg and Becca simultaneously lifted two more photos of women sprawled in lewd poses. Will grabbed his flashlight and blew through the shed door.

At first, the trail of porn seemed to be intentional; maybe a perverted variation of breadcrumbs in an attempt to lead Will--one vulva at a time--to his theater. But when they reached the top of the hill it became clear that the trail was merely litter; overflow from the actual exploit. Will held up his hand to stop the girls, then approached the stage and brushed the beam of his flashlight over the horrific tour-de-force of vandalism. Photos of nude women in hard-core poses lined the theater starting at the top of the visible foundation, past the stage platform, up the curved bandshell and across the lower half of the proscenium arch. The loose corners of the photos flapped against the walls, and the completed shell performed its duty by amplifying the fluttering sound into an eerie undertone like a voiceless flock of birds.

With a single call to Sherlock Cavenaugh, the defacement became a police matter.

The porn-prank sparked several lesser acts of vandalism including the spray-painted phrase “God Listens” on the unfinished broad side of the theater. Two days later the words “...to Metallica” were scrawled beneath. In another incident of juvenile delinquency, the Carmel’s property was TPed. The trees, shed, and slate roof were covered in damp webs of white tissue like a halloween mummy costume and before Will knew about the prank, Hyde was already in the yard, garbage-bag in hand, picking up draped lines of toilet paper and throwing them away.

“I can understand their ignorance,” Sarah said. “I can understand why people write to the Gazette to voice concerns about noise and appearance. But William, why would people attack us like this?”

“I won’t let it bother me,” he replied.

Will justified the need for a fourteen-hundred-foot iron fence by noting that preventing vandalism would save thousands in the long run. The permanent fence replaced the temporary wire barrier and sported an electronic gate for approved cars, a ticket booth and turnstile for foot-traffic, and a hidden access-gate on the Brandywine side for the Carmels convenience. The last-minute barrier was not part of the divine plan, but it was necessary for the safety of the theater.

The shed was opened for visitors in the middle of August. In preparation, Will created seven sealed plaques to display his seven original sketches and hung them in a row on the shed wall along with the detailed account of his experience. Sarah designed pamphlets with information about the theater and stables and printed them at home in black and white.

No one showed up the next day, the next week, or the next month.

Despite four months of restless sleep, Will spent three consecutive nights working security until a permanent guard could be hired. He shuffled around with a flashlight, baseball bat and a book about screenwriting. Excedrin and coffee were the only things that kept his eyelids from falling completely, and his posture was reminiscent of Romero’s zombies due to the burning sensation in his calves and the puss-bubbles on his heels. The chorus room was nearly complete now, and on those long meandering nights, Will admired the craftsmanship of his divine collaboration. The electrician wouldn’t finish with the chorus room for another month, so he inspected his masterpiece one circle of light at a time. The shape and size of the room, the position of the mirrors, and the height of the ceiling were all determined by God, but the intricacies came from Will, Marv and Leo. Forty vanities were custom built with the same traditional bulbs that Will remembered from his internship. The similarities between his room and the Chicago room were unintentional, but when he stood back to admire the progress, he was struck at how deftly his subconscious helmed the design. Like the chorus room from his memory, this one had no windows and only one door.

Will liked to visit the hatch too; he liked running his fingers along the invisible seam in the hardwood. The order for the lift mechanism was on hold. Leo deemed the machine too costly to install at the given budget, and recommended that they wait for the final numbers before moving forward. “If this project wasn’t funded on your own dime, I’d say go for it. But a hydraulic lift mechanism isn’t cheap... and luckily, it’s also not a necessity.” 

And so he would wait. The piano was still putting carpet divots in the living room anyway; until the last three strings were attached, the hatch and lift were useless anyway. Will would ensure that the project stayed within budget, and eventually he would get his lift. Until then, the room below the hatch remained an empty square cell across from the chorus room, and the hatch remained part of the stage, temporarily secured with metal brackets and bolts.

When Jaxon dropped off a box of complaints on the Carmel’s front porch, Sarah found the motivation to pen her own letter to the editor. Two days later it appeared on the Gazette’s front page under the heading “Living with a Prophet: Sarah Carmel Responds to Husband’s Venture.”

“William’s eccentricities may play as an operatic melodrama on the public stage, but behind closed doors he’s a normal man with a wife and daughter, doing what he knows is right. Do I believe he heard the voice of an angel? I do. Is it nerve-wracking to follow this voice into the chaotic unknown? Absolutely. But through the insanity--the blind-faith, the vandalism, the threats against my daughter, the financial struggles--there is no one I would rather have at my side than my husband.”