The Brandywine Prophet

4.6 Setting the Stage

“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.