Larry Woiwode's
Beyond
the Bedroom Wall
adapted
for the stage by Robert Hubbard (with the full permission of the author)
Copyright
2002
All
rights reserved
GENEALOGY
/ CAST LIST
“his generation acting what hers actually
felt?” (BTBW 541)
Storytellers/Narrators *
Marie Neumiller
Tim Neumiller
Jerome Neumiller
Charles Neumiller
Neumiller & Jones Families
Mr. Neumiller
Mrs. Neumiller
Martin Neumiller
Ed Jones
Mrs. Jones
Alpha Jones
CHORUS**
* These are the children of Martin and Alpha Neumiller. Within the
context of this production, they serve as narrators. Although they often
surrender themselves to the narratives they collectively recall, each maintains
his or her unique identity. Costumes should reflect their similarities in
function as well as their differences in temperament.
Although the actors playing these characters come from the larger CHORUS,
their involvement centers on these roles. Their costumes are more elaborate and
developed. They are the personages of the past conjured to help the extended
family relive and cherish their family history.
** A group of two to four performers who play several roles each.
Almost like a scavenger hunt, they dress themselves for each role with costume
pieces found in the old trunks left onstage throughout the performance. CHORUS
members also participate in choral speaking sections, perform live instrumental
and vocal music, and assist with scene changes. The CHORUS presumably consists
of distant relatives of Martin and Alpha Neumiller who gather together to bring
to life and share in the Neumiller family history. They are guided by the
immediate family of Marie, Tim, Jerome, and Charles Neumiller.
Setting/Scenery
The design
should reflect the theatricality and reflexivity of the performance itself.
Realism is not a goal. A flexible unit set should allow for multiple playing
areas and levels that can be used to suggest a variety of locations, including
the downtown of a small North Dakota town, the interior and exterior of the
Jones’ farmhouse, the interior and exterior of the Neumiller farmhouse, a
prairie field, Martin and Alpha's home in North Dakota, Martin and Alpha's home
in Illinois, a hospital room, and a front porch. Ideally, most of the
furnishings for these locales should be represented by a few set pieces present
onstage throughout the performance. These set pieces might include old but
sturdy trunks, a small circular table, four to five chairs, some bed linen, old
crates, etc. Many of the locations may be best suggested through lighting and
properties.
BEYOND THE BEDROOM WALL
Act One
(The audience arrives to see a flexible,
multi-leveled, presentational scenic design capable of suggesting a variety of
locations. Two weathered trunks sit in
the playing space. Additional set pieces
include several chairs and stools, a bench, a piano, and alcoves holding small
tables. Five minutes before the start of the show, members of the Neumiller
family begin entering the playing space. One of them sits at the piano and
plays a mixture of Catholic and Lutheran hymns.
The rest of the family gradually enters from every door of the theatre
as if to suggest travel from many different places. After greeting each other with hugs and
handshakes, a small group gathers by the piano and sings a Catholic hymn. The rest of the family members begin looking
through the trunks. They pull out the
fading treasures of the Neumiller family.
Besides the ones listed below, additional artifacts might include two
old baseball gloves, a music box, a hope chest, a Scandinavian wedding dress,
etc. Among other bits of business, the
actor playing ALPHA models the wedding dress for the actor playing MARTIN. Eventually MARIE pulls out a large family
album, takes it downstage, turns to the family, and opens it. This action catches the attention of the rest
of the family.)
CHORUS
(All)
MARIE
Its
black cover has a pebbly texture and the edges of it are ashen colored,
CHARLES
worn through, crumbling and cloth-like to the touch,
JEROME
and its pages of heavy black paper have been leafed
through over so many silent evenings by so many hands that several of them have
come loose.
TIM
A
black cord with silken tassels at each end is laced through a pair of metal
eyes along its left side, and the cord is tied in a bow that's been pressed
into the same shape for ten years.
MARIE, CHARLES, JEROME, TIM
On
the heavy pages are rows of photographs, held in place by black corner mounts,
and a careful hand has written a caption underneath each in white ink.
CHORUS
(All)
Piled
into its front and back, and interleaved among its pages, are
CHORUS
(Individual)
postcards of vacation spots the family has visited,
CHORUS
(Individual)
an envelope holding a lock of the oldest son's first
hair,
CHORUS
(Individual)
their father's report card from the eighth grade,
CHORUS
(Individual)
a folded purple-felt pennant from the college both
parents attended,
CHORUS
(Individual)
a birthday card signed “Much love, young one, Grandma”
with a rabbit on it holding up a white number two,
CHORUS
(Individual)
an immunization chart for one of the children with
only the first series of shots filled in,
CHORUS
(Individual)
a recipe for orange cake,
CHORUS
(Individual)
a letter written by a seven-year-old on his first
vacation away from home,
CHORUS
(Individual)
a mournful face repeated over and over on strips of
school pictures which weren't traded away by a son who had trouble making
friends,
CHORUS
(Individual)
a pressed corsage from a prom one daughter attended,
CHORUS
(Individual)
somebody's ribbon, pink,
CHORUS
(Individual)
a threaded needle,
CHARLES
a smell of frailty and age that seems to rise only
from this heavy black paper,
MARIE
as though the past itself were composed of elements as
permanent-
JEROME
seeming yet frail,
MARIE, CHARLES, JEROME, TIM
and dozens and dozens of photographs that there was no time
to mount.
CHORUS
(All)
TIM
(stepping
forward, addressing the audience)
Every
night when I'm not able to sleep, when scrolls of words and formulas unfurl in
my mind and faces of those I love, both living and dead, rise from the dark, accusing
me of
TIM
& CHORUS (Individual)
apathy,
TIM
& CHORUS (Individual)
ambition,
TIM
& CHORUS (Individual)
self-indulgence,
TIM
& CHORUS (Individual)
neglect
TIM
—all
of their accusations just—and there's no hope of rest, I try again to retrace
the street. It's an unpaved street, and it's the color of my hand. It's made up
mostly of the clayey gumbo from the flat and tilting farmland all around this
village, so small it can be seen through from all sides, and its ungraded surface is generally overrun with ruts that are
slippery and water-filled in spring, ironlike in
summer, furred in fall with frost as phosphorescent as mountainy
ridges on the moon's crust, and in winter buried beyond all thought except for
any thought that clay or gravel or the booted feet of people crossing
ice-covered snow above might have. It's the main street of
TIM CHORUS
I
lived in Hyatt from the time I was born Ti-i-i-i-i-i-i-m-m-m-m-m--eee
until I was six. I ran up and down this
street with friends, playing hide-and- Hi-i-i-i-i-i-i-d-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e
seek between buildings that stand
deserted, now that time has had its de---ssssssss--errrrrrrrr----ted
diminishing effects.
TIM
(excitedly)
My
brother Jerome once peed from the top of this water tower. My sister Marie could never find me when I
hid in this little corner. This is the
alley where Susie Eichelbuger—her parents owned the
only tavern in town—
MRS.
NEUMILLER
They
aren’t Catholic. Mrs. Eichelburger
smokes cigarettes, and their daughter, Susie, at the age of five, has begun to
exhibit herself to boys.
TIM
My
brother Charles and I were two of the first to see.
(beat)
Every
night I approach the street in the same way, from the east, along a long
building that shields it from me until the last moment of unbelievability is
banished by its being there. The building was once the machine shed of a
MARTIN
John
Deere implement dealer,
TIM
so my father’s told me, and is now the Town Hall and
high-school gymnasium; this side is surfaced with sheets of tin die-pressed to
simulate brick.
CHORUS
(Old Timer)
(stepping
forward)
The
Town Hall is the heart of Hyatt-the sports arena, the theater, the polling
place, the movie house, the dance hall, and the band building, the social
retreat, the inoculation center, the courthouse, the village palace with its
changing set of kings,
TIM
and every Thursday evening during the winter, when a
man from Fessenden wheels a wooden crate
CHORUS
(Man from Fessenden)
(as if a
salesman)
mounted on skate rollers into the building and seats
himself on a stool like the stools used by shoe salesmen, and straps on skates,
the Town Hall is a noisy roller rink.
TIM
I
come to the corner of the building and turn south on
CHORUS
(All)
N.
J. LUDVIG and CO.
TIM CHORUS
and when the period after
with sidewise swipes toward the ground, New.................................day
I
know it's only a pigeon diving after spilled grain, New.................................hour
TIM (continued) CHORUS
(continued)
a luncheon along individual lines, New.................................time
a new day for him, a new hour, a new time. New.................................day
TIM
I
start down the street, on a high-curbed sidewalk
TIM
& CHORUS
fractured and crumbling from severe freezes,
TIM
and pass the front doors of the Town Hall, which are
open, folded back in rectangles of knotty pine against the white siding, and
hooked in place.
CHARLES
There's
a patriotic ceremony going on inside.
(The meeting erupts into cheers.)
TIM
I
walk on, past Friedrich's Meat Market, where stout H. P. Friedrich, wearing
steel-rimmed spectacles and a white towel around his waist, mixes up in
washtubs with his bare hands an incomparable brand of farm-style sausage,
CHORUS
(H. P. Friedrich)
(with a
German accent)
the spiciest the Northern palate can handle and still
be pleased.
TIM
Past
the Red Owl where our family never shopped, past Echelburger’s tavern—I already
told you about Susie Echelburger; past Sill’s Café, K.W. Konig, D.D.S. The Hyatt National Bank and the post office
sit just across the street. Suddenly,
TIM CHORUS
I
feel a pressure behind and turn Tur-r-r-r-r-r-rn-n-n-n-n
and there are the cottonwoods and willows
at the far end of the street, along the Lee-e-e-a-a-a-v-v-s-s-s-s
edge of the lake, flying the maidenhair
faces of their leaves into the wind, In....to......the.....wi-i-i-n-n-d
and beyond their crowns of trembling tre-e-e-e-e-em-m-m-mbling
insubstantiality, across the lake dotted tre-e-e-e-e-em-m-m-mbling
with cottonwood pollen, the blue and In....to......the.....wi-i-i-n-n-d
azure plain abuts against the horizon Tur-r-r-r-r-r-rn-n-n-n-n
at infinity.
TIM
Next, a vacant lot overgrown
with weeds, with a gray path winding through it to the end of memory, a lot that's
flooded in the winter for skating and hockey, a lot where a traveling carnival
pitched its tents one summer evening.
(carnival music begins)
There’s a memory of mine, real or imaginary,
that goes:
YOUNG
TIM
(tugged across the stage by his mother)
walking in sawdust through a tent that smells oily and
mildewed, and wishing I'd stayed at home;
TIM
(to the audience)
my mother holding my hand in a manner that makes me
feel trapped,
ALPHA
too much smoke and noise,
TIM
and all of the stands and concessions bordered by
three-foot canvas curtains I can't see over.
TIM
& YOUNG TIM
Where
are my brothers, Charles and Jerome?
TIM
My
mother stops so suddenly I feel a jolt in my arm, and then I look up to where
she's looking and see a banner, painted in colors that are cracking away from
the cloth, and am sure I haven't read right, but the gaudy drawing above
confirms the words:
CHORUS
(Carnival Manager)
25¢
SEE THE TWO-HEADED BABY 25¢
ALPHA
“What?”
TIM
A
smiling man, whom I can see only from the waist up, comes over and puts his
hands on the pipe that supports the curtains, and my eyes go into zigzags to
take in all of the tattoos needled into his arms.
CARNIVAL
MANAGER
“Just
two bits, ma'am,”
ALPHA
“There's
no such thing.”
CARNIVAL
MANAGER
“Sure, ma'am. It's in that box where the curtain is.”
ALPHA
“You're
Lying. An infant couldn't live in there.”
CARNIVAL
MANAGER
“Oh, lady, a-heh-heh. It ain't alive.”
ALPHA
“It's
not?”
CARNIVAL
MANAGER
“Naw. Here. You want to see?”
TIM
I
hear curtain rings singing across a rod, and then she grips my hand so tightly
I want to cry out, but stop at her changed face.
ALPHA
“That's
diabolical!”
CARNIVAL
MANAGER
“Ah,
lady, it's just like your pickles at home.”
ALPHA
“What
if a child saw that?”
CARNIVAL
MANAGER
“There's many that have, ma'am, and kids, you know, it don't
bother one bit. I've let you see now. You want him to?”
ALPHA
“You
should be hanged,”
TIM
my mother says to him, and leads me out of the tent,
and I know what it's like not to know when something important is up and
exactly what it means to me. Or you. Do you see?
(CHARLES steps forward. Like the other three narrators, he too has
been reliving TIM's entire journey. He is holding a
small diary that he took earlier from the trunk.)
CHARLES
I
have a vision of a book: it is a journal written by my mother, and moves
through her years in Hyatt in an earth-colored, unbroken line, and then begins
to explore her past, tentatively at first. . .
CHORUS
(The lights do a slow cross-fade
from CHARLES to ALPHA.)
CHARLES ALPHA
as though stalactites were forming below 1936 NOV 9. I've skipped
back here to the line, and suddenly drop and move write
(I actually got you, Five Year
back toward her birth, while the Diary, on the `4th) because this
is my
narrative
grew thinner and thinner, birthday
and you were my gift from until, at the journal's end, you'd feel Martin, who couldn't be here for the left
on paper-thin footing, looking down event, on a weekday, of course,
a sheer cliff. . . (fades
out) because
of school. And now that I've
got you,
ALPHA
I'm
going to record my life as it is for Martin to read in five years. I was 20
years old on this date. Twenty! Lord, I feel like my life is just getting
started or already half done.
NOV
10. I might as well write on in this space too. It's fun! I'm working, but not
too hard, teaching 11 kids in a country school out beyond the outskirts of
Leal. That's in
NOV
19. I got the letter from Martin I've wanted all week and it's made the time
since more bright.
November sky. There was such a heavy snow I'd
hardly stepped outside before I was “changed from a civilian into a captain,”
as Jerome used to say—snow on my shoulders. I felt Jerome in my eyes and
spirits as I walked down the bright road.
DEC 24. Christmas Eve. I delivered two of our fat turkeys today—one
to the Neumillers, the other to the Carlsons, and
then stopped at the cemetery on the crossroads back and
stood at Jerome's grave and tried to pray, wondering how he
was resting, and it started to snow. I thought of him as a naked boy drowned in
dirt.
DEC
25. I woke many times last night thinking about Martin, my perfect man.
CHORUS
(The lights come-up on the
central playing space to reveal figure huddled and shivering under a blanket on
a couch. The setting is the interior of
the Jones' farm house. The actors playing ED JONES, MRS. JONES and ALPHA can be
seen in nearby playing spaces. JEROME and MARIE step forward to serve as the
narrators.)
JEROME
He
dreamed he'd been sleeping in the catacombs, those cold and nitrous tombs he'd
heard of only out of history books and from nuns' lips.
(MARTIN begins to shift under the
blanket)
The
shuffling of a pair of slippers traced a tangle of paths and passageways
through his sleep, the sound of an object being dropped
(MRS. JONES drops a spatula)
struck deep into a dream and turned up as a spatula, and
somebody in the kitchen
MARTIN
(poking his
head out)
Who?
CHORUS
(onomatopoeia)
whispering in a banjo tune, mingled with the hiss of a kettle
making steam, had washed out a great cave, the echoing hollow where he now lay.
JEROME
And
then he remembered that
MARTIN
he hadn't undressed.
JEROME
There
was a rumble of a cookstove grate as coals were shaken down,
(MR. JONES makes an approximate
sound effect)
and he saw a pattern
of cracks, as intricate as in shattered ice, across the leather back of the
horsehair sofa, and
MARTIN
JEROME CHORUS.
rose above a horizon in his mind. New-------------li-i-i-f-f-e
It
could mark the beginning of a new life New-------------year-r-r-r
with the new year. New-------------li-i-i-f-f-e
MARTIN
Oh,
let it,
JEROME
he thought, and was seized by a trembling sigh and
half yawn. He covered his head with the quilt.
MARTIN
Until
Alpha came downstairs, the world wouldn't know he was awake. He'd be a mole if
her brother or parents appeared,
JEROME
hibernating under silver webbing in a niche of the cave.
He'd be-
MARTIN
(sitting-up)
Last
night, here in the Jones house,
JEROME
& MARTIN
he'd asked Alpha to be his wife.
MARIE
(stepping
forward, taking the narration away from JEROME)
This
mole is smiling in his burrow with a star-shaped nose of gold, Martin Neumiller
his name.
CHORUS
(lines are
split up among four members)
Son, husband, father, grandfather.
MARIE
(MARTIN
stands. As he
does, the scene in the house dissolves away)
He
started out yesterday,
MARIE
& MARTIN
the
sky violet-blue against the white of the plain, the air so still and brilliant
that trees and buildings seemed sculptured out of its iciness,
MARIE
and then on his way to
MARIE
& ALPHA
(ALPHA turns into the scene)
a box of chocolates,
MARIE & CHORUS (Voices divided)
snowflakes started drifting out of the violet, and then a wind
hit, rocking the car on its springs,
(On the word “wind,” the CHORUS makes appropriate sound effects.
Gradually and seamlessly, their sound is blended with and taken over by an
audio winter wind blowing.)
MARIE
& CHORUS (continued)
and by the time he pulled into their yard, a distance
of three and a half miles, the white stuff was up to the axle hubs of the Model
A. The blizzard swirled away the drifted surface of the countryside and wrapped
the house in blackness, while the clock on the piano chimed and showed
(For the next series of lines, narrators JEROME and MARIE step into the
shadows. With the effects of some choral effects, the narration is divided
among the characters in the scene.)
ED
JONES
Nobody
dared to go out and shut it off.
MRS.
JONES
A
woman on the other side of
ED
JONES
So
the windmill clattered and shrieked in the distance, its lifter banging like a
mallet on tin,
MARTIN
and Ed Jones cursed it, and murmured,
ED
JONES
“That
barnyard will be a skating rink the rest of the winter, folks, you can bet your
ass on that.”
MRS.
JONES
The
kerosene lamps were lit, split railroad ties brought in from the back porch—along
with two lumps of coal, precious coal
ED
JONES
-the
potbellied stove in the front room was fired up,
ALPHA
and blankets and rugs were draped over the doors and
windows, where the wind hit and billowed them.
CHORUS
(Lauren)
“We're
in a tent,”
MARTIN
Alpha's
little sister, Lauren, cried.
LAUREN
“We're
living in a tent!”
MRS.
JONES
“Thank
your lucky stars we're not,” Mrs. Jones said. She opened the door of the potbellied
stove and pulled up a rocker and sat staring in at the flames. Alpha chorded a
slow hymn on the piano and then swiveled around and wrung her fingers.
ALPHA
So
cold!
ED
JONES
“We've
got a few dozen storm windows under a porch somewhere,”
MARTIN
Ed
Jones said. And then he unblocked the fireplace, and in a few minutes a
shuddering blaze rose above his hard-bitten profile with its big hooked nose.
He sat on a couch in front of the fire with his legs apart, rubbing his hands
and saying,
ED
JONES
“Ah!
Ah, God! Ah!”
MARTIN
And
once when he and Martin were alone in the room, he leaned over and
whispered,
ED
JONES
“Say,
boy, doesn't that warm up your balls?”
MARTIN
He
stared at Martin as though he expected a direct reply. His sea-green eyes, sunk
in deep sockets, overhung by heavy eyebrows that flared up at the ends, as
gleaming and fierce as a bird of prey's, were filled with a fulminating look
Martin could never fathom:
MARTIN CHORUS.
anger? deviltry? anguish? ang---------------guish-sh-sh-sh-sh
MARTIN
Jones
had a square jaw of the English sort and lips so thin all you noticed of them
were the two peaks of red at their center. It was his eyes; they seemed
brimming with an
MARTIN
(continued)
incendiary knowledge that had no outlet, and with the same
fulminating look in them, he could say,
ED
JONES
“Martin,
God love you, you're one of the finest young fellows hereabouts.”
MARTIN
Or,
about a milch cow that bedeviled his wife when he wasn't in the barn to
supervise,
ED
JONES
“Someday
I'm going to take that muley bitch by the tail and pull her tits out her
eardrums.”
MARTIN
His
piercing stare and the emanations that came from him and kept Martin silent
gave Jones a power over people he seemed afraid of. He spent the afternoon
ED
JONES
telling God,
MARTIN
in variations of His name,
ED
JONES
what He was doing to the livestock and wildlife with His
storm.
MARTIN
While
Martin,
ED
JONES
a wordless subject in this court, stared at the
fireplace,
MARTIN
and thought, how will I get home? How will I get to
church tomorrow? It's a feast day. It's a holy day of obligation, dear Lord.
ED
JONES
After
a time, Jones pulled a silver hip flask out and held it in his lap.
(To MARTIN)
“Some virtues of the earth, boy?
(MARTIN shakes his head)
“Oh,
come on. It'll make you feel smart.”
MARTIN
“I'd
rather not.”
ED
JONES
“Sprinkle
some on your breath. Have a whiff of it.”
(MARTIN manages a smile)
“Oh,
so you're going to try to kiss and woo the daughter again, huh?”
(MARTIN blushes)
MRS.
JONES
(entering the scene. Although she saves MARTIN
from an awkward moment, she is not happy with her message)
“It's
no use trying to drive in this weather, Martin. The couch will be yours
tonight.”
ALPHA
Alpha,
who was in the kitchen helping, turned and winked at him.
MRS.
JONES
Then
the evening meal, a traditional Scandinavian holiday feast, with meatballs and
boiled potatoes,
ALPHA
creamed corn, fruit soup and lefse,
LAUREN
and for dessert,
MRS.
JONES, ED JONES, ALPHA, & LAUREN.
(with
excitement)
flete gret!
ED
JONES
(describing
it as if it were a great delicacy)
sweet cream cooked with a little rice and a little sugar
until the cream formed liquid butter on its top;
ALPHA
and there were sugar cookies and julekahe and rosettes
and krumbake and fattigmann,
MRS.
JONES
plus a main course of
MARTIN
(with
disgust)
lutefisk,
MRS.
JONES
(hurt)
which Martin wouldn't touch;
MARTIN
the fish was soaked in lye until it turned translucent and
rubbery, and he'd heard that wholesalers in the city stacked slabs of it like
kindling outside their shops and then dogs came along and yellowed it.
ALPHA
After
the dishes were done
MRS.
JONES
and Lauren was in bed,
ALPHA
the adults sat around the table and talked, and Mrs.
Jones permitted herself to play a few hands of euchre and hearts,
MRS.
JONES
since it was a holiday and money wasn't involved,
ED
JONES
and then it was
MARTIN
They
shook hands around and wished one another a
Ed Jones, Mrs. Jones, Alpha,
Lauren
Happy
New Year!
Martin & ALPHA
(not
believing their luck)
Mr.
and Mrs. Jones went off to bed.
(The JONESES exit to their bedroom.
At this point, MARIE and JEROME step from the shadows and once again
take over the narration.)
MARIE
Then the fire. In front of it on the braided rug, their
faces fevered with its heat. Popcorn and divinity in bowls
between them. Their fingertips touching. The
intonations, the animal-like tones, the lamentation of the blizzard outside, as
though the plain were mourning the loss of its mate, the clear blue sky, and
would stay in mourning until the
human race was no more. The two of them, privileged
beings, spared and set down on a warmed island below the wide-wasting
malignancy of it.
MARTIN
& ALPHA
Alone.
MARIE
On the oval of the braided rug, the O of love with
them in its center. Sinking through echoing silence toward the light of the world,
JEROME
and then the question, alive in him for two years,
rising of its own accord.
CHORUS
(whispering)
Will
you marry me?
ALPHA
“If
you ever asked, I knew it would be tonight.”
MARTIN
“How?”
ALPHA
“I
just did.”
MARTIN
“You
mean you've-”
(ALPHA puts her fingers to his class ring, which she wears, wound with
yarn, on her right hand)
“I'm
really afraid,”
ALPHA
“I
know. I've been afraid, too.”
MARTIN
“What
of?”
ALPHA
“
(she
glances toward her parents' bedroom)
“What
makes a man afraid?”
MARTIN
“Everything. What you?”
ALPHA
(playfully)
“I'm
not, really, now that you asked.”
MARTIN
“Then,
will. . .”
(It is impossible for him to repeat
it.)
ALPHA
(whispering)
“Yes,”
(MRS. JONES walks into the room just then, wearing a nightgown and a
robe, and a dark shawl over her shoulders.)
MRS.
JONES
“Alpha,
it's past time you were in bed.”
(holding a
quilt toward MARTIN)
“Here,
this is yours.”
(ALPHA retreats up the stairs)
“I
sleep light,”
(She leaves the room.)
JEROME
The
floorboards above him groaned and creaked and gave out cracking sounds in the
cold, and he tried to visualize Alpha above him, and when he did, so vividly,
tried not to.
MARTIN
(to
himself)
What
did Alpha do, moving around up there for such an eternal length of time, before
she even got under the covers? Then there was a sound of springs as she settled
into bed and that was worse. Her legs quicksilvery as moonlight entangled with
sheets.
JEROME
He said
three Hail Marys. His boyhood prayers, so familiar they no longer seemed
constructed of language, went flying through his thoughts with the speed of an
express. He lost track of the times he'd
touched his Adam's apple and rolled on his side and said an Act of Contrition
so complicated with fleshy imagery it wouldn't have got him beyond the walls.
CHORUS
The
fire in the potbellied stove was burned down and its bulging sides no longer
gave off a glow.
JEROME
The
fireplace wasn't intended to heat the house in this sort of weather
MARTIN
it seemed to be sucking up what warmth there was,
JEROME
and with the sudden absence of human sounds and
movements, a deeper chill spread through the house.
MARTIN
(to
himself)
Had
Alpha said yes, or was it the wind and the fire? Her hand said yes, her
fingertips touching his ring; the angle of her head, bowed so that her dark
hair concealed her features, showing only her high brow bronzed by the fire;
the fold of her legs below her dress, her bare feet, her tipped shoes lying
beside them-all this said. . .
JEROME
(stopping
the fantasy)
Yes,
yes, but did she?
MARTIN
Alpha and Martin Neumiller.
(During the next section of narration, the furniture in the Jones house
is struck and reassembled in a similar pattern on another part of the
stage. In short, the interior of the
Jones’ house is replaced by the interior of the Neumiller’s.)
JEROME
The
names sounded indivisible on his tongue, but if she said yes, if they were to
be married and not merely speculate in a romantic way about a future married
state, as they had, then it would be difficult for them both from now on.
MARIE
Their
mothers never spoke and didn't get along, which was a common enough predicament
among married couples, perhaps, but in this landlocked state of so few people
it was almost unheard of for neighbors not to talk, no matter the quirks of
personality or grievances from the past, and their mothers were openly at odds.
(JEROME and MARIE fade into the background. During MARTIN’s next line, members of the
Neumiller household—MRS. NEUMILLER, VICE, FRED, and at least ONE CHILD—assemble
around a kitchen table.)
MARTIN
Nearly
five years ago, in the spring of '31, after his high-school commencement, his
mother went out to get the mail and saw a stranger walking down the tracks at
the end of their lane toward town.
(MARTIN crosses into his house and
sits)
She
came into the house and said,
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“He
was so little, I thought it was a child at first—also
because he wasn't wearing a hat, not even a cap, mind you, in this weather.
Then I saw that his hair was half gray. It was mussed up like a madman's and
flying in the wind. He saw me and stopped, and I shook
in my boots. His eyes are as mean as an old billy
goat's, and they were looking right through me. He made a sort of bow in my
direction and then kept on in a beeline toward town. He walks with a limp.”
MARTIN
And
she wondered if he could be a freight bum, or another of those Okies, or
somebody she should know about.
MR.
NEUMILLER
“Oh,
that's old Ed Jones,”
MARTIN
my father said.
MR.
NEUMILLER
“He
just moved in at the Chet Hollingsworth place. I believe he comes from around
Hannaford or Dazey.”
(Lights shift to evening.
Without warning, ED JONES crosses the stage, energetically singing a bar
song.)
MARTIN
That
night the Neumiller household woke to the sound of somebody singing and
shouting obscene songs, and looked out to see a dim figure weaving down the
tracks in the moonlight: Ed Jones on his way home.
MRS.
NEUMILLER
Mother
felt her children's ears had been scalded, and was convinced that Jones was
trying to pervert their innocence.
MARTIN
She
couldn't bear the least bit of obscenity (the worst words I ever heard my
father use were gol-dammit and Scheiss, and those were in the barn) and
couldn't tolerate
MRS.
NEUMILLER
(as if lecturing her children)
anybody who
drank; a drinker was dissolute and bound for hell, and his family, to permit
such a condition to exist, had to be as dissolute as the drinker, or at least
tending in his direction, to continue to live on with him.
MARTIN
She
had very little patience with non-Catholics in the first place,
MRS.
NEUMILLER
with people who couldn't see, when it was right there in
front of them, that the Catholic religion was the one true faith, since it had
been founded by St. Peter and went way back to the time of the early Romans.
MARTIN
She
was an
MRS.
NEUMILLER
(to MR.
NEUMILLER)
somebody to do something about this dirty-mouthed Ed Jones.
MR.
NEUMILLER
“Ach,
Marie,”
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“Well,
if you don't, I will. I'll go out and tell him to use the road like everybody
else. I'll give him the what for!”
MR. NEUMILLER
“Marie…”
(slowly stands, gestures for his sons to
follow him and crosses into the space recently violated by ED JONES)
She
was never equivocal with words and was at least one half of the force of the
family to be dealt with, so one day his father walked down the lane to
intercept Ed Jones on his way to town, with Martin and his two oldest brothers,
Vince and Fred, trailing along behind him, and after introductions and a few
pleasantries, their father,
MARTIN
who was absent of guile and by no means an artful
conversationalist, said,
MR.
NEUMILLER
“I
wonder why you walk the tracks so much.”
ED
JONES
“I
don't have a car, and I'll be gaddamned if I'll waste the wear and tear on a
good team just to go into town and get soused, and that's where I'm bound.
These tracks are the straightest shot I know from those two sections of quack
grass back there, which some
piker pawned off on me as a farm, to the closest gin
mill. And after scratching in quack grass for a week straight, I don't mind
admitting I like a shot of juice and a few pinches of snoose, or vicey-versa.
What do you folks do about quack grass? I've never seen it grow so like unto an
ungodly sonofabitch. I cultivate it with the machine, I beat it with a hoe, I
keep the wife and daughter and the boy after it, I pull it up by hand-roots,
runners, and all-and I even burn the crap.
(MARTIN and his brothers laugh.)
ED
JONES (continued)
That's
right, you laugh, you boys, but I do, by Christ, I burn a hayrack of it a day,
and next week it's up as thick as ever, choking my crops.”
MARTIN
It
was his tongue and way of talking the boys laughed at, not his problems or him.
MR.
NEUMILLER
(to JONES)
The
Hollingsworth place was one of the last pieces of land in the area to see the
plow; the sod was turned under barely ten years ago, and only a few crops were
put in before the Crash.
ED
JONES
“So
that's it. It'll take me years, then, or my life, before all that buried stuff
comes up where I can give it the ax. Jesus. Well, I'm a hard-working old fart
if there ever was one-it's true, you boys—and I'll keep at it till I win. It's
partly my fault I got took on the land. I left my old place for this
Hollingsworthless brute because of the barn. Have you ever been inside of it?
It's a beauty. It's built better than a brick-Well, I've been in a lot of barns
in my life and it's the best I've seen, and I've always maintained that if a
man can't sleep in his own barn, then it isn't a fit place to keep his
livestock. We burden the poor beasts with our work and whims their whole lives,
we beat them—I do—we make money on them when the market's right, we don't let
them run wild the way they did, so the least we can do in return is say 'No,
goddamnit!' when it comes to locking them inside some drafty, stinking,
jerrybuilt shack that's never warm and you can't keep clean, isn't it?”
MARTIN
They talked
for a long time, or rather Jones talked while the Neumillers, taciturn by
nature, listened, blinking, overcome by the outpour and gasconade. At last old
Jones said he
ED
JONES
Got
to get on with it, expect to see you all soon,
MARTIN
and then headed down the tracks. They went in for
supper and their mother said,
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“Well?”
MR.
NEUMILLER
“He
seems all right to me. Let him walk where he wants.”
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“What?”
MR.
NEUMILLER
“Anybody
who uses God's name as often as Jones has God's praise in his heart, or at
least His fear.”
(to his
children)
“When
you hear somebody take God's name in vain, you can change the words, in your
own mind, into a silent prayer. Every man worships in his own way, and we're
not here to judge one another.”
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“But
he's an atheist!”
MR. NEUMILLER
“Marie.”
MRS. NEUMILLER
“He's
a drunkard, that's for sure.”
MR.
NEUMILLER
“He's
troubled.”
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“Insane
would hit it closer. He'll be back again tonight with his insane performance.”
MR.
NEUMILLER
“He needs
somebody to talk to. I'll try to make a point of it.”
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“Is
that right?”
MR.
NEUMILLER
“What
do you mean?”
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“You
always say, 'You are judged not by who you are or what
you are, but by the company you keep.' “
MR.
NEUMILLER
“For
goodness' sake, Marie, I'm not in at Shella's drinking with Jones!”
MARTIN
(to the
audience)
Shella's was a Prohibition haunt.
MR.
NEUMILLER
“I'm
here with my family.”
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“Jones
is your neighbor.”
MR. NEUMILLER
“Marie! Be reasonable.”
MARTIN
(as he says this line, MARTIN stands and steps
out of the Neumiller space and toward the audience, trailed by MRS. NEUMILLER)
This
admonition from father to mother meant that a topic was closed. Their mother
hardly mentioned him again, but didn't seem appeased about him; and she was
also suspicious of Jones's wife,
MRS.
NEUMILLER
(directly
to the audience)
who was so much younger than he was, at least twenty
years, that she looked like a niece or a housekeeper instead of a spouse. Was
there something that a proper person wouldn't suspect of normal people going on
there?
JEROME
(stepping
back into the action, retaking control of the narration)
A
detached eighty of Neumiller land lay across the road from the Jones farm,
which sat bare and unprotected on the plain, without even a windbreak of
poplars around it;
(MARTIN and MR. NEUMILLER appear upstage, working on a trunk as if it were a tractor)
Martin
and his father were cutting barley on the eighty one day in the late summer of
cloudless infinite blue. They'd had a series of breakdowns due to the rough
going and glacial rock,
MARTIN
(frustrated
with his day)
plus third-hand equipment to begin with,
JEROME
and quit early in the day, before the first sign of
darkening, and drove over to the Joneses' in the car and
MR.
NEUMILLER
asked if they could leave their tractor in the Joneses'
farmyard instead of the field; there'd been trouble lately with migrants
stealing parts and gasoline.
ED
JONES
“Sure, sure. What the hell, you should've just driven it
right on over. Jesus, what are neighbors for? Park her right over there. Come
and have a drink first. Today's been a bitch.”
(JONES, who is with a cane he carries when he is on his property, and
is sauntering and gesturing with the jerky torso movements of a short man, leads
them down to a water tank. There is a tin can to drink from. They begin their
conversation as Jones pumps the water. Both MR. NEUMILLER and MARTIN drink.)
ED
JONES (continued)
Yes,
I take a good hand-pump over those motorized jobies. Same thing goes for
tractors. Give me a good team of horses any day. All those machines are going
to gas up the land, whereas horse apples are good for it. How many kids,
altogether, did you say you have? Or did you? I've seen quite a number at your
place.”
MR.
NEUMILLER
“Eight,”
ED
JONES
(JONES whistles)
“Say,
you folks aren't Catholic, are you?”
MR.
NEUMILLER
“Yes.”
ED
JONES
“I
should have realized. You don't seem a fool, like me. I've got seven.”
(sitting on
the edge of the tank)
“How
do you do it?”
MR.
NEUMILLER
“What?”
ED
JONES
“Keep
them all in food and clothes?”
MR.
NEUMILLER
“I
do repair work and carpentry in town. I might take a job as the janitor of the
grade school this fall.”
ED
JONES
“Yes,
I don't think anybody can make it strictly on the land any more, not in this
territory. We haven't got a goddamn nothin'. We're so hard up I had to farm out
my oldest boys, Conrad and Wiling, and then I've got two little girls, Bernice
and Kristine, who've lived
ED
JONES (continued)
with a pair of maiden aunts for so long I hardly
consider them mine any more. No, nobody has to worry about keeping up with
these Joneses. Wiling, who's my oldest, is with the wife's sister and husband
in
must say—and I say this without compunction—I don't miss
his tongue; he's a smartass like me. You can't tell him a thing and he's at the
worst age now, eighteen.”
(during Jones speech, MARTIN has been drinking
from the tin cup. Shortly before JONES finishes, MARTIN feels eyes on him and
takes a quick look toward the house. He sees ALPHA’s face disappear from a
window. Since MARTIN is eighteen, JONES' final line snaps him back into the
conversation. This first meeting should be set off my some appropriate musical
accompaniment.)
ED
JONES (continued)
“Ah,
but there's good in the boy's heart, too, God bless him. If he makes any money,
any hard cash, he sends it home to Ma. He's out running and hustling one month
and the next won't do horse piss for nothin'. Pardon that tongue. I imagine you
folks are religious, so I'll try to watch it around you. When Conrad writes home, which is seldom,
it's like getting a letter from a nine-year-old. Conrad's seventeen. He's with
my bachelor brother in
MR.
NEUMILLER
“No,
I've never been out of this state in my life,”
(During JONES's next speech, the door at the
back of the house opens and ALPHA comes down the porch steps, and for MARTIN
the air around her seems to lighten with each stride, as though she is walking
from a more rarefied season into theirs. She stares at him as if to draw his
attention with her stare, her eyes the poetical blue of deep affliction, and
then seems impatient, or embarrassed that he was still talking, and turns up
the stairs and inside again. As with
their first meeting, the appropriate musical accompaniment scores the
connection.)
ED
JONES
“Two
of one is eight to another. There's fair-to-middling land around
(JONES wipes a long sudden tear from
his big hooked nose)
“Well,
Conrad seems not to rub him wrong, being the quiet type. Conrad's a tall
fellow, taller than you, Martin. What are you? Six one?”
MARTIN
(startled.
He has been looking intently back at the house)
“Six
foot exactly.”
ED
JONES
“You
look taller than you are. He's six two. I can't understand where he gets his
height, unless it's from the wife. He's slow-moving and a bit slow-witted, too,
but not dumb. No, I've got no illusions about either of the boys, but I miss
them. Also, on the practical side, I could use their help. My boy who's still
here, Jerome, well he's the finest sort; obedient, bright-wheels within wheels
always whirling and seesawing—in his head—but he's only ten and doesn't like
farming. It appears he'll grow up to be the artist type. Now you have got to
take a look at this barn.
MR.
NEUMILLER
(delivers
line as he is pushed off by an enthusiastic ED JONES)
I
wonder if we shouldn't get the tractor first.
(ALPHA once again exits the house.
She apprehensively crosses to MARTIN.)
ALPHA
“Mama's
not feeling well and needs something from town. Would it be all right with your
dad if you drove me in to get it. My name is Alpha.”
MARTIN
Surely.
(looking in
the direction where his father left)
I
can't see why he would mind.
(During JEROME’s line, they each take a seat on a trunk, used to
symbolize the Model T.)
JEROME
All
the way in to town she sat on the edge of the seat, bolt upright, gazing
through the windscreen with such fixity it seemed she was guiding the car.
MARTIN
(to ALPHA)
“Haven't
you ridden in an automobile much?”
ALPHA
“Of course. We used to have two. You drive with half
your mind.”
MARTIN
“Oh. Are you through with high school?”
ALPHA
“I'll
be a junior next year.”
MARTIN
“You're
sixteen?”
ALPHA
“Not
quite fifteen.”
(She lifts her straight legs toward
the dash and touches its bottom with her shins.)
MARTIN
“Do
you like this part of the country?”
ALPHA
“No.”
(The lights change. A variation of the music used earlier to underscore
MARTIN and ALPHA’s first meeting plays. During their
lines, JEROME and MARIE spread a blanket to symbolize a picnic area. By “Martin Neumiller started dating Alpha
Jones,” ALPHA and MARTIN are sitting on the blanket.)
MARIE
From
this day forward for years he'd carried her image, suffused with the blue-dazed
warmth, the heat of that day he'd driven her to town, and in all that time no
woman had displaced it.
JEROME
Despite
separation, shyness and other relationships, the image of that afternoon
remained.
MARIE.
But
it wasn't until five years later, in the late spring of 1934,
JEROME
when
the Juneberry trees came into bloom, the grass greened and darkened with its
health assured, and the sound of tractors plowing nearby fields on the campus
of Valley City State Teachers College,
MARIE.
That
Martin Neumiller started dating Alpha Jones.
ALPHA
“Don't
you want to be out in the fields?”
MARTIN
“No.
I want to be here.”
ALPHA
“Would
you always like to be?”
MARTIN
What
do you mean? Here with you?
ALPHA
“Here
in
MARTIN
“Sure.
I guess.”
ALPHA
“I
would. It's the most beautiful city I've seen. Whenever I'm ready to settle
down, if I ever am, it'll be here for sure, you can bet your shirts on that,
boys.”
MARIE.
Her “if I ever am” opened another new wound in him. The
school year was over in a week. They returned home and the next day he drove
over and asked Alpha to a movie. Mrs. Jones wouldn't let her go.
MARTIN
Mrs.
Jones was a Missouri Synod Lutheran of the strictest sort, and didn't approve
of
MRS.
JONES
motion pictures, popular songs, dating in automobiles,
tobacco, alcohol
ED
JONES
-”Just
a snort, Ma,”
MARIE.
-Jones
would say when he was juiced-
ED
JONES
“It'll
put starch in your drawers,”-
MRS.
JONES
profanity, cards, and gambling;
MARTIN
and she had a hardly mentionable low opinion, like most
Lutherans of her mold, of Roman Catholics. It seemed unsavory to her, just to
begin with,
MRS.
JONES
the way they bred so much.
MARIE.
Alpha's
mother couldn't be called unkind, couldn't be faulted in any of the ways that
might suggest sin, but she'd remained standoffish toward him, a cold uncoiling
barrier.
JEROME
Remarkably,
Martin grew to feel more comfortable with Ed Jones.
(ED JONES crosses to MARTIN and puts
his arm on his shoulder.)
MARTIN
Jones
himself was friendly; when Martin entered the yard, he'd come out with his
cane, so garrulous and exclamatory he was a welcoming party in one, and clap
Martin on the back.
ED
JONES
Ha!
MARTIN
and call him
ED
JONES
“boy” and “son”
MARTIN
He
broke into moments that might be termed paternal advice:
ED
JONES
“Never lamp a dog, boy. Never look one straight in
the eye. It shortens his life and scares the hell out of him. He thinks you've
come down to his level, and what he needs is a
master, a real seeing and overseeing eye. A dog needs one.
And never stare at a person when he's asleep. It'll mix up his thoughts.”
MARTIN
He
spoke to him as an old-timer about
ED
JONES
“That
ass-kissing oaf,”
MARTIN
draft horses, and thoroughbreds,
ED
JONES
the repeal of Prohibition,
MARTIN
and their common interest,
MARTIN
& ED JONES
baseball.
ED
JONES
“Has
beens is what we are, both of us.”
MARTIN
Before
he threw out his shoulder in a college game—a day that also meant the end of his
college scholarship at the University of North Dakota—Martin showed
considerable promise as a pitcher.
ED
JONES
Jones
loved the game
MARTIN
and claimed to have played some in the minor leagues in
his youth.
(JEROME jogs on with two baseball gloves. He gives one to his father
and they begin playing catch)
Perhaps
sparked by his conversations with Martin, Jones started teaching Jerome to
pitch.
ED
JONES
(To MARTIN)
“Well,
well, we've got to have one in the family, eh, boy?”
(delivered
in the style of baseball chatter)
Jones
down in a crouch with a farmer's cap he never usually wore turned backward on
his head, snapping the ball to Jerome and keeping up a natural chatter,
JEROME
Jerome
going into the pump and windup and working on the stretch and form and control,
MARTIN
so absorbed that Jones would only glance at Martin
between pitches, with a look that was business-like, and then get on with it.
Or talk to Jerome so personally you wanted to leave them alone as Father and
son.
(MARTIN leaves the scene. For the next section, JEROME and MARIE share
the narration as if each is helping the other to remember more details about
the most colorful character from their family history. The tableau of father
and son playing catch underscores the dialogue between MARIE and JEROME.)
MARIE
Most
folks only know bits and pieces of Ed Jones' past; besides playing baseball
somewhere in the minor leagues and riding horses,
JEROME
he traveled as a supporting lead with an itinerant
Shakespearean company and
MARIE
(she begins
to laugh)
worked for a while as a ballroom-dancing instructor. This
was before he'd hurt his leg, which was shattered at the knee by the kick of a
horse.
JEROME
He
traveled through most of the East and
ED
JONES
(briefly
turning away from the game of catch)
part Welsh, part Scotch-Irish, part Norsky
MARIE
—”Norsky” to irritate her mother, a full-blooded Norwegian—,
ED
JONES
and part sonofabitch.
JEROME
He
married Alpha's mother when she was nineteen and he in
his forties.
MARIE
Nobody
knew his exact age, not even his wife;
JEROME
he sometimes claimed he was born in 1869,
MARIE
and then swore it was 1879,
JEROME
And
he'd also mentioned every year within that decade, saying his memory slipped.
MARIE
He
was courtly yet flirtatious with every female he met, combining in himself
flattery, deference, intricate courtesies from another century, smooth talk,
and winks.
JEROME
He
felt he'd been plagued most of his life by missed opportunities,
MARIE.
that his sense of timing was out of tune with the
world's,
JEROME
that his closest friends had betrayed him the worst,
MARIE.
for they'd all betrayed him,
JEROME
and that a curse had been placed on his life by a
hostile and unremitting God.
MARIE
He
was an alcoholic, of course.
(Pause.
MARTIN and ALPHA appear in the car.)
MARTIN
Once
on the way home from a baseball game in
ALPHA
“awful truth” to confess.
MARTIN
(to
himself)
Had
Jones beaten her? Had she been with someone else? “Well? What is it?”
ALPHA
“Daddy's
been married before this. Mama's not his first wife. He's been divorced. Mama
just told me. You might as well take me home.”
MARTIN
“But,
Alpha, I was aware of that.”
ALPHA
“You
were? Well, how, for God's sakes”
MARTIN
“I
assumed it was common knowledge. Most of the town knows. I believe your father
even mentioned it to me once.”
ALPHA
“He
did?”
MARTIN
“Yes.”
ALPHA
“When?”
MARTIN
“A
couple of years ago, I think.”
ALPHA
“Then
why didn't you say something about it to me, you lame-brain? Just how do you
suppose this makes me feel?”
MARTIN
“But,
Alpha, I hardly knew you then. I—
ALPHA
“You
know me now, dammit to hell!”
MARTIN
“Well,
yes, of course, but I always assumed that you'd be the first to learn about
anything like—”
ALPHA
“Oh,
shut up,”
MARTIN
They
said nothing to each other for a time and then Alpha asked him to
ALPHA
stop the noise of the car so we could talk.
MARTIN
He
pulled off the side of the road, into some weeds, and killed the engine.
MARTIN
“Yes?”
(ALPHA leans her head on his chest
and doesn't say a word)
“I
want you to know that what you've told me doesn't bother me one bit,”
ALPHA
“What
about your parents?”
MARTIN
“Ach.”
ALPHA
“Your mother, then?”
MARTIN
“Oh,
well. She has enough of her own to worry about.”
(She kisses him through his shirt. He slides down in the seat and puts
his arm around her above her waist. Their romantic actions correspond with
Jerome’s narration. The “Y—oooooooooooooooouuu”
spoken by the CHORUS should sound like the distant call of a dove’s song.)
JEROME CHORUS.
There
was a ghost of a full moon in the sky
and the three notes of the dove's song, the Y--oooooooooooooooouuu
first two proclaiming the two of them He-e-e-a-ar-r-r-r-rt
together and alone, You and You, and the
last long Oooo as stretched out and desolate He-e-e-a-ar-r-r-r-rt
as the plain. Heart, heart, does it have to end Y--oooooooooooooooouuu
here? He put his fingertips to her chin and He-e-e-a-ar-r-r-r-rt
lifted her face, pupils large and dark, Y--oooooooooooooooouuu
and kissed her on the mouth. . . and
JEROME & MARIE.
(Immediately before this line, both JEROME and MARIE rap their hands on
either side of the bench that is being used to represent the seat of Martin's
car)
Something
struck the windscreen and they jumped.
JEROME
Fifty
feet away, above them on the railway embankment, was old Ed Jones, who flung
aside some pebbles in a silent spray.
ED
JONES
“Get
that girl of mine home this instant, boy, before I take you and your car apart!”
(In a drunken swoon, he continues on down the railroad tracks, leaving
MARTIN and ALPHA alone in the car.)
MARTIN
(after the
shock subsides)
“Has
he ever beaten you?”
ALPHA
“Yes.”
(The scene fades to transition
light. Music from the piano plays softly.)
MARIE.
The
rest of the summer Ed Jones was busy in the barn whenever Martin showed up. He
and Alpha went back to
JEROME
It
was the most rewarding year of school for Alpha and Martin; they were together
as often as they wanted, and were more involved in the theater, the forensic
society, the debate team, and their separate church groups,
and their grades were better for a change.
MARIE.
And
then the Juneberry trees pronounced the end of the term, and Alpha received her
Standard Certificate,
ALPHA
which qualified her to teach in the lower grades, and
said she was going to get a job right away; she wanted to help out at home and
also put aside enough money to send Jerome through school.
MARIE
During
the summer that followed,
JEROME
the summer of '35,
MARIE
everything changed.
(ED JONES and
MRS. JONES sit together. In the following exchange, they recount a part of
their past that is, although no longer fresh, still alive with feelings of joy,
sorrow, and pain. Even though they know the price, they seem to genuinely want
to share their precious memories. To make this scene work, the audience must be
cast in the role of a close and intimate friend. During their exchange, in a
separate pool of light, JEROME JONES sits reading a book.)
MRS.
JONES
Jerome
was precocious, an avid reader and a recluse who went for long walks over the
plain, sometimes as far as Verendrye Creek, where he'd sit for hours and—Who
knows why he went there and sat? He didn't like to fish. He didn't believe in
blood sports of any
kind. He didn't like violence. He was the only one who
could calm Ed Jones when he was drunken, or unhinged, or
ED
JONES
“out on a wren's perch with a wild hair up my ass,”
MRS.
JONES
as he put it to drinking friends.
ED
JONES
Jerome
knew the native plants and wildlife and was always the first in the area to
find the season's first wildflower. He showed it to Alpha and then gave it to
his mother. He was four years younger than Alpha and with Mrs. Jones ill so
often Alpha had partly raised him, and was maternal toward him, but also spoke
to him and of him in a straight-forward and womanly-like way. He had an
unnerving habit of staring off in the distance while he wound and unwound his
hair around a finger.
MRS.
JONES
“What's
beyond those mountains?”
ED
JONES
his mother would ask.
(he pauses
at the pleasant memory)
He
tried to get the town of
MRS.
JONES
He
was often talking, in the phrase of the time, of . . .
(he looks
to her husband for help)
MRS.
JONES
“conservation of the land,”
ED
JONES
and when the family had any sort of fruit, which was
hard to get this far north, even in the summer, he gathered up the seeds and
planted them in different types of soil in different locations.
ED
JONES & JEROME JONES
Would
they grow here? Had it ever been tried in
MRS.
JONES
He
broke into an abandoned farmhouse because he'd heard there was money in its
basement, and confessed to the act the day after, before the break-in was
discovered;
ED
JONES
and when his mother, hysterical at the lawlessness of
it, asked him why he'd do anything so irresponsible and foolish, he said,
(JONES gets choked up thinking about
it.)
MRS.
JONES & JEROME JONES
(finishing
the sentence for him)
“I
wanted Dad to be rich.”
ED
JONES
(changing
the subject to compose himself)
He
had a strong pitching arm for his age and was developing a breaking curve, and
planned to try out for the high school team in the fall. Then there was a
steamy scandal at school when Jerome, who was at the head of his eighth-grade
class, was discovered in the furnace room with Eunice Winandy, lying on the
janitor's cot.
(JONES irreverently laughs at the situation. MRS. JONES is not
amused. In JEROME’s
playing space, a CHORUS MEMBER playing EUNICE WINANDY trots on. In a sweet tableaux of innocent love, the two
sit together)
ED
JONES (continued)
Jerome
was allowed, after a suspension and deliberation among the teachers and school
board and community leaders, to graduate as valedictorian.
(ALPHA enters the scene to join in the reminiscence. She brings with her a glass jar that she sets
on the floor next to MRS. JONES.)
ALPHA
Martin's
father, who was working as the janitor and was the one who discovered them,
might have had a hand in the decision; the superintendent kept coming to him
and he kept assuring the superintendent that, yes, Jerome's knickers were
buttoned when he walked in on them.
ED
JONES
Jerome's
commencement address also caused a stir. He didn't keep to his written text, as
he'd been instructed to, and in his extempore speech insinuated that the
community was hypocritical; the natural beauty left in the area, the real
plains grassland, he said, would soon be lost, along with people's false pride
in it, if all that governed their lives was progress, plowing up more land, and
money.
ALPHA
Alpha
stood and applauded when he was finished;
MRS.
JONES
she'd bought him a copy of Theodore Roosevelt's essays as
a graduation gift.
ED
JONES
“Dammit,
girl,”
ALPHA
Ed
Jones whispered, and jerked on her skirt.
ED
JONES
“Sit!
They think we're crazy the way it is, the bastards.”
ALPHA
(imitating
her father’s delivery and enjoying the camaraderie)
“The bastards.”
MRS.
JONES
Jerome
said he wasn't going to the class picnic.
(suddenly
the mood changes from light-hearted to grave)
He
felt he'd changed. He wanted to stay home and help his father; there
was fieldwork to be done, cattle to fix, the sheep were
lambing, and he knew he'd neglected his duties on the farm up until now.
ED
JONES
But
Mrs. Jones told him there would only be one such picnic as this, and one
afternoon out of this new life wasn't too much to ask, and besides, what would
people say if the valedictorian wasn't there.
(for the first time, JEROME JONES steps out of
his playing area and crosses into the JONES’ playing space. MRS. JONES picks up the jar, stands, and
crosses to him)
She
gave him a two-quart jar of pickles to take.
(Mother and son look briefly into each other’s eyes. JEROME then lightheartedly and youthfully
turns away. Overcome by emotion, MRS.
JONES exits the space.)
ALPHA
The
pickles rode between Jerome and Eunice Winandy on the drive to
ED
JONES
(trying to
keep going, but obviously affected)
the superintendent wasn't about to trust a pair who'd
demonstrated how brazenly they'd comport themselves if given a chance.
(By this time, the rest of the CHORUS have
assembled in the center stage area to play the picnic-goers. They create a boat out of one of the trunks
and stylistically pole it out from shore.
JEROME and EUNICE take positions in the center of the boat. For the remainder of this scene,
presentational staging techniques depict the action carried in the narrative
line.)
ALPHA
After the picnic, Jerome and Eunice, and two of
Jerome's friends and their girls, got into a boat and poled a ways out from
shore.
Jerome stripped down while people from the shore looked on aghast, and then
they saw that he was wearing bathing trunks.
ALPHA
& JEROME JONES
“I
bet I can make it to the diving float,”
ALPHA
he said to his friends, and leaped overboard and went
under as though weighted. His friends and the observers on shore thought he was
playing a trick when he didn't at first
appear, and then they knew it was serious. A lifeguard was
on duty, but it wasn't until twenty minutes later that Jerome was pulled into a
boat, releasing streams of water into the lake. The lifeguard labored over him
for a half hour, saying,
ALPHA
& CHORUS (Lifeguard)
“Jerome,
Jerome,”
ALPHA
as though Jerome were his brother, and then in a
desperate voice
ALPHA
& LIFEGUARD
“Jerome.”
ALPHA
Jerome
lay at last on his back on the ground, still and water-blanched and composed,
his open eyes staring out beyond the faces of his classmates as at the
dim-visioned dreams along a creek bank now dead within him.
MARTIN
The
superintendent and the lifeguard brought his body back in the superintendent's
car, but stopped first at the Neumillers and got Martin to help them face the
Joneses with this.
(For the rest of this memory, he serves as both participant and narrator.
ED JONES and MRS. JONES painfully replay their roles in the terrible drama.)
MARTIN
Mrs.
Jones got into the car and uncovered his body and held him and talked to him as
if he were alive and listening to her, while he lay in her arms with his head thrown
back, his blue mouth open to her kisses, a milky substance forming over his
eyes, and no one, not even Alpha, dared to part her from him. The lifeguard and
I walked out to where Jones was cultivating corn with the horses. Jones pulled
up the reins, threw them loose over the cultivator seat, and came trotting up
to them.
ED
JONES
“What
is it?”
MARTIN
he asked. His face was drawn back against its bones
and he was breathless from the run.
LIFEGUARD
“Mr.
Jones, I'm terribly sorry. Well, er—”
ED
JONES
“What
is it?”
LIFEGUARD
“It's
Jerome.”
ED
JONES
“He's
drowned,”
LIFEGUARD
“Yes,
he—”
ED
JONES
“I
knew it, by Jesus. I knew it, I knew it, I did.”
(JONES pulls the bandanna from around his neck and throws it to the
ground. He yells at the sky)
“You sonofabitch!! You dirty double-dealing
sonofabitch! I'm never going to be sober again in my life. I'm going to shoot
all the livestock! I'm going to throttle the wife and that frigging prissy-ass
daughter of hers!”
(his knees give out and he falls on the ground
and says in a voice broken by hiccups and a sob)
“Wake
me when the world gets off, dear Jesus.”
BLACK-OUT
(From the darkness, one of the CHORUS sings
the first verse of Amazing Grace accompanied by the piano. The music transitions into a Lutheran funeral
hymn played in a minor key. The lights
come up slowly on MRS. JONES sitting, gripping a handkerchief, wiping her
face. Her voice rises above the melody.)
MRS.
JONES
When
something awful like this happened to a stranger, I always thought,
Oh
Lord God, what did they do to deserve that?
And I never, no never ever
thought I'd be saying someday to myself, What did I do to
deserve this? Oh, Lord God of Mercy, Man of Sorrows, what did I do to deserve
this? I'm worse off than an owl or that
pelican in the wilderness You talk about in Your
Book! I can't be comforted! I'm dying of grief!
(MARTIN is revealed standing in the JONES' farm yard with ALPHA
collapsed in his arms)
MARIE.
Martin
did all he could to comfort Alpha after the drowning; took her for drives
nearly every night, consoled her and held her, got her to talk about Jerome as
much as she could, and gave her his class ring.
(MARTIN gives ALPHA his ring. They kiss softly and ALPHA enters the
house. Unknown to them ED JONES comes from the rear of the house and sees them
kiss. He is staggering, visibly drunk.)
ED
JONES
(Stumbling out from the side of the
house)
“You
screwed her yet?”
(MARTIN blushes and stares at his
shoes. In a louder voice, JONES asks)
“I
say, you spoil her yet?”
(no
response)
ED
JONES (continued)
“Pardon?”
(JONES spits a tobacco-browned
stream to one side)
“Cat
got your tongue? I hear that's all you Catholics like to do. Whoo-whoooo! Is
that right? What I heard, I mean?”
(MARTIN and JONES stare at each other. Eventually, JONES makes a
disgusted sound with his breath and stumbles back toward the rear of the house.
The lights fade to black except on JEROME.)
JEROME
Things
continued to get worse for Ed Jones and everyone around him. One evening Martin
came to take Alpha to a movie—movies were no longer verboten—
(The lights come up to reveal the interior of the JONES' house and the
time changes to early evening. MARTIN and MRS. JONES are in the kitchen. ED
JONES and another man are sitting in the living room.)
and
heard Jones talking with a neighbor and drinking crony, Len Melstrom in the
front room, so he waited in the kitchen, where Mrs. Jones was at the table
leafing through a Sears, Roebuck catalog.
CHORUS
(Melstrom)
“mackerel-snappers.”
(Unbelieving of what he just heard, MARTIN clears his throat in a loud
and rattling way to let the men know he was in the house.)
ED
JONES
“Show
me a Catholic, and I'll show you a hypocrite! They're the most sanctimonious
band of—”
MARTIN
Were
they drunk?
(He coughs and clears his throat again, and kicks his toes against the
floor as if they were freezing.)
ED
JONES
(louder
than before)
“They'll
trample or maim a man and call it divine, because they're the chosen and doing
what's right. They've got a direct line to the Almighty, you see, and we don't,
and I'll tell you why; it's because of the beads!”
MRS.
JONES
(getting up
from the table)
“Excuse me.”
(she pauses with her hand on the door and
turns on him the vague and glazed eyes of a convalescent)
“Excuse him.”
(Powerless and afraid, she exits to
her bedroom.)
ED
JONES
(conspiratorially)
“The
daughter here is going with one, you know. Oh, he's all right by me, he's a
fine boy, upstanding, upright-polite, cool—but
someday, if she doesn't watch it, I say.”
(he speaks
with more volume and with a change in tone)
“I
say, 'Alpha, one of these days you're going to have a dozen kids in the same
room with you, all of them swinging those rosaries like lassos, and yelling,
Yippee! Whoopee, Ma! Let's go to church!’”
MARIE.
On
trembling legs Martin made it out the door, out the back porch, and down to the
water tank. He pumped water over his head and wiped the back of his neck and
the insides of his wrists with a wet handkerchief, and then got into the Model
A. Alpha came out at last, flushed and tearful.
ALPHA
“I
just gave him hell. He's never said any such foolishness to me in my life,
although now I've heard it, of course. I'm leaving home no later than a week
from now.”
MARTIN
“Oh, Alpha!”
(ALPHA slumps in the seat, her face pale and empty of expression and
stares at a kerchief she keeps wadding and squeezing in her lap)
“If
either of you pipsqueaks in there has anything you really want to say to me,
then why don't you say it out here, where I can see if you really intend to
make a joke of it.”
ALPHA
“No.
Please. Don't. He's been even worse to Mama about her religion, especially
recently. It's because of Jerome. Also because your mother
never comes to talk. Yesterday he said—
(she stops
as though a hand were at her throat)
MARTIN
“What?”
ALPHA
“He
said, 'If there was a God, I'd wring His neck, the bastard.”
(The lights fade. Music. Lights come up on JEROME and MARIE.)
JEROME
There
was a sound of logs rumbling down a wooden runway,
MARIE.
or else another part of his dream was rising through
this one.
(By this time MARTIN has made his way back to couch as seen near the
beginning of Act One. He huddles under
blankets.)
JEROME
He
slipped out of half sleep into a skin cold and oily from sleeping in his
clothes. He opened an eye to the darkness under the quilt.
MARTIN
Where
was he now?
CHORUS.
There
was whispering in the kitchen, and now it was real, unattached to the luxurious
tangle he could weave of it in dreams, and then the back door banged, utensils
were moved, a liquid was poured, and the wet bottom of a kettle started
stuttering on the stove top. He strained to hear overhead, but the floorboards
were silent, and then the back door opened and closed, and footsteps came
across the kitchen, snow creaking under them against the cold linoleum.
(ED JONES walks in holding an armful
of firewood.)
MRS.
JONES
(In a harsh whisper)
“Ed.”
ED
JONES
“Yes
yes yes, sweet love.”
MRS.
JONES
“What
are you doing?”
ED
JONES
“What
does it look like? I'm taking this in there.
MRS.
JONES
“No,
you aren't.”
ED
JONES
“You
mean this stuff? What the hell. It's clean snow.”
MRS.
JONES
“You'll
wake him.”
ED
JONES
“He's
got to get up and get out of here, by God!”
MRS.
JONES
“But
that's so rude.”
(JONES walks into the living room and dumps the kindling into a woodbox
close to MARTIN's felt head. He then starts to
build-up the fire.)
ED
JONES
“Hey,
boy, aren't you awake yet?”
MARTIN
(Uncovering his head)
Yes.
Good morning.”
ED
JONES
“Good
morning, hell! Well, I finally got that windmill shut off before it rattled its
goddamn brains out. The wind quit at four and I ran out then. I don't suppose I
woke you.”
MARTIN
“No.”
ED
JONES
“I
figured not. It's a good thing you're going into education, is what I say. You
don't have what it takes to make a dirt grubber, boy. What time do you teachers
have to get up? It's
MARTIN
“Oh.”
ED
JONES
“You're
damn tootin! And it's thirty below out.”
MARTIN
“Oh.”
ED
JONES
“Oh, oh. Didn't you hear what I said?”
MARTIN
“Yes.
I mean, what's that you said?”
ED
JONES
“I
said it was
(ED JONES crosses upstage to MRS. JONES. She wraps a scarf around his neck and
straightens his winter hat. She then
hands him MARTIN’s hat, gloves, and scarf.
This happens during JEROME and MARIE’s
narration.)
JEROME
Of
what importance was time on this particular morning, on the new day of the New
Year, snowed in by the blizzard, when he was looking forward to helping Jones
with the chores, and having leftovers from last night, and more quiet card
games and genial talk;
MARIE.
and was hoping for the chance, after another tête-à-tête
with Alpha
MARTIN
—if
she'd said yes and would agree—
MARIE.
to announce their marriage to her parents first, on
the occasion of this day.
ED
JONES
(JONES moves closer to MARTIN)
“Hey,
boy, what the hell is it with you?”
MARTIN
(shoving
off the quilt and sitting)
“The cattle?”
ED
JONES
“Cattle, hell. They've been taken care of hours ago.”
(MARTIN slips his stockinged feet into the cold sheaths of his shoes
and laces them.)
ED
JONES (continued)
“I
tried cranking your Model A for a quarter hour and couldn't even make it go
poot. How do you adjust your spark?”
MARTIN
“All
the way down.”
MRS.
JONES
(there is
ringing laugh from the kitchen)
That's
what I suggested to the old fool all along!”
JEROME
(during this speech, MARTIN, with the help of
JONES, gets himself ready to go outside)
Martin
started trembling and not from the cold. They were turning him out on purpose
before Alpha was up. They'd worked up this plot together, for some reason, and
were delirious with the way it was moving ahead of him.
(JONES acts drunk. He scours his leather mittens together and gives
them a clap close to MARTIN's head,
shows his teeth in a fake smile, or so it seems, and strides into the kitchen
like a marionette. MARTIN follows. MRS. JONES is at the cookstove stirring a
steaming pot. She turns and gives him a merry smile.)
MRS.
JONES
“Good
morning, at last. Sorry you can't have breakfast.”
ED
JONES
“Jesus,
boy, you look like the soup's been sucked out of your bones.”
(MARTIN turns to thank MRS. JONES but hardly gets it out before she
plops his cap on his head.)
MRS.
JONES
“There's
no need for thanks. Goodbye, Martin. My best to you.”
ED
JONES
“You're
so bass-ackwards and slow and sheepish this morning, boy, I'd say it was
because you haven't taken your morning leak yet.”
JEROME
He
straightened, standing tall above Jones, and decided now was the moment to have
his say about this,
(JONES grabs his elbow, opens the kitchen door, pulls him onto the back
porch) but Jones pushed him outside door and two shafts of pain, like flying
icicles, were driven home above his eyes. When he finished blinking and his
vision cleared and
became grayly chromatic, he saw
the Model A stranded in a drift up above its running board. A team of black
Percherons, stomping and nodding against the traces and blowing blossomy plumes
from their frost-ringed nostrils, stood at the front of the car, hitched to its
bumper with logging chains and eveners, their heads stamped upon the morning
with a permanence that made them shine.)
MARIE
The
white day was still as death. Jones took his arm and started ragging him
through drifts, through deep trails left by the horses' big hooves.
(During MARIE’s speech, the CHORUS assembles
to represent a team of Percherons tied to the Model A. The lights change from a warm and comfortable
interior to an almost painfully bright exterior. ED JONES and MARTIN’s movements during the
next sequence are restricted by three feet of fresh, imaginary snow. Their walking takes on a form similar to
goose-stepping.)
JEROME
The
white day was still as death. Jones took
his arm and started ragging him through drifts, through deep trails left by the
horses’ big hooves.
ED
JONES
“I
know it looks pretty bad, but I walked out to the main road and it's already
been
traveled, so there won't be any trouble once we get that
far, or if there is I'll pull you all
the way on into town.
And there, by Jesus, is the team that can do it.”
(JONES turns to him with a smile of
pride, but it changes into consternation.)
“I'll
be go to hell. A tie.”
MARTIN
“A tie?”
ED
JONES
“Aren't
you well, boy, or didn't you sleep last night either, or what? I'm not up on
all your rigmarole, but I know today is a holy day of consecration, or
whatever, and you've got to get to church. Now, do you want to borrow a tie
from me?”
MARTIN
(finally
figuring out the confusion of the morning)
“Oh, no. I have one in my pocket. I—”
(he started
to pull it out)
ED
JONES
“My
first wife was a Catholic, you know, so I'm up on a few of the ins and outs of
your Church. That first marriage was so unfortunate, I
can't begin to tell you how. We had to
ED
JONES (continued)
get married, knocked up. I've got another daughter
roaming the world somewhere. I didn't even tell Ma herself until a few years
back-I was afraid she wouldn't have me if she knew that-and then when I finally
did, to explain why this girl kept writing me, she got so out of hand I had to
say, 'Well, dammit, Ma, the girl was a Catholic! What did you expect?'
(Pause)
And
now it seems imprudent of me to have said that. It rankled
Ma more than ever about that marriage, and sure as hell didn't do you any good.
Ma was a regular churchgoer once, too, you know, so she understands how
important this is for you, and she's been after me all morning to get you to
town by ten, when your Mass is. There at the first, when you first showed an
interest in Alpha, I suppose Ma figured you were just out to give her the dong
and then run off, and I must admit, because of my experience, I thought the
same thing. But I knew you were serious about her from the way you took her in
hand after Jerome—When. After that, I didn't think I could keep myself together
if she went off and left us too, but of course I can. I'm going to stop trying
to scare you off now. That's my New Year's resolution. Well, it's one of them.”
(He winks an ice-fringed eye at him) “I must say, though, I do feel a lot
better, now that you've gone and proposed. Easy, now.
I know all about it, and I'll always be able to say I was one of the first to
know. The old lady-Oh, Lord, why do we call them that when we
never think of them that way, especially in bed. The wife, Mrs. Jones,
overheard you and Alpha talking last night. She wasn't snooping. She's not a
snooper. She just happened to hear, and when she came in to bed she told me.
Didn't you hear us? We were up half the night. Can you imagine me a
grandfather? Jesus! And then Alpha couldn't sleep with the excitement of it, so
she came down around five, after I got the gag on that windmill, and told me to
my face, and I had
to pretend it was the first I'd heard of it, and go
through the hugging and kissing and try to shed a tear. It's too bad you sleep
so late and we're so rushed, because the wife and I wanted you to know how much
we wish you well.”
(JONES grabs MARTIN's
hand and grips it through mitten and glove)
“Do
you want to know something else, boy?”
(MARTIN nods, which is all he can do)
“Well,
with all the churchgoing and whatnot the wife has had, it really pleased me
that I was the one, not her, who knew about this holy day and how you had to be
to church on it-which I wouldn't have known, by heaven, if I hadn't been
married to a Catholic once, and, Jesus, doesn't it amaze you the way the world
goes round?”
(Lights fade from an exterior to an interior. If possible, a gobo of a
stained glass window reflects of the rear-stage wall. The CHORUS seamlessly transition from the
team of horses to a line of people kneeling at a communion rail. MARTIN steps onto the space and kneels in the
center of the group. JEROME and MARIE
are at either side of the stage.)
JEROME
Less
than a half hour later,
MARIE.
Martin
was kneeling in the furnace-heated warmth of St. Boniface Church in
MARIE
and JEROME
asking God if Alpha could be his wife.
BLACK-OUT
ACT TWO
(MARIE, JEROME, CHARLES, and TIM enter the playing space and search
through the trunks. TIM pulls out a file
folder and begins reading)
TIM
JOB APPLICATION. THE QUALIFICATIONS
OF MARTIN NEUMILLER. PERSONAL DATA: I am
twenty-three years of age, six feet tall, and weigh 185 pounds. My physical
condition is excellent. I am a Catholic, but have lived all my life in a
Protestant community, and so I can be at ease among Protestants as well as
Catholics.
(MARTIN and MRS. NEUMILLER enter the
playing space)
In
1931, I was graduated from
TIM
& MARTIN
and in 1933 enrolled at
(TIM and family retreat to the
background.)
MARTIN
SCHOLASTIC
RECORD: The titles of the courses of interest I have had in college are
literature, Drama, Grammar. . .
(The lights come up on the opposite side of the stage to reveal ALPHA Although he continues to read, MARTIN's voice fades out when
ALPHA begins to speak.)
ALPHA
NOV
24. Dear Diary, Martin took me to Thanksgiving dinner in the Belmont Hotel and
proposed a late December date for our wedding. I approved. So toward the 22nd
we go, hearts clean as razors, and I'm praying all the way.
MARTIN
FORENSICS EXPERIENCE. In high school, I participated
in dramatics, readings, and oratory. . .
ALPHA
NOV
26. At Home. Ironed clothes, seven dress shirts for
Daddy, and did other Saturday chores, trying to work up courage to tell Mama
about our wedding date, and did, finally, down on my knees with floor wax. To
my great surprise she took it with calm. Daddy just laughed and made eyes like
a wolf. Woof! Mama planned and talked and gave me simple womanly advice, and I
was so happy I wanted to hug her and say, “I love you, Mama! I'll miss you a
lot!”
MARTIN
PREFERRED
SUBJECTS. . . I prefer to teach English, History, German, and General Science,
but am willing and feel qualified to teach, in addition, Physics, Psychology,
Algebra, and Botany.
ALPHA
DEC
11. I had yet another session with Father Krull. I was wondering to him if I
hadn't got interested in religion because of Jerome, and wanted to say some
kind word to him now, and then he said,
CHORUS
(Father Krull).
(stepping
from the shadows)
“Why
don't we just spend a few minutes together in silence.”
ALPHA
I
listened and heard the Lord in currents of wind through wheat or flax! I'm
alive at last or have died.
MARTIN
RECOMMENDATIONS . . . If interested in my
application, you may secure my references by writing the College Placement
Bureau here at
(MARTIN pauses in wait of an opinion)
MRS.
NEUMILLER
“Well,
it certainly is complete. I can say that.”
MARTIN
“That's
what I want.”
MRS.
NEUMILLER
(concerned)
“I
was wondering, though, why you put this in, in the first paragraph here, this
about Catholics and Protestants.”
MARTIN
“Because
I figure I might as well lay it right on the line.”
CHORUS.
(During this next passage the CHORUS MEMBER playing FATHER KRULL steps forward and occupies an playing area representing his
study at the rectory. Dressed in a dark jacket and a priest’s collar, he slowly
feels his way along an imaginary wall leading to two chairs.)
ALPHA
Even
before Father Krull was ordained a priest, he was looked on as bishop material,
perhaps even the stuff of which cardinals are made. He loved old books,
footnotes, knowledge, the smell of dusty pages. He move up the ranks quickly and was put in charge of larger
and larger congregations. He was about to be made a monsignor and be
transferred again to the cathedral in Fargo, St. Mary's, and be a part of the
gang of boys in the bishop's office there, at St. Mary's, when he asked to
serve, instead, as pastor of the church in, Courtenay; Courtenay was Father
Krull's hometown, his birthplace. He was sent to Courtenay. Within the year it
became obvious why he'd asked to be sent there. He was going blind. He wanted
to go blind on home ground.
CHORUS
(Father Krull)
“Is
there anything in this lesson that bothers you?”
ALPHA
“The Trinity. Those three-Gods-in-one.”
FATHER
KRULL
“There's
a tale, probably apocryphal, about one of the saints—Thomas or Peter, I
believe. He was walking a beach, sand with rocks around, determined to prove
his worth and solve the riddle of the Trinity, when he saw a golden-haired boy
filling a sea shell with water and pouring it out on the beach. 'What are you
doing?' the saint is said to have asked. 'I'm emptying the sea, sir,' the boy
told him. ‘Even if you kept at it without a rest, you could never do such a
thing in your entire lifetime, my boy,’ the saint said. ‘Nor will you, in your
lifetime, sir, understand the Trinity,’ the boy said, and disappeared.”
ALPHA
“Why
didn't the saint offer to help?”
FATHER
KRULL
“Oh, ho, you!”
ALPHA
“I
don't know if I'm angry at the Trinity itself—I mean, not the people in it—or
just so prejudiced against the Church I figure everything it teaches is
purposely misleading me.”
FATHER
KRULL
“If
it were either of those, I don't think you'd be here.”
ALPHA
“Don't
I have to be, sir?”
FATHER
KRULL
“Ha!
Yes, but you could sit there, like the others I counsel, and keep saying, 'Uh
huh, uh huh,' so I could say 'Fine' and you could get married. It's not
necessary to understand all of this, much less believe in it. This is merely to
help you understand how Martin's mind
FATHER
KRULL (continued)
works on certain matters out of reflex. If you know some
of the reasons, you can be closer to him in your marriage, or so I've always
assumed.”
ALPHA
“I
figure if there are three Gods, then why not five or six, huh? Or a dozen of them. And then there are all the saints, who
could include just about practically anybody, the way it seems in your Church.
That sounds like paganism to me.”
FATHER
KRULL
“I
know you've acted in high school, and at the college, I hear, and I'm sure you
can portray more roles than the Lucy you did for us, can't you? Your voice was
so singing.”
ALPHA
“Of
course I can.”
FATHER
KRULL
“Couldn't
you use that to help you see the Trinity, thinking of it as different guises
God could assume?”
ALPHA
“I
guess I could.”
(MARTIN enters the playing space. He nervously begins to pace outside
the entrance to FATHER KRULL’s study.)
FATHER
KRULL
“It's
easier to have a feeling for it if you've grown up with the religion, as Martin
has, and it has to be felt to be believed. Religion is visceral.”
(he draws
back in his chair)
“Your
hour is up. Martin's pacing the sidewalk again. He doesn't realize you're
really interested in the faith and not just wrangling.”
ALPHA
“I
am?”
(There is a silence between them, interwound with the scrape and crush
of MARTIN's shoes on the sidewalk, creer chee, creaca
chee, creesh shee.)
FATHER
KRULL
“Ask
him to come in and have a cup of coffee with us.”
ALPHA
“All right.”
FATHER
KRULL
“Unless there's something more?”
ALPHA
“It
doesn't have to do with this lesson. It's the paper I have to sign, where I
promise to bring my children up in the Catholic Church. Well, it makes me sick
to think. . . that people who aren't even born yet are
going to be bound by a promise of mine.”
FATHER
KRULL
“That
document's primitive and absurd, and in violation of even your civil rights.
There's no justification for it, and someday it'll be thrown out of the Church
altogether. When you come to signing it, if you do, cross
your fingers.”
ALPHA
“What!”
(They both laugh.)
FATHER
KRULL
“But
don't tell any of the Neumillers I said that. Now let's have some of that
coffee. Bernice! Coffee for three, or four, if you care to join
us. It's Alpha and Martin.
(to ALPHA)
Would
you mind going to see if she needs any help?
(MARTIN enters the room. He looks uncomfortable. He is afraid ALPHA
said something sacrilegious to FATHER KRULL.)
FATHER
KRULL
“Isn't
she a fine girl?”
MARTIN
“Yes,
she is.”
FATHER
KRULL
“I
don't give personal advice, but since you and I are related, I will to you.
When you're married, and I expect you will be soon, live as far as you can from
your mother. Give her time to accept Alpha as your wife.”
MARTIN
“Certainly.”
FATHER
KRULL
“And
you'll have to be very attentive to your husbandry duties. Alpha is one of the
most passionate women I've met.”
(MARTIN blushes)
“One thing more.”
(he shakes a finger so close to MARTIN's chest
it seemed for an instant he can see)
FATHER
KRULL (continued)
“This:
Don't you ever, ever, even if your life depends on it, try to persuade that
girl to become a Catholic, do you hear?”
(The lights cross fade quickly to the spot where from FATHER KRULL's
playing space back to the spot where ALPHA earlier read from her diary.)
ALPHA
DEC
22. My heart's so full I feel it's been carrying me
around smiling instead of me it. Martin and I were married at
(TIM, MARIE, JEROME, and CHARLES
appear center stage.)
TIM, MARIE, JEROME, & CHARLES
The
years passed quickly from that point in the lives of Martin and Alpha
Neumiller.
MARIE.
Our
father got his first teaching position in a little town called Hyatt.
JEROME
He
was soon promoted to principal.
TIM
And
it seemed with each passing year, a new Neumiller entered the family.
JEROME
I
was the first, Jerome, named after the uncle who drowned and who my mother can
still barely mention without tears.
(As he says this, the CHORUS MEMBER who played YOUNG JEROME in “The
Street” runs across the stage chasing a ball.)
CHARLES
Shortly
thereafter, I came along. My name is Charles.
(The CHORUS MEMBER who played CHARLES in “The Street” runs across the
stage chasing after his brother.)
TIM
As
the youngest brother, I had to be pretty tough.
(The CHORUS MEMBER who played YOUNG TIM in “The Street” runs onto the
stage and tries to get his ball back. YOUNG JEROME and YOUNG TIM play keep away
from him. After a short time, YOUNG TIM starts swinging widely with his fists
at his brothers.)
TIM
(continued)
My
parents called me Tim, but I preferred “Timvalin.”
(Beat)
It
was a long phase I went through.
MARIE.
Finally,
there's me. Marie Neumiller. The
first daughter of Martin and Alpha Neumiller.
(the CHORUS MEMBER playing YOUNG MARIE skips
onto with a doll, drops to the floor, and begins playing with it)
I
still have that doll somewhere, I think.
CHORUS.
(CHARLES steps forward. As he does the four CHORUS MEMBERS playing the NEUMILLER CHILDREN take a seat at the MARTIN and ALPHA's
dinner table.)
CHARLES
At
the age of nine I wasn't afraid of the dark. When I ran down a deserted street
at night, I knew the chilling pursuer I felt at my back was put there by my own
act of running, and would disappear—like any creature of the imagination when
put to a test—the second I slowed to a walk. The gray hands that reached for me
as I lay in bed were of my own creation, too, and once I had proved my power to
summon them up, for the sake of a safe, enjoyable scare, I could destroy them.
(pause. During this next speech, the dinner
table in MARTIN and ALPHA’s home comes into focus. Along with MARTIN and ALPHA,
younger versions of CHARLES, JEROME, TIM and MARIE sit around the table. They are just finishing breakfast)
When
the change came, it seemed to come in a moment, but I believe I was being
prepared for it. I believe it began one morning when my father read a letter at
the breakfast table. The letter was from his father, who had left farming and
ALPHA
Wasn't
he satisfied with the job he had,
CHARLES
she wanted to know.
MARTIN
Of course, but there wasn't much chance of getting
ahead in
ALPHA
Wasn't
he the superintendent of a high school now?
MARTIN
Yes,
that was true, speaking as calmly and reasonably as she did.
ALPHA
And
didn't he make enough to keep them happy?
MARTIN
More than enough.
ALPHA
Then
would it be wise to give up the job he had, and sell the house, and move to
MARTIN
Didn't
she like
ALPHA
Not
especially.
MARTIN
Well,
they had only been there in the summer, and he imagined that was why. His
father hadn't liked it at first, either, but now he called it God's country.
ALPHA
Then
why did he so often come back to
MARTIN
Well,
probably because
ALPHA
And
wasn't it theirs?
MARTIN
Yes,
but his father had done so well for himself down there, and maybe he could,
too. Wouldn't she like a nicer house?
ALPHA
This
was the house she had always wanted—how could there be a better one?
MARTIN
Well,
his only reason for considering the idea at all was that his father was getting
old and wanted the family reunited. She knew that, didn't she?
ALPHA
Yes,
she said, and leaned to him and kissed him.
MARTIN
(taking
both her hands in his)
Wouldn't
she like it if they were in a bigger town where he could make more money and
she could have more friends?
ALPHA
She
bowed her head, as she did only when she was sad or very ashamed.
CHARLES
And
so, in the early summer of that year, after being promised a job as a high
school principal, my father moved the family from
(Using
a trunk as a seat, the NEUMILLER’s pry themselves into a space symbolizing a
very cramped car, with MARTIN driving and ALPHA holding MARIE in her arms) The move seemed doomed from the start. It was
so crowded in that car, with us kids and all of that
luggage. We boys wouldn't sleep or behave and Marie was wailing most of the
way. My mother, who was four months pregnant, looked especially miserable. We
drove straight through and arrived in
MARTIN
(Getting out of the car, trying to
alleviate the stress of the situation)
“I'll
open it up and get the lights on. Then we'll take some of this in and make it a
little comfortable. It doesn't look as bad inside.
(He crosses to the entrance of the house and searches for a key above
the ledge. Suddenly, the lights come on inside and the door opens)
CHORUS
(House owner)
“This
is some hour to show up.”
MARTIN
“What
do you mean? Here you are and we agre--”
HOUSE
OWNER
“The
wife's had a change of heart.”
MARTIN
“But its July twenty-fifth! You had two weeks to be
out! My wife, my kids—”
(He gestures at the car.)
HOUSE
OWNER
“The
wife's decided were staying here in town, and that's that.”
MARTIN
Why
didn't you at least let me know, for God's sake?”
HOUSE
OWNER
“I
lost that card of yours.”
MARTIN
“Why
didn't you tell my father?”
HOUSE
OWNER
“Who's
he?”
MARTIN
“But
surely you can't--I mean, my Lord! I've paid the first months rent and the
deposit!”
HOUSE
OWNER
“Take
it easy.”
(the man leaves for a moment. When he returns,
he hands MARTIN a sheaf of bills)
It's
all there.
(He then closes and locks the door.)
MARTIN
“Just
what the hell do you think you're doing?”
HOUSE
OWNER
(from
inside)
Watch
it, this is our house.
MARTIN
“I
mean—”
(He considers breaking down the door. Then he realizes that he never
signed a lease. Defeated, he slowly turns and walks toward the car. He meets
his worst fears in ALPHA's tired and hopeless face. Their terrible stare is
finally broken when CHARLES begins speaking. The family scatters, dissembling
the car in the process.)
(During CHARLES’ next speech, the upstage area, which previously symbolized
MARTIN and ALPHA’s home in
CHARLES
After
living as a family in my grandparents one room unfinished basement for nearly a
month, my father finally bought and started remodeling a duplex that had
originally been a gasoline station. Setting aside his usual calm and reserve,
he went at the place with such a passion that I was inspired; I learned to use
a hammer like a man and started to have at the old house, too. One morning when
my father was working in the kitchen, and I was pulling carpet nails out of the
stairs, a man named Alan Spear showed up and stared around with what seemed
embarrassment at the torn-up room.
MARTIN
Martin
apologized for it.
CHORUS
(Alan Spear)
(with
hesitation and embarrassment)
Spear
waved his words away and asked about the remodeling, to be polite and to have
questions to ask, it seemed, and then said that he was new at the job of
heading up a school board; there were the other members to contend with, and he
hadn't realized that the superintendent had so much say in hiring teachers,
especially the principal, who was the one he had to work the closest with over
the year, or more, if he was staying on, of course.
MARTIN
(laying his
hammer on the table)
“What
you're trying to say, Alan? Has my job been given to someone else.”
ALAN
SPEAR
“I'm
afraid so. Yes it has, Martin.”
MARTIN
“All
right, I'll teach English or Math or P.E. I'll even take a job in the junior
high school.”
ALAN
SPEAR
“We
wouldn't want somebody of your caliber and experience to take just any job,
Martin. And it's so late on in the year now, I don't know; I'm afraid most of
the really good openings might be filled up. I want you to know that I take
full responsibility for this.”
MARTIN
(MARTIN stares into his eyes. SPEAR
looks away)
“Are
they, Alan?”
ALAN
SPEAR
“What?”
MARTIN
“Are
all the openings in the district filled?”
ALAN
SPEAR
“I'm
afraid they are, Martin.”
CHARLES
(SPEAR exits. Dejected, MARTIN
continues his work at the table. CHARLES
crosses into the playing space)
Every
other school in the county had filled its openings, too. My father started
working for my Uncle Jay on a cement crew.
(bitterly
mumbling to himself as he works)
He’d
been passed over for the job because of his religion, he believed, but wouldn’t
think of mentioning it to anyone, especially my mother. Everybody in town was Methodist. The superintendent was, and the
superintendent and Spear and most of the members of the school board belonged
to the Masonic Lodge.
MARTIN
Those
rings they wore.
CHARLES
(pause)
Oh
yes, the house. The bedroom that my brothers and I were given—I'm Charles, by
the way—had no window. It was a small upstairs room with a ceiling that took
its sharp slant from the pitch of the roof. There was no daylight and no light
fixture in the room, no smell but the smell of dust and old lumber, no color,
no company; the seasons outside were merely changes in temperature.
(below him,
ALPHA enters the kitchen area)
When
our father first took us through the room, he said he'd install a dormer there,
and fill the room with daylight, but for the time being, all he did was move in
a double bed for Tim and Jerome --I was at the age where I couldn't stand to be
touched, much less sleep with anybody--, and set a narrow cot up against one
wall for me.
(pause)
CHARLES
(continued)
My
mother did not like the house we were living in, and was troubled that my
father had to give up teaching,
ALPHA
the profession he loved, and become a common laborer.
CHARLES
She
was also in her last months of pregnancy.
MARTIN
She
became silent and secretive, and kept her eyes lowered.
CHARLES
My
father watched her from the time he came home from work until he went to bed.
MARTIN
How
was she feeling today?
ALPHA
Fine.
MARTIN
Was
there anything he could do?
ALPHA
No.
MARTIN
Would
she like to go out-to a movie or somewhere?
ALPHA
No.
CHARLES
When
her answers turned from single words to shrugs, he became silent, too.
(pause. MARTIN exits the kitchen area. CHARLES comes down the steps)
One
afternoon I stood near the top of a stepladder and nailed a lath to the
partition in the kitchen.
(YOUNG CHARLES stands on the crate
and mimes a hammering motion)
My
mother sat at the table, paying little attention to the noise I made, and
embroidered on a dish towel. Once when I missed the nail completely, I cursed.
YOUNG
CHARLES
Crap.
CHARLES
Still she didn't look up. When I had first
started using foul language,
YOUNG
CHARLES
(looking at
his mother, perplexed)
she had washed my mouth out with soap. I had never
heard my father swear, and now she was letting me get away with it.
CHARLES
I
felt manly and arrogant, and made even more noise.
(pause)
But
then I realized how much she must have changed, to ignore what she had once
disapproved of, and I studied her from the top of the stepladder.
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Mom? Are you okay?”
ALPHA
(without
looking up)
“Yes,”
(she
quickly continues sewing, as if I'd caught her at something)
“Don't
worry about me. Do your job.”
CHARLES
Her
manner upset me. An emotion spread from her and pressed on me like a hand. I
stopped working, my eyes on the grooves of one of the steps, and tried to
figure out what she was feeling.
(YOUNG CHARLES turns from his position on the ladder to look at his
mother. She raises her face. They stare at each other for several seconds.
Embarrassed, he starts hammering again.)
ALPHA
“Don't.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Don't
what?”
ALPHA
“Don't
work anymore.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“The
hammering bothers you?”
ALPHA
“No.
I don't want you to work.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Why not?”
ALPHA
(she won't
look at him)
“Go
and play.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Who with? Dad told me to do this wall.”
ALPHA
“I
don't want you to work with your hands! You're too young to work.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“No,
I'm not!”
ALPHA
“Don't
argue. Go outside.”
CHARLES
With
her head lowered, her voice didn't seem a part of her. I came down the ladder
angrily, determined to make her look at me, and saw that the length and breadth
of her cheeks were wet with tears. I went out the back door and sat on the
steps.
(YOUNG CHARLES crosses downstage and sits on the edge of a
platform. CHARLES shadows his movements.)
YOUNG
CHARLES
It
wasn't right of her to go against my father's word, and she never had.
CHARLES
She
was even going against her own! She wouldn't talk to you, and when she did she
wouldn't look at you, and then she cried.
YOUNG
CHARLES
If
something was wrong and she didn't want me to know what it was, I wished she
would simply leave me alone.
CHARLES
Then
I remembered the long, unguarded look she had held me with.
(The scene changes to night. YOUNG CHARLES crosses up the stairs to his
bedroom. He lies down on a bench covered
by a sheet used to signify his bed. The
sound of a telephone can be heard cutting through the dim light.)
CHORUS
MARTIN
Martin
hadn't ever had a telephone in the house, and disliked the instrument and its
way of invading his private life. One night it rang at
CHORUS
(Doctor)
He'd
been looking through his family doctor book, he said, and thought perhaps Alpha
might have an acute form of hepatitis and should maybe see an internist in
MARTIN
He
went into a lengthy explanation of hepatitis,
DOCTOR
of the relationship between the patient and his
disease, explaining that this information came from the book lying open in
front of him,
MARTIN
and soon his speech became rambling and convoluted and
took sudden shifts that had no relation to logic. “Well, I don't know why
you're telling me all this at such an ungodly hour.”
(He hangs up.)
CHORUS
CHARLES
Back
in bed, hearing the whole house creak and sigh in its heavy sleep, I also
learned about the one element that stays awake: the air. Long after the house
was asleep, and long after I should have been, the dark air was alive with
excitement. Because there was never any light in the room, from the sun or the
moon, the air was my gauge of time and events. A disturbance outside—a passing
train, a car, the lashing of a tree—caused it to ripple. When the sun rose, the
air became angry, agitated, and some nights, for a reason I could never
understand, it thickened and pressed against me.
CHORUS
MARTIN
That
morning he called an internist in
CHORUS
(Internist)
asked who Alpha was presently seeing
MARTIN
and Martin told him.
INTERNIST
“Oh, goodness.”
MARTIN
“Why?
What's that about?”
INTERNIST
“I'm
afraid the poor fellow's about to lose his license. There have been a lot of
complaints about him and we're about to get a full-scale investigation under
way on him. We're pretty sure he's been using opium.”
CHORUS.
CHORUS.
CHARLES MARTIN
One
January night I woke, for no apparent An appointment with the internist was reason, and felt the
air above my cot had scheduled for
two days later, and the next thickened. It was denser than it was when night Martin woke to an unnatural coldness
the sun rose, and some sound was trying to that
seemed to emanate from beside the bed.
make its way through the denseness
CHARLES (continued) CHORUS
(All)
I
listened so intently my eyes joined in the (In a horrible whisper)
effort, searching the volume of dark air, Raw-throated sounds powerful
and then I heard yet
constrained, were coming from the direction of the coldness,
CHORUS
YOUNG
CHARLES
—coming
from the ground floor? from somewhere above the roof?—
CHORUS.
MARTIN
as if Alpha were crying and attempting to stifle it,
but he'd never heard her cry in such a voice. She wouldn't answer, and then. .
. (Her fist hits his face; it is tensed and beating at
MARTIN
(continued)
him with a fury he cannot fathom. He throws back the
covers and turns on the lamp; ALPHA is unconscious, having convulsions, and
bleeding into the bed)
CHORUS
BEYOND
THE BEDROOM WALL
CHARLES
a sound like the breathy creak of pigeon's wings, and
then falling away again.
CHORUS CHORUS
CHARLES MARTIN
Light
switches clicked downstairs, there He
ran and called the Pettibone doctor,
were footsteps, the telephone jingled as
it was cranked, and I felt the heavy throb DOCTOR
of my father's bass voice. who came
on at once and was levelheaded
After
a number of throbs, punctuated by and
concerned and told him to make sure her
silences that seemed humming question tongue was forward in her mouth, to cover
marks in the dark air, the receiver slapped her and keep her warm, if it would
ease his
into its holder, my father's footsteps mind, but mostly to keep back and not hurt
crossed the kitchen, and another switch her by trying to help her; he'd be
right over.
clicked. A white rectangle, its top end bent
up against the foot of the wall, gripped the
floor; he had turned on the light in the hall-
way downstairs. I went to the banister,
looked down the stairwell, and saw his
shadow cross the bottom steps.
CHORUS.
YOUNG
CHARLES
(from the
top of the stairs)
“Dad?”
(After a silence, a pause in the footsteps, MARTIN moves to the bottom
of the stairs.)
MARTIN
“What
are you doing up at this hour?”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Nothing.”
MARTIN
“You'd
better go back to bed.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Who
were you talking to on the phone?”
MARTIN
“The doctor. Do you realize it's
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Is
somebody sick?”
MARTIN
(he stares
at him for a few seconds)
“Go
to bed. Please.”
(YOUNG CHARLES crosses to the bed)
CHARLES
I
did, but I couldn't sleep. The birdlike sounds rose up again,
CHORUS.
MARTIN
Martin
went back to the bedroom and the convulsions had stopped; she was breathing
through her mouth as if asleep. Her tongue was as it should be.
(he pulls the damp and stained sheets off the
bed and covers her well, piles the sheets in the bathroom, and then sits on the
edge of their bed. He takes her hand)
Must
I go through this?
(her eyelids tremble and open on him with a
tentative stir; she takes a long time to focus)
ALPHA
“You're
so pale.”
MARTIN
“You
look better.”
ALPHA
“Why
do I feel so light? Have I lost the baby?”
MARTIN
“No,
no. Don't worry now. The doctor's on his way.”
ALPHA
“The doctor?”
MARTIN
“You've
been ill.”
ALPHA
“How long?”
MARTIN
“Just a while.”
ALPHA
“I
feel I've been under a spell a hundred years. Is this the hospital?”
MARTIN
“No,
we're at home now.”
ALPHA
“Where's
the big window that looks out on the front porch?”
MARTIN
“Here
in
ALPHA
“Oh.
I'm really confused then, or else I've been dreaming. So it's true that I'll
lose the baby.”
MARTIN
“No,
no, no. The baby's just fine.”
ALPHA
“No,
I'll lose it. It'll be as much sorrow to you as losing me,
and you'll think of us together.”
MARTIN
“What
do you mean?”
ALPHA
“It's
a girl.”
MARTIN
“Alpha,
I want you to know—”
(Her fingernails cut in and her face is transfigured as her spine
arches and beats with the force of another convulsion. He grabs her and holds
her while the raw-throated sounds come and go as if she is falling down past
him from a building and trying to cry out some final message or name. She
stops. Then with a gasping intake of breath go up again and again come flying
by with the important syllables missing, until he is afraid he'd do her harm if
this didn't stop. Then she lies still on the bed beneath him. There is bloody
foam on her lips. Her tongue was cut. MARTIN runs for the telephone.)
CHORUS
CHARLES
My
Father's footsteps crossed the house, in long strides this time, and the
jingling of the telephone was harsh. I got out of bed and was nearly to the
bottom of the stairs when I heard my father's voice: “. . .
(During these lines, YOUNG CHARLES exits his room and moves toward the
area representing the kitchen.)
MARTIN
realize it's practically a half hour since I called? You
can't be more than a block away, and . . . What? How in the world can a man
read at a time like this? . . . Well, I don't give a damn about your-your damn
family doctor's book! . . .”
CHARLES
The
profanity, so wrong on my father's tongue, scared me. And his voice was usually
under control; I had never heard it like this.
MARTIN
“Are
you listening? You get over here this minute or I'll come and get you!”
(he hooks the receiver into its metal cradle,
leans a shoulder against the wall, and whispers)
“Oh, God! What next?”
(He gathers himself and turns to
notice YOUNG CHARLES on the stairs.)
MARTIN
“I
thought I told you to go to bed.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Are
you sick?”
MARTIN
“What
are you doing down here?”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“I
have to go to the bathroom.”
MARTIN
(with a
moan of someone deathly ill)
“Go.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“What's
wrong?”
MARTIN
“Do
as you're told.”
CHARLES
I
don't have to go anymore.
MARTIN
“Then
go to bed.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“I
want to see Mom.”
MARTIN
“Not
now. Not tonight.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Why not?”
MARTIN
“She's
too sick.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“Let
me see her!”
MARTIN
“Maybe tomorrow. Go now.”
YOUNG
CHARLES
“She's
sick?”
CHARLES
He
nodded his head with such finality I wasn't able to ask anything else, or
disobey—run past him to their bedroom—but as I climbed the stairs I was sure I
had done something wrong.
(YOUNG CHARLES slowly crosses back
to his bedroom)
CHORUS. CHORUS.
BEYOND THE BEDROOM WALL
SNOWFALL ALONG THE
(MARTIN crosses back to the kitchen and seems very unsure of what to
do. Suddenly, he picks up the phone.)
CHARLES MARTIN
Because
I didn't know what it was, and at My name is Martin Neumiller.
the same time realized it was my mother I'm calling from Pettibone. Please
send an
who was ill, I started to tremble, and ambulance to my home as soon as possible.
when I settled into bed and the
rectangle (After
giving inaudible directions, he
on the wall vanished, darkness
pressed hangs up
the phone and immediately
on me as it never had before.
It took my dials
another number)
entire imagination, and closed
eyes, to Mom. Yes. There's been
an emergency. I
keep it away, and just as I
heard strange need you come and
watch the kids. Now.
voices-several of them, it seemed-I gave I'll
tell you later. Please come soon.
into the darkness. (He
hangs up the phone and sits motionless at the kitchen table).
CHORUS
(The
following dream sequence is stylistically choreographed using members of the CHORUS
to play ALPHA and YOUNG CHARLES. The
scene should take on a nightmare quality.)
CHARLES
I
dreamed I was walking with my mother through a department store. The walls and
ceiling were white, and the floor of white marble, with low display cases set
at great distances from one another. My mother held my hand in a firm grip. She
wanted to go upstairs, and I wanted to stay where we were, on the ground floor,
and look in the display cases. I pulled away from her and ran to one.
CHORUS
(Playing Alpha)
Don't.
Don't look!
CHARLES CHORUS
she called after me, and her voice Do-o-o--o-o-o-on't lo-o-o-o-o-o-ok
echoed through the empty store. Do-o-o--o-o-o-on't lo-o-o-o-o-o-ok
(Pause)
CHARLES
(continued)
The
case was filled with blue china figurines. There was a blue swan, similar to
the one in our kitchen, with a hole in its back, so that it could be used as a
flowerpot, blue angels, and small blue busts of children. My mother put her
hand on my shoulder and said,
ALPHA
Come
away.
CHARLES
I
turned to say no and couldn't breathe. She stood far above me, taller than she
had ever been, her face made of blue china and her eyes alive and staring at me
as they had in the kitchen. She pulled her coat close around her throat, turned
and walked away, and when I tried to run after her, my feet wouldn't move.
(During the following speech, MARIE, JEROME, and TIM enter the NEUMILLER home dressed in white lab coats. MRS. NEUMILLER enters shortly after
them. Silhouetted against the lit cyc,
MARTIN escorts the visitors to ALPHA’s bedroom.
Slowly and carefully they take her from bedroom to the area on the stage
what will eventually become the hospital.
A trunk covered in bedding is slid forward to be used as ALPHA’s
hospital bed. After watching his wife
leave the space, MARTIN crosses up to YOUNG CHARLES’ room and stands in the
doorway, watching him sleep.)
CHARLES
I
woke to darkness, twisted in the blankets, my heart beating hard against the
cot. I had to see my mother. I started to get out of bed and struck the wall. I
was stupefied; the wall was on the other side of the cot. I tried again. I knew
there was no wall there, and not all
the logic in the world, or the wall itself, could
convince me otherwise. Nothing as simple as getting reversed in bed occurred to
me. I tried again and again, and finally fell back onto the cot, and my left
arm extended into open space. If there was a wall where I was convinced there
was none, I couldn't imagine what waited for me in that emptiness where the
wall should be. I pulled my arm back and held it over my chest, afraid to move,
afraid of the dark. In the morning,
without having to be told, I knew my mother was gone. My father, who had had no
sleep, said
MARTIN
she had been taken by ambulance to the hospital.
CHARLES
Without
being able to confide in him, or in anyone—once the sun has risen, the darkness
seems partly our imagination—,
CHORUS
(All)
(repeated
at different speeds at intervals)
Once
the sun has risen, the darkness seems partly our imagination.
(As they repeat this line, the CHORUS forms a line behind ALPHA’s bed in the hospital. TIM and MARIE stand stage-right of the
bed. JEROME and CHARLES, who is now
putting on his lab jacket, stand to the left.
When the CHORUS is in position, they stop repeating the line.)
CHARLES
I
knew I would never see my mother again, and started preparing myself for her
death.
CHORUS
(All)
(Sterile, white lights come-up on the hospital room. MARTIN enters the space, hurriedly.)
DOCTOR
(Jerome)
(stopping
MARTIN)
She
was operated on in the morning and a full-term, nine-and-a-half-pound girl was
removed from her womb, dead.
(MARIE hands a piece of fabric she as taken from ALPHA’s bedside to
TIM. He crosses in front of JEROME and
MARTIN with fabric, cradling it as if it were a baby wrapped in cloth.)
MARTIN
& ALPHA
'You'll
think of us together”
DOCTOR
“I'm
afraid I also have to tell you that your wife has uremia.”
MARTIN CHORUS
“Uremia?” (in a whisper) Ur-r-r-r-e-e-e-e-em-m-m-mia
DOCTOR # 2 CHORUS.
“Yes, sir.” Ur-r-r-r-r-e-e-e-e-em-m-m-mia
MARTIN CHORUS
“Is
that serious?” Ur-r-r-r-r-e-e-e-e-em-m-m-mia
DOCTOR
“Very.
I'm afraid the child has overtaxed her system.”
MARTIN
“What
do you mean?”
DOCTOR
“Her
condition is critical.”
MARIE
For
the next five days,
MARTIN
Martin
hardly slept. Since he'd known her, he'd
begged her to see a doctor, any doctor,
MARIE
about the way she could go for days without going to the
bathroom,
CHORUS
usually during a deep despondency,
MARIE.
but she never would
MARTIN CHORUS
“Uremia? Ur-r-r-r-r-e-e-e-e-em-m-m-mia
MARTIN
The
word lay like a mold in his mind and mingled with the name Alpha had picked for
the baby: Dacey.
(Softly and at different speeds and
intervals, the CHORUS repeats “Dacey.”)
MARTIN
It
seemed a pitiable name to him. Was he in
mourning?
MARIE
The
next day Alpha was transferred to a hospital in
MARTIN
All
along,
DOCTOR
(Jerome)
the doctors had assumed that she'd soon be improving,
that there were more positive signs of recovery on the way,
MARTIN
but Martin no longer trusted them. There was a
detachment in her he'd never felt before, and
ALPHA
she'd ask him not to look at her, and to leave the
hospital
MARTIN
before he was ready to go.
(MARTIN steps away from ALPHA.
As he does the CHORUS surrounds her and gently takes her out of the
hospital space. A phone rings in the
distance)
MARTIN
(continued)
He
was not surprised when he walked into the house and heard the phone start its
ringing again.
DOCTOR
“Mr.
Neumiller, this is Dr. Morrow, the physician who spoke to you this evening?”
MARTIN
“Yes?”
DOCTOR
# 2
“I'm
afraid I have some very bad news for you. We're not sure of the reasons yet,
but your wife's gone into a coma. Can you come right in?”
MARTIN
(frantically reentering the hospital space.
ALPHA is gone. MARIE, TIM, CHARLES, and JEROME stand in the room)
And
then again, after the phone call at work four days later, after driving one
hundred miles an hour the sixty miles to
DOCTOR
“Mr.
Neumiller—We've used all of our medical knowledge, the
new drugs, and the most sophisticated equipment that's available to us, and
it's just not enough. Your wife died about an hour ago. We tried to get in
touch with you earlier, but couldn't. I'm terribly sorry, sir.”
MARTIN
“Oh
God,”
CHORUS.
he said, meaning
MARTIN
she was only thirty-four.
BLACK-OUT
(A Catholic funeral hymn plays softly on the piano. As it fades, the
lights come up to reveal a much aged version of ED JONES. He is sitting in a rocking chair. It is
afternoon. Next to him on a simple wooden side table is a transistor radio. The
barely audible sound of a baseball game can be heard. His face is gray and
unshaven, his lips pressed in a white-line, and his eyes flash back and forth,
tracing a mental record of this baseball game for the sake of future arguments
with imaginary friends. He is sitting on his porch. Inside the house, MRS. JONES sets the table
for dinner. For the following selection, the immediate family, JEROME, MARIE,
TIM, and CHARLES share the bulk narration.)
MRS.
JONES
“Ed!
Come and eat!”
(no
response)
“Ed!
Do you hear?”
JEROME, MARIE, TIM & CHARLES
He
doesn't.
JEROME
And
it's not so much a question of his hearing, which has failed, as it is him. He
doesn't care to hear. He can't bear for her to keep intruding on him and his
baseball, as if she's jealous of even that. It's vicarious now, the last of his
final pleasures, and elevates him out of the present, where he's become old,
nearly eighty, been proclaimed am cripple by the medical profession, and had to
hand the reins of a finally promising farm, which has the potential to
vindicate those decades of grubbing in bad soil, over to his wife and one of
his sons who lived.
ED
JONES
goddamnit.
MARIE.
What
more does she want? Her wish about the grandkid, Charles, is fulfilled; the
boy's spending his summer here.
(YOUNG CHARLES runs across the front of the
stage looking for some mysterious animal)
Everywhere
this cane carries him, he sees the kid running all over hell and damnation,
chasing the heat-afflicted cattle, kicking at chickens, making this clinker of
an old man feel worse. Oh, it isn't the kid's tearing around that really
bothers him, though it bothers him enough, being a gimp, but that the boy
reminds him so of his dear dead daughter it's enough to make him, the terror of
her life, the noisy drunkard who never once told her he loved her—it's enough
to make him cry out at the sky.
TIM
Hardly
more than a girl and already gone from them to the grave, gone at the age he
was when he met the girl's mother.
ED
JONES
Dear
God!
TIM
First Jerome and now Alpha. Outlived by him, as though
the curse he claimed was on his life, if there was one, had passed through him
to them and they suffered it in his stead.
ED
JONES
What
for?
CHARLES
His
kids were his hope. They were a way home. And now two were
gone. Jerome, Alpha, gone, and this husk of a man who was once Ed Jones
was paying out endless dues to the demands of the past.
MARIE.
He
wasn't even well enough to attend the funeral, or so the doctor and wife told
him, to give her a final grace, a father's goodbye, his final word:
ED
JONES
forgive.
(Almost before ED JONES finishes his line, the CHORUS begins repeating
it in variations of a whisper at different speeds. From the darkness, MARTIN
enters the playing space and sits on the edge of the porch. In this scene,
MARTIN is a product of ED JONES' imagination. A foil. A stab at redemption.)
ED
JONES
Martin,
my penance, as you'd call it, and my duty is to help you if I can. Those days
when she was a baby, wasn't even walking yet, you missed, boy. We'd sit on the
floor and roll empty thread spools back and forth, spools of Ma's I'd painted
every sort of color in a
mad
and drunken scramble for her Christmas that year, and I could hold up the purple
spool and say “Purrrple” and make her laugh so hard
she turned purple and red. She wasn't a year old yet and nobody else could make
her laugh that way, and it was a word that did it. I miss those days so much my
insides are rising out my back teeth, and the
chunks of fillings there sing and taste of sin and silver.
Oh, the times we had when she was young and I wasn't afraid of her because of
the hallucinatory effects of booze. She was so intelligent and changeable she
felt alien, a threat to my stiff mind, an angel with the energy of a sun, and
it radiated from her eyes if you could look there.
MRS.
JONES
(still from
the kitchen)
“Ed!”
ED
JONES
I
felt unworthy of her and poured down even more of the stuff. I had to stay
clear of her and her eyes for my sanity's sake. It made her wary and as afraid
of everyday life as I was. I'd ask her a question. She'd look at her mother.
Then she'd turn back to me. Or does a girl always hesitate that way for her
father? Does your daughter Marie do it, boy? I was so old compared to other
fathers I must have looked to her a walking ghost. And yet I'm alive and she's
not, and I sit here stranded in strife. Oh, sweet Jesus, please forgive me my
sins. I'm afraid of burning in hell now. A dirty cringing
frigging chicken coward still. Why don't any of the kids send a message
about the other side?
(pause)
The
worst of it is I want a drink this minute.
(MARTIN stands and slowly exists)
ED
JONES (continued)
Oh,
what energy was expended on that energetic child! Either she was the real
reason for reality, or else there's no proof. I'd give half my years if she
could have another year on earth. Now
there's that creaking and rush in my ears that must be the sound of the end.
Oh, ho, ho, Lord, these old bones will shed themselves and soon be pools for
bugs to drink at. Give Martin and his kids a long life. Forgive, Alpha, for-
(before he can finish the word “forgive,” MRS.
JONES steps onto the porch. The sound of the ballgame returns)
MRS.
JONES
(interrupting)
“What's
the matter? Are they losing again?”
(no
response)
“Ed?”
(she walks up and jerks a week-old copy of The
Fargo Forum from between his back and the back of the chair, where he's
draped it to absorb his sweat. He doesn't respond. She shakes him by the shoulder)
“Ed,
for God's sake, come and eat!”
(no
response)
“Do
I have to lift you out of that chair?”
ED
JONES
“You
do—You do, and I'll crack you with this goddamn cane.”
MRS.
JONES
“You're
a mean old fool. And you get meaner every day.”
ED
JONES
“And
it'll get worse before it gets better, you can bet
your ass on that, milady.”
MRS.
JONES
“Stop!”
ED
JONES
“When you stop your yipping.”
MRS.
JONES
“As
soon as you come and eat.”
ED
JONES
“After this inning.”
MRS.
JONES
“This inning nothing! After this inning it'll be
the next inning, and after that the next game, and then it'll be night. Lord,
you infuriate me! Right now! The food's getting cold.”
ED
JONES
“Pee on the food.”
MRS.
JONES
“Ed!”
(the
tremolo in her voice climbs close to tears)
“I'll
turn it up so you can listen in there.”
ED
JONES
“Up? Up? It's been going full blast all day! I have a
headache from it! Damn!”
(Their eyes meet. MRS. JONES seems to understand what had been going on
in his mind. Both in pain, they look deeply into each others eyes, neither
knowing how to help the other.)
MRS.
JONES
(gently)
“Please.
Chuckie's at the table, waiting.”
ED
JONES
(after a
pause, he delivers his final line as if it were an expletive)
''Horse's”
(He pulls himself to his feet with the aid of the cane. Once standing, MRS. JONES helps support him;
the two limp into the house as the lights fade.)
(The stage appears as it did at the start of the play. Members of the cast once again exchange hugs,
but the exchanges reveal a higher level of intimacy and emotional connection
than seen earlier. From off-stage, a
tired, older man enters. It is MARTIN
NEUMILLER. The cast ceremonially makes a
path for him. MARIE hands him the family
album used at the beginning of the play.
He opens it and scans some of its pages.)
MARTIN
(both to
the audience and to his onstage family)
“My
life is a lot like this book. There is one chapter,
there is one story after another. Some parts of it were sad, others were
beautiful, I didn't regret any of it. I spent some
good years working on it, as I felt and like to think now.
(pause)
MARTIN
(continued)
Things
have changed so much. Not that changes everywhere are for the worse, of course. Your
mother would be overjoyed that she could sing in the church now. How she wanted
to test her voice with the Mass! She loved to sing.
(pause)
I've
got my retirement to look forward to and the grandchildren you kids will have.
I want to watch them grow up. That's enough. The rest of it, all that's
happened in the past, all those early years up until now, all of that's done. I
have no desire to look back on it again. Maybe when I'm
older. Maybe
not. The only solution is to hope
a chapter will be added someday that will change all of this. Or maybe it's
better to leave it as it stands and let it go from me, as it feels it wants to.
And so, I close the book.”
(He closes the album. The lights
fade on everyone except CHARLES, MARIE, JEROME and TIM, who step forward almost
to the lip of the stage.)
CHARLES
(stepping
forward)
It
occurs to him that's he's constructing his own reality, artificial or not, and
making room for himself to operate within it.
CHARLES, MARIE, JEROME, TIM
His
generation acting what theirs actually felt?
JEROME
Whereas the past lies outside him in a state as
natural as the plain.
(The stage begins to darken, except
for a special on CHARLES downstage left.)
MARIE.
He
realizes that the love he seeks began as early as memory, or more.
CHARLES
And
then he sees his mother signaling him from the other side of the book.
(a special
downstage right light reveals ALPHA. Young and beautiful, she is
wearing her wedding dress. She stands with her arms
extended outward. From the other side of the stage, CHARLES reaches toward the
audience, as if to touch her)
And
they reach for one another across the abyss.
(The lights slowly fade. When
they come up, ALPHA is gone. TIM stands centerstage.)
TIM
There,
the street is retraced, or at least as completely as it can be for now. Now,
I'm asleep, and for right now, dear one, loved ones and friends, that's enough.
BLACK-OUT