excerpts from
San Antonio Sunset
from
The Best American Short Plays 1989
STONE I’m not looking. I’m not looking for shit. Put two dollars together. And two more to that. And make the dollars add up to a day. A day to a week to a month to a year. And more than that, I do not know. Do not want to know.
[A beat.]
I was in Philadelphia. No place to be. A place to do. Business. I do my business, and I’m looking at the road. The road—I don’t have to tell you—it gets to where it’s looking back. And about this time you get thirsty. Find a joint. Rough joint? Who gives a shit? The rougher the better. You only want a few. And, fuck it, you close the place.
[Beat.]
And the weather . . . is . . . hot. Not Texas hot, but hot enough. The type of weather where dogs fall over on the street; the neighbor comes at you with a bread knife. What I mean to say is—no buck-a-throw sweatbox fleabag tonight. No, sir. Got to be moving. Get the air running past you. Push the poison through the pores. Moving . . . to . . . music. But the radio, weather like that . . . the radio finds things . . . things you didn’t set out to find.
[Beat.]
And that night, the radio . . . how do you figure? . . . the radio waves had to be jumping like a june bug . . . because, because I’m in the car, on the road, and I’m doing the knobs, looking for my music. Something out of New York. And Jesus Christ, next thing I know, I’m listening to a station in Mississippi, a place so small, I never heard, and I’ve been to the smallest . . . and, what am I hearing? What am I hearing? Because my hands on the damn knob . . . and what’s coming out . . . my hand just falls away . . . because the music coming out, it’s washing over me like the hot night air. I’m . . . surrounded . . . filled with it.
[Beat.]
And what comes at me . . . right at me . . . right between the goddamn eyes is . . . slide guitar. Ride hard on the high notes. Tickle the lows with the thumb. And the voice . . . like nothing I ever heard before . . . like somebody big had ahold of him.
[Beat.]
Like somebody big had a hold of you.
[Beat.]
What was I thinking? I never should’ve come back. What was I thinking?
• • • •
JOHNSON Do if you the devil. See, the devil like to keep us down. Makes us think this life is all there is. And mostly we go on thinkin’ just that. But ever’ once in a while, somebody dig down into that part o’ hisself where the devil can’t get. The music part. That fill the devil with envy. That make the devil unhappy. And when he unhappy, he the unhappiest son of a bitch in creation.
[Beat.]
It’s blackness. [] It’s all that blackness, ain’t it? Oh, the devil, he’s a craft one. Get folks to thinkin’ soul’s a white thing, all air and alabaster. But we know better, you and me. We know that’s how the devil holds on to folks—get them to thinkin’ they movin’ closer to heaven, when all they doin’ is stayin’ bodily longer. Get folks to lookin’ up find God, when all the time God’s right here underfoot.
[Stomps the floor.]
But you and me [], we know better. It’s all that blackness. All my days, been told it’s a’ ugly thing, a whippin’ thing, a hatin’ thing, a hangin’ thing, till it sends you inside yourself. Deep inside. And what you find, well, black ain’t the color o’ hate. Black the color of the soul. You, me, ever’body. You [], it’s a black piece. Hid. Hid real good. But not so good you didn’t find it. And find it again. First bad. Then good. And, good Lord, with me, it’s a little closer to the surface. The skin itself. All that blackness. Sometimes think if I was to prick my finger, soul’d come runnin’ out the hole, so close it’s to the surface.
[Pause.]
All that blackness. The soul itself. And it passes out, don’t need no body no more, it don’t float up like a damn balloon. Hell that’s the devil’s foolery. No sir. The soul runs into the earth. The black earth. ’Cause that’s where God is. That’s where heaven is. Why there’s more heaven in one lump of mud than in a mile of sky. But we know that, you and me.