Dark stage.
HT’s voice [sings]: Let the Midnight Special
Shine a light on you
Pinpoint spot lights a sign, overhead left: “SURPLUS STORE.”
WOMAN [O.S.]: Guys, I need your papers of parole
And state ID to cash that check, OK?
MAN [O.S.]: Dump your whites up there on the second level.
The second level is where you dump your whites.
Use the changing room, sir, will you please?
WOMAN [O.S.]: Your middle name is printed on that check,
Then go ahead and spell your whole name out.
Sign the back side: first name, middle name
If middle name is printed on your check,
And then your last name; and I want your writ
Of discharge or parole certificate
And your official Texas state ID;
Or else your check will not be honored here.
HT’s voice [sings]: Let the Midnight Special
Shine a ever-lovin’ light on you
Lights up: Greyhound station in Huntsville, Texas. Plastic
pews; standing ashtrays; Coke machine; door to Surplus Store;
ticket counter; pay phone.
CLERK behind the counter, silent. On the counter a handbell.
He bangs it when the mood strikes. Sometimes furtively he nips
clear liquid from a screw-top canning jar. He’s got a little radio.
MASHA talks on the phone. Very brief shiny blue sleeveless
dress and big blue platform sandals with white straps. White
sunglasses; great big blue-and-white purse.
HT, a black man: wants the phone; needs change.
HT [sings]: Shine a mothaluving light on you…
MASHA [on phone]: I won’t come back till you stop making me—
OK! Come on!—you just come zooming up
To Huntsville like some crazed, spawning salmon:
I’m on my bus before you hit the highway.
…I just don’t want to. Things like that, they aren’t—
Huh-uh, not demeaning, just, it’s more—
Unnatural. I mean, for me. Or, well,
For anyone. And I’m not even sure
I really do it, even when it happens,
I mean in any verifiable…“Uh!”
“Uh uh uh uh uh!”
Can’t you get that worked on, ugly man?
Can’t they drill your head and fix that stutter?
…Your bank account is real. I realize that.
I truly just don’t have the gift. I don’t.
There’s such a thing as luck, you know—like isn’t
Luck what everybody’s betting on?
Wait a minute, got to feed the baby,
Baby’s hungry—[to HT] Sir, it’s gonna be
A little while—OK?—’cause I’m addressing
Certain urgent business—so, could you—?
HT: Man get crazy when his bus don’t come.
MASHA [on phone]: If you can hear me, I’m depositing—
HT: I just live in Willard, but the bus
Won’t go there. Got to go see Houston first.
MASHA: “You ever get to Houston,
Boy, you better walk right.”
HT: I will. I do. I got no sheet in Houston.
MASHA: It’s just a song.
HT: I never been arrested
Any way or shape or form in Houston.
MASHA: It’s just a song. It’s just a song.
HT: Lead Belly.
Sure. I know the song. But I’m just saying.
—The guys get outa prison yet today?
CLERK: At noon, like always. Bus already left.
HT: Uh-oh. The Houston bus?
CLERK: The Dallas bus.
MASHA [on phone]:—No, no! I didn’t say the Greyhound station!
My cousin—good ol’ Cousin Gus is coming,
Not the bus. I wouldn’t go by Greyhound
Ever except in abject desperation!
Meanwhile, an old woman in black enters from street door.
GRANNY BLACK: Hot! Hot! And while I fry in my own fat
I hear my dead relations singing in Heaven.
I ain’t a-gonna drive on that highway!
You don’t get me behind no chariot wheel!
Ninety miles of carburetors steaming
Like cauldrons in a line from here to Dallas.
Is it carburetors, now? Or radios?
Or what’s the things that steams, where you put water?
CLERK: That’d be the radiator.
GRANNY BLACK: Radiator!
Well!—unless you like that funny music,
I guess you’d best not wet your radio.
This is eighteen twenty-five for one
To Dallas. I won’t give a penny more.
They like to raise the rates with every breath
They drag, and someone’s got to hold the line.
MASHA:…No! It ain’t the money! Money stinks!
I haven’t got the gift! I haven’t got the power!
Just a minute, let me feed this thing—
[Deals with coins, etc.]
Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? HELLO!
My call is what? Well! You sound sweet as pie!
You sound just like my mother, operator—
I want my dollar ten, or you can kiss
My Rebel ass.—Hung up on by a robot!
This is how the vandalism starts!
CLERK: Now, honey, don’t molest my telephone.
[To HT] No. Don’t ring the bell. The bell’s for me.
HT: Lemme have it all in quarters, please.
CLERK: Try the change machine.
HT: It doesn’t work.
MASHA [offering coins]: Two bucks for a fistful. Gamble.
HT: Thanks.
You didn’t see a guy…
CLERK: A dozen guys.
A couple dozen guys. The usual—
You know. The Dallas took the most of ’em.
The usual recidivists in transit.
HT: You see a guy, a white guy, maybe looked
A little not so much a criminal?
CLERK: All human beings look like criminals.
HT goes to the phone.
GRANNY BLACK: Hot! Hot! Hear how this poor old woman
sizzles!
I pity the crappies and crawdads on account
I feel now what it hurts like to be cooked.
CLERK: It’s twenty dollars fifty cents to Dallas.
GRANNY BLACK: Eighteen twenty-five. No more, no less.
CLERK: It doesn’t work that way.
GRANNY BLACK: It used to do!
It used to was a twenty-dollar bill
Counted!—once upon a memory.
I’ll sit down here and let you ponder that…
I’ll let you ponder where the whole world went…
MASHA: I’m not worried if he’s after me.
By now he’s probly halfway out of Texas,
Blazing a trail for Huntsville, Alabama.
CLERK: Huntsville was named after Huntsville. You knew
that.
MASHA: Uh—no. I didn’t. But it stands to reason.
CLERK: After the one in Alabama. That’s
The explanation for all the confusion, see?
HT [on phone]: Hello? It’s all—It’s jammed. Hello?
Completely.
Fine. You busted it. Are you content?
MASHA: I’m just as happy as a clam in shit.
HT: O yeah? I think you got that saying wrong.
MASHA: I think you never saw a clam in shit.
HT: When’s the Houston come?
CLERK: It comes as scheduled.
HT: Scheduled when?
CLERK: It’s not that type of schedule.
It’s theoretical. Four a day.
HT: In theory.
CLERK: No, the vehicles themselves are real,
But all the rest is veiled in mystery
Because from here to goodness idiots
Are tearing up the road and moving it
West eleven inches. Traffic’s stuck
For hours at a time in all directions:
Miles and miles of stationary drivers
Contemplating this minute adjustment.
HT: Sound like the joint.
CLERK: It kinda does, at that.
HT: You been inside?
HT gets himself a Coke.
MASHA: …He’ll hop the barricades.
He’ll ride the back roads and the shoulder, then
He’ll drive on top of all the other cars.
He will. He’s on his way. I get no rest.
HT: Gah-dam, gah-dam, gah-dam!
CLERK: Excuse me, sir.
HT: I think it might be eating me alive.
CLERK: Crazy folks are not allowed in here.
HT: Crazy folks are too allowed in here.
Is this the Greyhound stop in Huntsville, Texas?—
Crazy folks get born and die in here.
CLERK: I know you, sir. They call you Hostage Taker.
HT: Yeah, yeah, it’s good to see you, good to see you.
Man, the bus don’t come and the bus don’t come.
Man, I got to get on down the road.
Man, this whole block used to jump with gypsy
Hot-shot cabs’ll take you there right now—
For twenty bucks they’re gonna fly to Houston,
Dallas, anyplace on earth—and they
Got reefer, they got beer, they got tequila—
CLERK: I thought they sprung you couple months ago.
HT: Sooner or later all God’s chillun be free.
[Raises his Coke]
“Wardens, jailers, presidents and kings—
They all must bow to calendars and clocks.”
CLERK: Then what puts you in Huntsville not a block
From where you did hard time? Guilt? Or nostalgia.
Or some concoction of the two.
HT: Touché!
CLERK: Touché?
HT: Touché! That’s what you say! You say
“Touché!” when someone jabs you with a word.
CLERK: I jabbed you what? I jabbed—
HT: You see…
You dig…You don’t begin your day with things
Like taking hostages on the agenda.
“Things to Do: Do NOT take hostages.”
You march inside, extend your weapon towards
The various faces, and receive the money.
PO-lice DO not COME sahROUND-ing you!
Megaphones and telephones and shit!
And no one’s hurt! And NO ONE GOES TO PRISON.
…I’m waiting on a guy. But I can’t wait.
CLERK: If you can’t wait, I guess you’re better off
To don’t. So see you later, Hostage Taker.
MASHA: I thought you said the bus—you live in—where?
HT: I never tell the truth. It’s too confusing.
You wanna get a drink? Or take a walk?
Something? Maybe feel the feelings of
The outside world? Fresh air?
MASHA: No thanks, I’m good.
HT: I didn’t mean—
MASHA: I know.
HT: I didn’t mean—
MASHA: But I’m just comfortable. I’m good right here.
HT exits through Surplus Store.
CLERK: Now, there’s a guy got bubbles in his brain.
…Well, looky here: The show’s not over, folks.
BILL JENKS enters from the street door.
MASHA: You are sucking on me with your eyes.
You’re staring like a laser beam.
BILL JENKS: My wife was here
She’d read my mind and kill me on the spot.
…Did I hear someone singing, while ago?
CLERK: Just some bubble-brain with vocal cords.
BJ offers MASHA a smoke. She ignores it; finds her own.
BILL JENKS: You hang around the Greyhound all the time?
MASHA: Don’t mistake me, hon.
BILL JENKS: For what?
MASHA: For what you think.
BILL JENKS: And what am I thinking?
MASHA: That’s for me to know.
She lights his smoke.
BILL JENKS [smoking]: I’m ready to believe in God again!
MASHA: Could you, like, hold the revival over there?
BILL JENKS: The gods combust our dreams for sport and suck
The fumes. Our spirits serve as censers.
MASHA: Shit.
You dudes are never right when you come out.
[Smoking] What’s a censer?
BILL JENKS: It’s the—hell, you know—
Those things they burn the incense in at Mass?
Come on, don’t kid around—a name like Masha—
MASHA: From where do you know my name?
BILL JENKS: From here.
I overheard. Your lovely back was turned.
You breathed your name into the telephone.
MASHA: That was my boss! I didn’t breathe a-tall!
BILL JENKS: Masha’s Russian. You could be Orthodox:
They’re always swinging censers.
MASHA: Let ’em swing,
’Cause I ain’t Russian! I’m from Texas, son.
BILL JENKS: So where’d you get the Masha from? Odessa?
MASHA: Hell if I know. It’s my name, is all…
You’re not from Texas.
BILL JENKS: No, ma’am. Mississippi.
But I was mostly raised in California.
Don’t get me wrong, I love you Texas women.
MASHA: How long were you in prison for? This time?
BILL JENKS: What makes you think I’ve been incarcerated?
MASHA: The checkered pants, the polo shirt, those big
Enormous shoes, no belt, that stubbly head—
The outa prison used-up fashion show.
BILL JENKS: They don’t have threads like these in prison, doll.
Except the shoes. And shoes like these are common.
MASHA: You cashed your fifty at the Surplus Store
And dumped your whites and bought the nearest thing.
Last week the streets were full of guys with boot-camp
Haircuts sporting stripèd Ban-Lon shirts
And almost iridescent green bell-bottoms.
Pouring rain outside, and here they come,
This mob of palpitating free men kind of
Trailing a verdant dribble off their cuffs.
Their T-shirts shrank right on them as we watched.
BILL JENKS: “Palpitating”? “Verdant”? What a smarty.
“What’s a censer?” What a smarty pants.
Ain’t you a genius. Where’d you go to school?
MASHA: I didn’t go. I didn’t need to go.
BILL JENKS: You knew it all.
MASHA: Enough to not get busted.
BILL JENKS: But not to not divide infinitives.
MASHA: Fucked-up grammar is not a crime in Texas.
He smokes. Offers one. She ignores it.
BILL JENKS: They cost a buck apiece inside…How much are
you?
MASHA: I dance. I’m not for sale. I dance.
BILL JENKS: You strip.
MASHA: I’m not exactly a ballerina, no.
BILL JENKS: But you done quit the life. Or so I heard.
MASHA: Heard when? When I was on the telephone?
BILL JENKS: Yeah, and I could smell the putrid karma
Percolating in the interaction,
And I say this: Whatever’s going on
With you and him can only improve with distance.
MASHA: I didn’t see you around. Just prisoners.
BILL JENKS: One was me. And then I bought the outfit…
Pack of smokes…and we’re not prisoners.
We’re out—How do!—We move among you now.
MASHA: What were you in for? Dealer? Killer?—Rapist.
BILL JENKS: Victim of religious persecution.
MASHA: Jewish, huh?
BILL JENKS: I was irregular.
MASHA: And went to prison for it?—What’d you do,
Diarrhea all over somebody?
BILL JENKS: My conduct was irregular. That is,
With money.
MASHA: Sure. You stuck somebody up.
BILL JENKS: I was convicted of commingling funds.
It means a stick-up with a ballpoint pen.
MASHA: Do tell. Co-mingling funds. Is that Chinese?
BILL JENKS: Lady, is that the way you play your game?
Hang around the Greyhound lookin’ down,
Makin’ fun of other folks’s clothes—
And Masha is a Russian nickname, sis.
MASHA: No, it’s not. “Sis” is a nickname. Masha’s
What I got at birth. My name is Masha.
BILL JENKS:…Mar-sha—!
MASHA: Yeah…
BILL JENKS: Well, I like Masha better.
MASHA: When I dance I’m Fey or I’m Yvette
Or I’m Nicole and then I’m naked.
BILL JENKS: Naked!
MASHA: I start out topless and proceed from there,
And logic does the rest.
BILL JENKS: I’ll bet it does.
I’ll bet it ends up running down the road
Yodeling and firing off both guns.
MASHA: You’re pretty slick with words.
BILL JENKS: Ain’t but a tic.
MASHA: I’ll bet your mouth gets you in trouble. Lots.
BILL JENKS: And where would someone fresh from prison go
To watch you executing logic so
Ruthlessly and gracefully? To Heaven?
Or someplace even higher?
MASHA: Try the Texas.
BILL JENKS: The Texas Bar?
MASHA: The Big-As-Texas.
BILL JENKS: …O!—
Sylvester’s Big-As-Texas Topless Lounge!
I guess I wasn’t off by very much:
“Just fifty miles from Houston and right next
To Paradise on Highway 35.”
How do you get to and from? You got a car?
MASHA: No, but I can always catch a ride.
BILL JENKS: I do believe you can. I guarantee it.
And what’s your next stop? Dallas?
MASHA: I’m not sure.
BILL JENKS: Not sure?
MASHA: I need to pick the proper move.
It’s heads or tails, and devil take the hindmost.
BILL JENKS: Sounds like you better grab the first thang smokin’.
MASHA: The tips were big as Texas—then the road
Got all torn up, and now it’s like a tomb,
And I got Peter Lorre for a boss, who just
Keeps jacking up the price of doing business.
BILL JENKS: I guess that happens all the time.
MASHA: Huh-uh,
It ain’t what you imagine. It’s much weirder,
Wilder—unnatural—and no, no, no,
It still ain’t what you’re thinking. It’s not sex.
…You mentioned a wife.
BILL JENKS: O! Yeah. I probly did.
And did I mention that her lawyers mentioned
A divorce?
MASHA: It wasn’t really necessary.
BILL JENKS: You turn me on. I think you make me wild.
Smart women get me going. Thus my downfall.
MASHA: Step right up and blame it on a woman…
How long did Texas guard your purity?
BILL JENKS: One and one-sixth years. That’s fourteen months.
—And I went in there in a monastic spirit:
I’ve been voluntarily celibate,
And celibate, God willing, I’ll remain.
MASHA: Well, you’ve been talking like your holy vow
Escaped your mind and pulled your trousers down.
BILL JENKS: Matter of fact it did. Wow. Fourteen months.
…I like the way your heel’s a little dirty.
I like the way you point your toes. I like
That silvery sort of robot-colored sort of
Sequined toenail polish.
MASHA: You are sick!
BILL JENKS: Wow. Just the sight of your foot makes me drool.
Your human foot. Wow. Fourteen months locked up.
MASHA: Aren’t there any humans with feet in there?
BILL JENKS: Humans? Yeah. Humans too goddamn human:
Misused and violent Negroes, and abused
And violent Texas crackers, and confused
Bilingual Meskin desperados—also
Violent—and sweet, retarded boys
Who can’t recall the violence they’ve done…
Deranged mulattos, and mestizos scrambled
In their natural brains…
Saints and suckers stirring in a stew
Of HIV and hepatitis C and walls
And years. And, yes: I guess they’ve all got feet.
But none of them ever dreamed of a foot like yours.
MASHA: You’re not a lover, are you…You’re a preacher…
BILL JENKS: Fourteen months exactly to the minute,
The same as Elvis did in Jailhouse Rock.
[He goes to the counter.]
Got me a voucher for the Dallas bus.
CLERK: Dallas’ll be along behind the Houston.
BILL JENKS: The Houston bus came not an hour ago.
CLERK: The Dallas end of things is crumbling.
While Texas undertakes repairs, there’s just
This formless ooze of throbbing vehicles
From here to there and back that never moves…
(I would love to strafe those motherfuckers…)
BILL JENKS: That lady got a pulse?
CLERK: That’s Granny Black,
Mourning her man who died in the electric chair.
Yeah, she was young and wild. And he was wilder.
Crazy little gambler with a temper.
Shot four niggers in a poker game,
Killed ’em all though he held the winning hand.
Well, you could get away with shooting one
Or two along back then around these parts,
But even colored you can’t slaughter by
The dozens and not expect to meet Joe Byrd.
MASHA: Joe Byrd?
CLERK: The man with the electric chair.
BILL JENKS: The executioner for fifty years
Or something like that.
CLERK: Captain Joseph Byrd—
The guy they named the cemetery after,
The resting place for prisoners, I mean.
He executed seven hundred men.
BILL JENKS: Well—not quite seven hundred.
CLERK: It was plenty—
You want facts and figures, read a book.
She walks among the graves up there all night.
Yeah. She’s a cheerful, harmless thing in daylight.
Always dickering on the price to Dallas.
Never has the price. Just comes to talk
And settle down and sleep all afternoon.
Nights you’ll spy her drooling on his grave,
Wailing for the Resurrection, weeping.
But ain’t she sweet and harmless in the daylight?
BILL JENKS: Do you know what? If something moved you to,
If curiosity prompted you, or pity,
You could take three hundred steps from that
Gray bench in those pretty blue shoes and stand
Exactly in the holy chamber where
Tonight they’ll execute a human being.
MASHA: I read about it. Hey. If guys like you
Weren’t punished, where’d we be? All you
Deranged and violent mulattos and
Your numerous other friends. If you
Were just forgiven, where would we be then?
BILL JENKS: In Heaven. Watching Masha shake her thang…
Look. In the joint the cereal don’t go
Snap crackle pop. It pewls and moans.
The dogs don’t go bow-wow. They say, Achtung!
They say, Jawohl! Sieg Heil! et cetera.
The whistle doesn’t blow. It reams your brains.
MASHA: They have a whistle?
CLERK: Lady, they sure do.
BILL JENKS: Every morning, middle of your dreams.
You maybe did a little stretch?
CLERK: Why, no…
MASHA: I never got your name.
BILL JENKS: Name’s Bill. Bill Jenks.
MASHA: You realize your initials are “BJ.”
BILL JENKS: It hadn’t escaped my attention entirely, no.
MASHA:…So you’re a preacher. Or you used to be.
BILL JENKS: So I don’t look familiar? Not at all?
Really?
MASHA: I very seldom cruise the links.
BILL JENKS: Don’t you watch the TV?
MASHA: I’m the show.
BILL JENKS: It happens I was poorly represented.
MASHA: Legally or journalistically?
BILL JENKS: Both ways. And up and down and back and forth.
When schism racks a flock, some sheep are torn.
The shepherd too sometimes. That’s showbiz, folks.
MASHA: Shepherd or showman?
BILL JENKS: Shaman,
Shaman of the Children of Jehovah.
My scheme went wrong. My streetcar hopped the track.
A woman was the ripple in the rail.
MASHA: Were you a preacher or an engine driver?
BILL JENKS: I was a shaman, babe, a shaman with a scheme.
MASHA: Shepherd, shaman, engine driver—hey,
All I know—you just got outa prison.
BILL JENKS:…Crimes…No…Love…Love…Let me
make my case…
MASHA: O, Jesus Christ! Love! That’s a crazy word—
Ain’t no bigger than a postage stamp,
But go to pry the corner up, you’re peeking
Upon a continent.
BILL JENKS: OK, OK,
I rest my case.
MASHA: What case?
BILL JENKS: Hell, I don’t know.
If I had courtroom skills, I’d be a judge.
I wouldn’t be no puppy-blind parolee
Strolling around in pegged and checkered pants.
At least they fit.
MASHA: At least you think they do.
BILL JENKS: Come on now, Masha, honey, have a heart.
MASHA: Look, I’ve got a heart, and I’ve got feeling
For the luckless, and I’ve even got two cousins
Locked up—or one; they let the other loose.
But I’ve got troubles too, that’s all. OK?
BILL JENKS: You think I didn’t know that? It’s the Greyhound.
This train don’t carry no senators’ sons.
…God. Is it possible…on this day of days?
…OK. It is. I’m sitting here…I’m drowning.
To think the dropdown blues could ambush you
The day they pour you from a prison cell,
First day in years you own your own footsteps,
First day the breezes carry a whiff of choice—
Fifty bucks, your hair growing back,
Your feet up, waiting for the two p.m.
To Dallas, and drowning. A guy should be ashamed,
You know? Humanity should be ashamed.
MASHA: Because you didn’t want to leave them there.
BJ purchases a Coke and sadly raises a toast:
BILL JENKS: Negroes, Meskins, Crackers, and Mulattos—
“Wardens, jailers, presidents and kings—
All must bow to calendars and clocks.”
I raise to you one ice-cold Coca-Cola…
Shoot, I drank this stuff inside. Somebody
Bring me something civilized!—a pale
Green olive sharing a freezing bath
Of Gordon’s with a solitary molecule
Of sweet vermouth. I mean I like ’em dry.
Can I get a “Hell yes”?
CLERK: Hell yes!
MASHA: Hell…
BILL JENKS: Good…Low-erd…
Meanwhile, JOHN CASSANDRA enters: large, rounded, slouching; somewhat the biker, but shaved and shorn and wearing prison-issue whites and work shoes.
He totes a wooden cross taller than himself, his shoulder in the crotch of the crossbeam. This burden rolls along on casters fixed to its base.
MASHA: What—a—blowjob!
JOHN makes his way slowly toward the ticket counter.
BILL JENKS: I think my order has been misconveyed.
I asked for liquor. Not the crucifixion.
I seek libation. Not religion. Well,
Howdoo, Christian?—Or do I assume too much?
MASHA takes a seat and stares in shiny-eyed silence at John.
JOHN [to CLERK]: This here’s a Dallas voucher, from the
Walls.
BILL JENKS: You bought that thing!
JOHN: Bought it or stole it, one.
…Keep your sights!
In the heights!
Keep your eyes!
On the prize!
BILL JENKS:…I saw that gizmo leaning in a houseyard.
I didn’t inquire was it available—
Not to imply I’d have availed myself.
JOHN: The sign said “For Sale.” The man named his price. I paid it.
BILL JENKS: You blew your fifty bucks on Jesus.
JOHN: Yep.
BILL JENKS: On Jesus Christ, the famous savior guy.
JOHN: I didn’t blow it on checkered pants and cancer.
BILL JENKS: Now, here’s a man resists the cigarettes,
A man with strength to stand against such things
As checkered pants and, he’d have us assume,
The random crimson Ban-Lon shirt. But, now:
While golfing, aren’t you known to make a wager?
JOHN: I don’t gamble, no. But I’d play golf
If someone ever thought to ask me to.
They’d have to show me how it works—you know—
They’d have to point me down the fairlane.
BILL JENKS: O Holy One: You ever take a drink?
JOHN: Not the alcoholic kind.
BILL JENKS: OK.
JOHN: Or not no more, at least.
BILL JENKS: Uh-oh.
That Not No More can get to be Right Now
Right quick the day they let you out of jail.
JOHN: I know. I gotta keep my eyes on Heaven.
Keep your sights!
On the heights!
Keep your eyes!
On the prize!—
BILL JENKS:—Hey. Martin Luther. What about tattoos?
What kind you got? Describe us your tattoos.
JOHN: There’s not a one. I wouldn’t mark my body.
BILL JENKS: Come on. You’ve gotta have one swastika.
One Born to Raise Hell. And at least one silly
Very Dixie-sounding woman’s name
In a vague and fading heart—like Sally,
Sally June. Or Junie May. Come on,
What’s the name inside your heart?
JOHN: It’s Jesus.
Jesus Christ.
BILL JENKS: O-K.—You want a Coke
Before your bus? Before we nail you up?
JOHN: No, thanks.
MASHA: No, thanks, “BJ.”—Now, there’s
A nickname you don’t want to take to prison.
CLERK hands JOHN a ticket.
CLERK: One to Dallas. Be about an hour.
BILL JENKS: Give or take.
JOHN: I see your radio.
Your radio?
CLERK: Well, I’m not hiding it.
JOHN: I was gonna ask to have it on.
CLERK: No sir. Nope. Got way way too much static
Cluttering up the air in here already.
I’m gonna have to make it policy.
JOHN: Just at the hour? Just to catch the news?
You could listen—look, I hate to ask—
And you could tell me what the news is saying.
They’re ruling on my mom today…My mother.
Today’s her last appeal. She’s on Death Row.
I hate to ask.
CLERK: Also I hate to say:
We execute great swarms of people here.
No—we don’t fool around down here in Huntsville.
Try ’em and fry ’em.
BILL JENKS: Boys, don’t mess with Texas.
CLERK: This is an appeal?
JOHN: Appeal, that’s right.
CLERK: She’s already on Death Row.
JOHN: Correct. She is.
CLERK: So she’d be—well, you’ve got two females
Waiting on the reaper up in Gatesville,
And Alice Allenberry’s way too young
To be your mom—so she’d be Bess Cassandra.
JOHN: Correct. That’s her.
BILL JENKS: Cassandra! There’s a name.
CLERK: The one who killed Jane Doe. Known as
“The Jane Doe Killer.”
JOHN: Now you’re not correct.
You’re absolutely wrong. That’s false.
She’s innocent.
CLERK: Like you. Like mom, like son.
JOHN: In one quick life I couldn’t do the time
For even half my sins, for just a small-
Size portion of the ones that I forget.
But I’ve been baptized and, you know—new-minted,
Thanks to prison preaching. Not my mom.
My mom’s not baptized. She’s just innocent.
Her hands are clean. She didn’t kill that girl.
CLERK: I’m really not the one to tell. Greyhound
Doesn’t hire clerks to sit in judgment.
JOHN: You think they care who killed that girl?
She was in for worse stuff than my mom.
They needed to close the book on it, they needed
A simple picture for the media,
And so they put my mother in a frame.
CLERK: Hey, I don’t sit here judging. All I know
Is what the TV wants for me to know,
Like all Americans everywhere. That girl
Was sort of innocent, too—I mean, the years
Of booze and dope had bleached her brain to white,
To where she couldn’t even tell her name.
She’d woken up in bed with some deceased
Farmer with the handle of a dagger
Jutting from his neck—or, I don’t know,
A belly full of buckshot—anyhow,
The whole bed squishy with his murdered gore
And this amnesiac harlot rolling in it
Like a log in a flood. So, you say the crimes
You can’t remember? Well, she did her time
Without a memory of anything, until
Another prisoner kills her with a broomstick.
These are the details of a blameless life.
And if your mother’s blameless, too, another
Innocent heading for the axe—all right:
Now you know what universe you’re in.
But I will listen to the radio.
BILL JENKS: For I’ve been purged with tears! Baptized by water!
Washed in saving blood! And turned out blank
And white as platinum on a sunny morning—
[As FIRST BUS DRIVER enters]
Which bus is this?
CLERK: The Magic Bus, I guess,
Materializing most miraculously.
Have I got everybody’s vouchers here?
Has everybody got their tickets? [To MASHA] Ma’am?
He’s gonna want a ticket. Ma’am?
DRIVER 1: OK,
I’m hardly pausing to relieve myself.
Line ’em up and march ’em on, let’s roll.
Folks, come on, I haven’t got till Xmas.
You wanna get your big old cross aboard?
JOHN: I didn’t think you’d haul it.
DRIVER 1: Crosses, stars,
Hearts-and-arrows, circles, figure eights—
It pays, it rides. This ain’t no limousine.
BILL JENKS: This ain’t no paradise.
MASHA: This ain’t no blowjob!
DRIVER 1: Hey, Patoot. You better curb the lingo.
’Board for Houston, Texas! Rock and roll!
JOHN: But I don’t go to Houston, Mr. Driver.
DRIVER 1: Today you do. The northbound lanes have had it.
You want the Dallas bus, then be prepared
To languish. This day, everybody’s Houston.
Yeah—sooner or later, everybody’s Houston.
Git it while you can! Last call for Houston!
DRIVER 1 exits.
BILL JENKS: Sooner or later Houston gets us all.
CLERK: Well, sorry—I can’t rewrite all y’all:
Your vouchers say to Dallas. And, now, ma’am:
I’d like to write you up for Dallas, since
The fact is otherwise you’re loitering.
MASHA: Fact is I know a blowjob when I see one.
Fact is I’m here to use the phone.
Sound of bus leaving.
CLERK: There she goes…She didn’t waste no time.
Folks, we’re on the bus schedule from Hell.
BJ extends his hand to JOHN.
BILL JENKS: William Jennings Bryan Jenks. The first.
JOHN: That’s funny. ’Cause my dad is named like that:
Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra…Yeah.
BILL JENKS: Cassandra. There’s a name I’ve always hated.
JOHN: Also the first. His folks misspelled it, though.
BILL JENKS: Misspelled “the first”?
JOHN: No. “Holmes.”
BILL JENKS: Don’t call me Holmes.
This ain’t the ’hood.
JOHN: No—They forgot the L.
H-O-L-M-E-S. Get it? “Holmes.”
BILL JENKS: Don’t call me Holmes. I ain’t your homey, John.
JOHN: Don’t call me John. Aah—
BILL JENKS: Well, then, what’s your name?
JOHN:—Shit. It’s John. But not like that, I mean.
Just call me John like John. Like it’s my name.
BILL JENKS: I see. And—missing any letters, John?
JOHN: My dad is missing the L in his, is all.
BILL JENKS: “Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra.” Wow.
I think your family may be known to me.
You wouldn’t have a brother?
JOHN: I’d have two.
BILL JENKS: Would one be Mark?
JOHN: We call him Cass.
BILL JENKS: I had some dealings with a Mark Cassandra
From California. Actually, I shot him.
Actually, more than once. I shot him twice.
Not twice on one occasion—once
On each of two quite separate occasions.
Once by mistake—the second time, on purpose.
Popped him like a Coney Island clown.
JOHN: I know all about it. He’s my brother.
BILL JENKS: Mark Cassandra.
JOHN: Yes, sir. Mark Cassandra.
BILL JENKS: I don’t think we’re going to be friends.
A SECOND BUS DRIVER enters.
DRIVER 2: Folks, I got as many seats as you got butts
To fill ’em up, but what I lack is time
To mess around and all, so git along,
And all aboard, and off we go, and so on.
JOHN: Ma’am, can you point me where to put this cross?
DRIVER 2: I don’t believe I will. That’s not allowed.
The glory train don’t carry no religious
Signifying statues of any type,
No banners, emblems, images, or icons,
No crosses, crescents, Hebrew hexagrams,
No Guadalupey Ladies, no Buddhistic
Eight-armed elephants from Hindustan;
None but the uncreated, changeless, true,
Eternal, kind of gray and kind of blue
Dog in flight. I guess you could say pewter.
Pewter is the color of the greyhound.
Houston! Austin! San Antonio!
JOHN: You’re going to Houston, is it, ma’am?
BILL JENKS: Far—out.
JOHN: But—what about the bus to Dallas?
DRIVER 2: Houston,
Houston, Texas! San Antonio!
JOHN: But we just had a gal in here announced
That she was the Houston bus.
DRIVER 2: Nope. She was Dallas.
A Dallas driver will generally lie.
That’s why I stay the heck away from Dallas.
Heck, they killed the president in Dallas.
Houston’s the place you need to be.
BILL JENKS: But then, of course, you could be lying, too.
DRIVER 2: That’s absolutely the case. You’re catching on.
Yes. I could be a lying Dallas driver…
Aboard for Houston! If thou dost believe!
[Exits; fading O.S.]
…Ten nine eight seven six five four three two…
Sound of bus leaving.
JOHN: This is total bullshit. Nothing less.
BILL JENKS: If they can mess with you, they mess with
you.
That’s a fact of nature here in Texas—
I’m speaking as a Mississippian—
But, also: Don’t you ask for disrespect
By traveling your way in prison whites?
I speak now as a Mississippian
With nothing but the highest, deepest, fullest
Regard for your West Coast Cassandra clan,
Excluding, naturally, that full-on, rank,
Hellborn, Hellbound slut-soul, your brother Mark,
Who spawned his own self fucking his own mother.
JOHN: That’s some rowdy talk! You better hope
The prison preaching holds, and I stay Christian!
BILL JENKS: I’d never’ve done my time without that kid
Making himself such goshdarn fun to shoot.
JOHN: He dropped the charges.
BILL JENKS: That was good of him—
JOHN: He’d never send a guy to jail. He’s just
A crook himself. But, now, revenge—
Revenge is something I’d be counting on.
It’s truly amazing he passed up on that;
It’s basically miraculous he failed
To hunt you down and gut you like a frog.
BILL JENKS: He did run me to ground—the second time.
That’s partly why I let him have another.
The first time was by accident, and then
Instead of letting bygones just be bygones,
Here he comes again—
JOHN: To make amends.
…That’s right. My brother’s sober now
About a year and seven months: I’m proud.
BILL JENKS: Amends? Amends?
JOHN: Like in the twelve-step program.
Number nine, you go and make amends.
BILL JENKS: Alcoholics Anonymous, you mean?
He never said.
JOHN: You didn’t let him say.
BILL JENKS: Then let me say the little lunatic
Stole near a pound of my cocaine, then flushed it.
How was he going to make amends for that?
They’re squaring off—CLERK intervenes—
CLERK: John Cassandra!—well, they cut your hair
And shaved your beard, but I think you’re the man
Stood on the roof of a parking ramp in Dallas
Shooting folks and threatening suicide.
JOHN: I didn’t shoot nobody.
CLERK: Shooting at.
JOHN: In the direction where they were, let’s say—
BILL JENKS: I guess it’s fortunate no Kennedys
Happened to be strolling by that day.
CLERK: Just settle down. Just settle down. RIGHT NOW.
JOHN: I’m willing to. I didn’t come for this.
CLERK: I can get you back in prison quick!
JOHN: He’s the one who’s escalating from
A simple conversation to a riot!
—Why? Because you want to stop your ears.
BILL JENKS: I what? I what?
JOHN: You want to stop your ears
And hide your heart from the Holy Spirit’s prompting.
BILL JENKS: Come again? Sorry—my ears are stopped—
JOHN: Peruse the facts: You shoot my brother twice,
He lets you skate, but you get busted later,
Exactly at the proper time and place
To land you in the Walls the same as me,
And get you out the same as me, and put you here—
The same as me. Is this coincidence?
You and I are strangled up together.
We’ve got our fates in a knot. And here we stand.
Guided by the Holy Spirit, here we stand.
BILL JENKS: I ain’t the quickest rabbit in the pack,
I guess the record proves that much, but, God,
I hope to Christ by now I’ve learned enough
To leave that Holy Spirit shit alone.
JOHN: Look. I recognized you. You knew that.
I recognized your face a year ago,
My first day on the yard. I watched you stand
Exactly still, more left-out and alone
Than any creature there, not halfway in
Your own skin, more the newcomer
Than me—but you’d been there two months.
Never saw a prisoner looked so much
Like somebody in prison. Every inch
And ounce of you in bondage. Sure, they had
The background on you, all the Christian bunch,
But nobody could figure out your story—
The famous shaman, healer of multitudes,
Standing in the yard with this, like, music
Coming down around your head, this
Jazz falling apart around you, man…
Look, my mother, I…my mother, sir…
BILL JENKS: There’s nothing I can do to help your mother.
JOHN: You have the gift, you have the power to heal,
You can help whoever you decide.
Don’t you see, you’re touched by the same fingers
That turn the earth.
BILL JENKS: Well, tell the fingers to get
Their claws outa me!…I can’t help your mother!
MASHA bangs the receiver against the pay phone unit repeatedly.
MASHA: WHAT! A BUNCH! A MOTHAH! FUCKIN! COCK-
SUCK!
GAAAAAAAAH!
[MASHA strikes the machine harder and harder. She
doesn’t stop.]
WAAAAAAAAH!!!
[Keeps beating the machine. Sings like Bessie Smith:]
GIMME A REEFAH
AND A GANG A GIN
SLAY ME ’CAUSE I’M IN MY SIN!
[She’s berserk, assaulting the phone.]
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!
Simultaneously, the CLERK erupts.
CLERK: I have HAD IT HAD IT HAD IT HAD IT, BOY.
Do you think I’m more than human?
I’ve only got two hands!
I can’t take care of everything at once!
I don’t have superstrength and X-ray eyes
To deal with you-all! I’m not Superman!
I’m not Captain Marvel! I’m not the Hulk!
To drag myself each morning from sweet dreams
Into your sleazy Greyhound station nightmare
Of God-forsaken apparitions with
Madness and sadness congealing in their eyes
And sell them TICKETS TICKETS TICKETS TICKETS!
Look at this!—Look at this woman doing
All a human can to destroy that thing!
Nothing stands between the realm of sanity
And total chaos but myself alone!
I’m all alone at the bulwarks of the world!
MASHA: HAAAAAAAH!! GAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!
MASHA lifts the nearest standing ashtray. She slings it mightily at the pay phone.
CLERK stops openmouthed in mid-tirade. MASHA repeats the action, going at it full tilt.
She busts the device clean off the wall and attacks it on the floor. Her fit worsens. She collapses, jerking, growling.
OTHERS: Get her off the floor. Put her on a bench.
Get her lying down.
Get her sitting up!
Get something in between her jaws!
Don’t let her bite!
SYLVESTER enters from street door.
SYLVESTER [aside]: There you are, you little magic thing!…
STAND ASIDE, PLEASE, DOCTOR COMING THROUGH.
GIVE WAY, THE DOCTOR’S IN THE HOUSE.
UH UH UH UH DOCTOR COMING THROUGH.
OTHERS: Thank goodness, Doctor. Hold her! Hold her!
She is strong!
Her spit is foaming like a case of rabies!
SYLVESTER: Nothing to alarm ourselves about.
CLERK: It’s typical! It’s standard stuff! It happens
All day long in here! It’s par for the course!
SYLVESTER: Loosen her uh loosen her uh…clothing.
I deal with this stuff daily, too—the human
Body, human physique, the human form…
Did the patient make any predictions?
Often this variety of seizure
Takes them in a way they make predictions—
No? Perhaps you didn’t recognize—
Uh sometimes they uh sometimes—Have a look
Now, at the racing form. Anything sound familiar?
Any of those names of horses there?
OTHERS: Missy, can you hear?
Somebody get some water—
SYLVESTER: I don’t like uh I don’t like to seem
Presumptuous, but I’m in charge here now.
Stand back and let me practice medicine!
BILL JENKS: Where’s your bag?
SYLVESTER: My bag?
BILL JENKS: Your bag of tools.
SYLVESTER: My bag? Where am I, 1882?
I’m not a country doctor. I don’t drive
A buggy through the daisies. That’s a ’Vette
You’ll see out there, you care to look, the blue
Corvette, the ’98. And I paid cash.
And anyway we don’t need implements.
We’re not on the brink of surgery here.
A little air, a couple minutes’ rest is all.
But I, myself, could use a little shot.
What’re we sippin’ behind the desk today?
Spare us an ounce or two, my boy, come on,
Don’t balk—we understand, and we approve:
Only a natural monstrosity
Uh uh uh uh uh
Or penitential masochist endures
Eight hours in the Greyhound totally sober.
CLERK: I’m in agreement with you there! I quite agree!
SYLVESTER: Well—save a drop for company!
Can’t have the citizens dispatched along
The routes by a comptroller in a state
A state of uh uh giddy inebriation—
Who knows uh uh how things would uh! end up?
CLERK: They’d end up just exactly like they are,
With no one getting anywhere. Go on,
Kill it, sir, it’s Everclear—
Seems like she’s calmer—
JOHN: Honey, just lay back.
SYLVESTER: Entranced and uncommunicative…
MASHA: LEMME DO THE HULA FOR YOU, BABY.
SYLVESTER:…She’s fainted.
JOHN: Doctor, why is her voice like that—
SYLVESTER: She’s coming out of the physical part of it now.
We’re entering the most important phase,
Prognostications, uh uh soothsaying—
BILL JENKS: Soothsaying? Buddy, what the hell is sooth?
SYLVESTER: We’ll see a period of trancelike, “twilight
Semi-consciousness” we uh uh uh
Physicians like to call it, during which
—Does anybody have a racing form?
—I happen to have a racing form myself!
—I’m going to whisper names and races so
Our patient hears them in her twilight state
And then I think you’ll uh uh be intrigued—
Intrigued, I say—all right, we’ve got the fifth
At Manor Downs. A lovely uh uh uh—
Outside of Austin there. They’ll go the mile.
THE FIFTH AT MANOR DOWNS. THE FIFTH. Luke’s Luck.
Blue Streak, Destroyer, Dark Delight, Shazam.
MASHA: Idiot of ages!
SYLVESTER: “Idiot—”
Uh, no, the six: Shazam. Shazam, in fact,
Is six, and number five is actually—
MASHA: Idiot idiot idiot! This one heals!
SYLVESTER: Settle down and pick me out a winner—
JOHN: This is William Jennings Bryan Jenks…
SYLVESTER: Jenks! The Shameful Shaman! Traveling?
I do enjoy a Greyhound trip myself.
It’s magical. You get to see the country.
BILL JENKS: Who are you?
SYLVESTER: I asked you first.
BILL JENKS: I didn’t hear you ask.
MASHA: SYLVESTER…
BILL JENKS: O! Sylvester!—
SYLVESTER: Uuh uh uh—
BILL JENKS: Sylvester’s Big-As-Texas Topless Lounge!
SYLVESTER: Back off!—Who is it now addresses me?
MASHA: You know me.
SYLVESTER: Give me now predictions three.
MASHA: Nothing for you.
SYLVESTER: Nothing? Uh. Huh. Huh—
MASHA: You’ve let her go, you fool. She’s found the healer.
SYLVESTER: This guy? uh uh uh—this guy’s a fraud.
Predictions three…
MASHA: Get rid of him.
SYLVESTER: Give me now predictions three.
MASHA: Get rid of him, or I abide in silence.
SYLVESTER: Aw, come on, demon! Gimme couple races!
Look at the odds on uh uh Dark Destroyer!
…We’re getting nothing here. [To BJ] You’ll have to leave.
Now, please. You’ll have to uh uh uh to leave—
BILL JENKS: Sucker, I been trying to leave all day.
You put me on a bus, I’ll disappear.
JOHN: This is a demon, brother! You can heal her.
SYLVESTER: You are jinxin’ my routine! Now blow!
GRANNY BLACK wakes.
GRANNY BLACK: Hot! Hot! Why do they say it’s air-conditioned?
BILL JENKS: I wish I could nap as sound as you, young lady.
CLERK: Go grubbing on a grave all night;
Gnaw the dirt above a killer’s corpse
While Huntsville lies in bed. Next day you’ll nap.
GRANNY BLACK: I never grubbed on a grave! You slander me!
I think you’re addled by the heat!
I think you’re positively shatterpated!
MASHA: ARLENE.
GRANNY BLACK: Lonnie?
MASHA: ARLENE.
GRANNY BLACK: Is it… ? Lonnie…
MASHA: I’ll see you tonight.
GRANNY BLACK: Lonnie…
MASHA: Sleep, sleep, Arlene. I’ll see you tonight.
GRANNY BLACK: All right, Lonnie. Yes, my love…
SYLVESTER: My Lord.
I’ve never seen her do like that. Uh…Uh…
BILL JENKS: DEMON!…DEMON!…DEMON! NAME YOURSELF!
MASHA: In whose name do you cast me out, Healer?
SYLVESTER: That’s a damn good question. Who exactly
Asked you to the party, anyway?
In whose name do you cast out demons?
BILL JENKS: I cast out demons in my own damn name.
JOHN: That ain’t gonna work.
BILL JENKS: You’ll watch it work!
SYLVESTER: Now uh uh this disturbed young gal and I
Have got a sort of system up and running,
And your insertion of uh uh yourself
Is absolutely unacceptable.
BILL JENKS: NAME YOURSELF!
SYLVESTER: JACKHAMMER!
BILL JENKS: …What?
I beg your pardon? Demon name yourself?
SYLVESTER: Jackhammer Jake! I batter this man’s throat.
SYLVESTER howls and shakes.
BILL JENKS: To tell the truth, I wasn’t expecting this.
Hold him down, John.—Don’t let go of her!—
Pry them jaws. Wider…Jackhammer Jake!
BJ spits on his finger and touches it to SYLVESTER’s tongue.
SYLVESTER: Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
BILL JENKS: Jackhammer Jake!
As Jesus promised in the Gospel of Mark
That we shall cast out devils and lay healing
Touches on the sick, I touch you now!
Unloose the string on this man’s tongue! Begone!
[SYLVESTER calms.]
…Now tell me, what did Peter Piper pick?
SYLVESTER: He picked your nose, you meddling piss, and I’d
Pay money to see him shove it up your hole…
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
Rubber baby buggy bumpers—wow.
This Mumble-Stumb’s red-dogged my vocalize
From minute one. I had full-on, obscene
Tourette’s till Mama whipped it out of me.
But let’s just stop this tent revival here—
Before you get me past the point of cure
And on into the tongues and rattlesnakes.
You gotcher cookies. Come, girl, let’s go home.
BILL JENKS: DEMON! NAME YOURSELF! NOW!
MASHA: Dark
Delight.
Dark Delight at Manor Downs. Fifth race!
SYLVESTER: One down! All right, now, where’s my sheet—
Back off now. Give her room. Give me my sheet!
I’ve lost my light—Don’t you turn the lights on?
CLERK: Once in a while. But I never like what I see.
BILL JENKS: Let me do my work.
SYLVESTER: I need that demon!
MASHA quakes at BJ’s approach.
JOHN: You can’t expel a demon in the name
Of nothing but yourself—it’s blasphemy.
BILL JENKS: Just let me take a whack at it. You’ll see.
JOHN: It’s blasphemy. The Bible’s clear on that.
Mark says, “In my name cast out devils.”
BILL JENKS: Your good ol’ brother Mark?
JOHN: Come on!
BILL JENKS: All right, I will. I’ll call on old JC.
…Jesus Christ, they crucified you, huh?
Holy Jesus, they crucified you good.
Jesus Christ, they threw you in the pit
And fed you meals of Spam and Wonder bread…
But the crucifiers never ride the Greyhound.
Jesus Christ…
[He falls to his knees.]
It’s Bill Jenks, fresh from prison.
Been out half a day, and my report
Says, Lord, it’s still the world they killed you in.
Says, Lord, the world is desperate and mean.
Lord, come on now, turn an ear to me.
Your Catholic priests are pederastic homos.
Your preachers are sluts. They clutch your Book
In one hand green from moneybags and poke
Your Word with fingers reasty from young cunts.
The sonsabitches crucify
Occasionally a savior while revering
Prophets their fathers lynched. The motherfuckers
Live unchallenged, prosper, die unpunished.
God, I hate them. Jesus hated them, too.
Don’t dispute me—Jesus Christ reviled them.
He saw who held the hammer and the nails.
He recognized who would and wouldn’t hurt him,
And so he palled around with dwarfs and whores,
People everybody hated—tax collectors,
Lepers, urchins, strangers, widows, dummies…
Come on now, Jesus, turn an ear to me.
Jesus Christ, I am a criminal.
I am a tax collector, whore, and midget:
You have nothing to fear from the likes of me,
And nobody else in here is gonna hurt you,
For the crucifiers never ride the Greyhound.
Jesus Christ, I beg you for the power.
I beg you for the power and cry…DEMON!
[He lays hands on MASHA; she writhes and screams.]
DEMON, I BANISH YOU TO—
MASHA: HEAR ME, HEALER!
…Spare me banishment to the pit of Hell,
But leave me to the world of things and men,
And I will grant you prophecies three.
SYLVESTER: YOU WHORE!
JOHN: Bill Jenks: Something good will come of this!
SYLVESTER: Masha—demon—buddy—talk to me—
MASHA: Only spare me the pit, and I will flee.
Spare me the pit, and I will prophesy…
BILL JENKS:…OK, I’ll take the deal. No pit of Hell.
MASHA: Hand on the cross.
BILL JENKS: Hand on the cross. No pit.
Prophesy away, and walk the world
As long as men and things inhabit here.
SYLVESTER: He’s got my damn predictions! I’m a pauper!
MASHA: Hear me, William Jennings Bryan Jenks:
I prophesy that you shall meet your mirror.
I prophesy that you shall raise the dead.
I prophesy one more: That like all men
William Jennings Bryan Jenks shall die,
And on his death an innocent shall be killed.
[BJ lays his hands on her.]
I FLEE!
JOHN: …She’s limp. That thing is gone.
SYLVESTER: Three predictions? That’s your total score?
Three predictions worth exactly zero?
Son of a bitch. She could’ve made you wealthy
Ten times over. What a rube you are.
[A siren; pulsing red and blue light that continues until blackout.]
Here comes the ambulance to the whore hospital.
BILL JENKS: I shall meet my mirror? I keep clear
Of mirrors. I don’t like their face.
I guarantee I’ll never raise the dead.
And naturally I’ll die. But all the rest
Is nonsense. Let me see your racing form.
Maybe she’s just handicapping horses.
CLERK [holding radio]: Hey there—John Cassandra—on the news:
They set your mother’s date an hour ago.
Isabel Cassandra: Death by poison!
JOHN wails.
Lights narrow: GRANNY, the cross, the sign: SURPLUS STORE.
HT sings as he enters from Surplus Store.
HT: If you ever get to Houston
Boy you better walk right
You better not gamble
And you better not fight
…What’s all the fuss? Where’d everybody go?
Ma’am, I heard my friend I’m waiting on
Raising his voice in here. I know his voice.
GRANNY wakes to see HT standing before the cross.
GRANNY BLACK: Whose ghost are you? Which one? Which murdered angel?
HT: Do I look like a ghost? I’m not a ghost.
(Am I a ghost?…I don’t remember dying…)
I’m waiting on a friend, a friend—I know his voice—
GRANNY BLACK: Harold Thomas Watson! I see you!
I feel your fangs sinking into my soul!
I didn’t tell him to! Nobody told him!
Demons sent and fetched him, slapped him, rocked him—
Everybody knew he’d kill somebody.
I’m the one he should have killed—he loved me!
I’m the one he should have killed—I loved him!
I swear I’m leaving town. I’m bound for Dallas.
I won’t be here among your children nor
Your children’s children on the Huntsville streets—
They’ll never have to look at me again!
Leave this poor old woman to the black
And miserable damnation love has earned her.
Her wailing blends with ambulance’s siren.
BLACKOUT