Icarus’s Mother was first produced at the Caffe Cino on November 16,1965, with the following cast:
| BILL: | John Kramer | |
| JILL: | Lee Worley | |
| PAT: | Cynthia Harris | |
| HOWARD: | James Barbosa | |
| FRANK: | John A. Coe |
It was directed by Michael Smith. It was subsequently produced by David Wheeler at the Theatre Company of Boston.
The stage is covered with grass. A low hedge upstage runs the width of the stage. Behind the hedge is a pale blue scrim. Center stage is a portable barbecue with smoke rising out of it. The lighting is bright yellow. On the grass down left is a tablecloth with the remnants of a huge meal scattered around it. BILL lies on his back down left staring at the sky. HOWARD lies up left, JILL up right, PAT down right and FRANK center stage—all in the same position as BILL and staring at the sky. Before the lights come up the sound of birds chirping is heard. The sound lasts for a while. The lights come up very slowly as the sound fades out. The lights come up full. A long pause, then all the people start belching at random. They stop.
BILL: (Still staring at the sky) Does he know there’s people down here watching him do that?
JILL: Sure.
PAT: It’s skywriting.
HOWARD: No, it’s not skywriting. It’s just a trail. A gas trail.
PAT: I thought it was.
FRANK: It’s gas
BILL: I don’t like it. I don’t like the looks of it from here. It’s distracting.
FRANK: It’s a vapor trail. All jets do it.
BILL: I don’t like the way he’s making it. I mean a semicircle thing like that. In a moon shape.
JILL: I like it.
BILL: If he knows what he’s doing, that means he could be signaling or something.
FRANK: Jets don’t signal.
PAT: It’s gas, Bill.
BILL: You mean that whole long stream of cloud is just excess gas?
HOWARD: Right.
BILL: He has no other way of getting rid of it?
HOWARD: Nope.
(BILL stands, looking up at the sky.)
BILL: And he’s spreading it all over the sky like that?
HOWARD: That’s right.
BILL: He’s staying in the same general area, though. How come he’s not moving to some other areas? He’s been right above us for the past hour.
FRANK: He’s probably a test pilot or something.
BILL: I think he sees us. I don’t like the looks of it.
HOWARD: He’s a million miles up. How could he see us?
BILL: He sees our smoke and he’s trying to signal. (Yelling at the sky) Get away from here! Get out of our area!
(HOWARD stands, looking up at the sky.)
HOWARD: He can’t hear you, Bill. You’ll have to be louder than that.
BILL: Hey! Get your gas away from here!
FRANK: Sit down.
BILL: We don’t know what you want but we don’t want you around here!
JILL: He can’t hear you. What’s the matter with you?
HOWARD: He can see us, though. He knows we’re looking at him.
BILL: If you need help you’ll have to come down!
HOWARD: (Yelling at the sky) We ate all the food so we can’t give you any!
FRANK: Sit down, you guys.
BILL: Get away from the picnic area! Go somewhere else! Go on! Get away from the park!
JILL: Will you guys cut it out. Leave the poor guy alone. He’s just flying. Let him fly.
HOWARD: He’s not just flying. If he were just doing that it would be all right. But he’s not. He’s signaling.
JILL: Who would he be signaling to?
HOWARD: His mother, maybe. Or his wife.
BILL: He could be signaling to anybody.
FRANK: Not likely.
PAT: What if he is? So what?
BILL: So, someone should be told about it. The community should know.
PAT: Let him signal his wife if he wants to. He’s probably been away for a while and he just got back. Let him show off a little.
HOWARD: But he’s right above us. His wife isn’t down here.
JILL: I’m his wife.
BILL: Are you his wife, Jill?
JILL: That’s right.
BILL: Then we should tell him, so he doesn’t have to waste any more time.
HOWARD: Come on down! Your wife’s down here!
BILL: Come on down here!
(JILL stands and yells at the sky.)
JILL: Come here, honey! Here I am! (She waves.)
BILL: Come and get her!
(FRANK stands and yells at the sky.)
FRANK: Come and get your wife, stupid!
(The following lines should happen on top of each other, with whistling and ad-lib shouts from all the actors.)
HOWARD: Come on! Land that thing!
JILL: Here I am, sweetheart! (Throwing kisses)
FRANK: You’d better hurry!
(PAT stands and yells at the sky.)
PAT: Come on down! Here we are! Yoo hoo!
BILL: Your other wife’s here, too!
FRANK: Two wives!
PAT: Come on, sweetie! Where have you been!
JILL: We’ve been waiting and waiting!
FRANK: Two ripe juicy wives waiting for you!
HOWARD: Come on!
BILL: You’ve been up there too long, mister!
FRANK: We can see you! Come on down!
BILL: Land that thing!
(JILL and PAT start shimmying around the stage.)
HOWARD: We’ve got your wives, mister pilot! You’d better come down or we’ll take them away.
BILL: We’ll use them ourselves! There’s three of us here!
FRANK: He’s leaving! Look! Hey!
HOWARD: Hey don’t! Come back here!
JILL: He’s leaving us! Stop!
PAT: Darling! The children!
BILL: You’re running out on your kids!
(They all yell and shake their fists at the sky.)
JILL: Don’t leave us! Come back here!
HOWARD: You’re no good, mister pilot!
PAT: Come back! The children!
JILL: Don’t leave us, darling!
(They all boo loudly.)
BILL: What a rotten guy!
(They stop booing and just stare at the sky.)
FRANK: He’s gone.
HOWARD: That makes me sick.
(A pause as they all stare at the sky.)
PAT: Well, when do they start this thing?
FRANK: Are you in a hurry?
PAT: No. I just want to know so I could take a walk or something in the meantime.
BILL: They don’t start till it gets dark.
FRANK: Where are you going to walk to?
PAT: Just down the beach or something. To rest my stomach. That was a big meal, you know.
FRANK: Walking doesn’t rest your stomach. When you’re full and you walk, that just irritates it.
JILL: He’s right.
PAT: All right! I’ll walk just to loosen my legs up or something. I’m not going to lie around here waiting for it to get dark, though.
HOWARD: What happens if they start while you’re on your walk?
JILL: That’d be terrible, Pat.
PAT: They shoot them in the sky. I can watch fireworks while I’m walking just as easy. It isn’t hard. All I have to do is tilt my head up and watch and continue walking.
BILL: You may trip, though, and there you’d be unconscious on the beach somewhere and we’d have to go looking for you.
JILL: Yeah.
HOWARD: Then we’d miss the fireworks just on account of you, Pat.
FRANK: We’d be looking all over. Through the bushes and up and down the beach for hours. Everyone would miss everything.
JILL: Then maybe someone else would trip while they were looking for you and we’d have two missing people on the beach unconscious instead of just one.
BILL: We might all trip and be there on the beach for weeks unconscious.
PAT: All right!
(She sits; the rest remain standing and close in on her, slowly forming a circle.)
HOWARD: You can walk if you want to, Pat. While it’s still light. We don’t mind.
JILL: We don’t want to wreck your fun, Patsy.
BILL: But you have to get back before it gets dark. Because that’s when the fireworks start. And you don’t want to miss them.
FRANK: You don’t want to be lost on the beach by yourself and suddenly hear loud booming sounds and suddenly see the sky all lit up with orange and yellow and blue and green and purple and gold and silver lights.
(They gather around PAT in a circle, looking down at her as she remains seated.)
JILL: That’d be scary.
HOWARD: You might run and fall and scream. You might run right into the ocean and drown or run right into the forest.
BILL: They’d have to send helicopters out looking for you.
JILL: Or jets.
BILL: Your husband in the jet would find you.
(PAT stands suddenly.)
PAT: Shut up! I don’t have a husband in a jet and neither does Jill! So stop kidding around! If I want to walk, I will! Just to walk! Just to walk down the beach and not come back till after dark. To loosen my legs up after a big dinner like that.
FRANK: We were just kidding, Pat.
(They all sit slowly around PAT.)
PAT: Boy! That’s something. Trying to scare me into not walking. What a group.
FRANK: We were kidding.
PAT: Shut up, Frank! Jesus. All of a sudden picnics are localized events. We all have to hang around the same area where we eat. We can’t even walk. We eat a big steak and we can’t walk it off.
(HOWARD stands and grabs PAT’s hand; he starts pulling her stage left.)
HOWARD: Let’s walk! Come on, Pat. Here we go walking. Where do you want to walk to? (The rest remain seated.)
PAT: Cut it out! Let go! Let go of my hand!
(He holds her hand tightly, staring at her.)
HOWARD: I would like very much to take a walk. You’re absolutely right about the steak. We need to walk it off.
PAT: Let go, Howard, or I’ll kick you.
BILL: Let her go, Howard.
HOWARD: But she’s right. We should all walk after steak dinners. The stomach works best when the whole body’s in motion. All the acid gets sloshed around.
(PAT struggles violently to get away, HOWARD grabs her other arm and holds her tightly, they face each other.)
PAT: Let me go! Let go of my arm, Howard! I’ll kick you. I really will.
FRANK: Come on. Let her go.
HOWARD: But she’s right, Frank.
FRANK: Her husband may come back in his jet plane and see what you’re doing. Then you’ll be in trouble.
PAT: Very funny.
BILL: He might.
JILL: Then he’ll land and do you in with a ray gun or a laser beam.
HOWARD: But we’ll be way up the beach. Jets can’t land on a little strip of beach. We’ll be under some bushes even. He won’t even see us. Will he, Pat?
(He shakes her.)
Will he, Pat?
PAT: He might.
JILL: See?
HOWARD: Pat’s lying, though. Jets fly at an altitude of approximately five thousand feet and move at a minimum of approximately five hundred miles an hour with an air velocity of approximately—and a wind velocity and the pilot can’t even hear or see or anything. He’s just hung in space and he can’t hear or see. Can he, Pat?
(He shakes PAT more violently. PAT gives no resistance.)
Can he or can’t he? No he can’t! Oh yes he can! He can see fireworks because fireworks explode at an altitude of approximately five hundred feet and give off powerful light rays and make swell patterns in the sky right under his keen old plane! Right? Beautiful. Just think how beautiful, Pat. We’ll be down here on the grass and he’ll be way, way, way up in the air. And somewhere in between the two of us there’ll be a beautiful display of flashing fireworks. I can hardly wait for nighttime.
(He lets go of PAT. She moves downstage slowly, then turns and walks slowly up stage; she stands upstage staring at the scrim. HOWARD and the others watch her.)
HOWARD: Of course you have to let yourself go into aeronautics gradually, Pat. You can’t expect to grasp the sensation immediately. Especially if you’ve never been up before. I mean in anything bigger than a Piper Cub or a Beachcraft Bonanza. Single- or double-propeller jobs of that variety usually don’t get you beyond say a sore ear or two sore ears from the buzzing they make. The booming of a jet is something quite different.
JILL: She knows that.
HOWARD: Of course the sound isn’t all of the problem. Not at all. It’s something about being in the cockpit surrounded by glass and knowing that glass is solid, yet it’s something you can see through at the same time. That’s the feeling. You know what I mean, Pat? Looking through this glass enclosure at miles and miles of geometric cow pastures and lakes and rivers. Looking through and seeing miles and miles of sky that changes color from gray to blue, then back to gray again as you move through it. There’s something to look at all around you. Everywhere you turn in the cockpit you have something to see. You have so much to see that you want to be able to stop the plane and just stay in the same position for about half an hour looking all around you. Just turning your seat from one position to the other until you take it all in. Even then you get the feeling that you’d like to spend more than just half an hour. Maybe a whole hour or two hours or maybe a whole day in that very same position. Just gazing from one side to the other.
(He crosses up to PAT slowly and stands behind her.)
Then up, then down. Then all the way around until you realize you don’t have enough eyes for that. That maybe if you had a few more eyes you could do that but not with just two. Then you get kind of dizzy and sick to the turn turn and your heads starts to spin so you clutch the seat with both hands and close your eyes. But even inside your closed eyes you can see the same thing as before. Miles and miles of cow pasture and city and town. Like a movie. Lake after lake with river after river running away from the lake and going to the ocean. House after house turning into city after city and town after town. So you quick open your eyes and try to fix them on the control panel. You concentrate on the controls and the dials and the numbers. You run your hands over the buttons and the circles and the squares. You can’t look up now or around or from side to side or down. You’re straight in front straining not to see with peripheral vision. Out of the sides of your eyes like a bird does but straight ahead. But the sky creeps in out of the corner of each eye and you can’t help but see. You can’t help but want to look. You can’t resist watching it for a second or two or a minute. For just a little bitty while.
(JILL stands.)
JILL: All right! Leave her alone!
HOWARD: Sorry.
(He crosses back down left and sits; JILL crosses up to PAT and stands beside her, patting her on the back.)
JILL: We’re all going to see the fireworks together. So there’s no point in getting everyone all excited. Pat’s going to see them with us and nobody’s going to walk anywhere.
FRANK: Oh, thanks a lot.
(He stands; BILL and HOWARD remain sitting.)
Thanks for the consideration, Jill. My stomach happens to be killing me. I could use a walk. And besides I’d like to see the beach.
BILL: We can walk later. After the fireworks.
FRANK: I can’t wait and besides I have to pee too. I really do.
JILL: Well go ahead.
HOWARD: Pee here.
FRANK: No!
HOWARD: Pee in your pants.
FRANK: Look, Howard—
BILL: You can pee in front of us, Frank. It’s all right. Pee your heart out.
HOWARD: We don’t mind. Really. We’re all friends.
JILL: We’ll close our eyes, Frank.
FRANK: I would like very much to take a nice little walk and pee by myself, alone. Just for the enjoyment of peeing alone.
BILL: Well go ahead.
FRANK: Thank you. (FRANK goes off right.)
HOWARD: How’s the girl?
JILL: She’s all right. All she needs is some rest.
BILL: Listen, Pat, why don’t you and Jill go up the beach with Frank and pee together under the bushes?
HOWARD: And we’ll stay and wait for it to get dark.
(At this point the lights start to fade, almost imperceptibly, to the end of the play.)
BILL: Pat?
HOWARD: We’ll wait here, Pat, and save you a place. We’ll save all of you a place to sit.
BILL: How does that sound, Patricia?
HOWARD: It would give you time to rest and settle your stomach and empty your bladder and loosen your legs. What do you think?
BILL: You could take as much time as you wanted.
HOWARD: You could even miss the display altogether if you want to do that. I mean it’s not mandatory that you watch it. It’s sort of a hoax, if you really want to know the truth. I mean if it’s anything at all like the one they had last year.
BILL: Last year’s was a joke.
HOWARD: That’s right, Pat. Most of them didn’t even work. The city spent thirty thousand dollars for twenty-five hundred fireworks last year and fifteen hundred of them exploded before they even got off the launching pad. They just made a little pop, and a stream of smoke came out, and that was it. A joke.
JILL: Some of them were beautiful.
BILL: Some of them were beautiful. The big gold and silver ones with sparklers on the ends. Then they had rocket ones that went way up and disappeared and then exploded way out over the ocean. They’d change into different colors. First orange, then blue, then bright yellow. Then this little parachute came floating down very softly with a tiny silver light on it. We just watched it slowly falling through the air hanging from the parachute. It went way out and finally sank into the water and the light went out. Then they’d shoot another one.
PAT: (Still facing upstage) I’m not going to miss the display. I’ve seen every one of them for the past ten years and I’m not going to miss this one.
JILL: Of course not, Pat.
(She strokes her hair.)
PAT: They get better and better as the years go by. It’s true that some of them didn’t work last year and that the city got gypped by the firecracker company. But that doesn’t mean it will happen again this year. Besides, as Bill said, some of them were beautiful. It’s worth it just to see one beautiful one out of all the duds. If none of them work except just one, it will be worth it to see just that one beautiful flashing thing across the whole sky. I’ll wait all night on my back, even if they have to go through the whole stack without one of them working. Even if it’s the very, very last one in the whole pile and everybody who came to see them left and went home. Even if I’m the only one left in the whole park and even if all the men who launch the firecrackers go home in despair and anguish and humiliation. I’ll go down there myself and hook up the thing by myself and fire the thing without any help and run back up here and lie on my back and wait and listen and watch the goddamn thing explode all over the sky and watch it change colors and make all its sounds and do all the things that a firecracker’s supposed to do. Then I’ll watch it fizzle out and I’ll get up slowly and brush the grass off my legs and walk back home and all the people will say what a lucky girl. What a lucky, lucky girl.
JILL: We’ll see them, Patty. Don’t worry.
BILL: Jill, why don’t you take Pat up the beach for a little walk? We’ll wait for you. It would do you both good.
JILL: Do you want to walk, Patty?
PAT: Will we be back in time?
JILL: Sure. We’ll just take a short walk and come right back.
(PAT turns downstage.)
PAT: All right. But just a short one.
BILL: That’s a girl.
(JILL leads PAT by the arm; they go off right.)
HOWARD: Take your time and we’ll save your places.
(BILL and HOWARD look at each other for a second, then they both get up and cross to the barbecue. HOWARD picks up the tablecloth and drapes it over the barbecue, BILL holds one side of the tablecloth while HOWARD holds the other, they look up at the sky, then they lift the tablecloth off the barbecue and allow some smoke to rise; they replace the tablecloth over the barbecue and follow the same procedure, glancing up at the sky; they do this three or four times, then FRANK enters from left in bare feet and carrying his shoes.)
FRANK: What a beach!
(HOWARD and BILL turn suddenly to FRANK and drop the tablecloth on the ground.)
It’s fantastic! The beach is fantastic, you guys.
(They just stare at FRANK.)
You ought to go down there. No beer cans, no seaweed, no nothing. Just beach and water and a few rocks. It’s out of the question. We ought to go down there and sit. That’d be the place to watch fireworks from. Right on the sand. We could move our stuff down there. What about it?
HOWARD: There’s flak and little particles that fly off in those explosions. It gets in your eyes.
FRANK: Well it would get in our eyes up here just as easy.
HOWARD: Not likely. We’re above sea level here.
FRANK: So what?
HOWARD: So the air is denser above sea level and the flak and shrapnel and—well, it’s just safer up here. Besides there’s waves to contend with at sea level. And there’s sand and we’re away from the smell up here. There’s a nice little breeze up here.
FRANK: I’d like to be down there myself.
(He crosses upstage and stares over the hedge as though looking down at a beach.)
BILL: Why don’t you go.
FRANK: I’d like to. It’d be nice lying there with the waves right next to me and explosions in the air.
HOWARD: Go ahead, Frank. We’ll stay here.
FRANK: Well we could all go. Like an expedition or an exploration. We could all find out what there is to know about the beach before it gets dark.
BILL: There’s nothing to know. The beach is composed of sand which is a product of the decomposition of rock through the process of erosion. Sand is the residue of this decomposition which, through the action and movement of tides controlled by the location of the moon in relation to the position of the other planets in the hemisphere, finds itself accumulating in areas which are known to us as beaches.
FRANK: But it stretches so far out. It’d be nice to walk to the end of it and then walk back.
HOWARD: Go, then! Nobody’s stopping you! Have fun! Go roll around in it.
(FRANK turns downstage.)
FRANK: Boy! You guys are really something. It interests me to know that I’ve been living in this community for ten years and never knew about this beach. I mean I never knew it was so clean. I expected trash all over and a huge stench from dead fish. But instead I find a long old beach that seems to go out to some kind of a peninsula or something. That’s nice to see. I’d like to try hiking out there some day. That’s an interesting thing to know. That you could spend a day hiking with a nice group of friendly neighborly neighbors and pack a lunch and make a weekend of it even. Or maybe two weekends’ worth, depending on the weather and the friendliness of the neighbors and the cost of the baby-sitters involved.
BILL: That sounds very nice, Frank.
FRANK: I think so.
BILL: We’ll have to try that.
FRANK: Where are the girls?
HOWARD: They left. They said they were going to look for you.
BILL: They wanted to tell you something.
FRANK: What?
BILL: They wouldn’t say. Something important.
FRANK: They’re just kidding.
(He crosses down left.)
HOWARD: No. It was something big, though, because they wouldn’t tell us even. We asked them what it was and they said they could only tell you.
HOWARD: Some kind of secret.
FRANK: Did they giggle about it?
BILL: Yeah but they wouldn’t tell. We even threatened them. We told them we’d take them home before the fireworks started if they didn’t tell.
(FRANK crosses down right).
FRANK: And they still didn’t tell?
BILL: Nope. Something exciting, they said.
FRANK: But they giggled a lot?
BILL: Yep.
FRANK: I bet I know what it is.
HOWARD: You do?
FRANK: If it’s what I think it is I’ll kill both of them. Do you want to know what I think it is?
HOWARD: No. They said it was top secret. We don’t want to know until you find out first.
FRANK: Well I already know.
HOWARD: Not for sure. Go find out for sure, then come back and tell us.
FRANK: Okay, but it’s really a joke if it’s what I think it is. And if it is what I think it is they’re going to be in real trouble.
HOWARD: Go find out.
FRANK: Which way did they go?
(HOWARD and BILL both point off right.)
FRANK: Thanks a lot. I’ll see you later. (He goes off right.)
BILL: Good luck.
(BILL and HOWARD pick up the tablecloth and drape it over the barbecue again; they look up at the sky, then lift the tablecloth. They do this a couple of times, then JILL and PAT enter from left, laughing hysterically and slapping each other on the back; they are in bare feet and carry their shoes. BILL and HOWARD drop the tablecloth and turn to the girls.)
JILL: Too much! What a nut!
(They both double over with laughter as BILL and HOWARD watch them. PAT falls on the ground and rolls around, laughing and holding her sides; JILL stands over her.)
PAT: Oh my side!
JILL: Do you know—do you know what this idiot did? Do you know what she did! She—we’re walking up the beach, see—we’re walking along like this.
(She walks very slowly with her head down.)
Very slowly and dejected and sad. So suddenly she stops. We both stop and she says, Guess what? And I said what? She says I really do—I really do have to pee after all.
(They both break up.)
So I said all right. I’m very serious with her, see. I say all right, Patsy dear, if you have to you have to. So then she said I have to pee so bad I can’t even wait. I have to go right now. Right this very minute. So we’re in the middle of the beach with nothing around but sand. No bushes or nothing. So she whips down her pants and crouches right there in the middle of the beach very seriously. And I’m standing there looking around. Sort of standing guard. And do you know what happens?
(They crack up.)
All of a sudden I have to pee too. I mean really bad like she has to. So I whip my pants down and crouch down right beside her. There we are sitting side by side on the beach together.
(She crouches down in the position.) Like a couple of desert nomads or something. So. You know how it is when you have to pee so bad that you can’t pee at all?
(BILL and HOWARD nod their heads.)
Well that’s what happened. Neither one of us could get anything out and we were straining and groaning and along comes our friend in the jet plane. Except this time he’s very low. Right above our heads. Zoom! So there we were. We couldn’t stand up because then he’d really see us. And we couldn’t run because there was nowhere to run to. So we just sat there and pretended we were playing with shells or something. But he kept it up. He kept flying back and forth right above our heads. So do you know what this nut does?
(HOWARD and BILL shake their heads.)
She starts waving to him and throwing kisses. Then he really went nuts. He started doing flips and slides with that jet like you’ve never seen before.
(She stands with her arms outstretched like a plane.)
He went way up and then dropped like a seagull or something. We thought he was going to crash even. Then I started waving and the guy went insane. He flew that thing upside down and backwards and every way you could imagine. And we were cracking up all over the place. We started rolling in the sand and showing him our legs. Then we did some of those nasty dances like they do in the bars. Then we both went nuts or something and we took off our pants and ran right into the water yelling and screaming and waving at his plane.
PAT: (Lying on her back and staring at the sky) Then he did a beautiful thing. He started to climb. And he went way, way up about twenty thousand feet or forty thousand feet. And he wrote this big sentence across the sky with his vapor trail. He wrote “E equals MC squared” in huge letters. It was really nice.
BILL: Are you sure he saw you?
JILL: Well he wasn’t doing all those tricks for nothing.
BILL: But are you sure it was the same guy?
JILL: Of course.
HOWARD: It couldn’t have been anyone else?
JILL: Not a chance.
HOWARD: Because Frank told us that guy crashed.
(PAT stands suddenly.)
PAT: What?
HOWARD: He said that he saw that very same jet go down in the middle of the ocean.
PAT: When?
HOWARD: Just before you came back.
JILL: So where did Frank go?
BILL: To get some help. They’re trying to fish him out right now.
PAT: You mean he crashed into the water?
BILL: That’s what he told us. It could be a different guy, though.
JILL: I doubt it.
HOWARD: The plane exploded just before it hit the water.
PAT: No!
BILL: That’s what Frank said.
JILL: Well let’s try to find him, Pat.
BILL: He went that way. (He points off right.)
PAT: Aren’t you guys coming?
HOWARD: We’ll wait here.
JILL: Come on, Pat.
(She pulls PAT by the arm, they go off right. HOWARD and BILL pause to look at the sky, then grab the tablecloth quickly; they are about to drape it over the barbecue when FRANK enters slowly from left. He seems to wander around the stage undeliberately and staring blankly in front of him. HOWARD and BILL drop the tablecloth and watch FRANK.)
HOWARD: Frank?
(FRANK continues to walk as he speaks; he moves all over the stage in a daze as HOWARD and BILL watch.)
FRANK: Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. You guys. You guys have missed the fireworks altogether. You should have seen—this is something to behold, this is. This is the nineteenth wonder of the Western, international world brought to you by Nabisco Cracker Corporation for the preservation of historians to come and for historians to go by. This is. If only the weather and the atmospheric conditions had been better than they were it would have beaten the Hindenburg by far more than it did.
(The lights by this time have become very dim, so that the scrim takes on a translucent quality.)
By that I mean to say a recognized world tragedy of the greatest proportion and exhilaration to make the backs of the very bravest shudder with cold sensations and the hands moisten with the thickest sweat ever before known, ever. And the eyes to blink in disbelief and the temples swell with pounds and the nose run with thick sticky pus. Oh you guys should have come, you guys should have. What a light!
(There is a tremendous boom offstage, followed in a few seconds by flashes of light onstage changing from orange to blue to yellow and then returning to the dim lighting of before; the flashes should come from directly above them. This all occurs while FRANK continues, oblivious to everything but what he’s saying; HOWARD and BILL remain in their positions.)
And to happen while walking head down looking at your toes and counting your steps. To happen under private conditions on sand. To be thinking about killing your baby boy or your baby girl or your wife or your wife’s sister or your pet dog. And to come to a standstill.
(Another boom followed by the same lighting and returning to the dim; the sound of a vast crowd of people starts faintly and builds in volume to the end of the play.)
To stop still in your tracks, thinking about the night to come and how long it takes to build a beach given the right amount of sand and the right amount of time and the right amount of water to push everything up. Bigger bodies of water with more rain and less sun. More water than land ever. In volume, in density, in the stratospheric conditions. And to hear a sound so shrieking that it ain’t even a sound at all but goes beyond that into the inside of the center of each ear and rattles you up so you don’t know exactly or for sure if you’ll ever hear again or if it actually exactly matters. And it pulls your head straight up off your shoulders in a straight line with the parallel lines of each leg and so each tendon leading to your jawbone strains to its utmost.
(Another boom followed by the lighting; the crowd increases.)
So your eyes bob back and roll around in their sockets and you see the silver-sleek jet, streamlined for speed, turn itself upside down and lie on its back and swoop up, then give itself in so it looks like it’s floating. Then another boom and it falls head down just gliding under its own weight. Passing cloud after cloud and picking up its own speed under its own momentum, out of control. Under its own force, falling straight down and passing through flocks of geese on their way back from where they came from. Going beyond itself with the pilot screaming and the clouds breaking up.
(Another boom and light.)
And the windows cracking and the wings tearing off. Going through seagulls now, it’s so close. Heading straight for the top of the flat blue water. Almost touching in slow motion and blowing itself up six inches above sea level to the dismay of ducks bobbing along. And lighting up the air with a gold tint and a yellow tint and smacking the water so that waves go up to five hundred feet in silver white and blue. Exploding the water for a hundred miles in diameter around itself. Sending a wake to Japan. An eruption of froth and smoke and flame blowing itself up over and over again. Going on and on till the community comes out to see for itself.
(Another boom and light.)
Till the houses open because of the light, they can’t sleep. And the booming goes on. And the porches are filled with kids in pajamas on top of their fathers shielding their eyes. And their mothers hold their fathers with their mouths open and the light pouring in and their cats running for cover.
(The booming sounds come closer together now and the lighting keeps up a perpetual change from color to color in bright flashes; the crowd noise gets very loud. FRANK moves faster around the stage, almost shouting the lines; HOWARD and BILL hold hands and stand very close together.)
And the sound keeps up and the doors open farther and farther back into the city. And the whole sky is lit. The sirens come and the screaming starts. The kids climb down and run to the beach with their mothers chasing and their fathers chasing them. Oh what a sight to see with your very own eyes. How lucky to be the first one there! And the tide breaks open and the waves go up!
BILL: Stop it Frank!
FRANK: The water goes up to fifteen hundred feet and smashes the trees, and the firemen come. The beach sinks below the surface. The seagulls drown in flocks of ten thousand. There’s a line of people two hundred deep. Standing in line to watch the display. And the pilot bobbing in the very center of a ring of fire that’s closing in. His white helmet bobbing up and bobbing down. His hand reaching for his other hand and the fire moves in and covers him up and the line of two hundred bow their heads and moan together with the light in their faces. Oh you guys should have come! You guys should have been there! You guys—
(He staggers off left. HOWARD and BILL stand very still, facing out to the audience and holding hands. JILL rushes on from right.)
JILL: Come on, you guys! The plane went down. Come and look! Come on!
HOWARD: Get away from here!
JILL: Everybody’s down there! It’s fantastic. The plane crashed, Bill! It really did!
BILL: Get away from the picnic area!
JILL: All right. But you guys are missing out.
(She runs off right, HOWARD and BILL stand very still, the crowd noise becomes deafening, the lights dim slowly out, the sound stops.)