excerpts from
The Highwayman
from
The Best American Short Plays 2005–2006
BESS Where is this?
[Pause.]
The land? The moor. Purple bog. Hi!
[Beat.]
Hello. Look out there. I can look out at the land. It’ll get darker.
[Beat.]
It’s nothing for you anyway. I could just make it up and you’d never know the difference. When they say “and it was all a dream,” I think, who cares? Tell me a story! I don’t care. God. Right there, over there a goat was buried. Many years ago. It didn’t belong to the mother or the father in particular. It was a family goat. I know goats are popular in jokes, but this isn’t a joke. It’s a dream! Ha-ha, who cares, not really. It’s a goat. How do I know? From the inscription. There is a goat engraved on the tombstone. It doesn’t say Beloved Family Goat, but I know about that for a fact. They loved that goat. It gave good milk. It ate the garbage. You could pet it at that time. Now you can only make yourself think so. What it said was, Here Lies, and then the name of the goat. Who cares? It wasn’t Bess. Or maybe it was. [. . .] No! Guess what. It wasn’t a goat. Now that I think, it was a donkey. All this time. That doesn’t change much, except the milk and the garbage. But they adored that donkey. Most donkeys seem to be unwelcome on this God-given earth, but not that one. Not this donkey! Why? Because it was so sweet-tempered. You should see with its kids—all lined up? They were all mules, but it never complained. The family contemplated having a portrait done like that, not of themselves. Because you can’t help it if she hands you a mule when the day’s come, right? You really can’t. It was a quiet life. I don’t want to talk about the rest. I don’t know why I started. Let’s just say here lies and then the name.
• • • •
BESS After this I have one dream. All right. I think it must be the darkest time of night. When is that? I think I know. No, I don’t know, that was the dream. And I knew those things. And I could tell things from the position of planets. Which I recognized. Clouds. I could tell from the clouds what the earth would be? And when they would be on the road? So I would have to go off it. How to find a hedge to go off it into. And know if the hedge is hungry and not go into it then and look again. That this would sometimes be true for miles and I would have to remember that I would have to dig in the ground, because they’re on the road now.
I knew how to do that and I had to do that, or also, I wouldn’t have to, because there was nothing but me out there, nothing, me moving. Going. Knowing. Looking. Knowing. Not knowing. Knowing again. Or also, a rain like a wind, a moon like a ship, all ocean. I thought, this is what I’m gonna be spraying like all these. Spraying out of here to be then.
• • • •
BESS Here, in here it’s the right heat. I cover the window with earth. People bring in the earth with their shoes. They don’t talk to me. It’s too dark for them to see me.
[Beat.]
Here, in here it’s the right heat. I cover the window with fire. The fire lies flat against the pane. It lights up the room and I see my own hands. They don’t look old. I know time is over. No one else knows. They can’t get it. No one can get in.
[Beat.]
Here’s the story. There was a girl. She kicked everyone. She said it was so they wouldn’t miss her. But it was because they wouldn’t miss her. It’s a stupid—it’s a stupid story. She could never kick anyone. Or do anything or want or think anything.
[Beat.]
I know what to tell you. It’s only the truth. No questions. Of course this is where I am.
[Beat.]
You could come
[Beat.]
out. . . . Why?—I’d like to remind you that the moor is habitable. Habitabitable. Habitabitabitable. Hospitababitle. With life-forms. So savage. Someday something will come in and you’ll have to go out there.
[Beat.]
So I build up my strength. Emergency measures. I smell my skin. I compare it with my other skill. Things like this’ll be helpful. Because I know I’ve been in here since I was born and no one else. And if someone else was here, he didn’t see me. And if he saw me, he’s coming back to get me.
[Beat.]
Because he would like me.
[Beat.]
Would he want me to go, I think he might want me to go with him. I think that’s what he would want. There’s no way I can do that. Look at me. I’ve been here my whole life. A quiet life. I used to bring sugar lumps out to the stable. There’s a cellar somewhere here, no, a tunnel through, not the cellar, I think there are stairs and there’s a, stairs through a room where they keep . . . beets? Is that possible? Through there, a passage to the stable. I go through there with my hand full of sugar. My hand is dry. Or both. That’s how I carry it through the passage, wedged out of the wet land. So I don’t set foot out of the inn.
[Beat.]
I get there, I get to the stable. There are so many of them. I’m saying this, it’s like a pillar of my childhood. I’m not just any one of those little girls. Because these were not a fantasy. They’re, they shit and they take a piss, they have spit foaming up, big sour spit, they’re covered with scars and their coats, you can’t even say coats, they’re covered in their skins, is the most you can say. They’ll bite, I have the rents some still on me.
[Beat.]
I get to the stable, still inside, I have sugar in my hand, that I took from the kitchen. There are so many of them. Everyone put an animal there and went in to drink. When it’s the busy season there’s fullness of them. And I’m coming down, there’s a push-bell the people do when they need something, but then I disappear, I go get the sugar and I go down the stairs into the place and into the place, to see them, to give them the sugar. I don’t know how to describe. I said. Filthy. Some are about to die. Some are on their first trip. Whips. They all have four and some have five and some are daughters. Grown-up. I’m here with the sugar. Just here. I put out my hand . . . a tongue comes down, no, teeth. You have to put your hand flat and not get bit. Big teeth. You can tell the work. Eyes like my dumb eyes. You know what they want, it makes them want it more, they want, they would say—they can’t, but—no, they wouldn’t—it makes them want, they want the saddle blanket and the saddle, the saddlebags and the rein, they want, and the spurs, reins and spurs and hands high, but even done like that they want to go, they want me to take them and go, and they would be better off to go, says their faces, go!
[Beat.]
And I say I can’t. Just because it’s not. What about wind and stripes? But it’s not. Anyway he might not come.
• • • •
BESS What I was feeling. You know metal in your mouth? Sour? It’s not you’re naked, because he doesn’t care about that. He opens your shirt. He doesn’t care about that, it’s so he can see where to put it. You’re, what are you doing, because not that you don’t know, you want him to say. He says, Pretty. He takes your eyes. He covers them with his eyes. All you know about is the land around you. Land around you, wet with time. Your bare foot feels the bone coming up under it, up from under the moss, this old bone, smooth as a lip, fills the arc of your foot. He says, Don’t move. It’s a shoulder bone. He says, Don’t you make a sound. Your cheek is wet for me. Listen. You listen. You can hear for miles. Moldering, creeping, growing up against itself, the moor. He says, You’re for this. You don’t move. The bone under your foot doesn’t move. He says, It’s inside you already. Inside and outside are the same. He doesn’t touch you with his hand. He has no skin. You hear the blood of him. He knows you hear it. Moving, he says. That’s what you hear in me. I’m what moves on this land. He says, When I take your last piece of movement you’ll understand. Kept. You know that word? And you feel kept on your face, he says, Your face is wet for me. I’ve made a place for your body. Do you understand? And he kisses you with no mouth but with something cold and sour. Mine.
[Pause.]
Do you understand?