excerpt from
Little Red Riding Hood
from
The Best American Short Plays 1992–1993
Note:
MOTHER’s prompting words can be spoken offstage.
HUNTER If a hunter doesn’t have his slab o’ steak he can’t grab his gun and if he can’t grab his gun he can’t blast the beasts and if he can’t blast the beasts how’s he gonna market their meats if he can’t market their meats there’s no way he can house his spouse and if he can’t house his spouse then where’s he supposed to eat his slab o’ steak, in the gosh darn mud crap slop?
MOTHER You didn’t get one of your arms into your shirt, dear.
HUNTER Sure you miss a sleeve now and then or sometimes you forget to button a few buttons, but what about the sleeve you did get into the shirt, what about the buttons you did button. I’m sick and tired of people who always focus on the empty sleeve or the unbuttoned button.
MOTHER Your fly’s open.
HUNTER or the opened fly, when the fact is if the truth be known when push comes to shove it’s the people with the unbuttoned buttons and unsleeved arms who are out there not looking at the lookers who are looking at them but just plain out there being out there. I’m out there. [. . .] I’m the one who faces the heat and the snow and the dirt—and let me tell you it gets dirty—so I can brave the hills and the lakes and the pebbles—which inevitably get in your boots—to grapple with the branches and the ragweed and the pollen—’til I’m sneezin’ my head off—don’t make me remind you about the time I got poison oak all across the cheeks o’ my butt—do you have any idea how filthy my toenails get by the end of the day?—and why? So I can shoot the beasts that make the coats that coat the backs of the very people who stand there staring at my empty sleeve when they should have been paying more attention to the arm in their own backyard in the first place.
MOTHER There’s grease on your nose and steak on your forehead, and your fork is lodged behind your ear.
HUNTER What’s a drop o’ grease on a hunter’s nose for the sake of his home, or a fork in his ear for his family? I love this fork and I love this family and let me tell you something, sister, I may have a slab of greasy beef suspended from my brow but that won’t stop me from pumping ten ounces of lead into a fat-assed quadruped at close range because it’s a dog eat dog jungle in that forest.