A Play
Three Acts
Setting:
There’s an old man on a porch somewhere inside the city and the porch is on the third or fifth or seventh or some higher seemingly imperceptible floor. The porch is ten foot by 6 foot, with a metal rail. Behind him are the sliding patio doors and the curtains are open, and inside it is dark and quiet with just a hint of the light from a television screen flickering. The old man is sitting in a worn overstuffed chair. Next to him is a metal TV tray, and on the tray is a glass filled with ice and whiskey and water. The ice is half melted, and the glass is sweaty and the tray moist. There’s a remote control next to the glass, and next to the remote is a paper pad with a pen. In one of his hands he holds a stone, and the stone is worn too, from his rubbing the stone with his thumb.
The old man watches the city, his eyes slowly glazing but still with a sliver of what they call ambition when a man is young then later called pride and sometimes mixed in with hope then later still after ambition and pride and hope there’s something else that still is energy in a man and still comes through his eyes…
Act One
The old man puts down the stone and picks up the paper and pen and writes:
We were fishing but not catching any fish. When you’re fishing and not catching any fish you’re wondering ’bout lots of stuff, after a while, besides why you’re not catching fish. After a while it doesn’t matter anymore whether you’re catching fish or not. And when you put on a few years and haven’t got a grandchild to share sitting next to the river bank with, you make one up and put him there beside you so to be able to tell the stories that you thought would come. Maybe you make up the stories too, then, of what coulda’ been and how once, when you were young, too, you looked upon living a life differently than what it comes out to be.
The old man exhales through his nose, scratching out the words, then scribbles…
Still, any old man like me deserves his right to go fishing with his grandchild and catch whatever he dreams up, or none at all, doesn’t he?
Lights fade.
Act Two
Lights rise. The old man is still in the same overstuffed chair with the same posture and instead of holding the paper and pen or the stone, in that same hand he now has a fishing pole. Behind him is a forest of young pine, and sitting next to him is a small child, presumably his grandchild, also holding a fishing pole. Both are sitting on the bank of a small creek.
“When we were very very young your Grandma and I would walk to the pine forest as early in the morning as we could and pretend we were way far away. All of the trees were pine, that almost bushy sort, really soft looking, a lot like these behind us, and their needles made for a thick covering on the ground. A pillow sort of covering. Later in life now I pass the “forest” I have to chuckle. Now it’s a retirement center. A big tall one. Really all it was was a piece of property out back of the shopping mall which some developer had secured and would sell or build on some day for a handsome profit, so just planted those pines in the meantime. But back then it was our forest and our home and where we both stole away to. I think then you were born, even though we were just as little as you, I think then is when the first glint of you in our eyes came into the world. The lineage. I remember…”
The old man’s eyes close, lights dim, leaving the boy and the old man in silhouette, while off to the side lights rise on a young girl and boy sitting underneath pine boughs. The young girl and boy act and speak as the old man continues his tale, speaking the narration.
“Did you bring the peanut butter, Childress?”
“Yes!” I placed my pack on the soft needles and zipped it open and placed the peanut butter jar next to Lacey. Lacey reached into her pack and pulled out a jar of jelly, the bread, a butter knife, two plastic plates and two cups and a water bottle.
“Let’s set them in the kitchen.”
Under the covers of the pine boughs we chose rooms, natural sort of cubby-hole-looking areas for rooms, the bedroom, livingroom, kitchen, bath. Lacey set the items in the kitchen, arranging them alongside one of the walls in the cupboard, what we knew was the wall to the kitchen and the kitchen cupboard.
After she had arranged the items just right, she closed the cupboard door, the imaginary cupboard door, and said, “There, now, you’re to leave to go to work, OK. And then I will start dinner for us.”
I went off for a little while and made noises in the forest, pretending to work. There were many lower limbs that no longer held the pine needles, and I would snap them off and make a pile. Once the pile looked large enough, I returned, and put the stack of small branches outside the front door to our home.
Lacey came to the front door, what we imagined the door to be, opened it, and said, “Childress! My Childress! Dinner is almost ready, dear.”
Lacey had the table set and a peanut butter sandwich for each of us set on the plates. In the cups she had poured the water.
“How was your day, dear?” Lacey said, sitting cross-legged, “I hope you like the dinner tonight, Childress.”
“It looks wonderful, Lacey.”
We began eating the peanut butter sandwiches, and Lacey all the time more content looking than usual. I wasn’t hungry of course because I’d just ate breakfast but still I pretended to enjoy the dinner Lacey set for us.
Lacey’s eyes didn’t dart about as they normally would, looking for the next task that needed to be done. And she was more quiet than usual, too.
Finally, she blurted out, “Tomorrow, Childress, our baby will come!”
I was finishing the peanut butter sandwich, chewing it into the smallest bits I could, because as I said I wasn’t all that hungry. I remember looking her way, then, and seeing the glow on her face. It was a glow that I’d experience later in life on several occasions with a woman. A completeness. A reason. A calling. Sometimes I’d experience this look of a woman when, well, when a man and a woman share an important moment together, sometimes when later like it was with Lacey that day when she’d inform me we were to have child; sometimes in spontaneous moments, from where out of the blue a woman would become all surreal looking like, and feel a sense of overwhelming pleasure.
“But first we need to make the baby, Childress. We need to kiss.”
That’s when I nearly choked on the last bite of the peanut butter sandwich. Kiss? I turned red, and felt a quick fever.
“Come on, Childress, I’ll clear the table, you go have a beer, and then we’ll sit together for a little while, and we need to kiss, so the baby will come.”
I remember I was happy with the way things were, and why would we need to take anything further? And I didn’t drink beer. And I told Lacey this, muttering it really.
“If I’m to be a mother you need to go have a beer. That’s what my Mom says, about my Dad, how babies are made.”
Lacey poured the last of the water into my cup, and said, “There, now there’s your beer. Go drink your beer outside in the garage, then come back in when you’re finished. And then we’ll kiss.”
I wasn’t sure where the garage was but I picked up the cup with the beer anyway and left the house and went to what I pretended was the garage. I drank the beer and returned, and Lacey, instead of sitting cross-legged, now lay on her back.
“Come here, now, Childress.”
I was frightened beyond belief. Lacey’s eyes then closed so then I had a little more nerve, so went over to her and layed next to her.
“Now kiss me, Childress.”
I reached over and kissed her real quick, blushing all the time. I’ll never forget the feel of her lips on my lips. They were wet and gooey.
“Once more now, just in case, Childress.”
In case? I hesitated.
“We need to make sure the baby will come, OK.”
So I reached over her again and it wasn’t as quick and it felt more natural the second time. It took a little longer. And I could feel even Lacey felt something…something different. Her eyes opened. But they welcomed me. No, they craved me. But then we were scared, especially Lacey, ’cause we didn’t really know what we’d done. But it was a funny feeling and I could feel we both shared it and were taken by it which made us feel OK but still it was scary.
The next morning we met and walked into the forest to our home and went inside and sure enough Lacey pulled a baby out of her pack. It was all pink and didn’t have any clothes. It had eyes that moved up and down when she sat it up or laid it down, and a string on the back that, when she pulled it, the baby said, Mommy! Daddy! Lacey layed the baby down and put clothes on it then placed the baby in my lap. The eyes bobbed up at me.
“Isn’t she wonderful!” Lacey said. “Now I’m going to take care of the baby and do laundry and make us dinner, Childress, so you need to go back to work, OK?”
Laundry? I handed the baby to Lacey and smiled, Lacey smiled, we kissed, and though I’m sure it wasn’t that kind of kiss, I still wondered about it when I went out to work. I passed the garage and that’s when I noticed I’d forgotten to take the empty cup back into the house the day before. I picked up the cup and instead of going to work I went to the back of the mall, running as fast as I could, and filled up the cup at the spigot at the one of the loading docks. I drank the beer as fast as I could, right there, then filled the glass again and drank that one much more slowly. After a while I returned to the forest and to our home and to Lacey and the baby, and when I went through the front door, our dinner was set.
“Where are the sticks?” Lacey asked. I had totally forgotten to collect the small branches. I muttered something like the pile of sticks was still in the forest, and I’d bring them afterwards. Something like that. But Lacey went on with the baby, rocking her, and you know what she said?”
“What, Grandpa?”
“She said, ‘The baby is beautiful, Childress.’”
Lights fade on the two young children and rise on the old man and his grandchild. The old man makes a short tug on the pole, waits, then relaxes. He picks up a stone and begins to rub it with his thumb.
“Like I said the forest is gone now and there’s that tall retirement center they built on it. It’s an ugly place for sure, for many who end up there, though you wouldn’t know it, the way it’s played up. It was the pine forest where things began, and it’s the pine forest I’d hoped we’d always return to.”
“Grandpa?”
“Yes?”
“What’s lin…age?”
“Lineage. Lineage?”
“Yeah.”
The old man reels in the line to check the bait and it looks alright so he swings the line back out into the creek.
Lights fade.
Act Three
Lights rise.
The mood appears darker now on the porch with the old man in the overstuffed with the television tray and the light is not as intense. The light from the television inside still flickers. He sets his paper and pen down upon the tray and picks up the drink and swallows the remainder. He sets the drink back down and picks up the stone and instead of rubbing the stone, holds it in a gently closed fist. He closes his eyes and his head drops down, his chin resting on his chest. After a short while his hold on the rock loosens, the stone drops and hits the porch floor, then keeps dropping, its sound fading as it keeps hitting porch floors below.
Lights fade, and all that is heard in the dark is the fading sound of the dropping stone.
END
