MRS NEILSEN. Don’t speak like that. Do you love me?
NICK. What?
MRS NEILSEN. Can you love me?
NICK. What kind of question is that?
MRS NEILSEN. I can take it either way. But you gotta tell me the truth.
NICK. You just said it’s all bullshit!
MRS NEILSEN. Yeah it’s all bullshit. It’s still all I got!
NICK. We ain’t spring chickens.
MRS NEILSEN. What’s that gotta do with it?
NICK. You live too long, you see too much. It chips away at you. How can you love someone who ain’t got a soul?
MRS NEILSEN. You have a soul.
NICK. I don’t feel it.
MRS NEILSEN. I feel it. Just say it to me. Just say it.
NICK. I can’t love anyone! There it is! There’s the truth!
MRS NEILSEN. Can’t or won’t?
He can’t answer her. Can’t look at her. She sings.
True Love Tends To Forget
I was lyin’ down in the reeds without any oxygen
I saw you in the wilderness among the men
Saw you drift into infinity and come back again
All you got to do is wait and I’ll tell you when
You belong to me, baby, without any doubt
Don’t forsake me, baby, don’t sell me out
Don’t keep me knockin’ about from Mexico to Tibet
True love, true love, true love tends to forget
Spoken or sung words from ‘Sweetheart Like You’, along with the music:
Sweetheart Like You
They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings
Steal a little and they throw you in jail
Steal a lot and they make you king
There’s only one step down from here, baby
It’s called the land of permanent bliss
What’s a sweetheart like you doin’ in a dump like this?
It’s morning. NICK comes out on the porch. PERRY has returned with his wilted-looking flowers.
PERRY. Happy Thanksgiving, Nick.
NICK (startled). Jesus Christ! Yeah – Happy Thanksgiving, Mr Perry. (Sotto.) You been out here all night? Look at you, you’re freezing! Get inside.
NICK drags him inside. PERRY meets ELIZABETH in the hallway.
PERRY. Happy Thanksgiving, Elizabeth.
NICK. Get in here.
MARIANNE is fixing up the room for a big Thanksgiving meal. NICK shoves PERRY in.
Well look who’s here!! Let me, eh… Let me just…
He nods aggressively to PERRY and leaves. NICK tries to take ELIZABETH with him, but she slips back in, watching PERRY.
PERRY. Well, Happy Thanksgiving, Marianne!
MARIANNE. Happy Thanksgiving, Mr Perry.
PERRY. How are you?
MARIANNE. Pretty much as well as I was when you saw me yesterday.
PERRY. I can worry about you, can’t I?
MARIANNE. I guess. But you don’t know me all that much.
PERRY. Would you believe me if I said I feel I do know you?
MARIANNE. How?
PERRY. I guess God’s goodness shines down and it makes things happen. Things you couldn’t dream of I guess.
ELIZABETH. I guess.
MARIANNE. Mmm.
MARIANNE goes to the piano and plays while they converse.
PERRY. Maybe my whole life has been leading me right here to give you and your child shelter. Who can say? (Laughs pathetically.) I mean, that makes about as much sense as anything else as far as I can make out!
MARIANNE. Maybe you’re just a predator.
PERRY. A predator.
MARIANNE. Sure.
PERRY. I don’t think so.
MARIANNE. Well how would you know?
PERRY. I think I’d know if I was a predator, Marianne.
MARIANNE. Maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you have to believe you’re going round doing good deeds so as to enable you to go on the hunt. You know, on the prowl.
PERRY. I don’t think so.
MARIANNE. No, huh? My pa didn’t say nothing about all the trouble we had here?
PERRY. Trouble is everywhere. I know.
MARIANNE. I’m talking about troubles no one can explain.
PERRY. Explain what?
MARIANNE. That night. The night I… the night the wind came in my room. I woke up. All I knew then was… someone was there.
PERRY. A man came in your room?
MARIANNE. It was deeper than a man. Older than a man. When I pressed my face into his tunic and I breathed in, I could smell, like, ancient water. You know that smell like water under the ground? Like stone? And when I breathed in more and more it was like I was breathing through him. And I could see through him – into the ancient past. A figure in a boat, and someone was singing and I… That’s how it happened.
PERRY. Marianne, however it happened, you got yourself in trouble. All your daddy wants is to look at our options here.
MARIANNE. You look like a weak man, Mr Perry. But you got some steel buried in there keeps you cutting in the woods.
PERRY suddenly confronts MARIANNE aggressively.
Out in the kitchen a girl sings ‘Girl From The North Country’, other guests harmonizing.
PERRY. Hey! I don’t need to come down here and be told I’m weak! You don’t know what I been going through every day since your daddy came to me! What would you know about it? You haven’t got a damned pot to piss in and you subject me to this? Let me tell you something. Your daddy can’t take care a you. This house? It’s gonna all be taken by the bank. Your daddy’s old to work on a farm or a factory – even if there was work. Bottle’s got your brother. Who knows where your mama’s gone? Where you gonna go? A black girl with a black baby? You want me to tell you? You’re gonna be made to give that baby away and then you can whistle your way down to St Louis or somewhere work as a maid. That’s all you are. Now you and me both got a chance. My wife came and told me in a dream, Marianne. My wife!! You just get in under my roof, girl, and I won’t never touch you, that’s a promise. Nobody chooses to get old. Everybody fights it. But it kicks your ass. You can’t win. You move slower and slower ’cause you can’t go fast! It hurts! Pain’s got ya surrounded.
Your back and your legs and your hands in here in your gut?! You wake in the night, there’s no one there. Only the cold. And one way down. You remember a warm light and a smile from long ago. But doesn’t help. It only hurts.
Something in his tone has landed deep inside her. She stands looking at him in silence. NICK returns.
NICK. So we doin’? Huh?
MARIANNE looks at NICK.
ELIZABETH. Oh he’s just been showing everybody his Vienna sausage.
NICK ignores her.
PERRY. Give me a date and I’ll write you a cheque.
NICK. How about Christmas Eve?
PERRY nods. NICK shakes his hand.
Stay for lunch.
PERRY nods.
ELIZABETH is playing the piano – ‘Ballad Of A Thin Man’. MARIANNE continues her work. MRS BURKE and other guests are setting up a Thanksgiving dinner.
GENE comes through.
GENE. Happy Thanksgiving.
NICK. What you doing? Gettin’ up or goin’ to bed?
GENE. Getting up.
NICK. At four thirty?
GENE. If it’s four thirty then, yeah.
GENE is putting fancy shoes on ELIZABETH’s feet.
NICK. You go down to that eh…
GENE. Sure.
NICK. Well?
GENE. Yeah.
NICK. Yeah?
GENE. Yeah it’s…
NICK. We’re talking about the interview?
GENE. Yeah, I know.
NICK. And?
GENE. Yeah.
NICK. It’s all good?
GENE. All good. He said the railroad’s gonna lift all the boats round here. Bright guy like me, start in the office, working my way up…
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NICK. That’s right…
GENE. Said it was just what they wanted to see.
NICK. Didn’t I tell you?
GENE. Yeah.
NICK. Huh?
GENE. Yeah.
NICK. Gene…
NICK shakes GENE’s hand.
You’re a good boy.
GENE nods, goes on his way. NICK goes down into the kitchen.
DR WALKER is in the dining room with the guests.
MRS BURKE is dancing with SCOTT to the music someone plays on the piano. The guests are drinking wine. ELIZABETH dances with MRS NEILSEN. PERRY drinks a cup of coffee.
Someone starts strumming a ukulele – the infectious opening chords of ‘Hurricane’. The double bass takes the walking bass line and someone scratches a wild fiddle over it. SCOTT sings.
Hurricane
Pistol shots ring out in the barroom night
Enter Patty Valentine from the upper hall
She sees the bartender in a pool of blood
Cries out, ‘My God, they killed them all!’
Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For somethin’ that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world
Three bodies lyin’ there does Patty see
And another man named Bello, movin’ around mysteriously
‘I didn’t do it,’ he says, and he throws up his hands
‘I was only robbin’ the register, I hope you understand
I saw them leavin’,’ he says, and he stops
‘One of us had better call up the cops’
And so Patty calls the cops
And they arrive on the scene with their red lights flashin’
In the hot New Jersey night
Meanwhile, far away in another part of town
Rubin Carter and a couple of friends are drivin’ around
Number one contender for the middleweight crown
Had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down
When a cop pulled him over to the side of the road
Just like the time before and the time before that
In Paterson that’s just the way things go
If you’re black you might as well not show up on the street
’Less you wanna draw the heat
Segue to ‘Idiot Wind’. MARIANNE and SCOTT sing.
Idiot Wind
Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they’d cut it out but when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky
…
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth
Blowing down the backroads headin’ south
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
…
Idiot wind, blowing through the flowers on your tomb
Blowing through the curtains in your room
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth
You’re an idiot, babe
It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn’t enough to change my heart
Now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top
You’re on the bottom
…
Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We’re idiots, babe
It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves
The guests all enjoy dancing around. The music softens, the fiddle playing softly against the uke…
MRS BURKE. Happy Thanksgiving, Nick!
NICK. Happy Thanksgiving, Mrs Burke, Mr Scott.
SCOTT. Same to you, sir.
MARIANNE comes to GENE. She takes his hand and they dance.
MRS BURKE. Where’s Elias?
MR BURKE. We had a walk. He’s sleeping.
NICK comes through with fuel for the stove.
Well look at all this! Happy Thanksgiving, Nick!
NICK. To you too – Marianne cooked the turkey, so…
MR BURKE. Marianne, you are a genius.
MARIANNE. I wouldn’t say that. You can make yourself a sandwich – cranberry’s all in the bowl.
MR BURKE. Holy shamoly.
NICK. We always do a sandwich. Then you don’t have to do all that – you know – sitting at the same table, right?
MR BURKE. Yeah – everybody looking at each other! I get it. I’m the king of the sandwiches.
MR BURKE stumbles a little drunkenly.
MRS NEILSEN. Here, let me make you one.
MR BURKE. I always liked you, Mrs Neilsen, you have a way about you. Doesn’t she have a way about her?
MRS NEILSEN. What kind of a way?!
MR BURKE. A way! A way! Nick knows! Right? Am I right?
MRS BURKE. Ignore him, Mrs Neilsen. You think Elias wants a sandwich?
MR BURKE. Leave him, he’s sleeping. (To MRS NEILSEN.) I dunno what it is – it’s the confluence between your eyes and your eyebrows. Somehow they suggest a gateway to the eternal.
MRS NEILSEN. I’m just making you a sandwich!
MRS BURKE. What in God’s name are you talking about?
MR BURKE. You look out, Joe, she’s got them talons, once they get into you, you’ll never get away.
SCOTT. I don’t know about that, but she can dance.
MRS BURKE. You mind not talking about me like I’m not here?
SCOTT. I’m sorry, excuse me.
MR BURKE. It’s only good things! We’re only saying nice things! You look out. How many drinks has she had?
MRS BURKE. Not as many as you clearly. (To SCOTT.) I never felt arms like these.
SCOTT. Thank you, ma’am.
MRS BURKE. I mean it – you ever feel arms like that, Nick?
NICK. Not lately.
The live music in the room stops while people eat. DR WALKER puts on the wireless. A 1930s arrangement of ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’ is on. MARIANNE is near DR WALKER.
DR WALKER. How are you, Marianne?
MARIANNE. Fine, thank you.
DR WALKER. You want to call by – next week?
MARIANNE. Sure.
DR WALKER. Unless you want to see someone else.
MARIANNE. No, that’s fine.
MRS BURKE. Should I go get Elias? He’s missing everything.
MR BURKE. Leave him alone.
NICK smiles at MRS NEILSEN. She doesn’t give him one back. Embarrassed, he addresses the room.
NICK. Anyone been outside? Man, it’s cold.
DR WALKER. Sure is.
MR BURKE. Mmm! You see the snow?
DR WALKER. Mm-hm.
NICK. That’s how it starts. Those dry flakes like that? That’s North Pole air. Sit down!
MR BURKE. I’m good. I like standing. It’s like swaying around on a ship.
MR BURKE and NICK watch the dancing for a few moments. Then NICK goes back to kitchen. MRS BURKE sees MR BURKE helping himself to a drink.
MRS BURKE (to MR BURKE). You want to go easy?
MR BURKE (calling in to NICK). A sick child gets inside you somehow, Nick.
NICK (off). What’s that?
MR BURKE (calling to NICK). I guess you can’t help it. It’s down there underneath everything.
MARLOWE comes in.
MARLOWE. Happy Thanksgiving.
Hello, all. What about that wind! It’s like a knife!
Girl from the North Country Page 7