HT [sings]: Wake up this morning
Blue dog called my name
If you ever get to Houston
Boy you better walk right
You better not gamble
[He materializes from the dark.]
…You better never have no fun a-tall.
…Wrap yourself around me! Gimme a squeeze!
I waited for you at the Huntsville Greyhound!
Man, I broke parole to see you. Man—
Baby baby baby—how you doing?
I’m doing good, myself! I’m traveling!
They call me Hostage Taker ’cause I took
Some hostages, and that’s my claim to fame.
Who is this guy? How come he don’t talk?
Brer Jenks has got hisself a Tar Baby.
[Sings] Mistah Blue-bird on mah shoul-dah!
OK OK OK let’s settle down.
I waited for you! First the Houston bus
And then the Dallas, and you never came!
That’s the day things started going wrong.
Parole boss say be here, or I’ll get mad.
You miss the meeting and he gets his sharpened
Fingers motorvating on that phone pad
Wop bop-a-lu-bop, a wop bam boom!—like that
He violates your ass, and you got warrants.
That’s what happens when the bus don’t come!
—How long has Brer Jenks been like this?
JOHN: I saw you on TV.
HT: —Now, don’t believe
Just every single thing that TV shows you.
JOHN: I didn’t say believe. I say I saw.
I saw you on there.
HT [with BJ’s jug]: Want a snort?…To fame!
Woo. Woo. That strangles up your vocal cords.
JOHN: How’d you get here, anyhow?
HT: I walked.
I walked across the fields. Across, across.
That’s why I’m all red dirt up past my knees.
…They let you wear your hair and beard in the joint?
JOHN: No. I been out a couple years.
HT: A couple?
JOHN: Yeah. Two years.
HT: Then what you wearing whites for?
Been gambling? Gambling treats you mean as drinking.
Either one, your wardrobe goes to hell.
Now, look at me. I’m mussed, I know, but look—
A brand-new suit. Use me as your example.
[Siren in the distance.]
—That’s that blue dog calling me. That skinny
Blue dog…[Of the cross:] It’s kinda Mexican, ain’t it?
JOHN: Yeah, it’s Mexican. And so’s my mother.
HT: So’s my mother? What’d you say about—
JOHN: No, mine. My mother’s Mexican, not yours.
HT: How do you know my mom ain’t Mexican?
She could be an African-Mexican.
I could be an Afro-Hispanic-American,
So leave each other’s mother out of it.
Did you just see a worm crawl outa my brain?
Some days I feel screwier’n Japanese jazz!
Been starin’ in the pit of Hell so long
My eyes are bleeding and I’m damn near blind,
But that’s all right…
Let me introduce myself.
JOHN: You introduced yourself.
HT: I introduced myself? OK, OK,
Then let you introduce yourself to me.
JOHN: I’m John Cassandra.
HT: And this here’s Preacher Jenks.
Me and the preacher have a history.
I’m charmed I’m sure. ’Cause I heard all about you,
Uh-huh, the Cross Boy and the preacher man.
JOHN: What’s your purpose here?
HT: My purpose on this earth?
JOHN: No. On this porch.
HT: I’m just here long enough to cure my nerves.
BILL JENKS: My age, you get to feel this vernal weather
Down in the gristle…
HT: Brother Bill!
BILL JENKS: Quite so!
Is it autumn, or is it spring? I can’t decide.
We’ve got this barometric memory
That kind of senses atmospheric change
Based on what we’ve seen since childhood.
JOHN: Bill,
Will you shut up?
HT: How long has he been like this?
BILL JENKS: It’s a proper question.
JOHN: No, the question
Is how long are you gonna stay like this?
BILL JENKS: Either until autumn or until spring.
Old HT! I saw you on the TV.
Let’s us have a drink.
HT: Brer Jenks! I’m out!
…You’re out! We’re out! It’s time!—We hit that number!
Baby, don’t you remember? I finally hit that number.
I pulled some mischief, slick as baby shit—
Guess where? Do you know where? In Canada!
Been up there for a year. I got a car,
I got a name, I got ID, the total package,
I had it all up there, but I missed home.
Not home in Willard. Home back at the Walls.
I missed that smell. The voices echoing.
The same day over and over and no way out.
I kind of missed that feeling like you’re trapped.
BILL JENKS: What I hear, you ain’t gonna miss it long.
HT: I feel like I’m full of poison—emotional poison,
Physical poison, and every kind of poison.
My mind got fat. My dick won’t make no juice.
What are they thinking about in Canada?
They make you feel ridiculous…
BILL JENKS: It wasn’t Canada that made you famous.
There ain’t no show called Canada’s Most Wanted.
Nope, I believe they showed your photograph
On one they call America’s Most Wanted,
Had it on now several Sairdy’s running,
Account of this thing you did in Ellersburg,
And not the Canadian Ellersburg, no sir,
This other Ellersburg down here in Texas,
The Texas Ellersburg. A quite bad thing.
HT: I know.—Well, it looks like…well, it looks like…
BILL JENKS: Well, HT, it looks like a double killing.
It looks like they think you did it, like they think
You did this double killing up there. So they think.
Siren in the distance—
HT: It was a desperate situation, Brother Jenks.
BILL JENKS: They’re looking for you, Brother Hostage Taker.
HT: Don’t go believing everything you hear.
JOHN: Sirens? Sirens are hard not to believe.
HT: That’s just a train. The good old K.C. Flyer.
BILL JENKS: They want you, they want you bad, the worst. “The most.”
HT: I’m saying it was a desperate situation.
BILL JENKS: How could it be desperate? There’s nothing there,
It’s Ellersburg—a crossroads with a store,
A gasoline pump, and a Coke machine.
It’s like a scene from 1957.
Thing still dispenses Yoo-Hoo for a dime.
HT: Man, you don’t get it, I’m here, I’m here.
BILL JENKS: And Mom and Pop slopped over on the floor—
Which one was Mom? Which one was Pop? We’ll wait
On Ellersburg’s most talented mortician
To figure that one out.
HT: He had a gun!
BILL JENKS: Hey, so do I. You gonna blow my head off?
HT: What are you saying? Man, we have a deal!
Twelve months in a prison cell together—
BILL JENKS: Hey now, what was that movie, what was that movie…
The Defiant Ones, with Sidney Poitier.
“Charlie Potato, Charlie Potato!”…Boys,
I’m going to Huntsville, Texas,
boys,
To raise this bastard’s mother from the dead.
JOHN: Thank God!
BILL JENKS: No. Get back. There’s foodstuff caught in your beard.
JOHN: Thank God. Thank God!
HT: So—where do I come in?
BILL JENKS: Come in?
HT: Come in. Come in.
BILL JENKS: You don’t come in.
HT: I don’t?
BILL JENKS: You don’t come in. Where would you fit?
HT: That’s what I’m asking in this stupid place
With sirens screaming awful bloody murder
And blah blah blah—now where do I fit in?
BILL JENKS: Sidney…You’ve got no role in my movie.
My movie’s got a cast of one.
It’s all about this preacher silhouetted
Against a gory sunset outside Dallas
Tyin’ up a rope to lynch himself.
That’s the picture I’m trying to get across.
Kind of a tragic silly mystery.
HT: Man, we have a deal, we have a deal!
BILL JENKS: What deal? When did I ever make a bargain
With such as you?
HT: Man!—twelve months in a cell?
A solid year? Me smelling your shit
And listening to you playing with yourself,
Coughing, farting, talking in your dreams,
Crying all night long the first eight weeks?
—And I remember the night you didn’t cry,
First night you slept the night entirely through.
I didn’t sleep all night that night, for joy.
BILL JENKS: Ah! Those were the days! And then they stopped.
HT: Brother, Brother. I waited at the Greyhound…
Do you want to know why those people got killed?
BILL JENKS: There was this guy I knew, he was a—well, you know,
I don’t know what you’d call him, maybe a faggot?
That what you are? A homosexual?
HT: O, God, O, God, this ain’t my people here!
I got to get with my people, not these people!
Gimme a sign!
…Do you know why that mom and pop got killed?
Can you ever guess why those two persons died?
BILL JENKS: ’Cause buckshot blew their brains up.
HT: Can you guess?
Or should I trace it back for you? Listen:
I’m all set up, I got a job, I’m in a suit,
I’m in the Houston Public Library.
Carpet. Silence. Air-conditioning.
Holding Street Rod News in my black fingers.
The time has come to buy a powerful new
Machine, because I’m free…White guy comes over.
Now, I’m just looking at my magazine—
I’m looking at pictures of engines, powerful engines—
Look up, ’cause now he’s going hem-hem-hem
With his throat. I say to myself: White man
Coming up in the public library…
Light brown hair, blue eyes, the one
Explain your options on the life insurance,
Sell you a washer-dryer combination.
I’m thinking, First my beautiful suit, and now
This white man in the public library.
Not young, but not exactly middle-age,
Just nonchalant, you know, ain’t nothing to him.
He says, “This is my name,” and all like that,
White man in the public library.
“Don’t get me wrong, I gotta show you something.
Come over here to this part of the library
For compact discs and videos and all,”
And I don’t know is he a cop, some Mormon…
What am I gonna do but follow him there?
He leads me like we’re on safari, man,
We’re gonna capture something with our stealth,
White man in the public library.
Like we’re stalking on a quiet field of birds
Or moving through a church,
And there, across the room,
White man in the public library
Shows me a beautiful young black woman.
She’s standing by the racks, what can I say,
Looking like a lump of Lawd Have Mercy.
Short sleeveless dress of graphite gray,
Smooth black arms, incredible black face,
Had that sticky-outy posture like she tore
Herself from Vogue or Ebony or Cosmo;
The tiniest littlest dab of spit would melt her.
He showed her to me.
He looks at me with this face,
Like a bird dog saying with his face, There,
Master, I didn’t leave
No marks of my teeth in her feathers.
JOHN:…Then what?…
What then?
HT: Then we stood still. And then she moved. And then
She passed into the rest of things.
And him, he’s gone like he weren’t never there,
White man in the public library,
And I felt very confused. I said, I said,
“I can-not stop being confused by this.
I stand here in my slick new suit, so clean…
A white man shows me a black, beautiful woman…”
JOHN: The same suit you have on.
HT: This very suit.
JOHN: There’s not much left of it.
HT: Why, no, not much.
It’s done been eat to bits in all the confusion,
The ongoing saga of my continuing
Confusion, which has not stopped, from then till now,
You see, because I continue to feel confused.
They’ll never let me out, I don’t suppose.
BILL JENKS: Nope. Calendars and clocks, my man.
And bars and walls and years, et cetera.
HT: Do you understand a little better now?
Now do you understand why I killed those people?
JOHN: I know who understands: God understands.
HT: God is just a little jumped-up white man.
That was God in the Houston library.
White man in the public library.
…I can’t stop the thoughts,
I’m cookin’ too hot!
[Leaving]
My suit?…Take a look at yours!
BILL JENKS: Give you a sign? Here’s a sign…He gone—
Into the sea of Spam and Wonder bread…
Sidney. Sidney. I ain’t Tony Curtis.
I’m strictly Looney Tunes! I’m Daffy Duck!
Woo-woo! Woo-woo.
Sirens; train whistle.
JOHN: …Give me something of yours.
BILL JENKS: Something? My what. My shoe? What something? What?
JOHN: Something that’s lucky or important or that means
Something.
BILL JENKS: Lucky.
JOHN: Like your Derringer.
BILL JENKS: I’m not sure I’m in favor of gun control.
JOHN: We glue it to the cross, and you’ll be healed.
BILL JENKS: I’m not sure I’m in favor of being healed.
JOHN: This is how the Mexicans cure their troubles.
BILL JENKS: By gluing items on the cross. With Jesus.
JOHN: Trinkets, yeah, things that have touched them, tokens,
Things to represent their scars and glories.
To sacrifice. To crucify their sorrows.
Train whistle.
BILL JENKS:…It’s always the most relentlessly simple things
That tear at you and break your heart. Like trains.
[Sirens]
SO LONG, SIDNEY!
JOHN: Maybe he can’t be helped.
But did you really have to be a shit?
JOHN exits into the house.
BILL JENKS:…Where on earth did you get that silly notion?
Don’t you know what the emblems are about?
Th
ey don’t stick pagan symbols on the cross.
Them Catholics have the whole thing codified,
Everything’s got a meaning—all this stuff:
These crossbones are the bones of Adam,
Said to be buried at the foot of the true cross.
These are the hammers and these the nails that banged
The Savior to the tree in agony.
These aren’t lucky dice—except for the guy
Who won his garments—they cast lots, remember?
The Roman soldiers gambled for his clothes.
They stripped Christ bare, and one went home a winner.
Where do you get this stuff? Here is the sun
Whose face the storm obscured when Christ was killed,
And here is the moon that bled. Where do you get
Your silly notions, John?…The moon that bled.
BILL JENKS raises his Derringer, takes aim: CLICK.
BLACKOUT
Scene 2
Twenty days later.
Corner of Tenth and J Streets in front of Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas.
JOHN CASSANDRA, costumed as a clown, poses on his cross.
Hubbub, voices O.S. [fading out]: Shoot her full of poison,
Throw her in a grave!
Shoot her full of poison,
Throw her in a grave!
[others:] Two! Four! Six! Eight!
There’s no rhyme or reason
To capital punishment!
Two! Four! Six! Eight!
There’s no rhyme or reason
To capital punishment!
[others:] Justice for the innocent!
Killing for the killers!
Justice for the innocent!
Killing for the killers!
Lights up on Public Information Office across the street from the Walls:
JERRY and STEVIE. JERRY at the window.
JERRY: Stevie, has Texas gone and joined the circus?
Or is it the universe, or just my life
That’s grown a populace of runts and freaks?
STEVIE: Jerry, should I toss this coffee out?
JERRY: I have a daughter, Stevie: you touch my daughter,
I’m gonna jump straight up somebody’s ass.
Is that a concept of too wide a girth
To fit inside our brains?
Soul of a Whore and Purvis Page 8