—You actually, you like Oscar?
—Always have to like a man that’s at the end of his rope, came over the table to her in a cloud of smoke and then, piercing her through it, toot! toot!
—My God why did I ever dig that thing up, you expect him to come wheeling around that blind corner from the hall on that awful tricycle he was still riding when his legs were so long that he could hardly, Oscar? I’m in here with, look out!
—Well. You finally got here.
—And he’s been sitting here with the clock running since wait, will you just park over here by the windows before you knock these cups over?
—But my students, aren’t they here yet?
—What on earth would your students be doing here.
—Because, Christina. Because we’re going to go over these points for the complaint, Mister Basie’s seen the movie now and while we go through the rest of the play he can note down the things they’ve stolen and . . .
—And these dense students of yours will sit here and applaud?
—They can have the chance to get a real sense of the complicated issues that were at stake in the Civil War I should have thought of it before, having them read the parts aloud and feeling they’re taking part in the whole atmosphere of the . . .
—No wait. You can’t mean you’re going to have them read your play to us out loud? Here? Now?
—They’re bright talented kids Christina, they just need to be stimulated maybe some of them have even seen the movie and can point out . . .
—You mean you’re going to put on this circus while Mister Basie just sits here with the clock running? Is that why I just spent something like two hundred dollars getting all these copies made? Is there any earthly reason to have ten copies?
—Probably need more than that if we get in deeper Mrs Lutz, see but now you have copies Oscar maybe I could just take one along and then talk on the phone later?
—Oscar will you listen to him? Mister Basie’s trying to tell you that you can save time and money if he takes a copy with him and reads it himself, couldn’t you have simply mailed one to him? without dragging him all the way out here? and then discussed it on the phone? Isn’t that why they invented the ungodly thing in the first place? to save people from tramping around the countryside on some stupid errand that no one in his right mind would, how many of these socalled students do you expect.
—Maybe only a dozen or so, I left the message that it would help their grades and . . .
—My God. Listen, I want that two hundred dollars I spent on those copies.
—Did you get a receipt? I’ll need it for tax . . .
—I did not get a receipt! Simply give me the two hundred dollars.
—All right but, later yes listen, before they get here where are my glasses, listen. This might be useful in my complaint Mister Basie listen, it’s a letter of Bernard Shaw talking about making movies from plays he says here ‘set your analytical faculty, if you have any, to tabulate all the techniques involved in these extraordinary exhibitions . . . ’
—Oscar, please . . .
—‘Up to a certain point it pays. Most of the studios seem to live by it. But in such studios the dramatist can find no place. They know that they can do without him.’
—Oscar for God’s sake what has this got to do with . . .
—’They don’t even know, poor devils, that there is such a thing as a dramatic technique. Get drama and picture making separate in your mind, or you will make ruinous mistakes’ and then he says . . .
—Might come in handy later on Oscar, see all we want right now is a few clearcut causes of action, opening guns you might say like this rejection, show they had their hands on it. You found that letter?
—I . . .
—Can’t you simply say no Oscar? that you had that poor woman hauling a hundred heavy boxes down all those stairs and you don’t really know whether it’s in any of them? One letter, you expect to find one piece of paper in this whole mess, you’ve saved every letter anyone ever wrote you God only knows why they bothered, there are letters all over the place. What about that bundle you had me cart in to the hospital for no earthly reason but to cart them back out here, if you can’t bear to simply throw them away you’ve a marvelous chance to get rid of them haven’t you? this socalled historical society down there begging to add them to their distinguished collection?
—Why! For some doddering old women to paw through them wheezing over their sacred past, I’ve got my own archive haven’t I? And this family correspondence they already claim to have should be in it too, it’s mine isn’t it? Ours?
—Why don’t you ask your lawyer, he’s sitting right here with the clock running.
—I don’t have to ask anyone! It’s our family correspondence, it’s ours Mister Basie isn’t it?
—Might have some trouble contesting who owns the actual letters but what they say, that still belongs to whoever said it, whoever wrote the letter, father, grandfather, grandmother, the rights pass right on down to the survivors. Might not be that bad an idea just to go ahead and register the copyright in your name, that way if some problem comes along you . . .
—Yes well do it then, you’ve got your yellow pad there write it down, can we do it?
—Just need some particulars, where they’re deposited, who they . . .
—He didn’t even know they existed till he heard from this preposterous historical society, he’s probably lost that letter too.
—What do you mean too!
—I mean this rejection letter you’re so pleased with that Mister Basie’s sitting here with his clock running waiting for you to produce.
—Don’t have to produce it right this second Oscar, state in the complaint they had this access and face the problem of proof when we have to, taking a little chance on these reasons they gave for rejecting it when we try to claim breach of implied contract as a cause for action but . . .
—They weren’t reasons at all, nobody could have written that letter who’d really read the play it was probably just some twit of a secretary who typed up a form letter for Livingston to sign and . . .
—What Mister Basie is trying to tell you, Oscar, is that your Livingston Kiester person had to have read it if he was going to steal it, isn’t that what this whole asinine business is all about?
—Well he, that’s what I mean, would you believe anything he said? You can see how shifty he is just the way he’s kept changing his name yes and I want that in, fraud and deceit changing his name twice to cover his tracks to put in the complaint?
—Put it in Oscar, but this intent can be real hard to prove, why somebody goes and changes his name? Smoke took shape in a ring billowing gently upward in the thin sunlight, —now you take your name, suppose you just decided that you . . .
—I’ve certainly got no intention of changing it yes and that’s another thing, the way they’re advertising this based on a true story with this cheap vulgar movie defaming my grandfather what about that.
—Can’t defame the dead, Oscar.
—Well I’m not dead am I! Neither is Father, they got his decision reversed down there isn’t that what they wanted? Dragging our name through the mud what about me, what about my professional reputation if anybody thought I had anything to do with it, if . . .
—Oscar, look out the . . .
—Christina, please! Because I don’t care if you can’t defame the dead I want that in there, I don’t care if I can’t copyright my own grandfather I want that in this complaint for the very first cause of action because it is, because it will let them know immediately that they’re not just dealing with some, some nuisance.
—Oscar calm down, a dirty van just pulled in out there I think it’s your cast of thousands.
—Oh! Oh yes let them in, have Ilse let them in, are they coming in?
—My God.
They could all sit on the floor he thought, mainly concerned lest they waste any time, passing round copies, assigning pa
rts, sizing up the first act’s tribulations with a haste such that it might indeed have been he who had first labeled it superfluous pressing on, now, with all the urgency he’d endowed in his protagonist, to get out, to leave the South behind with all its sacred past and simpering postulates and seize reality by the throat in an office in a western Pennsylvania mining city, midsummer eighteen sixty two, Act II, Scene i.
Smoke and evidence of the colliery are visible at the large window, upstage left. At downstage left center a rather ponderous desk littered with mail and newspapers, two chairs, and the effect of being partitioned off in a large glassed enclosure from the rest of the office beyond, reached by a glass-paneled door upstage right. Outside the door, at upstage right center, is another desk, far less pretentious but more littered. Cabinets of some sort, acceptable in but hardly designed for an office, stand within the inner office downstage right.
Neatly but unostentatiously dressed, THOMAS is standing at a window left staring out, as MR BAGBY advances from upstage right toward downstage center desk. Despite a concerted effort at florid respectability, there is a seediness about BAGBY that goes beyond his overtight clothes: shrewd, pompous, ingratiating by turns, he is constantly eyeing his man and the main chance without missing any of the minor ones by the way.
BAGBY
Why, we’ve one shaft sunk four hundred and thirty eight feet, and you cannot expect men to have kindly thoughts down there, whoever they are. And now, the kind that’s come in, with the need for coal what it is? There’s foreigners and all manner of undesirables, with their striking and looking for trouble. They get down there in the dark together and think up some new deviltry the minute you’ve settled an old, you meet one demand for them and they’ll think up another. There’s no end to their ingratitude. No, they want a tap on the head now and again, as your uncle would say, to knock some gratitude back into them.
Edging up to the desk at downstage center as he talks, BAGBY twists his head to get a look at the letters opened there as THOMAS turns thoughtfully from the window and crosses to downstage center slowly, treating BAGBY in an almost humouring but patronizing way, and with an assumed reassurance he had not had in Act I.
THOMAS
My uncle has said all he had to say. I don’t know how I shall convince you, Bagby, if the sight of him didn’t, hunched lifeless here over his accounts, as you told me, one morning when you came in?
(PICKING UP PAPER, HOLDS IT OUT)
And his house up in Norwegian Street? Here’s a bill from the Pinkertons, for a guard on it. Who are you guarding, his ghost? I told you to sell that house, not to guard it.
BAGBY
But to sell it off now? Ah, for you to stay in it yourself, that’s another matter. I wouldn’t care to stay in it if I was you, of course, and the men in the temper they are. It wouldn’t be the first that they’d burned it to the ground, and you in it, watchman and all.
THOMAS
(IMPATIENTLY, SITTING DOWN AT THE DESK)
And why should they harm it? Haven’t I been fair to them? Don’t they know me by now? Yes, you’ve said so yourself, they know me for a just man. And has there been one accident? Even one, since I took up here?
(HOLDS BILL OUT TO BAGBY, RETURNING TO MAIL ON THE DESK)
No, here. I’ve told you, I want order.’ I want order here . . . but
(MUTTERING)
I won’t hire murderers . . .
BAGBY
(STANDING BEFORE THE DESK, WITH MOCK AFFRONT)
Murder? Now how many’s been murdered then? Surely a head knocked in now and again an’t murder? And when two days later you’ll see the same head bobbing up and asking for it again?
(PICKING UP A NEWSPAPER, POINTING OUT HEADLINE)
Here, ‘Coal operators may be forced to suspend operations until the militia draft is ended.’ You’re an owner, whatever else you may be, fair or not. And that’s reason enough for them to burn you and your house to the ground right there. Do you see . . . ? where it speaks of the ‘lawless foreign element’ that’s come in, with the demand for labour what it is now?
(PAUSING TO TAKE A JAWBREAKER FROM HIS WAISTCOAT POCKET AND POP IT INTO HIS MOUTH)
When men behave like savages, after all, with no respect for law and order, how must they be treated? Why, like savages! Take them one by one they may be fine fellows, as you say, but get them together they’ll rise up and go wild with their brawling and drink and howling for justice, with no respect for decent people like ourselves.
(CRUNCHING DOWN ON THE JAWBREAKER)
You must knock a bit of justice into them now and again . . .
(SITTING A HAM FAMILIARLY UP AGAINST THE DESK, LEANING ACROSS)
And I might add, sir, you’ve made no friends here since you came, and it’s not as though you mightn’t need them, before you’re done.
THOMAS
(SITTING BACK, HALF DERISIVELY)
We’ve made friends, haven’t we Bagby?
BAGBY
(IMPULSIVELY CANDID, AS THOUGH TAKEN OFF GUARD)
I hope so sir . . .
(RECOVERING HIS CONFIDENTIAL DETACHMENT)
Ah, but I meant . . . them with influence. The other mine operators, the foundry owners, the bankers . . . they wonder about you, now and again, you know. I’ve stood up to them for you of course, but it’s some of the changes you’ve made for the men here, giving in to them where your uncle stood fast. It’s not . . . playing the game, you might say, doing such things on your own without consulting together . . . though I’ve told them, of course . . .
THOMAS
(AMUSED BUT ANNOYED)
Told them what.
BAGBY
(REASSURINGLY)
There, I haven’t repeated some of the things you’ve said, no. Of your being the master here with the men’s consent . . . no, have no fear of my repeating such things. I’ve stood up to them for you. But if you was to get out a bit more yourself . . .
THOMAS
(DISDAINFULLY, WAVING HAND TOWARD THE WINDOW)
Out? In that?
BAGBY
Out in society I mean to say, not tramping the streets alone at night, as you’ve done and unarmed at that. No, there’s some that pass through here, United States senators and the like, cultured people like yourself, and speaking the French language and such things, and your father that served in that embassy there . . . and then that you’ve seen a bit of the South, it don’t hurt in these times, you know, with many of them’s never been down there. And a bit of influence, now and again, it don’t hurt when you want things done . . .
(LEANING CLOSER OVER DESK, IN SPICY CONFIDENCE)
And then, if you cared to do yourself up a bit, that and move from the place you’ve been living up into a decent establishment, up in Mahantongo Street perhaps, dressed up a bit more in the fashion, you might say, instead of such worn clothes as mine here that’s all I can afford, why . . . I know of a lady or two who’d find it an honour . . .
THOMAS
(SARCASTICALLY)
And how would you have me dressed, Bagby? In a uniform . . . ?
(LOOKING AT A LETTER FROM TOP OF THE PILE)
From Brooks Brothers?
BAGBY
(DISCONCERTED, LOOKING ANXIOUSLY AT THE LETTER)
Ah, you . . . know the firm, sir? In New York?
(CRANING NECK TO LOOK AT THE LETTER)
Gentlemen’s clothiers . . . a fine old firm . . .
THOMAS
(HOLDING THE LETTER BACK, READS AND COMMENTS ACIDLY)
It sounds like just the place. Here’s a mention of a contract for ‘twelve thousand uniforms which were delivered at a net price of nine dollars fifty . . . ’ You’ve dealt with them?
BAGBY
(GUARDEDLY, BACKING OFF)
Not directly myself, I’ve had friends, influential friends . . .
THOMAS
(READS AND COMMENTS ACIDLY)
Yes, I’d like to see myself in one of these uniforms! Here, ‘of inferior materia
l, strange and outlandish cut, and ingenious construction . . . ’ I like that. ‘Pocketless, buttonless, and otherwise devoid of necessary entity . . . ’
BAGBY
(RECOVERING EXPANSIVELY, STANDING BACK)
There, that was all straightened out you know. The newspapers tried to make it a scandal but some very prominent people stepped in and straightened it out. There was some that let on that the state officers had conspired with the manufacturers there, but it was all straightened out. The soldiers was left with some rags, the Brooks Brothers with some money, and the people reading the papers with a new scandal. Why, some of them prominent people that straightened it out, I know them myself, you know, people with influence . . .
THOMAS
(COLDLY, HANDING OVER THE LETTER)
I gathered you did. This letter is addressed to you. And let me tell you, Bagby, when I want company, when I want influence I’ll find it myself. If there’s one thing money can buy that’s worth the having, it’s privacy, do you hear? Privacy . . . ! there. Where are the walls I’ve asked for here, instead of this glass cage I’m in?
BAGBY
But you wouldn’t be able to see what’s going on, with walls all about you and nowhere to look but the window? and out at the pits? Your uncle liked to see what went on. Here, he’d tap on the glass with the ring he wore, and I’d be in in an instant. A look from him through the glass, and I’d know what he wanted.
THOMAS
(CURTLY, RETURNING TO THE MAIL)
Now you know what I want, and you see to it.
BAGBY
(SOMEWHAT APPREHENSIVELY, LOOKING AT THE MAIL)
As you say sir, and I shall explain to the staff . . .
THOMAS
(WITH ANNOYANCE)
You need explain nothing to anyone. Do you think I come into this office every morning just to watch that parade of sharpers that lines up there at your desk?
BAGBY
(REPROVINGLY, BUT PREOCCUPIED TRYING TO SEE THE MAIL)
There’s problems come up with the mines you know, details . . . unless you might be referring to the man in here yesterday? Him with the hair down his back? Now there’s a man, sir, you wouldn’t speak so slighting if you knew what he’s up to. He’s an inventor, a rare fellow you might say, and I may let you into a confidence. He’s built a rapid-fire gun that will end the war in a day. Yes, once it’s brought into the line, once it’s seen by the right people . . . them with influence . . . was there . . . any more of my mail? that might be . . . mixed in?
Frolic of His Own Page 14