Frolic of His Own

by William Gaddis

  THOMAS

  (WITH FEIGNED LACK OF INTEREST, HOLDING UP A LETTER)

  Two hundred barrels of mess pork, shipped to Washington?

  BAGBY

  (TAKING IT WITH A SHOW OF INTERESTED IGNORANCE)

  Possibly . . .

  THOMAS

  Sabres at four dollars and twelve cents ‘for ornamental purposes’? Are they for the mines?

  BAGBY

  (TAKING THE LETTER)

  No sir, a small commission . . .

  THOMAS

  Small? And priced to the government at eight dollars? And here, pants at two dollars fifty cents on government contract for five?

  BAGBY

  (TAKING THE LETTER, DISTRACTED)

  Yes, five . . . dollars a pair, it may mean? At two fifty each? And . . . was there nothing else, then?

  THOMAS

  No. Not if we’ve worms in the mines, that is.

  BAGBY

  . . . Worms?

  THOMAS

  (HOLDING OUT A PAPER)

  A shipment of vermifuges, from something called Pfizers in Brooklyn. You signed this order?

  BAGBY

  I . . . I didn’t know what they was sir. ‘Vermifuges.’

  THOMAS

  Will you tell me the meaning of all this, then? You knew the cost and the mark-up, and that was enough . . .

  BAGBY

  (INTERRUPTING DEFERENTIALLY)

  There, sir, you mustn’t be . . . outraged . . . An occasional small commission that passes my way. There, and an’t it a man’s place to come forward and offer a hand? Yes, with times what they are, and the government fighting to preserve the Union, and equality for people like ourselves? A bit of business on the side now and again, when I find I can help things along, a chance to be of assistance . . .

  (TAKING A PAPER FROM HIS INSIDE COAT POCKET)

  To help out a friend . . . as you called me . . .

  (HANDING THE PAPER TO THOMAS)

  To lend a hand against fate, you might say, I might let you into this . . . Not that you’re off on a boat trip. It’s a marine insurance policy indeed, but you needn’t go anywhere to collect on it. It’s a new thing, an accident clause. You don’t even need to drown, an accident in the parlour will suffice. Surely you’ve paid fifteen cents for twenty four hours protection on a train journey from loss of life and limb? This don’t end overnight, it goes on, on until you collect. Yes, I have it myself, you know, and it’s them plays the game, this company here, making up odds against death and accident, and nobody loses. It’s a fine new dodge for all concerned. Why, you may manage things anywhere, and collect what they call the principal for no more than the loss of both hands, feet, eyes, or a winning combination . . .

  THOMAS

  (THRUSTING THE PAPER BACK AT HIM EXASPERATED)

  A fine new dodge! Is this how you spend all your time here? And that parade past your desk, your Pfizers and Brooks Brothers peddling worm medicine and one-legged trousers . . .

  BAGBY

  (BURSTING OUT DEFIANTLY)

  And what would you have! No, it’s all honest goods. I’ve broken no law. Do you think it’s like the army buying sand for sugar, and being sold rye for coffee? paying for leather no better than brown paper? The governor of the state himself, and I’ve met him, before the war was a week old he’d contracted for ten thousand suits of clothes and a half million dollars was gone in a month. And a single firm here last November got a state contract for eight hundred and fifty thousand yards of army cloth. A million three hundred thousand dollars to a single firm! And I should hang back? When a beef contract runs from three dollars ninety cents to eight dollars thirty a hundred pounds, on the hoof at that? And you ask me to hesitate?

  (COMING IN MORE CLOSELY, IN CONFIDENCE)

  I’ve a friend now, he’s a major for the moment, his company got a contract for ten thousand head of cattle at eight cents a pound and he let it out very next day at six and a half. Thirty two thousand dollars overnight, without the risk of a penny! Do you think he ever saw the cattle? He knows as much of cows as I do of these vermifuges, and here was thirty two thousand two hundred and sixty eight dollars and seventeen cents overnight, without risking a penny. Why, before the new war secretary came in there was feed contracts let for mixed oats and corn, and who knew the difference when the ratio was switched about? Must you know oats from corn? or only the difference in price. And who knew what had happened, the mules? blown to pieces with grape shot when they’d fairly finished eating?

  (HALF TO HIMSELF)

  And how long can it last now, what’s left . . .

  THOMAS

  (IMPATIENTLY)

  Last?

  (RISING ABRUPTLY, WALKS TO WINDOW LEFT, MUTTERING)

  It can’t!

  BAGBY

  (HALF FOLLOWING)

  Now they’ve called up three hundred thousand volunteers, right here in the state alone? Even if some of them’s already saying it’s only a war to free the naygers . . .

  THOMAS

  (IMPATIENTLY)

  It can’t last. Don’t you read the papers?

  BAGBY

  Three million naygers . . . !

  THOMAS

  Since the battle of Seven Days? McClellan’s great campaign of invasion that was to destroy the Southern armies and capture Richmond . . . what happened? It went to pieces in front of Lee and Jackson. And with Lee in command now? The Southern armies have been sweeping north ever since. They’ll be here before summer’s out.

  BAGBY

  (ALMOST WISTFULLY)

  Yes, and then . . . that’s all there is . . . All at once, one fine day, things is only what they might have been again, and there you are. It’s all over before you know it, it ends up and leaves you behind.

  (INTENTLY)

  No. A man must put himself forward. You get my meaning, sir? There’s no harm in trying to better myself a bit, now? While it lasts? To better myself while I can, more like you if I may say? A gentleman . . . ?

  THOMAS

  (LAUGHS DISTASTEFULLY, RETURNING TO THE DESK)

  If you like, Bagby.

  BAGBY

  (AN EDGE CREEPING INTO HIS VOICE, PARADE SOUNDS OFFSTAGE)

  And is it so different, then? You may laugh at influence, like them Brooks Brothers have that I told you about. But isn’t influence the next thing to power itself? And power no more than the advantage of the man who can make things go forward, staying inside the law? That’s justice enough, isn’t it? What works? Yes, you may afford to mock at influence, with your resources spread out there wherever the eye can see . . .

  THOMAS

  (ABRUPTLY, CURBING ONE HAND IN THE OTHER)

  This . . . blackness, wherever the eye can see . . . ?

  Distant parade sounds have now given way entirely to tumult.

  Dirt? and strife, do you hear it? Yes, are these my resources? Even without it, without the strike, that clanking machinery tearing the earth, and the darkness, digging deeper, darker, men whose voices are the clang of metal, whose lives are death and whose white faces . . .

  (TURNING TO BAGBY, ABRUPTLY MOCKING)

  Do you know what coal is, Bagby? that it’s death by the billion in every handful?

  BAGBY

  Ah, but its uses . . .

  THOMAS

  Uses? No, is that like owning a . . . a thing for itself? A place? Where there’s order and life? The order of everything growing, alive . . . and the sun itself is a part of things, not the blazing stranger that it is here, lighting up ugliness better hidden, the lives of men who bring darkness up with them from under the earth to spill it out . . . listen . . .

  Sounds of tumult erupt closer.

  (REMOTELY, LOOKING OUT)

  Yes, ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,’ do you know that one, Bagby? ‘Where moth and rust corrupt, and thieves break through and steal . . . ’

  BAGBY

  There, it’s using things that keeps rust off of them, and the moth and the thief ha
ve no chance . . .

  THOMAS

  (ALMOST RECOVERING HIS PATRONIZING IMPATIENCE)

  Uses! Your uses be damned! For what then, more uses?

  BAGBY

  (QUIETLY SHREWD)

  And what would you do with your place that you speak of, to own ‘for itself’? A farm, to grow fat like a vegetable?

  THOMAS

  (FEELINGLY)

  No, in all that a man can . . . take hold and grow, and be something real to other men, to do something, something real in public life . . .

  (BREAKING OFF, AS THOUGH HE’S GONE TOO FAR BEFORE BAGBY, ADDS SOMEWHAT LOFTILY AS HE RETURNS TO DESK)

  Never mind, no, you wouldn’t understand me . . .

  BAGBY

  (FOLLOWING HIM, OBLIGINGLY)

  But I would indeed sir, for it’s politics, an’t it? And an’t that just uses, and a means to an end then? Your farm? And does it stay the same, the end then, whatever the uses, them that gets it and them that it’s used for?

  (COMING ROUND FRONT OF DESK, MORE CANNILY OBLIGING)

  You may find your free white savages here all strife and darkness if you like, and your black slavery part of life and order, things growing, you say? Like the . . . plantation you speak of? No, it all has its uses, that’s all, and what’s better using than politics? for this plantation, as you say? This place . . . with the shares, that you’re after? With the curious name . . . ‘Quaintness,’ is it . . . ?

  THOMAS

  (SITTING SLOWLY BACK, STARING AT HIM)

  What . . . what do you know of it? What business of yours . . . !

  BAGBY

  Ah, not mine, not mine at all sir. I know nothing more than I heard, just in passing, from a banking acquaintance . . .

  THOMAS

  (CRUMPLING PAPERS ON DESK IN DISMAYED EXASPERATION)

  By . . . heaven! Your bankers here . . . call themselves bankers, do they? Talking over my business in public?

  BAGBY

  (HASTILY REASSURING)

  In privacy you may be assured sir, and only with them that they trust . . . If you’d spoke to me first, now, we might have bought these shares up cheap. Then there’d be nobody about, pressing you for the profits as they’re ready to do to you now . . . Them that owns them, now they know what you’re after, there’s no telling the price, with your resources spread about here wherever the eye can see . . . The streets an’t safe for you wandering out alone, and . . . you value yourself very high, I know. It’s not to be a safe night out, not for anyone but most not for you. There, that insurance I spoke of earlier . . . ? You’re a very good bet to collect!

  THOMAS

  (RISING TO HIM BEHIND THE DESK, TENSELY)

  I’ve fought that, do you hear? I’ve fought it, and I’ve won!

  BAGBY

  (BACKING OFF A STEP, AS THOMAS STARTS ROUND DESK TO HIM)

  Yes, you didn’t find that scar in a parlour, I suppose? No . . . a bit nearer the battlefield I should imagine.

  (AS THOMAS DRAWS CLOSE TO HIM)

  I . . . I’ve seen a bit of that too, you know.

  THOMAS

  (STOPS, LOOKING AT HIM)

  You? the battlefield?

  BAGBY

  Why yes, at Bull Run you know, I . . .

  Offstage sounds of violence increase, with breaking of glass as THOMAS slowly takes BAGBY’s arms and speaks with the impulsive appeal of having found here a comrade in arms, an opponent only in battle’s appearances since both fought the same thing, death.

  THOMAS

  You . . . ? At Manassas?

  BAGBY

  (UNCERTAIN, DRAWING BACK)

  Why yes, yes but I . . .

  THOMAS

  (ALMOST HUNGRILY)

  You . . . my opposite in every way . . .

  BAGBY

  (CONCERNED, STEPPING FROM REACH, HASTENING TO EXPLAIN)

  No, no, I was just there in the gallery, a spectator as you might say. Yes, this senator I spoke of? with a lady friend, all as a lark. But there, we’d no sooner got our picnic laid out on a spot that gave us a view than a soldier on horseback rides through it, smashing bottles every which way. Here, a bit of flying glass . . . I’m marked from it still, do you see?

  (OFFERS HIS WRIST TO THOMAS, WHOSE LOOK TURNS TO ONE OF THOROUGH CONTEMPT AS HE TURNS ON HIS HEEL ROUND BEHIND THE DESK)

  The whole army of the Potomac rode over that picnic cloth, every man jack. I lost a boot myself before we was safe back in Washington . . .

  (AT A LOSS, UNABLE TO UNDERSTAND THOMAS’ REACTION)

  The lady was very put out . . .

  They stare at one another as offstage sounds die into silence.

  THOMAS

  (WITH A STERN EFFORT, SEATED BEHIND THE DESK)

  Listen to that! What’s the meaning of it? I tell you, I will have order here! Obedience, yes, to authority, things as they should be, and that brought to an end.

  BAGBY

  (HELPLESSLY)

  What, sir?

  THOMAS

  (VEHEMENTLY)

  All that . . . outrage, that . . . chaos, do you hear?

  BAGBY

  (RETIRING UPSTAGE RIGHT, ALMOST PLAINTIVELY)

  If we can’t crack a skull here and there . . .

  THOMAS

  And Bagby!

  (BAGBY STOPS)

  This scar? For your information, this scar that you wondered about? It was an accident, it happened . . . a fall from a horse . . .

  As BAGBY stands upstage right, facing THOMAS with a look of shrewd understanding taking place of bafflement in his face, sound of crashing glass offstage and a quick fade-out.

  Toot! toot toot!

  —Thank God.

  —No sit down Christina, wait. That’s only the first scene, I’m just calling Ilse for . . .

  —Mister Crease? Where’s the . . .

  —Down that hall, past those boxes it’s the second door on the right. Now. Was any of that familiar? Who’s seen the movie.

  —It was gross.

  —I’m sure it was, Frank, that’s not what I mean. Did any . . .

  —I’m not Frank, I’m Jed. This is Frank.

  —All right then, Jed. Or Frank, any of you, did anyone recognize, oh Ilse? Will you bring me a glass of that Pinot Grig . . .

  —Ilse? I think he’d prefer a nice cup of tea.

  And yes, there were certainly movie scenes in the offices looking out over the mines, the noise, the smoke, but this character Bagby, they remembered a minor character in the movie, kind of a straight man, a foil, short, fat, foul mouthed, —a kind of a Punchinello, Oscar, real opera buffa, Bagby in one or two crude dimensions maybe, a stock character, a comic device. But where had he come from? They just took Bagby and made him an Italian to cover their tracks, like changing Livingston to Siegal? —Look at it that way Oscar, they just claim parody, the worse this cartoon character of theirs is, the more they hold Bagby with all his posturings around up for ridicule the stronger their parody defense.

  —All right but listen, what comes next. Listen to what comes next it’s a specific scene, there are five or six characters they couldn’t take it, they couldn’t just take it and call it a parody . . .

  That evening, or one soon thereafter. A scrim curtain scene of a street corner, dark toward stage left. Some tattered evidence of a parade earlier that day, such as patriotic bunting, litters street, and torn recruiting posters deck the walls. The main illumination shed on the characters in this short scene comes from offstage right in flashes with the illusion of a fire with increasing steadiness and brilliance.

  As the scene opens all is still but for a sound from abovestage left, of a child crying, not loud or desperate but mounting from a whimper. THOMAS appears walking slowly from downstage right, head bowed, unaware of the figure awaiting him near stage center, a SOLDIER dressed in the worn blue uniform of the Union army and displaying a decided limp, played by the same person who plays WILLIAM in Act I but made up a good twenty years older so there may be no confusion t
hat it is WILLIAM. He is barefoot, his shoes knotted by their laces over his slumped shoulder.

  SOLDIER

  (STANDING OUT IN THOMAS’ PATH, HIS HAND ON THOMAS’ ARM)

  Sir . . . ?

  (AS THOMAS STARTS, STEPPING BACK IN ALARM, CONFRONTS HIM)

  If you’ve a moment? You’ll understand. You . . . you look like you’ve seen it yourself . . .

  THOMAS

  (RECOVERING, BRUSQUELY)

  What’s the meaning of this?

  SOLDIER

  (HANDING OVER PAPERS)

  I’m not begging. Here, I’m an honourable man. I want nothing for nothing.

  THOMAS

  (BEWILDERED)

  What’s this?

  SOLDIER

  Four months’ soldier’s pay’s what it is. It’s yours for the price of three. With clothing benefits there at three fifty a month that’s sixty six dollars all told for fifty, yours for fifty dollars gold.

  (AS THOMAS STEPS BACK LOOKING AT HIM ALARMED, CONFUSED)

  Or paper, then. Gold or paper then, damn it!

  THOMAS

  No, but . . . why mine? What do you mean?

  SOLDIER

  (BECOMING BELLIGERENT)

  I mean you may cash it and I may never, that’s what I mean! There’s been no pay master, that’s what I mean, and they told us it was over, that the whole damn bloody thing would be finished, and now I’m called back to my company. Can my children eat them papers? Can I leave them here without a penny and the chance I’ll never come back at all? They’re used to food and clothing, that’s my mistake, and I’ll leave them money before I go . . . if you’ll . . . buy it?

  THOMAS

  (HORRIFIED, THRUSTING PAPERS AT HIM)

  But . . . by heaven! You ask me to . . . would that be just? Do you think I could . . . buy your pay? What do I look like?

  SOLDIER

  (ANGRILY, GRABBING PAPERS FROM HIM)

  Don’t get high and mighty with me, by God! and . . . to tell me what’s just! When I’ve seen your damned justice swallowed up in more suffering pain and fire . . . With a pound of grape shot in my leg, and does that make you the better man? What do you look like in your damn fine boots? Yes, I’d like to see you taking my place in the line now, going back in . . . !