A Particle of Dread
Page 4
OTTO: Topsy-turvy.
JOCELYN: Stop it! We should go back now. We’re getting really silly. We may lose our minds out here altogether, and there we’d be—
OTTO: Where?
JOCELYN: Out here on the highway. Who would stop for a couple of doddering old loonies like us?
OTTO: Yes. (Sees something on the ground, far right.) Wait!
JOCELYN: What? (She stops; Otto points to something down right, at a distance.)
OTTO: What’s that?
JOCELYN: What?
OTTO: Don’t you see it? Push me over there. Come on, come on.
JOCELYN: Take it easy.
(JOCELYN pushes OTTO in the wheelchair over to where he’s pointing.)
OTTO: Stop. What’s that?
(She stops and looks down to where OTTO’s pointing.)
JOCELYN: (Trying to see the object.) What?
OTTO: (Pointing.) That right there! Don’t you see it?
JOCELYN: Oh.
OTTO: What’s that?
(JOCELYN crosses to a tiny piece of cloth sticking out of the floor, just the corner of something. She bends over and takes hold of it and begins pulling on it. Very slowly it comes out of the floor like a magic trick at the circus—the yellow blanket ANNALEE had wrapped the baby in. JOCELYN holds it up to the light, then lays it across OTTO’s lap.)
(BLACKOUT.)
Scene 21
(ANNALEE sings a cappella in the dark.)
ANNALEE:
In tears I was born
In tears I will die
And life in between
Is the history of tears
Scene 22
(Lights up on LANGOS as he comes strutting downstage, methodically macho, with a cell phone held tightly to his ear.)
LANGOS: So now let me get this story straight. Apparently he didn’t bleed to death from his ankle wound. Is that it? Some asshole saved him? Cut him down? Who? A hitchhiker? A lonely old man by the side of the road took pity on him? No, no, that can’t be the case. No! Look, who exactly are you? Just an anonymous caller doing me a favor? Well, thank you very much. And what am I supposed to do with this information? Huh? What? Say that again. He’s coming after me? (Laughs.) This punk kid is coming after me? You’ve got to be joking. Does he have any idea who he’s dealing with—who I am? Look, what’s he after? Money, is that it? How much does he want? Revenge? (Laughs.) Revenge? Who are you! Who does this kid think he is? My son! My son? No. No, no, you’ve got this whole thing screwed up! This is all a huge mistake! I have no son! No. Well, none to speak of. I mean, long ago, maybe. No, no, that’s not true. That was in another life. That was— You’re not his mother, are you? Is that it? No? Just a friend. An innocent friend. Of the family? No! There is no family! There never has been!
(He hangs up and storms off upstage as ANNALEE storms on. The two of them pass each other with no sign of recognition.)
Scene 23
ANNALEE: (To audience, charging to down center.)
Oh, tragedy, tragedy, tragedy, tragedy.
Piss on it.
Piss on Sophocles’s head.
I’d rather be dead.
I would.
No lie.
You think I’m kidding?
Why waste my time?
Why waste yours?
What’s it for?
Catharsis?
Purging?
Metaphor?
What’s in it for us?
You and me.
All this harking shit up.
I ask you.
I ask myself.
I do, I do.
I’d rather not know.
Tell you the truth.
I go around and around and around and around about it.
I do, I do.
Am I better off?
No!
Are you?
I go around and around and around and around.
And I wind up here.
Right back here.
Just like you.
Exactly like you do.
What’s in it for you and me?
A broken memory?
Scene 24
(Lights up on TRAVELER, seated on bench up center. OEDIPUS enters.)
OEDIPUS: So I see they’ve found you. Where were you hiding? Back with your goats again? Your burros.
TRAVELER: Someone informed me you’ve become keenly interested in the truth, suddenly.
OEDIPUS: We need to root this killer out. You’ve seen the state of things. They tell me nothing will get any better until we capture this maniac.
TRAVELER: Who’s they?
OEDIPUS: The powers that be.
TRAVELER: I rarely come to town. I’m not up-to-date on things.
OEDIPUS: But you know— You can’t help but know what’s become of the country.
TRAVELER: Yes. Everything’s gone to shit, hasn’t it?
OEDIPUS: Hell in a handbasket.
TRAVELER: All the guts are now on the table.
OEDIPUS: So can you help us? We need to eliminate this killer before it’s too late.
TRAVELER: You bear your fate and I’ll bear mine.
OEDIPUS: You can’t refuse this. They say you know who the killer is.
TRAVELER: The truth won’t save you. The truth will only bring you down.
OEDIPUS: I’ll be the judge of that!
TRAVELER: Not if I remain silent.
OEDIPUS: You can turn your back on your own country? Betray us all and ruin the state? If you can identify this criminal, it’s your duty—
TRAVELER: Duty! My duty? If you could only see what I’m saving you from.
OEDIPUS: There are ways we can extract information, you know?
TRAVELER: Torture cannot touch me. You ought to know that by now.
OEDIPUS: I’ll tell you what I think. I think it may be you we’re searching for. The mastermind behind it all. Part of some creeping conspiracy.
TRAVELER: You’re wildly splashing in your own madness now.
OEDIPUS: I’ll have you arrested and brought before the courts and exposed as a fraud and an informer!
TRAVELER: All right! All right! (Pause.) You want to know? You want to know? Here’s the thing you say you long for. The “truth” you say you want. Can you take it? Can you swallow it whole? You yourself are the sickness behind this utter collapse.
OEDIPUS: What? You can come stumbling in here, smelling of piss and goats, and make an accusation like this?
TRAVELER: You demanded it.
OEDIPUS: Say it again?
TRAVELER: It wasn’t clear the first time?
OEDIPUS: Say it again! Don’t play with me.
TRAVELER: You are the murderer you’re looking for! You weave your own doom!
OEDIPUS: Bastard! (OEDIPUS grabs him suddenly by the neck.)
TRAVELER: (Breaking free.) I see you haven’t lost your impulse!
OEDIPUS: (Backing away.) You drive me to it!
TRAVELER: You drive yourself.
OEDIPUS: Enough! You blind idiot!
TRAVELER: With both your naked healthy eyes, you are the one who cannot see.
OEDIPUS: What? What is it?! Tell me!
TRAVELER: The wretchedness of your own life. You can’t see in whose house you live, nor with whom. Who are your mother and father? Can you answer me that? Who are your blood parents?
OEDIPUS: Who?
TRAVELER: The double lash of your parents’ curse will whip you and send you reeling into exile.
OEDIPUS: What are you saying? (Screaming.) Who were my parents!! Who were they?
TRAVELER: This day will give you a father and break your heart.
Scene 25
(Lights up on ANNALEE, to one side.)
ANNALEE: I never thought of him as my brother. I don’t now. They say he is. They’ve all told me. The world knows, but I don’t. He’s my father and always will be. I’ll stick with him ’til his last days on earth. I’ll hold his hand. I’ll guide him. I’ll be his eyes. I love him. I always will. I know
what he’s done—what they say about him. It doesn’t matter. I love him still. It’s a love that knows no bounds. No boundaries. He will live in me forever.
Scene 26
(Lights up on JOCASTA and OEDIPUS facing each other. He is seated, facing a mirrored plate that JOCASTA holds up to his face.)
JOCASTA: So, now, just tell me what you see.
OEDIPUS: (Looking in mirror.) I see— I see—
JOCASTA: What is it?
OEDIPUS: My self. I see myself.
JOCASTA: Do you see anything resembling a murderer?
OEDIPUS: No.
JOCASTA: A skulking dog?
OEDIPUS: No.
JOCASTA: A brother to his own son?
OEDIPUS: No.
JOCASTA: To his own daughter?
OEDIPUS: No.
JOCASTA: A killer of his father?
OEDIPUS: No.
JOCASTA: Husband to his mother?
OEDIPUS: No.
JOCASTA: Then what is this old fool who told you all these lies anything other than insane?
OEDIPUS: He was trusted—
JOCASTA: By who?
OEDIPUS: My parents, for one.
JOCASTA: Your parents?
OEDIPUS: Yes. They found him trustworthy.
JOCASTA: And who were these parents of yours?
OEDIPUS: They were in the distant city of—
JOCASTA: Where?
OEDIPUS: Far away. I can’t remember.
JOCASTA: Where you grew up?
OEDIPUS: Yes.
JOCASTA: You can’t remember?
OEDIPUS: No.
JOCASTA: Then how would this old blind man know if you yourself can’t even remember? He was never there!
OEDIPUS: His story—
JOCASTA: What about it?
OEDIPUS: Something—
JOCASTA: All prophesies are hocus-pocus! Poppycock!
OEDIPUS: Something about—
JOCASTA: Tokenism! Cock-and-bull!
OEDIPUS: Something about the story—
JOCASTA: Treacherous! Mythomania!
OEDIPUS: Something about the story rang true!
(Silence. JOCASTA puts the mirror in front of him again.)
JOCASTA: What do you see, again?
OEDIPUS: I see—
JOCASTA: Yourself again.
OEDIPUS: I see…murder.
JOCASTA: No!
OEDIPUS: The most horrible—
JOCASTA: No!
OEDIPUS: Running, horses, cars on fire, burning flesh.
JOCASTA: No!
OEDIPUS: I see hordes of people. Screaming. Throwing stones.
JOCASTA: No!
OEDIPUS: I see people killing brothers. Skinning mothers. Rolling their fathers’ heads down the street with sticks.
JOCASTA: He’s put all this in your mind! That evil, evil man.
OEDIPUS: The street is lit with hatred. Their eyes are torches. Their tongues—
JOCASTA: Stop!
(Pause.)
OEDIPUS: I may have been the one.
JOCASTA: What?
OEDIPUS: The one they’re looking for.
(Silence.)
JOCASTA: How is that possible?
OEDIPUS: Something about his story— I remember—
JOCASTA: What? You remember what?
OEDIPUS: A crossroads. The place.
JOCASTA: You were far, far away, you said. A boy. Another town. Your father—
OEDIPUS: My father may have been the one I slaughtered.
JOCASTA: That was another man! Another time!
OEDIPUS: What if it wasn’t? What if I am the man they’re looking for?
JOCASTA: He’s trying to turn you. Make you doubt your real self.
OEDIPUS: Is it the truth we’re after?
JOCASTA: Of course it is, but this old man is blind. How can he see the truth?
OEDIPUS: There is a memory. A face—
JOCASTA: Whose?
OEDIPUS: His face. Black with anger. His eyes. As though he wanted to crush me, grind me in the ground.
JOCASTA: It wasn’t him. It was another man.
OEDIPUS: A king! They said he was a king!
JOCASTA: Of another land. Kings are a dime a dozen.
OEDIPUS: Not this one. He wanted me dead! Gone.
(JOCASTA desperately holds the mirror in front of OEDIPUS.)
JOCASTA: Tell me what you see!
OEDIPUS: Him! Slaughtered on the highway. Run over! Pulverized in rocks and gravel. It was me who ran him over! Me!!
JOCASTA: No!
OEDIPUS: There was no one else.
JOCASTA: If you grow to believe this lie, you will bring everything down upon you. There’s no way you will survive the weight of it. It will splinter you into a million pieces like a giant fist you don’t see coming. You will be smashed to bits.
OEDIPUS: There was no one there but me.
(OEDIPUS and JOCASTA remain onstage with their backs turned toward audience. Light shifts slightly as MANIAC enters and speaks to OEDIPUS.)
Scene 27
MANIAC: Now he’d trade spots with me, I’ll bet—give anything to live in my pointless dilemma. Beg for a ride out of here. Wake up to find himself sleeping in dumpsters, covered in garbage and sheets of black plastic. Lavish in it. Now he’d gladly steal fruit from a vendor, socks from a clothesline. Go days rambling to only himself and stray dogs. What fleeting skin we wear. Every day shedding another layer until nothing’s left but blood and muscle. The rain stings. Breeze is like razors across your back. Sun cooks me to the core. Fresh meat. I crawl in the shade of juniper. I crawl. Gladly.
(He exits upstage as light rises on JOCASTA and OEDIPUS.)
Scene 28
JOCASTA: (Turning to OEDIPUS.) Who told you the “truth” was such a good idea? You think they know the world? “The truth will set you free?” Ha! What a crock of shit that is. That’s for sissies. That’s for those who haven’t got a clue. Flailing around in their own confusion. Swimming in a sea of failure and regret. A last resort. I’ll tell you what the “truth” is for. It’s for tearing us all apart. Suspicion! Treachery! That’s what it brings down upon our heads. Sudden mistrust. There’s not one out there that can tell you the unknowable. Not one. They’re making it all up. Dreamers, and you’ve fallen into their web. (Pause.) Everyone knows the king was killed by a multitude of men, marauding strangers on the highway—not a single lone assassin. Certainly not his own flesh and blood. Everyone knows that. So how can some old blind man claim to have packed away this secret until today?
OEDIPUS: How strange. A shadow just crossed my mind.
JOCASTA: What shadow’s that?
OEDIPUS: I saw the highway.
JOCASTA: Your mind is playing tricks.
OEDIPUS: What can I trust if not my mind?
JOCASTA: They’re shaping things in you that don’t exist.
OEDIPUS: Tell me how the king looked. How old was he?
JOCASTA: Tall. His hair streaked with white. His build was much like yours.
OEDIPUS: Was he alone or with a group?
JOCASTA: Why are you asking these things?
OEDIPUS: Was he alone!
JOCASTA: No. Yes. No.
OEDIPUS: Who told you how it happened? (Pause.) Who told you!
JOCASTA: He worked for the king.
OEDIPUS: Where is he now?
JOCASTA: I sent him away. I found him another job.
OEDIPUS: Why was that?
JOCASTA: I was afraid.
OEDIPUS: Of what?
JOCASTA: Someone.
OEDIPUS: Find him!
JOCASTA: I can’t!
OEDIPUS: Find him now!
JOCASTA: What can he tell you that I haven’t already?
OEDIPUS: He was there! He can tell me the truth!
(Lights fade on their exit. Lights up on LANGOS.)
Scene 29
LANGOS: When I was first told this tale, I thought I could dodge the implications. Run around it somehow. Avoid my fate t
he way you would a falling tree. You hear it cracking long before it hits the ground. I stole the baby from its mother. Tore it from her breast. I ran with it for miles until my chest was full of fire. There was no going back. No second thought. I bound its legs. Drove a stake through its left ankle and hung it upside down from an olive tree. I didn’t hear it screaming. I saw birds. Clouds racing. But I didn’t hear it scream. It was not a son to me. Just an enemy. A demon in disguise. Terror drove me to it. Only terror. It wasn’t me.
(Cross-fade on his exit.)
Scene 30
(OEDIPUS and JOCASTA facing HARRINGTON, with RANDOLPH sheepishly standing behind. They are at the very scene of the crime: Highway 15, near Barstow, California.)
OEDIPUS: (Pointing to RANDOLPH.) Who’s that man? Why is he here?
HARRINGTON: He was my partner, sir.
OEDIPUS: Partner?
HARRINGTON: On the case. Professional forensic investigator. Detective Ronald J. Randolph, sir. (HARRINGTON nudges RANDOLPH out in front. RANDOLPH emerges, head down, extending a blue-gloved hand out to OEDIPUS, who refuses to shake it. OEDIPUS and JOCASTA stare at him coldly.)
JOCASTA: He’s just a lackey. (To HARRINGTON.) I told you to come alone.
HARRINGTON: Sorry, ma’am, but he has concrete evidence.
OEDIPUS: Of what?
HARRINGTON: The murder. DNA samples. Dirt. Spit. Hair. Blood. Even fingernail clippings.
OEDIPUS: Where are they? All these samples.
HARRINGTON: Take them out, Randolph. Show them.
(RANDOLPH starts taking out all the various items, contained mostly in ziplock bags, including a crushed cigar butt, from his overcoat pockets and lines them all up in front of OEDIPUS on the floor.)
JOCASTA: More conjury! Magic tricks. What is all this proof of?
HARRINGTON: Who was killed, ma’am. How they were killed. How many were present.
JOCASTA: How many?
HARRINGTON: Yes, ma’am.
OEDIPUS: Have you arrived at a number?
HARRINGTON: Four, sir.
OEDIPUS: Four?
JOCASTA: Were you there at the time the murder took place?
HARRINGTON: No, ma’am.
JOCASTA: Then how could you possibly know how many? Maybe there were more?
HARRINGTON: These things—