—When you are gone from here, boy, you are long gone and nowhere! The human machine is not so different from the animal machine or the fish machine or the bird machine or the reptile machine; or the insect machine! It's just a whole God damn lot more complicated and consequently more trouble to keep together. Yep. I thought I had it. The earth shook under my foot, the sky come down like the black lid of a kettle and I couldn't breathe!—Today!!—that lid was lifted, I drew my first free breath in—how many years?—God!—three....
[There is laughter outside, running footsteps, the soft, plushy sound and light of exploding rockets. Brick stares at him soberly for a long moment; then makes a sort of startled sound in his nostrils and springs up on one foot and bops across the room to grab his crutch, swinging on the furniture for support. He gets the crutch and flees as if in horror for the gallery. His father seizes him by the sleeve of his white silk pyjamas.]
Stay here, you son of a bitch!—till I say go!
BRICK: I can't.
BIG DADDY: You sure in hell will, God damn it.
BRICK: No, I can't. We talk, you talk, in—circles! We get nowhere, nowhere! It's always the same, you say you want to talk to me and don't have a ruttin' thing to say to me!
BIG DADDY: Nothin' to say when I'm tellin' you I'm going to live when I thought I was dying?!
BRICK: Oh—that!—Is that what you have to say to me?
BIG DADDY: Why, you son of a bitch! Ain't that, ain't that—important?!
BRICK: Well, you said that, that's said, and now I—
BIG DADDY: Now you set back down.
BRICK: You're all balled up, you—
BIG DADDY: I ain't balled up!
BRICK: You are, you're all balled up!
BIG DADDY: Don't tell me what I am, you drunken whelp! I'm going to tear this coat sleeve off if you don't set down!
BRICK: Big Daddy—
BIG DADDY: Do what I tell you! I'm the boss here, now! I want you to know I'm back in the driver's seat now!
[Big Mama rushes in, clutching her great heaving bosom.]
What in hell do you want in here, Big Mama?
BIG MAMA: Oh, Big Daddy! Why are you shouting like that? I just cain't stainnnnnnnd—it....
BIG DADDY [raising the back of his hand above his head]: GIT!—outa here.
[She rushes back out, sobbing.]
BRICK [softly, sadly]: Christ...
BIG DADDY [fiercely]: Yeah! Christ!—is right....
[Brick breaks loose and hobbles toward the gallery. | Big Daddy Jerks his crutch from under Brick so he steps with the injured ankle. He utters a hissing cry of anguish, clutches a chair and pulls it over on top of him on the floor.]
Son of a—tub of—hog fat....
BRICK: Big Daddy! Give me my crutch.
[Big Daddy throws the crutch out of reach.]
Give me that crutch, Big Daddy.
BIG DADDY: Why do you drink?
BRICK: Don't know, give me my crutch!
BIG DADDY: You better think why you drink or give up drinking!
BRICK: Will you please give me my crutch so I can get up off this floor?
BIG DADDY: First you answer my question. Why do you drink? Why are you throwing your life away, boy, like somethin' disgusting you picked up on the street?
BRICK [getting on to his knees]: Big Daddy, I'm in pain, I stepped on that foot.
BIG DADDY: Good! I'm glad you're not too numb with the liquor in you to feel some pain!
BRICK: You—spilled my—drink....
BIG DADDY: I'll make a bargain with you. You tell me why you drink and I'll hand you one. I'll pour you the liquor myself and hand it to you.
BRICK: Why do I drink?
BIG DADDY: Yeah! Why?
BRICK: Give me a drink and I'll tell you.
BIG DADDY: Tell me first!
BRICK: I'll tell you in one word.
BIG DADDY: What word?
BRICK: DISGUST!
[The clock chimes softly, sweetly. Big Daddy gives it a short, outraged glance.]
Now how about that drink?
BIG DADDY: What are you disgusted with? You got to tell me that, first. Otherwise being disgusted don't make no sense!
BRICK: Give me my crutch.
BIG DADDY: You heard me, you got to tell me what I asked you first.
BRICK: I told you, I said to kill my disgust!
BIG DADDY: DISGUST WITH WHAT!
BRICK: You strike a hard bargain.
BIG DADDY: What are you disgusted with?—an' I'll pass you the liquor.
BRICK: I can hop on one foot, and if I fall, I can crawl.
BIG DADDY: You want liquor that bad?
BRICK [dragging himself up, clinging to bedstead]: Yeah, I want it that bad.
BIG DADDY: If I give you a drink, will you tell me what it is you're disgusted with, Brick?
BRICK: Yes, sir, I will try to.
[The old man pours him a drink and solemnly passes it to him. There is silence as Brick drinks.]
Have you ever heard the word 'mendacity'?
BIG DADDY: Sure. Mendacity is one of them five-dollar words that cheap politicians throw back and forth at each other.
BRICK: You know what it means?
BIG DADDY: Don't it mean lying and liars?
BRICK: Yes, sir, lying and liars.
BIG DADDY: Has someone been lying to you?
CHILDREN [chanting in chorus offstage]: We want Big Dad-dee! We want Big Dad-dee!
[Gooper appears in the gallery door.]
GOOPER: Big Daddy, the kiddies are shouting for you out there.
BIG DADDY [fiercely]: Keep out, Gooper!
GOOPER: 'Scuse me!
[Big Daddy slams the doors after Gooper.]
BIG DADDY: Who's been lying to you, has Margaret been lying to you, has your wife been lying to you about something, Brick?
BRICK: Not her. That wouldn't matter.
BIG DADDY: Then who's been lying to you, and what about?
BRICK: No one single person and no one lie....
BIG DADDY: Then what, what then, for Christ's sake?
BRICK: —The whole, the whole—thing....
BIG DADDY: Why are you rubbing your head? You got a headache?
BRICK: No, I'm tryin' to—
BIG DADDY: —Concentrate, but you can't because your brain's all soaked with liquor, is that the trouble? Wet brain!
[He snatches the glass from Brick's hand.]
What do you know about this mendacity thing? Hell! I could write a book on it! Don't you know that? I could write a book on it and still not cover the subject? Well, I could, I could write a goddam book on it and still not cover the subject anywhere near enough!!—Think of all the lies I got to put up with!—Pretences! Ain't that mendacity? Having to pretend stuff you don't think or feel or have any idea of? Having for instance to act like I care for Big Mama!—I haven't been able to stand the sight, sound, or smell of that woman for forty years now!—even when I laid her!—regular as a piston.... Pretend to love that son of a bitch of a Gooper and his wife Mae and those five same screechers out there like parrots in a jungle? Jesus I Can't stand to look at 'em! Church!—it bores the Bejesus out of me but I go!—I go an' sit there and listen to the fool preacher! Clubs!—Elks! Masons! Rotary!—crap!
[A spasm of pain makes him clutch his belly. He sinks into a chair and his voice is softer and hoarser.]
You I do like for some reason, did always have some kind of real feeling for—affection—respect—yes, always.... You and being a success as a planter is all I ever had any devotion to in my whole life!—and that's the truth.... I don't know why, but it is! I've lived with mendacity!—Why can't you live with it? Hell, you got to live with it, there's nothing else to live with except mendacity, is there?
BRICK: Yes, sir. Yes, sir, there is something else that you can live with!
BIG DADDY: What?
BRICK [lifting his glass]: This!—Liquor...
BIG DADDY: That's not living, that's dodging aw
ay from life.
BRICK: I want to dodge away from it.
BIG DADDY: Then why don't you kill yourself, man?
BRICK: I like to drink....
BIG DADDY: Oh, God, I can't talk to you....
BRICK: I'm sorry, Big Daddy.
BIG DADDY: Not as sorry as I am. I'll tell you something. A little while back when I thought my number was up—
[This speech should have torrential pace and fury.]
—before I found out it was just this—spastic—colon. I thought about you. Should I or should I not, if the jig was up, give you this place when I go—since I hate Gooper an' Mae an' know that they hate me, and since all five same monkeys are little Maes an' Goopers.—And I thought, No!—Then I thought, Yes!—I couldn't make up my mind. I hate Gooper and his five same monkeys and that bitch Mae! Why should I turn over twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile to not my kind?—But why in hell, on the other hand, Brick—should I subsidize a goddam fool on the bottle?—Liked or not liked, well, maybe even—loved!—Why should I do that?—Subsidize worthless behaviour? Rot? Corruption?
BRICK [smiling]: I understand.
BIG DADDY: Well, if you do, you're smarter than I am, God damn it, because I don't understand. And this I will tell you frankly. I didn't make up my mind at all on that question and still to this day I ain't made out no will!—Well, now I don't have to. The pressure is gone. I can just wait and see if you pull yourself together or if you don't.
BRICK: That's right, Big Daddy.
BIG DADDY: You sound like you thought I was kidding.
BRICK [rising]: No, sir, I know you're not kidding.
BIG DADDY: But you don't care—?
BRICK [hobbling toward the gallery door]: No, sir, I don't care.... Now how about taking a look at your birthday fireworks and getting some of that cool breeze off the river?
[He stands in the gallery doorway as the night sky turns pink and green and gold with successive flashes of light.]
BIG DADDY: WAIT!—Brick...
[His voice drops. Suddenly there is something shy, almost tender, in his restraining gesture.]
Don't let's—leave it like this, like them other talks we've had, we've always—talked around things, we've—just talked around things for some rutten reason, I don't know what, it's always like something was left not spoken, something avoided because neither of us was honest enough with the—other....
BRICK: I never lied to you, Big Daddy.
BIG DADDY: Did I ever to you?
BRICK: No, sir....
BIG DADDY: Then there is at least two people that never lied to each other.
BRICK: But we've never talked to each other.
BIG DADDY: We can now.
BRICK: Big Daddy, there don't seem to be anything much to say.
BIG DADDY: You say that you drink to kill your disgust with lying.
BRICK: You said to give you a reason.
BIG DADDY: Is liquor the only thing that'll kill this disgust?
BRICK: Now. Yes.
BIG DADDY: But not once, huh?
BRICK: Not when I was still young an' believing. A drinking man's someone who wants to forget he isn't still young an' believing.
BIG DADDY: Believing what?
BRICK: Believing....
BIG DADDY: Believing what?
BRICK [stubbornly evasive]: Believing....
BIG DADDY: I don't know what the hell you mean by believing and I don't think you know what you mean by believing, but if you still got sports in your blood, go back to sports announcing and—
BRICK: Sit in a glass box watching games I can't play? Describing what I can't do while players do it? Sweating out their disgust and confusion in contests I'm not fit for? Drinkin' a coke, half bourbon, so I can stand it? That's no goddam good any more, no help—time just outran me, Big Daddy—got there first...
BIG DADDY: I think you're passing the buck.
BRICK: You know many drinkin' men?
BIG DADDY [with a slight, charming smile]: I have known a fair number of that species.
BRICK: Could any of them tell you why he drank?
BIG DADDY: Yep, you're passin' the buck to things like time and disgust with 'mendacity' and—crap!—if you got to use that kind of language about a thing, it's ninety-proof bull, and I'm not buying any.
BRICK: I had to give you a reason to get a drink!
BIG DADDY: You started drinkin' when your friend Skipper died.
[Silence for five beats. Then Brick makes a startled movement, reaching for his crutch.]
BRICK: What are you suggesting?
BIG DADDY: I'm suggesting nothing.
[The shuffle and clop of Brick's rapid hobble away from his father's steady, grave attention.]
—But Gooper an' Mae suggested that there was something not right exactly in your—
BRICK [stopping short downstage as if backed to a wall]: 'Not right'?
BIG DADDY: Not, well, exactly normal in your friendship with—
BRICK: They suggested that, too? I thought that was Maggie's suggestion.
[Brick's detachment is at last broken through. His heart is accelerated; his forehead sweat-beaded; his breath becomes more rapid and his voice hoarse. The thing they're discussing, timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to 'keep face' in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the 'mendacity' that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with. It may be the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not even the most important. The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. I'm trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent—fiercely charged!—interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis. Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself. This does not absolve the playwright of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he legitimately can—but it should steer him away from 'pat' conclusions, facile definitions which make a play just play, not a snare for the truth of human experience. | The following scene should be played with great concentration, with most of the power leashed but palpable in what is left unspoken.]
Who else's suggestion is it, is it yours? How many others thought that Skipper and I were—
BIG DADDY [gently]: Now, hold on, hold on a minute, son.—I knocked around in my time.
BRICK: What's that got to do with—
BIG DADDY: I said 'Hold on!'—I bummed, I bummed this country till I was—
BRICK: Whose suggestion, who else's suggestion is it?
BIG DADDY: Slept in hobo jungles and railroad Y's and flophouses in all cities before I—
BRICK: Oh, you think so, too, you call me your son and a queer. Oh!! Maybe that's why you put Maggie and me in this room that was Jack Straw's and Peter Ochello's, in which that pair of old sisters slept in a double bed where both of 'em died!
BIG DADDY: Now just don't go throwing rocks at—
[Suddenly Reverend Tooker appears in the gallery doors, his head slightly, playfully, fatuously cocked, with a practised clergyman's smile, sincere as a bird-call blown on a hunter's whistle, the living embodiment of the pious, conventional lie. | Big Daddy gasps a little at this perfectly timed, but incongruous, apparition.]
—What're you looking for, Preacher?
REVEREND TOOKER: The gentlemen's lavatory, ha ha!—heh, heh...
BIG DADDY [with strained courtesy]: —Go back out and walk down to the other end of the gallery, Reverend Tooker, and use the bathroom connected with my bedroom, and if you can't find it, ask them where it is!
REVEREND TOOKER: Ah, thanks.
[He goes out with a deprecatory chuckle.]
BIG DADDY: It's hard to talk in this place...
BRICK: Son of a—!
BIG DADDY [leaving a lot unspoken]: —I seen all things and understood a lot of them, till 1910. Christ, the year that—I had worn my shoes through, hocked my—I hopped off a yellow dog freight car half a mile down the road, slept in a wagon of cotton outside the gin—Jack Straw an' Peter Ochello took me in. Hired me to manage this place which grew into this one.—When Jack Straw died—why, old Peter Ochello quit eatin' like a dog does when its master's dead, and died, too!
Three Plays Page 7