by Roger Elwood
SERGEANT: Oh sure, he talked to everybody. The usual gas about brotherhood that everybody spouts around here. It sounds like religion, but your honor, once you’ve banged around in little wars like this as long as I have, you’d better believe that it’s politics.
JUDGE [very politely]: Do you find it easy to tell the difference?
SERGEANT: No, sir, that’s just what I was saying. In gook countries, whether it’s politics or religion, it all comes out to knives in the back. Where we come from, nobody kills you for being against the administration, or belonging to the wrong church. But around here, they’ll string you up by the thumbs if you don’t agree with anything they say. You’ve just got to get in there fustest with the mostest.
[The CAPTAIN is trying to catch the sergeant’s eye, in increasing anguish at the non-com’s bluntness, but without success.]
JUDGE: [still more politely]: Is that what he said?
SERGEANT: No, sir, but that’s what he meant. He could of been you, sir, or me, or anybody, except that we had the firepower and he didn’t. That’s all brotherhood meant to him. It’s all it means to any of these agitators.
MINISTER [from audience]: He never hurt you! He never hurt anyone!
CAPTAIN [looking fruitlessly about the audience for the source of the voice]: Quiet! You lost your turn!
JUDGE: If you please, Captain . . . the point is perhaps well taken. I never heard that the man did anyone any harm. He was certainly not a soldier—only a carpenter. And even by the age of thirty-three, he had never written a book. He only talked.
SERGEANT: Sure. That’s all any of ’em do—until you turn your back. Then somebody on your side buys a farm, and there’s nothing left to do but split up his gear and get on with the job. He ain’t going to miss any of it, and neither is the supply sergeant.
CAPTAIN: Your honor, I’m afraid my sergeant’s testimony must be a little baffling. I believe he’s told the essence of his story.
JUDGE: I find it interesting. Tell me more, Sergeant, about this division of spoils.
SERGEANT: Oh, it’s just a custom, sir. Share and share alike. For instance, this ringleader—I got his greatcoat when we cut him down. [The captain wipes his forehead and stares carefully off into space.] It was all fair and square; I played show-down, sudden-death poker for it with my squad. Of course, between you and me, sir, they knew better than to win against me—I’d of loused up all their rotation points if they had. [Suddenly not quite sure the JUDGE will get the point] Only a gag, your honor.
JUDGE: What did you want his coat for?
SERGEANT [trying to mend his fences]: Only for a story, your honor. You know, sir, like when one of your kids asks you what you did in the war. Not that this hole is much of a war. Another guy in my squad won his hat; you couldn’t wear it back home, it looks like some sort of owl’s nest—but it makes a good story, too.
JUDGE: How many children do you have, Sergeant?
SERGEANT: I think I got one, if he made the date. He was due three months ago. I don’t have the word yet—mail call’s been pretty slow lately.
JUDGE: Thank you. Stand down.
[The SERGEANT leaves the stand and resumes his post next to the captain.]
CAPTAIN [in a fierce whisper]: You damned blabbermouth!
SERGEANT: You ordered me to testify, sir.
MARCHER [from audience]: Give us back our dead! Don’t let them defile our homes! Stop police brutality! End the occupation!
[The JUDGE, reading, pays no attention.]
CAPTAIN [to SERGEANT]: Now what? Between you and them, I’d six times rather be shot at.
TEEN-AGE GIRL [from audience]: Make love—not war!
[The TEEN-AGE BOY, the POET and the MARCHER join in, clapping rhythmically.]
both teen-agers, poet, marcher: Make love, not war! Make love, not war! Make love, not war!
[The TEEN-AGE GIRL, encouraged by this support, begins a sort of dance in the center aisle. The JUDGE raps sharply for order. The housewife reaches out and yanks the teenage girl back to her seat.]
SERGEANT: You may be shot at yet, sir. They’re working themselves up to something down there. There’s a thin guy in a beard who’s been marching round and round the building ever since the earthquake, carrying a big sign. He’s got maybe a dozen other pickets with him, and all kinds of ragbaggy kids trailing after them.
CAPTAIN: What do the signs say?
SERGEANT: You’ve got me there, sir. I don’t read gook lettering so good. Could be INRI, or LSD, or NASA, or anything. It don’t make much sense no matter how you look at it.
MAGDA: [from audience]-. But I loved him!
[The JUDGE looks up.]
JUDGE: Magda, I know your voice. Come up here. Captain, please have your man fetch her. [He points.]
SERGEANT [to CAPTAIN]: She’s only one of the local pros. They come out and howl at all the funerals. What does she know about anything?
[The CAPTAIN gestures sharply and the SERGEANT goes down into the congregation to MAGDA. He escorts her to the stand and helps her sit down, his expression ironically patient.]
JUDGE: Magda, I know you, but we need to identify you for the written record. Tell me then, did you know any of the prisoners?
MAGDA: I knew the king, town father.
JUDGE: Your honor.
MAGDA: I knew the king, your honor. Not the thieves; only the king.
CAPTAIN: Does she mean the ringleader?
JUDGE: If you please, Captain . . . Now, Magda: What did you know about him?
MAGDA: I love him, town—your honor. I would have taken him into my bed. I would have charged him nothing. But he made me whole, instead.
SERGEANT: [to captain, sotto voce]: Them joy-girls’ll say anything to please a customer. Sometimes I forget what a clean woman sounds like.
CAPTAIN: [sotto voce]: Shut up.
JUDGE: But what do you know? Have you nothing else to tell us?
MAGDA: He warded off stones from me. He made me whole. And now they’ve killed him. He was a king, and I loved him, and now he’s dead.
JUDGE: Yes, we know. Thank you, Magda. You may go.
[MAGDA rises and makes her way uncertainly back into the audience. The JUDGE turns a page.]
SERGEANT: [to CAPTAIN, watching her go]: That’s how it goes—bitch, bitch, bitch. You come halfway around the world to give these gooks a hand, and they charge you fifteen dollars for a warm weak beer, and a dirty song with no tune and words you can’t even understand. That’s soldiering for you.
CAPTAIN: You don’t gripe much, eh? . . . [He suddenly sees someone he recognizes in the congregation and springs to his feet.] Your honor, if it please the court, I see the physician of the deceased in the audience. At the trial, he testified—
JUDGE: Yes. He declared all three of them insane. Bring him forward.
[The SERGEANT darts into the congregation and fetches back the doctor, who sits down in the witness chair, settling his ruffled feathers.]
JUDGE [soothingly]: We welcome an expert witness, Doctor. Please tell us: What is your present opinion of the sanity of the deceased—in particular, the ringleader?
DOCTOR: The usual psychic masochist has a strong martyr complex. Having been weaned too early, he feels that he was punished in infancy for some unknown crime, usually called original sin. In revenge against his mother, he desires to show the mother that he can produce his own substitute for milk and be independent of her. Thus he becomes an artist, or a prophet. That will be twenty-five dollars, please.
JUDGE: We are not quite ready for the fee yet, please. Doctor . . .
SERGEANT [sotto voce, to CAPTAIN]: I can get around in gook language as far as the john, but half the time I think they don’t know themselves what they’re talking about.
JUDGE [continuing previous speech, over SERGEANT ]:
. . . just exactly what does that mean, in layman’s terms?
DOCTOR: I mean simply that the patient was harmlessly insane and should have been released into the custody of some competent per
son. All three of them badly needed trained help.
JUDGE: It will be observed, sir, that we have passed beyond that stage now.
DOCTOR: As was quite predictable. In due course, the psychic masochist, having found that art or religion do not substitute for mother’s milk, defeats his own ends, punishes himself and commits suicide. Such people are no danger to society and should be kindly institutionalized.
SERGEANT [at before]: These kids have got more religions than a dog has fleas.
JUDGE: Thank you. Stand down.
DOCTOR: Please pay the nurse when you go out. [Exit.]
SERGEANT: Boy, I could use some sack time along about now.
CAPTAIN: Can you sleep?
SERGEANT: Any time, any place. I learned long ago just to drop where I stood. Nothing bothers me any more.
JUDGE: Who wishes to appear next, please?
LAWYER ffrom audience]: Why should we coddle murderers and parole them, and at the same time let the subversive thinker undermine the family, and our whole society? Why imprison the active criminal and praise the thought-criminal?
JUDGE: Come forward, please.
CAPTAIN [sotto voce, to sergeant]: Who’s that?
SERGEANT: Dunno. Some lawyer, sounds like. [He leaves the bench and resumes prowling before the front pews.]
LAWYER: The man who destroys a way of life is a thousand times as dangerous as the man who destroys one life!
JUDGE: No testifying from the audience, please—
SCIENTIST [from audience]: As a scientist—
SERGEANT [spotting the scientist]: Aha! [He grabs the scientist by the wrist and pulls him out into the aisle.] It’s up to the witness stand for you, me lad.
[The SCIENTIST frees himself and walks with dignity up to the witness stand.]
JUDGE: Now then, sir, just what is your interpretation of these events?
SCIENTIST: As a scientist, I feel that there’s a great deal of imprecise thinking going on at this meeting. Today we live in a world where an act of nature, or an act of war, threatens us all with many megadeaths. We should be objective enough to stop and think about what a tolerable number might be.
MARCHER [from audience]-. Anyone for megadeath?
SCIENTIST: In this context, the execution of just one potential criminal is hardly worth thinking about.
POET from audience]: After the first death, there is no other.
MINISTER [from audience]: Some say that God Himself is dead.
SCIENTIST: That would be only what we call a mini-death.
TEEN-AGE GIRL [from, audience]: This God bit is a grown-up racket. Our generation doesn’t mind a little religion here and there. But if the wrong people take it up, well, sure it’s dead.
TEEN-AGE BOY [from audience]: Yeah!
DOCTOR [from audience]: Some have to die that others may live. That’s the nature of social therapy.
TEEN-AGE BOY: Oh, that’s the nitty-gritty, baby.
MAGDA [from audience]: I loved him. He made me whole.
DOCTOR: Thirty pieces of silver, please.
LAWYER: Bury them all. The guilty must pay.
HOUSEWIFE [from audience]: But don’t you think he might have brought food prices down? He seemed like such a nice young man.
TEEN-AGE GIRL: Oh, mother, please—you’re embarrassing me in front of my friends!
HOUSEWIFE: Well, dear, I was only asking—
[The members of the cast in the audience (except for MARY, the CORPORAL and the SCIENTIST) are now on their feet arguing with each other, and begin to filter out into the aisle.
The scientist starts out of the witness box; the SERGEANT moves tentatively to stop him.]
SERGEANT [calling to the captain over the mounting hubbubJ: The natives is restless—ain’t that how it goes, sir?
[The noise gets louder. The JUDGE bangs his gavel. The captain looks up at the judge, and then beckons to the back of the church to the CORPORAL.]
COLONIAL [from audience]: This is a travesty! Get that bloody wog off the bench!
[The colonial makes for the chancel, waving his umbrella. The rest of the cast in the audience follow him, shouting and gesticulating.
The SERGEANT tries to hold them back, jostled from one side by the scientist, who is arguing violently with the minister, the poet, and the MARCHER.]
CORPORAL [shouting from his post]: All right, break it up! Break it up, gooks! The show’s over!
[The noise gets louder still. At its climax, three loud bangs from the judge’s gavel are followed, after a beat, by a shot fired by the corporal over the heads of the mob. All the mob actors scurry to their seats, including the scientist.
[Dead silence follows, during which the CAPTAIN and the SERGEANT brush themselves off and try to recover their equanimity.
[At the same time the CORPORAL, still holding his pistol aloft with one hand, has seized MARY by the scruff of the neck and is propelling her down the aisle.]
SERGEANT: There’s my corporal. That’s the end of that.
CAPTAIN: Somehow I doubt it.
[The CORPORAL reaches the chancel area and throws MARY toward the witness box. She falls on the steps with a stifled cry. The corporal turns slowly, faces the audience, and blows smoke off the mouth of his pistol like a TV cowboy. He looks the audience over arrogantly.]
CORPORAL: They scatter like sparrows. Show a little muscle and that’s all you need. [He turns, bolstering the pistol.] Hello, Sarge. Oh, hello, sir. [Salutes negligently.]
[The captain, appalled, ignores the salute and kneels beside MARY.]
CORPORAL [continuing previous speech]: I nabbed one for you. [He kicks MARY explanatorily.] She claims she’s his mother.
[MARY cries out.]
CAPTAIN: Are you ill? Come now, it’ll all be over soon. In a little while you can go home.
MARY : You . . . killed my son.
CORPORAL [to SERGEANT]: Sure, that’s what they all say. She probably just wants his coat or something like that. In this lousy desert, there’s only one dirty rag for every three of ’em.
JUDGE: Mary . . . would you tell us about it?
MARY : Don’t touch me. Let me weep.
CORPORAL [swinging around to MARY and seizing her shoulders]: Get up in the chair, you, and speak politely.
CAPTAIN: Let her alone. Go back to your post.
CORPORAL: Yessir. [Aside to sergeant] What’s the matter with him, Sarge—getting soft on the gooks?
SERGEANT: Shaddup. Anything you need to know, I’ll tell you.
CORPORAL: Sure you will. You’re missing half the fun, though, Sarge. There’s a cute broad down there, hanging around just waiting for some action. A lot neater than this one [jerking his thumb toward MARY].
SERGEANT: Beat it.
CORPORAL: Okay, okay. But just don’t tell me any big story tomorrow. [He looks scornfully toward MARY.] Huh!
[The CORPORAL goes back up the aisle, swaggering, and pausing to eye MAGDA. The captain tries to lift MARY to her feet; MARY shakes her head and clings to the earth. The JUDGE watches them all without expression.]
MARY : My son . . . my son . . .
CAPTAIN: Mother, if I can help you—
JUDGE [abruptly]: Captain, I leave the witness in your charge, and declare a recess. [He raps once smartly with the gavel, leaves the pulpit, and retires swiftly.]
[The CAPTAIN jumps to his feet and tries to follow.]
CAPTAIN: But, Your Honor!
[The JUDGE has vanished. After a baffled pause, the captain returns to MARY, lifts her gently and helps her stumble to the bench, where she crouches, still hiding her face.
[The CAPTAIN paces, at a complete loss. The SERGEANT stands at parade rest at the other side of the chancel.]
CAPTAIN: Now. what? [There is no answer.] . . . Sergeant?
SERGEANT [coming to attention]: Yessir?
CAPTAIN: What did you think of the trial? Not this one—the other one, day before yesterday?
SERGEANT: No screwier than this one. [He relaxes a little, res
ponding to the captain’s informality.] Trials is all alike, sir. He didn’t get a fair deal. Who does? He didn’t break any of their laws, not that I could tell. It was just a put-up job. This judge looks all right, but that other guy—he was ours.
CAPTAIN [with a worried look toward MARY]: Ours?
SERGEANT: You know what I mean, sir. We said he was some kind of agitator, so his own people handed him over to us. We said he was stirring up trouble with the other gooks.
CAPTAIN: Well—wasn’t he?
SERGEANT: Sure he was. Brotherhood and all that jazz. But that’s just what they all say. We was just makin’ some damn kind of example of him.
CAPTAIN: I had the impression his own people didn’t like what he said, either. They seemed pretty glad to get rid of him.
SERGEANT: Well, I don’t know why. He didn’t say anything these preachers don’t say all over this part of the world. All he said was that he was a messenger from God and wanted to bring everybody peace. What’s wrong with that?
CAPTAIN: A little blasphemous, don’t you think?
SERGEANT: He didn’t blast us. He didn’t blast nobody.
CAPTAIN: Do you think he came from God?
SERGEANT: That’s none of my business, sir. He didn’t come from Capitol Hill, that’s all I’m supposed to care about.
CAPTAIN: Do you believe in God?
SERGEANT [after a pause]: Well, I do and I don’t. Excuse me, sir, but what god are you talking about?
CAPTAIN: Well—the one he was talking about.
SERGEANT [promptly]: No sir. I don’t. He’d just got hold of one of those local, one-goat gods they all have in these little holes. Out farther east, when those people talk about God, they make you listen. I wouldn’t buy his kind of god for a minute. As a prophet, he was just a cheap imitation, compared to—excuse me, sir.
CAPTAIN: No, go on. What’s to apologize for?
SERGEANT: Well, sir, if you don’t mind, you’re kind of a young man. I’ve been in the army for twenty years, and I’ve seen a lot of gods. I’ve seen a lot of agitators like him, too. So I can kind of compare ’em. You’re an officer, but you haven’t seen as much of the god business as I have.
CAPTAIN: Oh. A connoisseur.
SERGEANT: No, sir, a career sergeant. That’s my profession. But if you’re asking me about gods, well, I’ve seen better ones than his. He was a good guy, more or less, but he was putting us on. That’s what the gooks strung him up for.