Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse

by Denis Johnson

  Demand, did I say? No. I shall command.

  I’ll reduce our Mr.—“P”—to pabulum.

  But, sir, whereas I taste the very words

  Like blood on my tongue, I can’t quite redden the page.

  O, would you help?

  I want somehow to remonstrate and also

  Devastate, you see. He must be wounded.

  He’s grown to quite the prideful peacock,

  Fanning and strutting and shimmying, grinding

  Under his spurs the faces of his betters.

  He’s slimy with adulation. It’s ungrateful.

  —There’s the crux, he’s just ungrateful, there

  You have its full and quivering extent.

  PURVIS: You ask me to help you phrase

  The letter of my so-called termination?

  HOOVER: I’ll settle for a writ of resignation.

  PURVIS: You won’t get one. Fire me. Put it on paper

  Above your name for all the world to see.

  HOOVER:…Perhaps I spoke too vigorously just now.

  The hurt of having been outshone, you see,

  The piercing of a beneficiary’s

  Ingratitude, you see—that corkscrew works

  Deeper and deeper—you see.

  PURVIS: How can I not?

  HOOVER: Vigor of tongue is for the politician.

  We are the new, soft, strong, gray men, in whom

  A kind of soapy equanimity

  Is not entirely uncalled for.

  The proper bureaucrat must keep

  Alert but noncommittal.

  PURVIS: Like a dog.

  HOOVER:…Have you visited the pyramids of Egypt?

  —But you’ve seen photos. We could raise a hundred

  In twenty months. A pyramid was called

  “The place where men are turned to gods.”

  …How do you find Chicago, Agent Purvis?

  Isn’t winter like a thousand razors?

  PURVIS: It’s still autumn.

  HOOVER: And down near zero!

  A million miles from sunny Carolina.

  [Sings] I’d walk a million miles

  For one of your smiles—

  PURVIS: And just last month we had a solid week

  Of days that broke a hundred.

  HOOVER: Brutal stuff!—

  Brutal.

  PURVIS: I can’t tell you what it is,

  But think of all the killers bred from here:

  The Daltons; Frank and Jesse James;

  HOOVER: The Youngers;

  PURVIS: Johnny Ringo,

  HOOVER: Ringo, really—

  Wyatt Earp grew up in Pella, Iowa,

  As I remember reading—

  PURVIS: Yes, quite right,

  And Katie Elder came from Davenport.

  HOOVER: The vagaries of climate—

  PURVIS: Or the diet,

  All this dust, the hopeless distances,

  HOOVER: The vertigo of horizontal vastness—

  PURVIS: The sweet, mild Carolinas don’t conduce

  This bloody tommy-gun-style criminal

  Deportment. The hypnotic wheat

  Of Kansas, Illinois, that’s where these boys

  Rise out of, and they’re mean. They come for blood

  With the innocence of sucklings. Charles A. Floyd

  Hardly blinked, so say the witnesses,

  When he and his accomplices gunned down

  Four noble cops, including one of ours,

  That day at the Kansas City station.

  Killing suited him.

  HOOVER: Well, killing’s what you gave him.

  PURVIS: Charles A. Floyd was struck down in the throes

  Of violent resistance to arrest.

  The same for Gillis—alias Baby Face—

  The same for Dillinger.

  HOOVER: Alias Jimmy Lawrence.

  PURVIS: That is not an alias known to me.

  HOOVER: I was a guest at City Hall last week.

  Had my photo snapped with Mayor Kelly;

  And he—that is, the mayor—raised the name

  Of Michael Green, the officer on hand

  With you when Dillinger was shot. Mike Green? Chicago cop?

  PURVIS: I think it rings a bell.

  HOOVER: O, you hear a bell ring, do you, Purvis?

  Officer Green, in turn, has raised the name

  Of Jimmy Lawrence—ding dong!—Jimmy Lawrence?

  PURVIS: I repeat: The name is not familiar.

  HOOVER:…All day long I gaze at the faces of liars,

  And to my practiced eye the difference

  Between your face and that of a liar is vast,

  So vast I might be staring into the face

  Of Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein,

  That’s how monstrously rare a face you have.

  It’s not the face of a liar. I believe the name

  Of Jimmy Lawrence is not familiar to you.

  PURVIS: Will you tell me who he is?

  HOOVER: You’re not a liar, unless, perhaps,

  You work a self-deception practically

  Hallucinatory in its intensity.

  PURVIS: I see you launched on your bureaucratic

  Argosy and I no longer view

  Your world as one in which I’m possible.

  HOOVER: Hero, what do you accuse me of?

  Cowardice, no—effeminacy?—what?

  PURVIS: I don’t. I’ve cast no implication here.

  HOOVER: The room is ripe with it. A cloying, rotten

  Honey. I can’t breathe. Where’s a breath?

  PURVIS:…Never let it be known

  Outside this room I spoke this way;

  But you are false, sir. What you do is a falsehood.

  You are a lie. I want you to understand

  I’ve lived. You never will. I’ll die.

  You’ll neither live nor die. You’ll simply

  Fade as the truth comes out.

  …I can’t say what I’ve fought to save,

  The right things, the good things, the people who hope for them,

  But I know what I’ve fought against,

  I’ve seen it animate

  The heart of a gangster with seventeen bullets in him,

  And I didn’t come here

  To knuckle under to its latest guise.

  You are the Dark, the Death.

  HOOVER: You want to call me

  Devil—but sophistication robs you

  Of a name for me and leaves you stammering.

  You’re so mundane, you’re so unworthy, so

  Ignoble in your vision, so one-eyed.

  Don’t you see that we shall minister for gods

  That we create? We’ll don the heads of beasts

  And speak with new tongues, dancing in the smoke

  Of sacrificial fires!—while outside

  The glowing pyramid the multitude

  Feels the pull and trembles and bows down.

  I curse you, sir. I raise you high above

  The flames and break your body!

  Silhouetted in a purple light,

  To the rhythms of a sexual, melting jazz

  Composed in an exotic scale,

  HOOVER enacts a private rite, making

  Supplication to the numina

  Who animate his trembling desires.

  PURVIS looks on, utterly motionless.

  And while the light transforms itself around him,

  He, despite the onslaught of these powers,

  Undergoes, himself, no transformation.

  BLACKOUT

  Scene 6

  October 22, 1934: A cornfield near Wellsville, Ohio.

  A long shriek of agony…

  Vast fields at night.

  PRETTY BOY FLOYD lies amid rows of stubble. His shrieking subsides.

  PURVIS stands right; far left, a uniformed OHIO STATE HIGHWAY PATROLMAN.

  Except at the very end, PURVIS never once looks in FLOYD’s direction.

 
A meteor shower makes shooting stars. Occasionally one or two or even three at a time streak through the sky.

  PURVIS: How much whiskey could be mashed and dripped

  From all this corn, do you suppose, that is,

  If it were corn, if we weren’t standing in a waste

  Of stubble? Half the county could get good

  And cross-eyed. Have a whiskey-mashin’ bash.

  Fiddler scrapin’ up a waltz, one voice singing,

  Thump of the one-string washtub bass, and the tuba basso

  Too of the jug old Granddad blows across

  The mouth of—oompapa oompapa oompapa—and

  The revelers tromping up from the elderly

  Floorboards a sprinkling of oaken dust.

  —Oaken? Or alder? What do you build things with

  Here in the Midwest, here in the treeless plains,

  Out here ’mongst the plowed infinitude?

  What are your floors and walls constructed of?

  Corncobs? Cornstalks? Mortared with the drool

  And cud of cows? If I took you back home

  With me to visit, down in South Carolina,

  I fear you’d deeply miss this place. You’d anguish

  Wretchedly for flatness. You’d tell how

  In west Ohio at sunset you can see

  Clear across to dawn next Saturday.

  But South Carolina’s way past Jupiter

  Tonight…How are you, Pretty Boy?

  FLOYD: I’m peaches!

  Many’s the night I’ve lain all night in the cornrows.

  Plenty of times I’ve tapered off a spree

  All ragg’d up and dreaming in the chaff.

  You just wind up here when the times get jolly!

  It’s soft as feathers till you get to squirming,

  Then it bothers and pokes a feller. Well,

  But I won’t squirm, because I’m paralyzed,

  Because you shot me in the back. My hero!

  PURVIS: Oompapa, oompapa, oompapa, oompapa,

  There’s a little town in Iowa called Lone Tree.

  Now, I’ve been through Lone Tree. And the tree is gone.

  Someday the name will be Forgotten Tree.

  FLOYD [sings]: The ring-dang-doo, now what is that?

  It’s round and black like a bowler hat.

  It’s good for me, and it’s good for you,

  And it’s what they call the ring-dang-doo.

  Now, looky here, I pissed my pants!

  PURVIS: That’s blood.

  FLOYD: Blood! Well, that’s all right then.

  PURVIS: Charles Arthur Floyd, your life is leaking.

  If you’ve done crimes as yet not laid to you,

  You’d best own up and shed the burden.

  FLOYD [sings]: O,

  When I was a lad not seventeen

  I met a gal from New Orlean.

  She had blond hair and eyes so blue

  And she let me ride on the ring-dang-doo.

  I wish I had a few big things to say.

  I wish I had a book to read a speech from.

  I wish last April this poor dirt-scratcher

  Owns this place had plowed the alphabet

  Under these rows so all around would stand

  Important words. All I can tell you is

  The dirt feels natural to lie here dying,

  And why so many shooting stars tonight?

  PURVIS: Those are meteorites rubbing the air:

  Like match heads dragged along the leg

  Of dungarees so fast they pop up blazing.

  FLOYD: I guess they’re bigger than a match head, though.

  PURVIS: Smaller, actually. Popular Mechanics

  Or Popular Science had an article.

  They’re rarely more substantial than a jot

  Of sand.

  FLOYD: A little grit makes all this show!

  …I’d like to tell you things I remember. Damn,

  The words get smaller down here at the end.

  [Sings] The ring-dang-doo, now what is that

  It’s soft and round like a pussycat

  It’s got a hole in the middle and it’s split in two

  And it’s what they call the ring-dang-doo

  PURVIS: The Kansas City station! June last year!

  FLOYD: I never did it! By the Devil’s luck

  I were in Kansas City on that day

  But never shot nobody, never knew

  A word about it!…Boys, I swear to you,

  Laid out in my maker’s lap and looking

  Death in the eyes, I swear it.

  PATROLMAN: Well, he swears.

  PURVIS: A villain’s oath. Shoot him in the head.

  FLOYD: What did he say?

  PATROLMAN: Sir—did you say—

  FLOYD [sings]: O, mademoiselle from Armentières,

  Parlez-vous

  O, mademoiselle from Armentières,

  Parlez-vous

  PATROLMAN and FLOYD [sing together]:

  O, mademoiselle from Armentières,

  She hasn’t been kissed in forty years.

  Hinky dinky parlez-vous.

  PATROLMAN: Did you say “Shoot him in the head”?

  FLOYD: Aw, naw…

  PATROLMAN: But you said “Shoot him in the head.”

  PURVIS: Did I?

  PATROLMAN: You heard him say it—didn’t you hear him, Floyd?

  FLOYD: Aw, he didn’t mean it. Naw, you didn’t, did you?

  …“Alouette,” that’s a right one for ye.

  Would you fellers care to, care to—

  [Sings] Alouette, gentille alouette…

  PATROLMAN: I’ll shoot him if you say.

  FLOYD: Seems like the wind

  Blew by and sucked some rain along behind it.

  PURVIS: The Kansas City Massacre.

  PATROLMAN: I know.

  FLOYD: I say we’ll feel the drops in just a while.

  PURVIS: Good men shot down unarmed.

  FLOYD: I wasn’t there!

  [Sings] For half a shilling she’ll lay her down

  Parlez-vous

  For half a shilling she’ll lay her down

  Parlez-vous

  PATROLMAN and FLOYD [sing together]:

  For half a shilling she’ll lay her down

  She’ll jolly well kill ya for half a crown

  Hinky dinky parlez-vous

  PATROLMAN: You seem chipper.

  FLOYD: I ain’t shot so bad.

  I’ve felt worser after Daddy thrashed me.

  PATROLMAN: Did you know that one, sir?

  PURVIS: I know it, but I don’t sing such songs.

  FLOYD: I’ll tell you a story, since you don’t care for songs.

  I’ll tell you the story of something that happened one day.

  I hired on a farm one time for getting

  The hay into the barns when I were nine

  Or thereabouts—tall work for any age.

  We scraped from dark till dark eleven days

  And didn’t pause for Sunday. None but hay:

  Cut it, raked it, baled it, hauled it, stacked it,

  Breathed it, ate it, and at end of day

  Laid down to sleep in it, and by God all

  Night dreaming of it too, that itchy, dusty

  Hay come up from Hell. So then one day

  He says, “Come raking with your hands along

  The floor here in the barn and throw them bits

  Out in the corral,” and we says, “Farmer,

  Why?” and he says, “Folks, because you’re done—

  Look around!” And I raised up my heavy

  Eyes and watched the mounds of hay go marching

  Off in every way I looked, and underneath

  A golden carpet in the slanty afternoon.

  He says, “Them as wants to make for Gaithersburg

  I’ll pay you out, and there’s nine miles of road

  To take you walking. Them as likes to go

  To Millerton the o
pposite, jump on

  Aboard my wagon and I’ll haul you.” Well,

  I rode in the back with my legs a-dangling,

  Rode past the mounds, all that we made, and then

  Past the mounds on the next farms, that we hadn’t made,

  And it was so restful to be done,

  And then on toward into Millerton.

  And I hopped off before the ice cream parlor

  And went inside to get me something heaped

  High in a bowl, and there I saw my uncle

  Who’d lost his eyes, my uncle Charles that took

  That blinds-you kind of fever in his cradle:

  Now he’s blind, and having some dessert.

  I never said a word hello. I sat right by

  And only watched. I watched him fetch

  A ball of ice cream in a sugar cone

  And eat it in the most…I’m going to find

  The word for when you’re blind and you eat ice cream.

  First you hold the cone and touch it with

  Your either fingers, then you hitch your chin

  And nose up like you plan to make a speech,

  And all you do is smell. And, boys, I think

  You listen to it too, I think he heard

  The dabs come melting and a-waxing along

  The sugar edges of that cone like little

  Moons till just that very first sneaked down

  And touched his fingers. Then he started;

  He tried the drops, the cone, the tippy top

  And sides of that ball, and all of it with

  The tip, the sides, the under, and the broad

  Of his tongue, and every now and then down came

  His lips like a babe’s over that creamy teat,

  And nothing could disturb him. What’s the word

  For going at an ice cream cone that way?

  ’Cause then I bought my triple chocolate sundae

  For me, and don’t you see? I was a child.

  And I ate it like a blind man, just as loving,

  And when I watched my uncle tasting his,

  I watched him like a blind boy who could see.

  The word for doing things that way is “young.”

  The word for that is “young, when you were nine.”

  It makes me kind of glad that I remember.