MR. UNIVERSE

by Jim Grimsley

  PAUL. You cannot possibly do this to me.

  J. Sweet, soft and naive. Luminous in the seat next to you. Obedient and pliant to your will. You gather her in your arms, the Maserati still warm from its desert run, the hot sun on your back and on her thighs—

  PAUL. This never happened. You know perfectly well I am incapable. My little infirmity.

  J. But you remember her. Don’t you? Of course you do. You were perfectly whole that afternoon. This was long before your legendary self-castration, which is, after all, disputed by most reputable sources. And you remember, as I describe, your companion’s soft hair tangled in your lips. Your body spinning in a thousand directions, approaching infinity but still frightened. And then, as you were beginning your little act of self-abandon, over the desert a blinding light appeared, and you thought it was for you.

  PAUL. This is not how it happened. I have never remembered it this way before.

  J. This isn’t how you wrote it down, is it?

  PAUL. No. No.

  J. Those documentation problems. Can be tricky. When your memory goes. How could you have forgotten the smell of her freshly washed hair? Or the light, when it first appeared, not white but amber. Glittering. And a deep voice that said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And you leaned up over the ecstatic, shuddering body of your companion, and you hid your face in your hands. But the light was too fierce, seeping through your closed fingers, prying open the lids of your eyes. And you opened your eyes. And your companion, beneath you, was no longer the woman who had ridden with you all that way through the desert. She was not a woman at all. Her skin was cold, white, scaly, her body stiff, her thick tail lashing beneath you. And you were plunged deep inside her, and God was watching. At last, mercifully, you were blind. But then the tongue of the lizard touched your throat, and you took it in your hands and ripped it free.

  SOL HEIFFER (touching a hand to her throat). I remember.

  PAUL. No. You appeared to me. You said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And I said. I said. I was looking at the light. (Pause.) And then Sam Jennings and Bert Bryant—

  SOL HEIFFER. No. That’s not the way it happened.

  PAUL. You can’t possibly know anything about it.

  SOL HEIFFER. I remember. Sam and Bert came later. The next day. After.

  (PAUL focuses on SOL HEIFFER with a great effort.)

  PAUL. What are you talking about? I trust you have found the guard captain as I ordered.

  SOL HEIFFER (glancing at J.). Yes sir.

  PAUL. You’re lying. Of course you are. You never went anywhere.

  SOL HEIFFER. The guards will be here soon.

  PAUL. There should be no reason for delay. Why can’t they come now, at once, as I asked?

  J. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

  PAUL (throwing the cassette recorder against the wall; turning to SOL HEIFFER). Go and get them now. Tell them to come now.

  (The crowd erupts, louder than at any point before.

  Exit SOL HEIFFER.)

  J. Foolish. Don’t you think? The way they sound, all together. Like animals at feeding.

  PAUL. My attorney wouldn’t have used it anyway. It wasn’t a real deposition.

  J. That’s right.

  PAUL. My head will clear in a few days.

  J. Maybe you should read your own account of what happened. Sam Jennings and Bert Bryant, all that.

  PAUL. You called me by name.

  J. Yes. Yes, I suppose I did.

  PAUL. Then you admit it. This whole game of yours. It’s a sham. My memories. Are false. The incident with the woman never happened. You’ve tampered with me. Admit it.

  J. (quietly, simply). I’ve told you the truth. Whatever I told you. Is the truth. Now and forever. (Pause.) The woman in the desert had a child. The child was a lizard. Nathan raised the child. You remember Nathan, don’t you? From my parable?

  PAUL. I will not believe it.

  J. Your old memories will fade. Only the new ones will remain.

  PAUL. You had no right to tamper with my mind.

  J. It wasn’t your mind I changed. It was the past.

  (Silence.

  The implications of this sink in.

  PAUL kneels in front of J. in a pose of worship and grasps the hem of J.’s robe.)

  PAUL. The Lord my God is a mighty God, he upholds the righteous and casteth down those who do wickedness. In the strength of the Lord my God I will stand, for you are a mighty rock, and there are none who can come against you.

  (Enter SOL HEIFFER, with a cross on which is the figure of a crucified lizard.

  She leans the cross against the wall and takes her place beneath it, the Mother of the Lizard, mourning the sacrifice.

  By the end of the speech, PAUL’s old memories are fading fast.)

  PAUL. For you have sent your Son to die for the sins of the world, and he is come among us with great righteousness, and light shines from him as from the sun, and his glory is the glory of your name, and his strength is the strength of your Word, and his grace is the grace of the innocent. For he is without sin. And behold, men have chastised him and vilely used him, and they have raised him up to you, as a sacrifice to you, even your Son whom you freely gave. But now the Mocker has come among us. And he mocks at you with a great voice, and foulness issues from his mouth. In no wise can he abide your tender mercy or your loving truth. Behold, with his tongue he has brought a great sin upon my house, for I mistook him for your Son and brought him to live among my private chambers. But he has lain among my innocent children like a poison. He came not as once he came to me in the desert, with a blinding light and gentle words. He has been among my followers like the pestilence, and he has brought great evil to me and all my kind.

  J. That’s enough.

  PAUL (raising his head). You’re still here.

  J. Yes.

  PAUL. Will the guards come soon? You’re to be crucified.

  J. Yes. I know.

  (Silence.)

  PAUL. It isn’t fair. What you’ve done.

  J. It’s dangerous. Worshiping an omnipotent God. You should have thought of that.

  PAUL (seeing SOL HEIFFER). Sol. Sol Heiffer. What are you doing there?

  SOL HEIFFER (gesturing to the lizard). My son is dead.

  PAUL. I’m terribly sorry.

  (SOL HEIFFER reaches her hand toward PAUL.)

  SOL HEIFFER. He died on the cross.

  PAUL. Yes. I can see.

  SOL HEIFFER. Would you like to hear about him? About his immaculate conception? His childhood wisdom? His virtuous death? Would you like me to tell you the story?

  PAUL (joining her, laying his head in her lap). Yes. But not now.

  (Lights down to form two pools of light onstage.

  One is on the crucifixion scene.

  The other is on J., who goes to the cot, kneels, and pulls a suitcase from beneath.

  Removing his robes, he folds them and puts them in the suitcase.

  This leaves him in his underwear and sandals.

  He puts on a man’s business hat.)

  J. Today. In the market. My message was simple. I said, enough. I said, I didn’t come back for nice-guy stuff. Plowshares into swords, remember? That’s what I said. You want to make religion work for you? Maybe you better just start over. You’re in the holy city for the weekend? All right. Begin with that. Tonight we’re going to burn this city down. (Laughs.) I said that. (Laughs; begins to exit with the suitcase.) That’s pretty good. Burn this city down.

  (Stops at the foot of the cross for a moment of silence, at the end of which he bows his head politely.)

  J. Better you than me. O lizard of righteousness.

  (Exit J.

  Lights to black a moment later, excepting only the eyes of the lizard, which continue to glow, the new sacrifice.)

  Kaye Gibbons, on The Borderland

  Hardscrabble southerners, as remarkably portrayed in The Borderland, do not suffer interlopers from the city gladly
. People such as Grimsley’s Rollins couple critique and pass judgment on strangers who wonder how such people manage to back some semblance of life out of the tangled, violently composed wrecks of their existence. The Rollinses, in their favor, were born of the land and know their way through fields in the dark, and when we consider that southerners have forever loved land, we see that by owning a piece of the earth they are actually better southern citizens than the play’s chief irritant, Gordon Hammond.

  Grimsley writes of what happens when two diametrically opposed married couples breach the borderland, both physical and spiritual, that separates their lives. This tale of life roiling in a crucible has been acted out before, by Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and every writer who has looked for the extraordinary collision of cultures and values. Grimsley, however, transcends the bulk of modern fiction by blurring the dividing line a bit by his methods of characterization. He shows, always; he tells us only what we need to know and is then quiet. He is never a preacher, never didactic. But somehow at the play’s end, we see in retrospect how he manages his shades of gray, how subtly his characters convey the heart of the story. We never feel that Grimsley has any animosity, any scores to settle. It is plain that he respects his art form, his language, too much to turn a fine story into a social diatribe. He certainly had the chance and was wise enough not to take it. He is interested in words, symbols, metaphor, and character. In all of Grimsley’s work, there are those powerful characters, straining to break free from the page.

  The Hammonds and the Rollinses live by different rules, treasure different ideals, if one can say that the wife-beating, violent-natured Jake has any ideals other than the solely utilitarian—eat, drink, procreate until the wife is spent. His counterpoint, Gordon Hammond, is skittish, possibly impotent, and, in contrast to Jake, can wield neither his pistol nor his penis satisfactorily. The menace each one provokes—Jake physically and verbally, Gordon emotionally—is played out in the dark. Here, Grimsley’s work with darkness recalls the famous last lines of The Glass Menagerie. If one of Borderland’s men had a bit of what the other had, they might make decent husbands. But they have been molded by circumstance, not nature, and this acculturation makes each, in his own way, a son of a bitch seldom so artfully drawn in literature.

  The wives, Helen Hammond and Eleanor Rollins, have in common the singular ability to feel pain. We readily see what strife the common lot of male humanity has put them through, the emotional if not physical hurts, the trauma of a furious fist, the refusal to create a family. Helen has come to the country to find a life that southern city people, latent boomers, increasingly wish to imagine their grandparents had. They build “new” farmhouses, buy “new” antiques. Missing in the South now, among these interlopers and in Helen’s life, is the authenticity, the realness. She has surrounded herself with new things—things that a true countrywoman can see only in catalogs or in rare glimpses inside one of these new neighbor’s homes. And when Eleanor, wet, beaten, and scared, runs from the elements, and above all from the element of nature that her husband represents, to the safe and warm home of a much-concerned Helen, the borderland is crossed. When Jake comes to find her and drag her home, where he is in control, the trespass is powered by inchoate anger, loathing, sheer criminal intent. Here, Grimsley executes the crisis of the story in a few deft strokes. His language, always loaded even in his novels, is now so heavily freighted with portent that the reader may need to stop a moment, as I did, to let the puny little human heart adapt itself to the speed and intensity with which Grimsley is now propelling us toward the final moments. The reader may find the ride to that last scene to be more than he or she bargained for. As always, Jim Grimsley gives good value for your dollar. We are blessed that he is one of the most hard-working, honest, and intelligent writers working today.

  THE BORDERLAND

  The Borderland premiered at Currican Theatre in New York in October 1994, in a production directed by Dean Gray, featuring Elisabeth Lewis Corley as Helen, Laurence Lau as Gordon, Sarah McCord as Eleanor, and David Van Pelt as Jake. Sets were by Rob Odorisio; costumes, by Jonathan Green; lighting, by Jack Mehler; and sound, by Michael Keck.

  PLAYERS

  HELEN HAMMOND, a woman in her early thirties. She has decided to stay at home full-time, since her husband can now support a family on his salary alone, and plans to have her first child soon. GORDON HAMMOND, a professional in his early thirties. He has recently received a promotion that has allowed him to buy a new house in the country but within fairly comfortable commuting distance of metropolitan Atlanta.

  ELEANOR ROLLINS, a rural housewife in her mid- to late twenties JAKE ROLLINS, a rural laborer in his late twenties

  SETTING

  The interior of an upper-middle-class house built in the country by city people and intended to resemble other rural buildings in superficial ways while providing all the comforts of the metropolis. The stage is dominated by two large windows. Suggested set pieces might be fake primitive woodwork and furniture, a country-style hearth, anything of that sort, but nothing should be overdone. The exits suggest the larger house surrounding the stage. Beyond the windows is a porch, though this need not be represented in any way, except that storm effects should be muted by the porch. The play begins in late afternoon. Rigid adherence to any period is neither necessary nor desirable. Storm effects must be of high quality, since they pervade the action.

  ACT 1

  HELEN is found at the largest of the windows, almost lost in the curtains.

  Enter GORDON, with a paper, which he begins to read.

  He speaks to HELEN while not actually concentrating on her.

  The wind is blowing outside.

  GORDON. How’s it looking?

  HELEN. Cloudy. Wind’s blowing.

  GORDON. Another storm?

  HELEN. I think so.

  GORDON. I hope it’s not as bad as last night.

  (GORDON watches HELEN for a moment.)

  GORDON. Come out of there. You look lost.

  HELEN. I’m all right.

  GORDON. Come out of there anyway.

  HELEN. But I like it.

  (GORDON sits with the paper.

  A moment passes.)

  GORDON. What did you do today?

  HELEN. Repotted my ferns.

  GORDON. Again?

  HELEN. Yes. (Pause.) They weren’t right. From before.

  GORDON (still not really interested, but talking). You said you had some kind of meeting.

  HELEN. Library club. I didn’t go.

  GORDON. Why not?

  HELEN. I just didn’t.

  GORDON. I thought you liked those women.

  HELEN. There’s one man in the group.

  GORDON. Really?

  HELEN. He’s very bright. He reads Spanish.

  GORDON. But you still didn’t go to the meeting, even to hear this man read Spanish.

  HELEN. Why would he read Spanish at the meeting? (Pause.) I felt shy at the last minute. They’ve all known each other for years.

  GORDON. I’m sure they like you fine.

  HELEN. Anyway, I watched a good movie on TV.

  (Silence.)

  GORDON (looking entirely away from the paper for the first time). I’m worried about you.

  HELEN. Why? I’m fine.

  GORDON. I thought you would be happy when you didn’t have to work.

  HELEN. Oh Gordon, I’m fine. I’ll go to the meeting next week.

  (GORDON returns to his newspaper.)

  HELEN. I saw that woman again.

  GORDON. Who are you talking about?

  HELEN. The woman I told you about. I did, I remember telling you. Who lives in the house next door.

  GORDON. The white woman with all the washing machines on her porch? The one who has about sixty children.

  HELEN. She has five children.

  GORDON. Five’s enough. Don’t you think?

  HELEN. She’s younger than me. Did you know that?

  GORDON. No.
>
  HELEN. She is. And she has five children. (Pause.) I can’t even imagine what that’s like. If we had five children in the house. Now.

  GORDON. Where did you see her?

  HELEN. Running across the field. A few minutes ago, this side of the bridge.

  GORDON. Running?

  HELEN. Yes.

  GORDON. Where?

  HELEN. To the woods. I didn’t see where.

  GORDON. Maybe she’s just getting exercise.

  HELEN. Don’t be silly.

  GORDON. When did you get to be so fascinated with this woman?

  (HELEN should be free of the window by now.)

  HELEN. Her husband was in the yard. The side yard. Watching her. Not chasing her. Just standing there.

  GORDON. How do you know how old she is?

  HELEN. I talked to her last week. At Mr. Jarman’s store. I gave her a ride home.

  GORDON. What made you do that?

  HELEN. She had more than she could carry. One of the children was with her but he was too small to carry much. She shops at that store. Not like we do, not just when she’s out of something, she buys all her groceries there.

  GORDON. At those prices?

  HELEN. She was planning to walk home with two heavy bags. And this sweet little boy trying to help her.

  GORDON. This is really too much. You sound like a social worker.

  HELEN. I knew you wouldn’t like it. That’s why I didn’t tell you.

  GORDON. She should learn to drive.

  HELEN. She knows how to drive.

  GORDON. There’s a car right in the yard.

  HELEN. I know. I suppose it doesn’t work.

  GORDON. Well I’m sure I’ve seen her husband in it. In motion.

  HELEN. Well I didn’t question her about it.

  GORDON. She was probably lying. She probably can’t drive at all. Too frightened to learn. Too stupid. Something like that.

  HELEN. I don’t think she’s stupid.

  GORDON. How do you know?

  HELEN. Because I’m not stupid and I talked to her.

  (GORDON goes to HELEN, who is still standing, and embraces her.

  She speaks past his shoulder.)

  HELEN. When I saw her running. Her face. She was so afraid. And there he was just standing there. I couldn’t imagine what she could be running from.