by Sam Shepard
Hobart collapses in an exhausted heap on the horse’s belly, gasping for air. Slowly, he begins to weep softly, head tucked into his elbow. Long pause as Hobart grieves. His arm slowly embraces the horse’s belly. He pats the horse softly, strokes its belly. The wind has become more present now, beginning to moan and howl ominously. Very distant thunder, followed by branches of lightning on the horizon. Hobart looks up slowly at the dark sky.
(To himself.) So, this is the way you wind up. Not like some gallant bushwhacker but flattened out babbling in the open plains. What the hell did you have in mind, anyway? What was it?
He pats the horse, talks to it.
Maybe the two of us—huh? Maybe that’s it. Both of us were meant to go down in the hole. Do you think so? Maybe that’s exactly it. Both of us.
He props himself up and looks down into the hole.
Should’ve dug it deeper.
(To horse.) If I was to jump down in there with you, would you be a little more cooperative? Would you maybe be less lonely? Is that it? Just the plain old lonesomeness of it?
He slowly stands, speaks to horse.
I don’t expect an answer right away. You can take your time to consider. Just know that at this point—this particular low moment in time—I am willing to take the leap. I’ve got nothing to lose.
Pause.
But I’m not jumping down in there if you chicken out on me. I’m not diving down into all that infernal blackness without getting some assurance that I’ll have company.
Pause.
Company—some—warmth.
Thunder and lightning closer. Wind picking up.
(Looks at sky.) What’re we going to do, huh? Just lay out here and get rained on like a couple of rocks? Drenched to the teeth. You expect me to just hang around here and get rained on while you—
Pause.
No. No, I’m not making any deals. No deals. I’m not bargaining with a dead horse.
He moves down right to remaining equipment, talking as he goes about his business. Searching through the duffel, he pulls out a flashlight, switches it on, finds a small white canvas tent, rectangular, Civil War style and starts struggling to set it up in the semidarkness. Intermittent thunder.
(To horse, as he struggles with tent assembly.) Just because you’ve decided to cash in your chips is no reason for me to just—
He turns to the horse violently.
I’m not talking to you anymore, all right? I’ve had it with you! You and your—dilemma. What about me? I’m out here, wasting my time trying to get you buried and—I’m not buying into this. This is not my first county fair, you know. I can make it through this. I’ve been through some bitter squalls in my time. Hail the size of baseballs. Freezing rain. Wind that would knock your dick in the dirt, knock you right out of the saddle. This—
He waves at the darkening sky.
This is nothing.
The tent collapses; he repeats trying to set it up as he raves on.
This is—this is some little pissant gully wash. Some piss in the oceans—that’s what this is. Not enough to turn the dust to mud. I’ve got beans here! Plenty of beans! Bacon! I’ve got jerky and trail mix! Shelter! What else do you need? What else?
The tent collapses again; he soldiers on.
A little fortitude, maybe. Vinegar and Moxie! Nothing more than that. Piece of cake! You don’t think I’ve just stumbled out here like some greenhorn tourist, do you? Some SUV nincompoop!
Thunder and lightning closer.
I cut my teeth on this kind of country. Worse! Broke boulders in the High Sierras!
Through lightning and thunder:
Crushed primitive elements! Squashed snakes and scorpions. Right here. Right on this very ground! I’m not just some bumbling fool looking for a handout. Look at these hands! You see these?
He rushes toward the horse, holding out his hands.
Look at these hands!
The tent collapses again; he repeats setup.
You don’t earn hands like these backing down from Manifest Destiny! No sir. Not a bit of it.
(To horse.) You, now—you might belong to that tribe of lily-livered weaklings who’s ready to roll over and play dead in the midst of monumental challenge, but some of us—some of us are aware of our—
The tent collapses again.
FUCKING TENT!!
Loud thunder and lightning close by. Hobart becomes more frantic in his tent assembly.
(Struggling with tent.) What’s with this tent? This isn’t my original tent, is it? Who ordered this fucking tent? Sabotage and sedition! That’s what it is. Why else would I be having this much trouble? Why else? I shouldn’t be having this much trouble with—nothing’s cooperating. Absolutely nothing. I don’t understand it.
Throughout the next sequence the storm becomes more violent.
I do not understand why I’m having so much trouble taming the wild. I’ve done this already. Haven’t I already been through all of this? We closed the frontier in 1890-something, didn’t we? Didn’t we already accomplish that? The Iron Horse—coast to coast. Blasted all the buffalo out of here. An ocean of bones from Sea to Shining Sea. Trails of tears. Chased the heathen red man down to Florida. Paid the niggers off in mules and rich black dirt. Whupped the Chinese and strung them up with their own damn ponytails. Decapitated the Mexicans. Erected steel walls to keep the riffraff out. Sucked these hills barren of gold. Ripped the topsoil as far as the eye can see. Drained the aquifers. Dammed up all the rivers and flooded the valleys for recreational purposes! Run off all the pathetic small farmers and transformed agriculture into “Agribusiness”! Destroyed education. Turned our children into criminals. Demolished art! Invaded sovereign nations! What more can we possibly do?
Finally Hobart manages to get the tent set up. He climbs inside with the flashlight on. There’s barely enough room for him to turn around. He hunkers down, facing audience through the open flap, knees tucked tightly up under his chin, arms wrapped around his lower legs. He is exhausted from his tirade, catching his breath and staring out bleary-eyed. Thunder and lightning crescendo. Lightning silhouettes the dead horse, its legs stiff in the air. Flashlight beam cuts across Hobart’s face. Sound of deluge, then weather begins to subside into distance, enough for Hobart’s plea to be heard. Darkness pervades.
(Inside tent, after pause.) What if I tried praying at this late date?
You? Praying?
“If,” I said. “What if.”
Don’t make me puke. The going gets a little rough and suddenly you’re a man of the cloth?
I wouldn’t go that far.
An epiphany, is it?
“If”! Is there anything wrong with “if”?
What would you pray for?
A sunny day, I guess. One last bright, shining, sunny day. Is that too much to ask?
What makes you think you deserve it?
Well, there’ve been other sunny days I never deserved. Gratuitous sunny days where I woke up and they just happened to be there. Beams of light streaming through the window. Her golden hair.
(Mocking.) “Her golden hair.”
You’re impossible to have a civil conversation with.
Well, you’re welcome to find somebody else.
Pause.
So this is it, I guess, huh? “Prominent New York Art Dealer Found Dead in Badlands with Dead Horse. There were no apparent signs of a struggle.”
Pathetic.
What do you suppose I had in mind?
Authenticity, wasn’t it? AUTHENTICITY.
Oh, yeah.
Pause.
I think I might try it, anyway. Just for the heck of it.
Try what?
Praying.
By all means. Be my guest.
I’ve never actually tried it, have you?
Once. It didn’t work.
You—put your hands together?
I think it’s optional.
Close your eyes?
Why not.
Think�
��what? Think of God?
Suit yourself.
I don’t think I can think of God.
Then dream something up.
A bright—shining—sunny—day.
That might work.
The lights bump up abruptly to a bright yellowish prairie daylight. The storm has vanished. Hobart peers out from the tent, squinting his eyes against the brightness. Slowly he emerges from the tent, leaving the flashlight behind. He staggers downstage center, squinting out into the distance.
(He stops. Speaks out toward horizon.) Bright. Blinding. Far as the eye can see.
He peers up at the sky, then turns upstage and looks at the horse, still in its rigid, belly-up position, legs pointed straight to the sky. Hobart staggers to the edge of the pit and looks down into it. He sees his hat in the hole. He runs his hand slowly over the top of his head, missing the feel of his hat. He turns to audience. Speaks directly to them.
(To audience.) Hat like that shouldn’t be down in a hole. Brand-new hat. Hardly even got a chance to break it in.
Slowly, he climbs back down into the hole where he originally made his entrance, disappearing. Long pause, then the dead horse slams forward, this time downstage, with a mighty boom accompanied by bass timpani offstage, dust billowing up, filling the stage. The horse falls into the hole with just its head sticking out. Pause, as dust begins to settle, then Hobart’s voice is heard from deep in the pit, singing the song as the lights begin slowly to fade to black. The flashlight remains on, illuminating empty tent.
Oh, didn’t he ramble
Oh, didn’t he ramble
Rambled all around
In and out of town.
Oh, didn’t he ramble
Oh, didn’t he ramble
He rambled till those butchers
Cut him down.
Lights to black. Flashlight remains on. Music: Dr. John singing “Didn’t He Ramble” from same album, then lights rise for the curtain call.
End.
ALSO BY SAM SHEPARD
BURIED CHILD
A Play
In this newly revised edition of the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Buried Child, a scene of madness greets Vince and his girlfriend when they arrive at the farmhouse of his hard-drinking grandparents, who seem to have no idea who he is. Nor does his father, Tilden, a hulking former All-American football player, or his uncle who has lost one of his legs to a chain saw. Only the memory of an unwanted child, buried in an undisclosed location, can hope to deliver this family from its sin.
Drama/0-307-27497-7
CRUISING PARADISE
Tales
A boy travels to a roadside inn to retrieve the mattress on which his drunken father burned to death. A mortified actor bulldozes his way through the Mexican border bureaucracy by pretending to be Spencer Tracy. A man and a woman quarrel desperately in a South Dakota motel room and part company for reasons neither can understand. The stories in Cruising Paradise map the places where our culture is defined, from a writer who has become synonymous with the recklessness, stoicism, and solitude of American manhood.
Fiction/Short Stories/0-679-74217-4
THE GOD OF HELL
A Play
Frank and Emma are a quiet, respectable couple who raise cows on their Wisconsin farm. Soon after they agree to put up Frank’s old friend Haynes, who is on the lam from a secret government project involving plutonium, they’re visited by Welch, an unctuous government bureaucrat from hell. His aggressive patriotism puts Frank, Emma, and Haynes on the defensive, transforming a heartland American household into a scene of torture and promoting a radioactive brand of conformity with a dangerously long half-life.
Drama/1-4000-9651-0
GREAT DREAM OF HEAVEN
Stories
A woman driving her mother’s ashes across the country has a strangely transcendent run-in with an injured hawk. Two aging widowers, in Stetsons and bolo ties, together make a daily pilgrimage to the local Denny’s, only to be divided by the attentions of their favorite waitress. A boy watches a “remedy man” tame a wild stallion, a contest that mirrors his own struggle with his father. Peering unblinkingly into the chasms that separate fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends and strangers, these lyrical tales bear the unmistakable signature of an American master.
Fiction/Short Stories/0-375-70452-3
SIMPATICO
A Play
Carter ought to be managing his thoroughbred business in Kentucky. Instead, he is in a room in Cucamonga, Nowheresville, U.S.A., trying to get back in the good graces of Vinnie, the one man who has the power to destroy him. From the beginning, Sam Shepard’s Simpatico launches us into the world of horse racing, where high society meets the low life and the line between winners and losers is as treacherously thin as a razor blade.
Drama/0-679-76317-1
THE LATE HENRY MOSS, EYES FOR CONSUELA,
WHEN THE WORLD WAS GREEN
Three Plays
In The Late Henry Moss, two estranged brothers confront the past as they piece together the drunken fishing expedition that preceded their father’s death. In Eyes for Consuela, a vacationing American encounters a knife-toting Mexican bandit on a gruesome quest. And in When the World Was Green, a journalist in search of her father interviews an old man who resolved a vendetta by murdering the wrong man.
Drama/1-4000-3079-X
STATES OF SHOCK, FAR NORTH, SILENT TONGUE
A Play and Two Screenplays
Sam Shepard’s writing tears through the envelope between prose and poetry and between pop culture and myth. In the play States of Shock, a nostalgic colonel and his mutilated guest celebrate a bizarre anniversary–and in the process reopen the wounds of war, sexuality, and familial betrayal. The screenplay Far North looks fondly and sadly across the gap of gender and generation. And in his screenplay Silent Tongue, Shepard turns the history of the white presence on the frontier into something resembling Greek tragedy.
Drama/0-679-74218-2
THE UNSEEN HAND
And Other Plays
If you visit Sam Shepard country, expect to find bayous, deserts, and junkyards where dreams rust alongside abandoned Chevys. Prepare to meet broken gunmen, refugees from distant galaxies, slavering swamp things, and California highway patrolmen. Sam Shepard does nothing less than renew America’s myths–and sometimes he invents them from scratch. In these fourteen works for the theater, our most audacious living playwright sets genres and archetypes spinning, with utterly mesmerizing results.
Drama/0-679-76789-4
VINTAGE BOOKS
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).
