liking to fail in any way) That's a failing, I know.
PENELOPE
(accepting this ruefully) I see. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (119 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]
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PAUL
I don't care. I don't care if there was love or not. That's all right. I'm going to go to my room and close the door. I don't want to hear any more. PAUL exits wretchedly to his room.
HAROLD
See how you've upset him. He was so merry and hale before you came home. PENELOPE
How unhappy he's going to be--alone in his room.
HAROLD
He'll play with his rifle, I expect. That will cheer him up. PENELOPE
Rifle? HAROLD
I bought him a twenty-two yesterday--on the way home from Hamburger Heaven. And where is the good doctor? Have you two feathered a love nest somewhere?
PENELOPE
He's in East St. Louis with his mother--visiting an aunt. HAROLD
Last I heard, his mother was going alone. PENELOPE
He's afraid of you, Harold. He knew you'd want to fight him. He doesn't know anything about file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (120 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]
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fighting. He hates pain.
HAROLD
And you, a supposedly healthy woman, do not detest him for his cowardice? PENELOPE
It seems highly intelligent to me. HAROLD
What kind of a country has this become? The men wear beads and refuse to fight--and the woman adore them. America's days of greatness are over. It has drunk the blue soup. PENELOPE
Blue soup? HAROLD
An Indian narcotic we were forced to drink. It put us in a haze--a honey-colored haze which was lavender around the edge. We laughed, we sang, we snoozed. When a bird called, we answered back. Every living thing was our brother or our sister, we thought. Looseleaf stepped on a cockroach six inches long, and we cried. We had a funeral that went on for five days--for the cockroach! I sang "Oh Promise Me." Can you imagine? Where the hell did I ever learn the words to "Oh Promise Me"? Looseleaf delivered a lecture on maintenance procedures for the hydraulic system of a B-36. All the time we were drinking more blue soup, more blue soup! Never stopped drinking blue soup. Blue soup all the time. We'd go out after food in that file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (121 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE
honey-colored haze, and everything that was edible had a penumbra of lavender.
PENELOPE
Sounds quite beautiful. HAROLD
(angered) Beautiful, you say? It wasn't life, it wasn't death--it wasn't anything!
(anger still mounting) Beautiful? Seven years gone-(snapping his fingers) like that, like that! Seven years of silliness and random dreams!
Seven years of nothingness, when there could have been so much!
PENELOPE
Like what? HAROLD
(becoming dangerously physical, seizing a battle-ax) Action! Interaction! Give and take! Challenge and response!
He splits a coffee table with the ax.
PAUL
(rushing in with his .22 rifle at a high port arms)
Mom?
HAROLD
What's this?
PAUL wilts instantly, attempts to make his rifle inconspicuous, harmless, meaningless.
HAROLD
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What's this?
PAUL
Nothing. HAROLD
That's a rifle you have?
PAUL
No. HAROLD
Of course it is. Is it loaded?
PAUL
No. HAROLD
Open the bolt!
PAUL obeys. A cartridge pops out.
HAROLD
That's a cartridge, if I'm not mistaken. Gunpowder, bullet, cartridge case, and fulminate of mercury percussion cap--all set to go. PAUL
I was cleaning it. HAROLD
Pick up that cartridge and slip it back into the chamber--where it belongs. PAUL
Gee whiz, Dad-HAROLD
Welcome to manhood, you little sparrowfart! Load that gun!
PAUL
(bleatingly) Dad-file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (123 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]
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HAROLD
Too late! It's man to man now. Protecting your mother from me, are you? Protect her!`PENELOPE
He's a child! HAROLD
With an iron penis three feet long. Load it, boy. PENELOPE
You're begging him to kill you? HAROLD
If he thinks he's man enough. PENELOPE
(amazed by sudden insight) That's really what you want. You become furious when people won't make you dead. HAROLD
I'm teaching my son to be a man. PENELOPE
So he can kill you. You hate your own life that much. You beg for a hero to kill you. HAROLD
I plan to live one hundred years! PENELOPE
No you don't. HAROLD
If that's the case--what's to prevent my killing myself? PENELOPE
Honor, I suppose. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (124 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]
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HAROLD
What a handsome word. PENELOPE
(wonderingly) But it's all balled up in your head with death. The highest honor is death. When you talk of these animals, one by one, you don't just talk of killing them. You honored them with death. Harold--it is not honor to be killed.
HAROLD
If you've lived a good life, fought well-PENELOPE It's still just death, the absence of life--no honor at all. It's worse than the blue soup by far-that nothingness. To you, though, it's the honor that crowns them all.
HAROLD
May I continue with the rearing of my son? (to PAUL)
Load that gun!
PAUL shakes his head.
HAROLD
Load it! PAUL refuses.
HAROLD
Then speak, by God! Can you fight with words?
PAUL
I don't want to fight you. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (125 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM] HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE
HAROLD
Get mad! Tell me you don't like the way I treat your mother! Tell me you wish I'd never come home! PAUL
(weakly) It's your house, Dad.
HAROLD
(throwing up his hands) Everybody simply evaporates! (including the
audience, inviting it to share his indignation) There are guest issues to be fought out here--or to be argued, at least. The enemy, the champion of all who oppose me, is in East St. Louis with his mother and his aunt! I have so far done battle with a woman and a child and a violin.
PENELOPE
The old heroes are going to have to get used to this, Harold--the new heroes who refuse to fight. They're trying to save the planet. There's no time for battle, no point to battle anymore. HAROLD
I feel mocked, insulted, with no sort of satisfaction in prospect. We don't have to fight with steel. I can fight with words. I'm not an inarticulate ape, you know, who grabs a rock for want of a vocabulary. Call him up in East St. Louis, Penelope. Tell him to come here. PENELOPE
No.
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HAROLD
(emptily, turning away) No. Pause. He contemplates PAUL.
HAROLD
And my son, t
he only son of Harold Ryan--he's going to grow up to be a vanisher, too? PENELOPE
I don't know. I hope he never hunts. I hope he never kills another human being. HAROLD
(to PAUL, quietly) You hope this, too? PAUL
I don't know what I hope. But I don't think you care what I hope, anyway. You don't know me. (indicating PENELOPE) You don't know her, either. I don't think you know anybody. You talk to everybody just the same. HAROLD
I'm talking to you gently now. PAUL
Yeah. But it's going to get loud again. PENELOPE
He's right, Harold. To you, we're simply pieces in a game--this one labeled "woman," that one labeled
"son." There is no piece labeled
"enemy" and you are confused. Lion doorbell roars. PAUL goes to answer it. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (127 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]
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HAROLD
There won't be anybody out there. That's the new style: nobody anywhere. PAUL, aghast, admits NORBERT WOODLY. WOODLY is high as a kite on his own adrenaline. PENELOPE
(aghast, chokingly) Get out of here. WOODLY
It's really that bad? He comes farther into the room, bravely.
PENELOPE
You fool, you fool. WOODLY
Oh--look at the poor, crucified violin, would you? HAROLD
It died for your sins. WOODLY
This little corpse is intended as a lesson? HAROLD
There's a certain amount of information there.
WOODLY
Lest we forget how cruel you are. PENELOPE
(moving to the telephone) I'm going to call the police. HAROLD
(frighteningly) Don't!
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WOODLY
I agree. WOODLY closes the door. PENELOPE backs away from the phone, drifts toward PAUL, who still holds his rifle.
HAROLD
This is man to man. WOODLY
It's healer to killer. Is that the same thing? HAROLD
What brought you back? WOODLY
The same hairy, humorless old gods who move you from hither to yon. "Honor, " if you like.
HAROLD
(to PENELOPE) He's a champion after all.
WOODLY
Of the corpses and cripples you create for our instruction--when all we can learn from them is this: how cruel you are. PENELOPE
This is suicide. (to PAUL)
Go get the police.
HAROLD
Stop! PAUL stops.
HAROLD
There's going to be no bloodshed here. I know how he'll fight--the only way he can fight: with words. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (129 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE
The truth.
(to WOODLY)
Am I correct?
WOODLY
Yes. HAROLD
I can defeat him with anything from flavored toothpicks to siege howitzers. But he got it into his little head that he could come here and demolish Harold Ryan with words. The truth! Correct?
WOODLY
Correct. HAROLD
What an hallucination!
(laughs)
Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear. Oh dearie me.
WOODLY
You haven't heard me yet. HAROLD
You intend to crack my eardrums with your voice? Will I bleed from my every orifice? Who will clean up this awful mess? WOODLY
We'll find out now, won't we? PENELOPE
No, we won't. No matter how it begins, it will end in death. Because it always does. Isn't that always how it ends, Harold--in death? HAROLD
There has to be a threat of some sort, nobility of some sort, file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (130 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM] HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE
glamour of some sort, sport of some sort. These elements are lacking.
WOODLY
You're a filthy, rotten bastard. HAROLD
(pretending to be wounded) Oooooo. That hurt. WOODLY
You're old--so old. HAROLD
Now who's being cruel? WOODLY
A living fossil! Like the cockroaches and the horseshoe crabs. HAROLD
We do survive, don't we? You're going to have to apologize, of course, for calling me a bastard. That's a matter of form--not allowing you or anybody to call me a bastard. No rush about that. Just remember to apologize sometime soon. PENELOPE takes the rifle from PAUL.
WOODLY
You're a son of a bitch. HAROLD
Yes--well--uh--that's another one of those statements which more or less automatically requires an apology. Whenever you feel like it. It's sort of like turning off an alarm clock that's ringing loudly. Your apology turns off the alarm. PENELOPE
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(leveling the gun) I'm turning off the alarm. I'm turning off everything.
HAROLD
Ah! The lady is armed. PENELOPE
I want you to get out of here, Norbert. Harold--I want you to sit down in the chair, and not lift a finger until Norbert is gone. HAROLD
(to WOODLY) Whoever has the gun, you see, gets to tell everybody else exactly what to do. It's the American way.
PENELOPE
I mean it! HAROLD
Then you'd better fix your bayonet, because there aren't any bullets in the gun. PENELOPE
(to PAUL) Where's the bullet?
PAUL makes no move to help.
HAROLD
Help your mother find the bullet. PENELOPE
(to PAUL, pointing to the floor) There it is. Give it to me. PAUL obeys.
PENELOPE
How do I load?
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HAROLD
(to PAUL) Load it for her.
PAUL shakily obeys.
HAROLD
Cock it, too.
PAUL obeys.
HAROLD
Give it to her.
PAUL obeys.
PENELOPE
All right! Am I exceedingly dangerous now?
HAROLD
The National Safety Council would be appalled. PENELOPE
Then listen to me. (angrily)
You're both disgusting--with your pride, your pride.
(to WOODLY)
I hate you for coming here--like a federal marshal in a western film. I loved you when you stayed away. But here you are now--high noon in the Superbowl! You fool, you fool.
WOODLY
Everything's going to be beautiful. PENELOPE
You fake! You're no better than the dumbest general in the Pentagon. (pause) You're not going to beat Harold. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (133 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]
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You're not going to beat anybody. You're not going to stay here, either--yammering and taunting until you're most gloriously killed. Go home!
HAROLD
She's right, Norbert--go home.
WOODLY
I haven't said all I have to say. PENELOPE
Out! WOODLY
I haven't told you, Harold, how comical I think you are.
HAROLD
(hit squarely, absolutely unable to forgive) Comical?
PENELOPE
(to HAROLD) Sit down or I'll shoot!
HAROLD goes over to her, easily takes the gun away)
HAROLD
Give me that Goddamn thing! Now get out of here, or I might kill you. Who knows? P
ENELOPE
(terrified) You've killed women?
Happy Birthday, Wanda June Page 9
