Coming to Terms

by James Reston

  BILLY: Now this is level, Rich; this is straight talk, (HE is quiet, intense. This is difficult for him. HE seeks the exactly appropriate words of explanation) No b.s. No tricks. What you do on the side, that’s your business and I don’t care about it. But if you don’t cut the cute shit with me, I’m gonna turn you off. Completely. You ain’t gonna get a good mornin’ outa me, you understand, because it’s gettin’ bad around here. I mean, I know how you think—how you keep lookin’ out and seein’ yourself, and that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you because that’s all that’s happenin’, Rich. That’s all there is to it when you look out at me and think there’s some kind of approval or whatever you see in my eyes—you’re just seein’ yourself. And I’m talkin’ the simple quiet truth to you, Rich. I swear I am.

  BILLY looks away from RICHIE now and tries to go back to the mopping. It is embarrassing for them all. ROGER has watched, has tried to keep working. RICHIE has flopped back on his bunk. There is a silence.

  RICHIE: How . . . do . . . you want me to be? I don’t know how else to be.

  BILLY: Ohhh, man, that ain’t any part of it. (The mop is clenched in his hands)

  RICHIE: Well, I don’t come from the same kind of world as you do.

  BILLY: Damn, Richie, you think Roger and I come off the same street?

  ROGER: Shit . . .

  RICHIE: All right. Okay. But I’ve just done what I wanted all my life. If I wanted to do something, I just did it. Honestly. I’ve never had to work or anything like that and I’ve always had nice clothing and money for cab fare. Money for whatever I wanted. Always. I’m not like you are.

  ROGER: You ain’t sayin’ you really done that stuff, though, Rich.

  RICHIE: What?

  ROGER: That fag stuff.

  RICHIE (HE continues looking at ROGER and then HE looks away): Yes.

  ROGER: Do you even know what you’re sayin’, Richie? Do you even know what it means to be a fag?

  RICHIE: Roger, of course I know what it is. I just told you I’ve done it. I thought you black people were supposed to understand all about suffering and human strangeness. I thought you had depth and vision from all your suffering. Has someone been misleading me? I just told you I did it. I know all about it. Everything. All the various positions.

  ROGER: Yeh, so maybe you think you’ve tried it, but that don’t make you it. I mean, we used to . . . in the old neighborhood, man, we had a couple dudes swung that way. But they was weird, man. There was this one little fella, he was a screamin’ goddamn faggot . . . uh . . . (HE considers RICHIE, wondering if perhaps HE has offended him) Ohhh, ohhh, you ain’t no screamin’ goddamn faggot, Richie, no matter what you say. And the baddest man on the block was my boy Jerry Lemon. So one day Jerry’s got the faggot in one a them ole deserted stairways and he’s bouncin’ him off the walls. I’m just a little fella, see, and I’m watchin’ the baddest man on the block do his thing. So he come bouncin’ back into me instead of Jerry, and just when he hit, he gave his ass this little twitch, man, like he thought he was gonna turn me on. I’d never a thought that was possible, man, for a man to be twitchin’ his ass on me, just like he thought he was a broad. Scared me to death. I took off runnin’. Oh, oh, that ole neighborhood put me into all kinds a crap. I did some sufferin’, just like Richie says. Like this once, I’m swingin’ on up the street after school, and outa this phone booth comes this man with a goddamned knife stickin’ outa his gut. So he sees me and starts tryin’ to pull his motherfuckin’ coat out over the handle, like he’s worried about how he looks, man. “I didn’t know this was gonna happen,” he says. And then he falls over. He was just all of a sudden dead, man; just all of a sudden dead. You ever seen anything like that, Billy? Any crap like that?

  BILLY, sitting on ROGER’s bunk, is staring at ROGER.

  BILLY: You really seen that?

  ROGER: Richie’s a big-city boy.

  RICHIE: Oh, no; never anything like that.

  ROGER: “Momma, help me,” I am screamin’. “Jesus, Momma, help me.” Little fella, he don’t know how to act, he sees somethin’ like that.

  For a moment THEY are still, each thinking.

  BILLY: How long you think we got?

  ROGER: What do you mean?

  ROGER is hanging up the mops; BILLY is now kneeling on ROGER’s bunk.

  BILLY: Till they pack us up, man, ship us out.

  ROGER: To the war, you mean? To Disneyland? Man, I dunno; that up to them IBMs. Them machines is figurin’ that. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe never.

  The war—the threat of it—is the one thing THEY share.

  RICHIE: I was reading they’re planning to build it all up to more than five hundred thousand men over there. Americans. And they’re going to keep it that way until they win.

  BILLY: Be a great place to come back from, man, you know? I keep thinkin’ about that. To have gone there, to have been there, to have seen it and lived.

  ROGER (Settling onto BILLY’s bunk, HE lights a cigarette): Well, what we got right here is a fool, gonna probably be one a them five hundred thousand, too. Do you know I cry at the goddamn anthem yet sometimes? The flag is flyin’ at a ball game, the ole Roger gets all wet in the eye. After all the shit been done to his black ass. But I don’t know what I think about this war. I do not know.

  BILLY: I’m tellin’ you, Rog—I’ve been doin’ a lot a readin’ and I think it’s right we go. I mean, it’s just like when North Korea invaded South Korea or when Hitler invaded Poland and all those other countries. He just kept testin’ everybody and when nobody said no to him, he got so committed he couldn’t back out even if he wanted. And that’s what this Ho Chi Minh is doin’. And all these other Communists. If we let ’em know somebody is gonna stand up against ’em, they’ll back off, just like Hitler would have.

  ROGER: There is folks, you know, who are sayin’ L.B.J. is the Hitler, and not ole Ho Chi Minh at all.

  RICHIE (Talking as if this is the best news HE’s heard in years): Well, I don’t know anything at all about all that, but I am certain I don’t want to go—whatever is going on. I mean, those Vietcong don’t just shoot you and blow you up, you know. My God, they’ve got these other awful things they do: putting elephant shit on these stakes in the ground and then you step on ’em and you got elephant shit in a wound in your foot. The infection is horrendous. And then there’s these caves they hide in and when you go in after ’em, they’ve got these snakes that they’ve tied by their tails to the ceiling. So it’s dark and the snake is furious from having been hung by its tail and you crawl right into them—your face. My God.

  BILLY: They do not.

  BILLY knows HE has been caught; THEY ALL know it.

  RICHIE: I read it, Billy. They do.

  BILLY (Completely facetious, yet the fear is real): That’s bullshit, Richie.

  ROGER: That’s right, Richie. They maybe do that stuff with the elephant shit, but nobody’s gonna tie a snake by its tail, let ole Billy walk into it.

  BILLY: That’s disgusting, man.

  ROGER: Guess you better get ready for the Klondike, my man.

  BILLY: That is probably the most disgusting thing I ever heard of. I DO NOT WANT TO GO! NOT TO NOWHERE WHERE THAT KINDA SHIT IS GOIN’ ON! L.B.J. is Hitler; suddenly I see it all very clearly.

  ROGER: Billy got him a hatred for snakes.

  RICHIE: I hate them, too. They’re hideous.

  BILLY (And now, as a kind of apology to RICHIE, HE continues his self-ridicule far into the extreme): I mean, that is one of the most awful things I ever heard of any person doing. I mean, any person who would hang a snake by its tail in the dark of a cave in the hope that some other person might crawl into it and get bitten to death, that first person is somebody who oughta be shot. And I hope the five hundred thousand other guys that get sent over there kill ’em all—all them gooks—get ’em all driven back into Germany, where they belong. And in the meantime, I’ll be holding the northern border against the snowmen.

  ROG
ER (Rising from BILLY’s bed): And in the meantime before that, we better be gettin’ at the ole area here. Got to be strike troopers.

  BILLY: Right.

  RICHIE: Can I help?

  ROGER: Sure. Be good. (And HE crosses to his footlocker and takes out a radio) Think maybe I put on a little music, though it’s gettin’ late. We got time. Billy, you think?

  BILLY: Sure. (Getting nervously to his feet)

  ROGER: Sure. All right. We can be doin’ it to the music. (HE plugs the radio into the floor outlet as BILLY bolts for the door)

  BILLY: I gotta go pee.

  ROGER: You watch out for the snakes.

  BILLY: It’s the snowmen, man; the snowmen.

  BILLY is gone and “Ruby,” sung by Ray Charles, comes from the radio. For a moment, as the music plays. ROGER watches RICHIE wander about the room, pouring little splashes of wax onto the floor. Then RICHIE moves to his bed and lies down, and ROGER, shaking his head, starts leisurely to spread the wax, with RICHIE watching.

  RICHIE: How come you and Billy take all this so seriously—you know.

  ROGER: What?

  RICHIE: This army nonsense. You’re always shining your brass and keeping your footlocker neat and your locker so neat. There’s no point to any of it.

  ROGER: We here, ain’t we, Richie? We in the army. (Still working the wax)

  RICHIE: There’s no point to any of it. And doing those push-ups, the two of you.

  ROGER: We just see a lot a things the same way is all. Army ought to be a serious business, even if sometimes it ain’t.

  RICHIE: You’re lucky, you know, the two of you. Having each other for friends the way you do. I never had that kind of friend ever. Not even when I was little.

  ROGER (After a pause during which HE, working, sort of peeks at RICHIE every now and then): You ain’t really inta that stuff, are you, Richie? (It is a question that is a statement)

  RICHIE (Coyly HE looks at ROGER): What stuff is that, Roger?

  ROGER: That fag stuff, man. You know. You ain’t really into it, are you? You maybe messed in it a little is all—am I right?

  RICHIE: I’m very weak, Roger. And by that I simply mean that if I have an impulse to do something, I don’t know how to deny myself. If I feel like doing something, I just do it. I . . . will . . . admit to sometimes wishin’ I . . . was a little more like you . . . and Billy, even, but not to any severe extent.

  ROGER: But that’s such a bad scene, Rich. You don’t want that. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to be a punk. Not nobody. You wanna know what I think it is? You just got in with the wrong bunch. Am I right? You just got in with a bad bunch. That can happen. And that’s what I think happened to you. I bet you never had a chance to really run with the boys before. I mean, regular normal guys like Billy and me. How’d you come in the army, huh, Richie? You get drafted?

  RICHIE: No.

  ROGER: That’s my point, see. (HE has stopped working. HE stands, leaning on the mop, looking at RICHIE)

  RICHIE: About four years ago, I went to this party. I was very young, and I went to this party with a friend who was older and . . . this “fag stuff,” as you call it, was going on . . . so I did it.

  ROGER: And then you come in the army to get away from it, right? Huh?

  RICHIE: I don’t know.

  ROGER: Sure.

  RICHIE: I don’t know, Roger.

  ROGER: Sure; sure. And now you’re gettin’ a chance to run with the boys for a little, you’ll get yourself straightened around. I know it for a fact; I know that thing.

  From off there is the sudden loud bellowing sound of SERGEANT ROONEY.

  ROONEY (Offstage): THERE AIN’T BEEN NO SOLDIERS IN THIS CAMP BUT ME. I BEEN THE ONLY ONE—I BEEN THE ONLY ME!

  And BILLY comes dashing into the room.

  BILLY: Oh, boy.

  ROGER: Guess who?

  ROONEY (Offstage): FOR SO LONG I BEEN THE ONLY GODDAMN ONE!

  BILLY (Leaping onto his bed and covering his face with a Playboy magazine as RICHIE is trying to disappear under his sheets and blankets and ROGER is trying to get the wax put away so HE can get into his own bunk): Hut who hee whor—he’s got some yo-yo with him, Rog!

  ROGER: Huh?

  COKES and ROONEY enter. BOTH are in fatigues and drunk and big-bellied. THEY are in their fifties, their hair whitish and cut short. BOTH MEN carry whiskey bottles, beer bottles. COKES is a little neater than ROONEY, his fatigue jacket tucked in and not so rumpled, and HE wears canvas-sided jungle boots. ROONEY, very disheveled, chomps on the stub of a big cigar. THEY swagger in, looking for fun, and stand there side by side.

  ROONEY: What kinda platoon I got here? You buncha shit sacks. Everybody look sharp. (The THREE BOYS lie there, unmoving) Off and on!

  COKES: OFF AND ON! (HE seems barely conscious, wavering as HE stands)

  ROGER: What’s happenin’, Sergeant?

  ROONEY (Shoving his bottle of whiskey at ROGER, who is sitting up): Shut up, Moore! You want a belt? (Splashing whiskey on ROGER’s chest)

  ROGER: How can I say no?

  COKES: My name is Cokes!

  BILLY (Rising to sit on the side of his bed): How about me, too?

  COKES: You wait your turn.

  ROONEY (HE looks at the three of them as if THEY are fools. Indicates COKES with a gesture): Don’t you see what I got here?

  BILLY: Who do I follow for my turn?

  ROONEY (Suddenly, crazily petulant): Don’t you see what I got here? Everybody on their feet and at attention!

  BILLY and ROGER climb from their bunks and stand at attention. THEY don’t know what ROONEY is mad at.

  I mean it!

  RICHIE bounds to the position of attention.

  This here is my friend, who in addition just come back from the war! The goddamn war! He been to it and he come back. (HE is patting COKES gently, proudly) The man’s a fuckin’ hero! (HE hugs COKES, almost kissing him on the cheek) He’s always been a fuckin’ hero.

  COKES, embarrassed in his stupor, kind of wobbles a little from side to side.

  COKES: No-o-o-o-o-o . . . (And ROONEY grabs him, starts pushing him toward BILLY’s footlocker)

  ROONEY: Show ’em your boots, Cokes. Show ’em your jungle boots. (With a long, clumsy step. COKES climbs onto the footlocker, ROONEY supporting him from behind and then bending to lift one of COKES’s booted feet and display it for the boys) Lookee that boot. That ain’t no everyday goddamn army boot. That is a goddamn jungle boot! That green canvas is a jungle boot ’cause a the heat, and them little holes in the bottom are so the water can run out when you been walkin’ in a lotta water like in a jungle swamp. (HE is extremely proud of all this; HE looks at them) The army ain’t no goddamn fool. You see a man wearin’ boots like that, you might as well see he’s got a chestful a medals, ’cause he been to the war. He don’t have no boots like that unless he been to the war! Which is where I’m goin’ and all you slaphappy motherfuckers, too. Got to go kill some gooks. (HE is nodding at them, smiling) That’s right.

  COKES (Bursting loudly from his stupor): Gonna piss on ’em. Old booze. ‘At’s what I did. Piss in the rivers. Goddamn GIs secret weapon is old booze and he’s pissin’ it in all their runnin’ water. Makes ’em yellow. Ahhhha ha, ha, ha! (HE laughs and laughs, and ROONEY laughs, too, hugging COKES)

  ROONEY: Me and Cokesy been in so much shit together we oughta be brown. (And then HE catches himself, looks at ROGER) Don’t take no offense at that, Moore. We been swimmin’ in it. One Hundred and First Airborne, together. One-oh-one. Screamin’ goddamn Eagles! (Looking at each other, face to face, eyes glinting. THEY make sudden loud screaming-eagle sounds) This ain’t the army; you punks ain’t in the army. You ain’t ever seen the army. The army is Airborne! Airborne!

  COKES (Beginning to stomp his feet): Airborne, Airborne! ALL THE WAY!

  RICHIE, amused and hoping for a drink, too, reaches out toward ROONEY.

  RICHIE: Sergeant, Sergeant, I can have a little drink, too.

  ROONEY (Looks
at RICHIE and clutches the bottle): Are you kiddin’ me? You gotta be kiddin’ me. (HE looks to ROGER) He’s kiddin’ me, ain’t he, Moore? (And then to BILLY and then to COKES) Ain’t he, Cokesy?

  COKES steps forward and down with a thump, taking charge for his bewildered friend.

  COKES: Don’t you know you are tryin’ to take the booze from the hand a the future goddamn Congressional Honor winner . . . Medal . . .? (And HE looks lovingly at ROONEY. HE beams) Ole Rooney, Ole Rooney. (HE hugs ROONEY’s head) He almost done it already.

  And ROONEY, overwhelmed, starts screaming “Agggggghhhhhhhhhh,” a screaming-eagle sound, and making clawing eagle gestures at the air. HE jumps up and down, stomping his feet. COKES instantly joins in, stomping and jumping and yelling.

  ROONEY: Let’s show these shit sacks how men are men jumpin’ outa planes. Agggggghhhhhhhhhh. (Stomping and yelling, THEY move in a circle, ROONEY followed by COKES) A plane fulla yellin’ stompin’ men!

  COKES: All yellin’ stompin’ men!

  COKES and ROONEY yell and stomp, making eagle sounds, and then ROONEY leaps upon BILLY’s bed and runs the length of it until HE is on the footlocker, COKES still on the floor, stomping. ROONEY makes a gesture of hooking his rip cord to the line inside the plane. THEY yell louder and louder and ROONEY leaps high into the air, yelling “GERONIMO-O-O-O!” as COKES leaps onto the locker and then high into the air, bellowing “GERONIMO-O-O-O!” THEY stand side by side, their arms held up in the air as if grasping the shroud lines of open chutes. THEY seem to float there in silence.

  What a feelin’. . .

  ROONEY: Beautiful feelin’ . . .

  For a moment more THEY float there, adrift in the room, the sky, their memory. COKES smiles at ROONEY.

  COKES: Remember that one guy, O’Flannigan . . .?

  ROONEY (Nodding, smiting, remembering):. O’Flannigan . . .

  COKES: He was this one guy . . . O’Flannigan . . . (HE moves now toward the boys. BILLY, ROGER and RICHIE, who have gathered on ROGER’s bed and footlocker. ROONEY follows several steps, then drifts backward onto BILLY’s bed, where HE sits and then lies back, listening to COKES) We was testing chutes where you could just pull a lever by your ribs here when you hit the ground—see—and the chute would come off you, because it was just after a whole bunch a guys had been dragged to death in an unexpected and terrible wind at Fort Bragg. So they wanted you to be able to release the chute when you hit if there was a bad wind when you hit. So O’Flannigan was this kinda joker who had the goddamn sense a humor of a clown and nerves, I tell you, of steel, and he says he’s gonna release the lever midair, then reach up, grab the lines and float on down, hanging. (His hand paws at the air, seeking a rope that isn’t there) So I seen him pull the lever at five hundred feet and he reaches up to two fistfuls a air, the chute’s twenty feet above him, and he went into the ground like a knife. (The bottle, held high over his head, falls through the air to the bed, ALL watching it)