by James Reston
Silence.
CARLYLE (HE sits up, uneasy and wary): That how you work it?
ROGER: Work what?
CARLYLE: Whosever turn it be.
BILLY: No, no, that ain’t the way we work it, because we don’t work it.
CARLYLE: See? See? There it is—that goddamn education showin’ through. All them years in school. Man, didn’t we have a good time tonight? You rode in my car. I showed you a good cathouse, all that sweet black pussy. Ain’t we friends? Richie likes me. How come you don’t like me?
BILLY: ’Cause if you really are doin’ what I think you’re doin’, you’re a fuckin’ animal!
CARLYLE leaps to his feet, hand snaking to his pocket to draw a weapon.
ROGER: Billy, no.
BILLY: NO, WHAT?!
ROGER: Relax, man; no need. (HE turns to CARLYLE; patiently, wearily. HE speaks) Man, I tole you it ain’t goin’ on here. We both tole you it ain’t goin’ on here.
CARLYLE: Don’t you jive me, nigger. You goin’ for a walk like I’m askin’, or not? I wanna get this clear.
ROGER: Man, we live here.
RICHIE: It’s my house, too, Roger; I live here, too. (HE bounds to his feet, flinging the blanket that has been covering him so it flies and lands on the floor near ROGER’s footlocker)
ROGER: Don’t I know that? Did I say somethin’ to make you think I didn’t know that?
Standing. RICHIE is removing his trousers and throwing them down on his footlocker.
RICHIE: Carlyle is my guest.
Sitting down on the side of his bed and facing out. RICHIE puts his arms around CARLYLE’s thigh. ROGER jumps to his feet and grabs the blanket from the foot of his bed. Shaking it open. HE drops onto the bed, his head at the foot of the bed and facing off as HE covers himself.
ROGER: Fine. He your friend. This your home. So that mean he can stay. It don’t mean I gotta leave. I’ll catch you all in the mornin’.
BILLY: Roger, what the hell are you doin’?
ROGER: What you better do, Billy. It’s gettin’ late. I’m goin’ to sleep.
BILLY: What?
ROGER: Go to fucking bed, Billy. Get up in the rack, turn your back and look at the wall.
BILLY: You gotta be kiddin’.
ROGER: DO IT!
BILLY: Man . . .!
ROGER: Yeah . . .!
BILLY: You mean just . . .
ROGER: It been goin’ on a long damn time, man. You ain’t gonna put no stop to it.
CARLYLE: You . . . ain’t . . . serious.
RICHIE (Both HE and CARLYLE are staring at ROGER and then BILLY, who is staring at ROGER): Well, I don’t believe it. Of all the childish . . . infantile . . .
CARLYLE: Hey! (Silence) HEY! Even I got to say this is a little weird, but if this the way you do it . . . (And HE turns toward RICHIE below him) it the way I do it. I don’t know.
RICHIE: With them right there? Are you kidding? My God, Carlyle, that’d be obscene. (Pulling slightly away from CARLYLE)
CARLYLE: Ohhh, man . . . they backs turned.
RICHIE: No.
CARLYLE: What I’m gonna do? (Silence. HE looks at them, all three of them) Don’t you got no feelin’ for how a man feel? I don’t understand you two boys. Unless’n you a pair of motherfuckers. That what you are, you a pair of motherfuckers? You slits, man. DON’T YOU HEAR ME!? I DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS SITUATION HERE. I THOUGHT WE MADE A DEAL! (RICHIE rises, starts to pull on his trousers. CARLYLE grabs him) YOU GET ON YOUR KNEES, YOU PUNK, I MEAN NOW, AND YOU GONNA BE ON MY JOINT FAST OR YOU GONNA BE ONE BUSTED PUNK. AM I UNDERSTOOD? (HE hurls RICHIE down to the floor)
BILLY: I ain’t gonna have this going on here; Roger, I can’t.
ROGER: I been turnin’ my back on one thing or another all my life.
RICHIE: Jealous, Billy?
BILLY (Getting to his feet): Just go out that door, the two of you. Go. Go on out in the bushes or out in some field. See if I follow you. See if I care. I’ll be right here and I’ll be sleepin’, but it ain’t gonna be done in my house. I don’t have much in this goddamn army, but here is mine. (HE stands beside his bed)
CARLYLE: I WANT MY FUCKIN’ NUT! HOW COME YOU SO UPTIGHT? HE WANTS ME! THIS BOY HERE WANTS ME! WHO YOU TO STOP IT?
ROGER: (Spinning to face CARLYLE and RICHIE): That’s right, Billy. Richie one a those people want to get fucked by niggers, man. It what he know was gonna happen all his life—can be his dream come true. Ain’t that right, Richie! (Jumping to his feet, RICHIE starts putting on his trousers) Want to make it real in the world, how a nigger is an animal. Give ’em an inch, gonna take a mile. Ain’t you some kinda fool, Richie? Hear me, Carlyle.
CARLYLE: Man, don’t make me no nevermind what he think he’s provin’ an’ shit, long as I get my nut. I KNOW I ain’t no animal, don’t have to prove it.
RICHIE (Pulling at CARLYLE’s arm, wanting to move him toward the door): Let’s go. Let’s go outside. The hell with it.
But CARLYLE tears himself free; HE squats furiously down on the bunk, his hands seizing it, his back to all of them.
CARLYLE: Bull shit. Bullshit! I ain’t goin’ no-fuckin’-where—this jive ass ain’t runnin’ me. Is this you house or not? (HE doesn’t know what is going on; HE can hardly look at any of them)
ROGER: (Bounding out of bed, hurling his pillow across the room): I’m goin’ to the fuckin’ john, Billy. Hang it up, man; let ’em be.
BILLY: No.
ROGER: I’m smarter than you—do like I’m sayin’.
BILLY: It ain’t right.
ROGER: Who gives a big rat’s ass!
CARLYLE: Right on, bro! That boy know; he do. (HE circles the bed toward them) Hear him. Look into his eyes.
BILLY: This fuckin’ army takin’ everything else away from me, they ain’t takin’ more than they got. I see what I see—I don’t run, don’t hide.
ROGER: (Turning away from BILLY, HE stomps out the door, slamming it): You fuckin’ well better learn.
CARLYLE: That right. Time for more schoolin’. Lesson number one. (Stealthily HE steps and snaps out the only light, the lamp clamped to RICHIE’s bed) You don’t see what you see so well in the dark. It dark in the night. Black man got a black body—he disappear.
The darkness is so total THEY are all no more than shadows.
RICHIE: Not to the hands; not to the fingers. (Moving from across the room toward CARLYLE)
CARLYLE: You do like you talk, boy, you gonna make me happy.
BILLY, nervously clutching his sneaker, is moving backward.
BILLY: Who says the lights go out? Nobody goddamn asked me if the lights go out.
BILLY, lunging to the wall switch, throws it. The overhead lights flash on, flooding the room with light. CARLYLE is seated on the edge of RICHIE’s bed. RICHIE kneeling before him.
CARLYLE: I DO, MOTHERFUCKER, I SAY! (And the switchblade seems to leap from his pocket to his hand) I SAY! CAN’T YOU LET PEOPLE BE?
BILLY hurls his sneaker at the floor at CARLYLE’s is feet. Instantly CARLYLE is across the room, blocking BILLY’s escape out the door.
Goddamn you, boy! I’m gonna cut your ass, just to show you how it feel—and cuttin’ can happen. This knife true.
RICHIE: Carlyle, now c’mon.
CARLYLE: Shut up, pussy.
RICHIE: Don’t hurt him, for chrissake.
CARLYLE: Goddamn man throw a shoe at me, he don’t walk around clean in the world thinkin’ he can throw another. He get some shit come back at him.
BILLY doesn’t know which way to go, and then CARLYLE, jabbing the knife at the air before BILLY’s chest, has BILLY running backward, his eyes fixed on the moving blade. HE stumbles, having run into RICHIE’s bed. HE sprawls backward and CARLYLE is over him.
No, no; no, no. Put you hand out there. Put it out. (Slight pause; BILLY is terrified) DO THE THING I’M TELLIN’! (BILLY lets his hand rise in the air and CARLYLE grabs it, holds it) That’s it. That’s good. See? See?
The knife flashes across BILL
Y’s palm; the blood flows. BILLY winces, recoils, but CARLYLE’s hand still clenches and holds.
BILLY: Motherfucker.
Again the knife darts, cutting, and BILLY yelps. RICHIE, on his knees beside them, turns away.
RICHIE: Oh, my God, what are you—
CARLYLE (In his own sudden distress. HE flings the hand away): That you blood. The blood inside you, you don’t ever see it there. Take a look how easy it come out—and enough of it come out, you in the middle of the worst goddamn trouble you ever gonna see. And know I’m the man can deal that kinda trouble, easy as I smile. And I smile . . . easy. Yeah.
BILLY is curled in upon himself, holding the hand to his stomach as RICHIE now reaches tentatively and shyly out as if to console BILLY, who repulses the gesture. CARLYLE is angry and strangely depressed. Forlornly HE slumps onto BILLY’s footlocker as BILLY staggers up to his wall locker and takes out a towel.
Bastard ruin my mood, Richie. He ruin my mood. Fightin’ and lovin’ real different in the feelin’s I got. I see blood come outa somebody like that, it don’t make me feel good—hurt me—hurt on somebody I thought was my friend. But I ain’t supposed to see. One dumb nigger. No mind, he thinks, no heart, no feelings a gentleness. You see how that ain’t true, Richie. Goddamn man threw a shoe at me. A lotta people woulda cut his heart out. I gotta make him know he throw shit, he get shit. But I don’t hurt him bad, you see what I mean?
BILLY’s back is to them, as HE stands hunched at his locker, and suddenly his voice, hissing, erupts.
BILLY: Jesus . . . H. . . . Christ . . .! Do you know what I’m doin’? Do you know what I’m standin’ here doin’? (HE whirls now; HE holds a straight razor in his hand. A bloody towel is wrapped around the hurt hand. CARLYLE tenses, rises, seeing the razor) I’m a twenty-four-year-old goddamn college graduate—intellectual goddamn scholar type—and I got a razor in my hand. I’m thinkin’ about comin’ up behind one black human being and I’m thinkin’ nigger this and nigger that—I wanna cut his throat. THAT IS RIDICULOUS. I NEVER FACED ANYBODY IN MY LIFE WITH ANYTHING TO KILL THEM. YOU UNDERSTAND ME? I DON’T HAVE A GODDAMN THING ON THE LINE HERE!
The door opens and ROGER rushes in, having heard the yelling. BILLY flings the razor into his locker.
Look at me, Roger, look at me. I got a cut palm—I don’t know what happened. Jesus Christ, I got sweat all over me when I think a what I was near to doin’. I swear it. I mean, do I think I need a reputation as a killer, a bad man with a knife? (HE is wild with the energy of feeling free and with the anger at what these others almost made him do. CARLYLE slumps down on the footlocker; HE sits there) Bullshit! I need shit! I got sweat all over me. I got the mile record in my hometown. I did four forty-two in high school and that’s the goddamn record in Windsor County. I don’t need approval from either one of the pair of you. (And HE rushes at RICHIE) You wanna be a goddamn swish—a goddamn faggot-queer—GO! Suckin’ cocks and takin’ it in the ass, the thing of which you dream—GO! AND YOU—(Whirling on CARLYLE) You wanna be a bad-assed animal, man, get it on—go—but I wash my hands. I am not human as you are. I put you down, I put you down—(HE almost hurls himself at RICHIE) you gay little piece of shit cake—SHIT CAKE. AND YOU—(Hurt, confused. RICHIE turns away, nearly pressing his face into the bed beside which HE kneels, as BILLY has spun back to tower over the pulsing, weary CARLYLE) you are your own goddamn fault, SAMBO! SAMBO! (And the knife flashes up in CARLYLE’s hand into BILLY’s stomach, and BILLY yelps) Ahhhhhhhhh. (And pushes at the hand. RICHIE is still turned away)
RICHIE: Well, fuck you, Billy.
BILLY (HE backs off the knife): Get away, get away.
RICHIE (As ROGER, who could not see because BILLY’s back is to him, is approaching CARLYLE and BILLY goes walking up toward the lockers as if HE knows where HE is going, as if HE is going to go out the door and to a movie, his hands holding his belly): You’re so-o messed up.
ROGER (To CARLYLE): Man, what’s the matter with you?
CARLYLE: Don’t nobody talk that weird shit to me, you understand?
ROGER: You jive, man. That’s all you do—jive!
BILLY, striding swiftly, walks flat into the wall lockers; HE bounces, turns. THEY are all looking at him.
RICHIE: Billy! Oh, Billy!
ROGER looks at RICHIE.
BILLY: Ahhhhhhh. Ahhhhhhh.
ROGER looks at CARLYLE as if HE is about to scream, and beyond him. BILLY turns from the lockers, starts to walk again, now staggering and moving toward them.
RICHIE: I think . . . he stabbed him. I think Carlyle stabbed Billy. Roger!
ROGER whirls to go to BILLY, who is staggering downstage and angled away, hands clenched over his belly.
BILLY: Shut up! It’s just a cut, it’s just a cut. He cut my hand, he cut gut. (HE collapses onto his knees just beyond ROGER’s footlocker) It took the wind out of me, scared me, that’s all. (Fiercely HE tries to hide the wound and remain calm)
ROGER: Man, are you all right?
ROGER moves to BILLY, who turns to hide the wound. Till now NO ONE is sure what happened. RICHIE only “thinks” BILLY has been stabbed. BILLY is pretending HE isn’t hurt. As BILLY turns from ROGER, HE turns toward RICHIE and RICHIE sees the blood. RICHIE yelps and THEY all begin talking and yelling simultaneously.
CARLYLE: You know what I was learn-
ROGER: You all right’ Or what? He slit
in’, he was learnin’ to talk all that
you?
weird shit, cuttin’, baby, cuttin’,
the ways and means a shit, man,
BILLY: Just took the wind outa me,
razors.
razors. scared me.
RICHIE: Carlyle; you stabbed him; you
stabbed him.
CARLYLE: Ohhhh, pussy, pussy, pussy, Carlyle know what he do.
ROGER: (Trying to lift BILLY): Get up, okay? Get up on the bed.
BILLY (Irritated, pulling free): I am on the bed.
ROGER: What?
RICHIE: No, Billy, no, you’re not.
BILLY: Shut Up!
RICHIE: You’re on the floor.
BILLY: I’m on the bed. I’m on the bed. (Emphatically. And then HE looks at the floor) What?
ROGER: Let me see what he did. (BILLY’s hands are clenched on the wound) Billy, let me see where he got you.
BILLY (Recoiling): NO-O-O-O-O-O-O, you nigger!
ROGER: (HE leaps at Carlyle): What did you do?
CARLYLE (Hunching his shoulders, ducking his head): Shut up.
ROGER: What did you do, nigger—you slit him or stick him? (And then HE tries to get back to BILLY) Billy, let me see.
BILLY (Doubling over till his head hits the floor): NO-O-O-O-O-O! Shit, shit, shit.
RICHIE (Suddenly sobbing and yelling): Oh, my God, my God, ohhhh, ohhhh, ohhhh. (Bouncing on his knees on the bed)
CARLYLE: FUCK IT, FUCK IT, I STUCK HIM. I TURNED IT. This mother army break my heart. I can’t be out there where it pretty, don’t wanna live! Wash me clean, shit face!
RICHIE: Ohhhh, ohhhhh, ohhhhhhhhhh. Carlyle stabbed Billy, oh, ohhhh, I never saw such a thing in my life. Ohhhhhh. (As ROGER is trying gently, fearfully, to straighten BILLY up) Don’t die, Billy; don’t die.
ROGER: Shut up and go find somebody to help. Richie, go!
RICHIE: Who? I’ll go, I’ll go. (Scrambling off the bed)
ROGER: I don’t know. JESUS CHRIST! DO IT!
RICHIE: Okay. Okay. Billy, don’t die. Don’t die. (Backing for the door. HE turns and runs)
ROGER: The sarge, or C.Q.
BILLY (Suddenly doubling over, vomiting blood. RICHIE is gone): Ohhhhhhhhhh. Blood. Blood.
ROGER: Be still, be still.
BILLY (Pulling at a blanket on the floor beside him): I want to stand up. I’m . . . vomiting . . . (Making no move to stand, only to cover himself) blood. What does that mean?
ROGER: (Slowly standing): I don’t know.
BILLY: Yes, yes, I want to stand up. Give me blanket, blanket. (HE r
olls back and forth, fighting to get the blanket over him)
ROGER: RIICCHHHIIIEEEE! (As BILLY is furiously grappling with the blanket) No, no. (HE looks at CARLYLE, who is slumped over, muttering to himself. ROGER runs for the door) Wait on, be tight, be cool.
BILLY: Cover me. Cover me.
At last BILLY gets the blanket over his face. The dark makes him grow still. HE lies there beneath his blanket. Silence. NO ONE moves. And then CARLYLE senses the quiet; HE turns, looks. Slowly, wearily. HE rises and walks to where BILLY lies. HE stands over him, the knife hanging loosely from his left hand as HE reaches with his right to gently take the blanket and lift it slowly from BILLY’s face. THEY look at each other. BILLY reaches up and pats CARLYLE’s hand holding the blanket.
I don’t want to talk to you right now, Carlyle. All right? Where’s Roger? Do you know where he is? (Slight pause) Don’t stab me anymore, Carlyle, okay? I was dead wrong doin’ what I did. I know that now. Carlyle, promise me you won’t stab me anymore. I couldn’t take it. Okay? I’m cold . . . my blood . . . is . . .
From off comes a voice.
ROONEY (Offstage): Cokesy? Cokesy wokesy? (And HE staggers into the doorway, very drunk, a beer bottle in his hand) Ollie-ollie oxen-freeee. (HE looks at them. CARLYLE quickly, secretly, slips the knife into his pocket) How you all doin’? Everybody drunk, huh? I los’ my friend. (HE is staggering sideways toward BILLY’s bunk, where HE finally drops down, sitting) Who are you, soldier? (CARLYLE has straightened, his head ducked down as HE is edging for the door) Who are you, soldier?
And RICHIE, running, comes roaring into the room. HE looks at ROONEY and cannot understand what is going on. CARLYLE is standing. ROONEY is just sitting there. What is going on? RICHIE moves along the lockers, trying to get behind ROONEY, his eyes never off CARLYLE.
RICHIE: Ohhhhhh, Sergeant Rooney, I’ve been looking for you everywhere—where have you been? Carlyle stabbed Billy, he stabbed him.
ROONEY (Sitting there): What?
RICHIE: Carlyle stabbed Billy.
ROONEY: Who’s Carlyle?
RICHIE: He’s Carlyle. (As CARLYLE seems about to advance, the knife again showing in his hand) Carlyle, don’t hurt anybody more!
