Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse

  JOHN: Appeal, that’s right.

  CLERK: She’s already on Death Row.

  JOHN: Correct. She is.

  CLERK: So she’d be—well, you’ve got two females

  Waiting on the reaper up in Gatesville,

  And Alice Allenberry’s way too young

  To be your mom—so she’d be Bess Cassandra.

  JOHN: Correct. That’s her.

  BILL JENKS: Cassandra! There’s a name.

  CLERK: The one who killed Jane Doe. Known as

  “The Jane Doe Killer.”

  JOHN: Now you’re not correct.

  You’re absolutely wrong. That’s false.

  She’s innocent.

  CLERK: Like you. Like mom, like son.

  JOHN: In one quick life I couldn’t do the time

  For even half my sins, for just a small-

  Size portion of the ones that I forget.

  But I’ve been baptized and, you know—new-minted,

  Thanks to prison preaching. Not my mom.

  My mom’s not baptized. She’s just innocent.

  Her hands are clean. She didn’t kill that girl.

  CLERK: I’m really not the one to tell. Greyhound

  Doesn’t hire clerks to sit in judgment.

  JOHN: You think they care who killed that girl?

  She was in for worse stuff than my mom.

  They needed to close the book on it, they needed

  A simple picture for the media,

  And so they put my mother in a frame.

  CLERK: Hey, I don’t sit here judging. All I know

  Is what the TV wants for me to know,

  Like all Americans everywhere. That girl

  Was sort of innocent, too—I mean, the years

  Of booze and dope had bleached her brain to white,

  To where she couldn’t even tell her name.

  She’d woken up in bed with some deceased

  Farmer with the handle of a dagger

  Jutting from his neck—or, I don’t know,

  A belly full of buckshot—anyhow,

  The whole bed squishy with his murdered gore

  And this amnesiac harlot rolling in it

  Like a log in a flood. So, you say the crimes

  You can’t remember? Well, she did her time

  Without a memory of anything, until

  Another prisoner kills her with a broomstick.

  These are the details of a blameless life.

  And if your mother’s blameless, too, another

  Innocent heading for the axe—all right:

  Now you know what universe you’re in.

  But I will listen to the radio.

  BILL JENKS: For I’ve been purged with tears! Baptized by water!

  Washed in saving blood! And turned out blank

  And white as platinum on a sunny morning—

  [As FIRST BUS DRIVER enters]

  Which bus is this?

  CLERK: The Magic Bus, I guess,

  Materializing most miraculously.

  Have I got everybody’s vouchers here?

  Has everybody got their tickets? [To MASHA] Ma’am?

  He’s gonna want a ticket. Ma’am?

  DRIVER 1: OK,

  I’m hardly pausing to relieve myself.

  Line ’em up and march ’em on, let’s roll.

  Folks, come on, I haven’t got till Xmas.

  You wanna get your big old cross aboard?

  JOHN: I didn’t think you’d haul it.

  DRIVER 1: Crosses, stars,

  Hearts-and-arrows, circles, figure eights—

  It pays, it rides. This ain’t no limousine.

  BILL JENKS: This ain’t no paradise.

  MASHA: This ain’t no blowjob!

  DRIVER 1: Hey, Patoot. You better curb the lingo.

  ’Board for Houston, Texas! Rock and roll!

  JOHN: But I don’t go to Houston, Mr. Driver.

  DRIVER 1: Today you do. The northbound lanes have had it.

  You want the Dallas bus, then be prepared

  To languish. This day, everybody’s Houston.

  Yeah—sooner or later, everybody’s Houston.

  Git it while you can! Last call for Houston!

  DRIVER 1 exits.

  BILL JENKS: Sooner or later Houston gets us all.

  CLERK: Well, sorry—I can’t rewrite all y’all:

  Your vouchers say to Dallas. And, now, ma’am:

  I’d like to write you up for Dallas, since

  The fact is otherwise you’re loitering.

  MASHA: Fact is I know a blowjob when I see one.

  Fact is I’m here to use the phone.

  Sound of bus leaving.

  CLERK: There she goes…She didn’t waste no time.

  Folks, we’re on the bus schedule from Hell.

  BJ extends his hand to JOHN.

  BILL JENKS: William Jennings Bryan Jenks. The first.

  JOHN: That’s funny. ’Cause my dad is named like that:

  Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra…Yeah.

  BILL JENKS: Cassandra. There’s a name I’ve always hated.

  JOHN: Also the first. His folks misspelled it, though.

  BILL JENKS: Misspelled “the first”?

  JOHN: No. “Holmes.”

  BILL JENKS: Don’t call me Holmes.

  This ain’t the ’hood.

  JOHN: No—They forgot the L.

  H-O-L-M-E-S. Get it? “Holmes.”

  BILL JENKS: Don’t call me Holmes. I ain’t your homey, John.

  JOHN: Don’t call me John. Aah—

  BILL JENKS: Well, then, what’s your name?

  JOHN:—Shit. It’s John. But not like that, I mean.

  Just call me John like John. Like it’s my name.

  BILL JENKS: I see. And—missing any letters, John?

  JOHN: My dad is missing the L in his, is all.

  BILL JENKS: “Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra.” Wow.

  I think your family may be known to me.

  You wouldn’t have a brother?

  JOHN: I’d have two.

  BILL JENKS: Would one be Mark?

  JOHN: We call him Cass.

  BILL JENKS: I had some dealings with a Mark Cassandra

  From California. Actually, I shot him.

  Actually, more than once. I shot him twice.

  Not twice on one occasion—once

  On each of two quite separate occasions.

  Once by mistake—the second time, on purpose.

  Popped him like a Coney Island clown.

  JOHN: I know all about it. He’s my brother.

  BILL JENKS: Mark Cassandra.

  JOHN: Yes, sir. Mark Cassandra.

  BILL JENKS: I don’t think we’re going to be friends.

  A SECOND BUS DRIVER enters.

  DRIVER 2: Folks, I got as many seats as you got butts

  To fill ’em up, but what I lack is time

  To mess around and all, so git along,

  And all aboard, and off we go, and so on.

  JOHN: Ma’am, can you point me where to put this cross?

  DRIVER 2: I don’t believe I will. That’s not allowed.

  The glory train don’t carry no religious

  Signifying statues of any type,

  No banners, emblems, images, or icons,

  No crosses, crescents, Hebrew hexagrams,

  No Guadalupey Ladies, no Buddhistic

  Eight-armed elephants from Hindustan;

  None but the uncreated, changeless, true,

  Eternal, kind of gray and kind of blue

  Dog in flight. I guess you could say pewter.

  Pewter is the color of the greyhound.

  Houston! Austin! San Antonio!

  JOHN: You’re going to Houston, is it, ma’am?

  BILL JENKS: Far—out.

  JOHN: But—what about the bus to Dallas?

  DRIVER 2: Houston,

  Houston, Texas! San Antonio!

  JOHN: But we just had a gal in here announced

/>   That she was the Houston bus.

  DRIVER 2: Nope. She was Dallas.

  A Dallas driver will generally lie.

  That’s why I stay the heck away from Dallas.

  Heck, they killed the president in Dallas.

  Houston’s the place you need to be.

  BILL JENKS: But then, of course, you could be lying, too.

  DRIVER 2: That’s absolutely the case. You’re catching on.

  Yes. I could be a lying Dallas driver…

  Aboard for Houston! If thou dost believe!

  [Exits; fading O.S.]

  …Ten nine eight seven six five four three two…

  Sound of bus leaving.

  JOHN: This is total bullshit. Nothing less.

  BILL JENKS: If they can mess with you, they mess with

  you.

  That’s a fact of nature here in Texas—

  I’m speaking as a Mississippian—

  But, also: Don’t you ask for disrespect

  By traveling your way in prison whites?

  I speak now as a Mississippian

  With nothing but the highest, deepest, fullest

  Regard for your West Coast Cassandra clan,

  Excluding, naturally, that full-on, rank,

  Hellborn, Hellbound slut-soul, your brother Mark,

  Who spawned his own self fucking his own mother.

  JOHN: That’s some rowdy talk! You better hope

  The prison preaching holds, and I stay Christian!

  BILL JENKS: I’d never’ve done my time without that kid

  Making himself such goshdarn fun to shoot.

  JOHN: He dropped the charges.

  BILL JENKS: That was good of him—

  JOHN: He’d never send a guy to jail. He’s just

  A crook himself. But, now, revenge—

  Revenge is something I’d be counting on.

  It’s truly amazing he passed up on that;

  It’s basically miraculous he failed

  To hunt you down and gut you like a frog.

  BILL JENKS: He did run me to ground—the second time.

  That’s partly why I let him have another.

  The first time was by accident, and then

  Instead of letting bygones just be bygones,

  Here he comes again—

  JOHN: To make amends.

  …That’s right. My brother’s sober now

  About a year and seven months: I’m proud.

  BILL JENKS: Amends? Amends?

  JOHN: Like in the twelve-step program.

  Number nine, you go and make amends.

  BILL JENKS: Alcoholics Anonymous, you mean?

  He never said.

  JOHN: You didn’t let him say.

  BILL JENKS: Then let me say the little lunatic

  Stole near a pound of my cocaine, then flushed it.

  How was he going to make amends for that?

  They’re squaring off—CLERK intervenes—

  CLERK: John Cassandra!—well, they cut your hair

  And shaved your beard, but I think you’re the man

  Stood on the roof of a parking ramp in Dallas

  Shooting folks and threatening suicide.

  JOHN: I didn’t shoot nobody.

  CLERK: Shooting at.

  JOHN: In the direction where they were, let’s say—

  BILL JENKS: I guess it’s fortunate no Kennedys

  Happened to be strolling by that day.

  CLERK: Just settle down. Just settle down. RIGHT NOW.

  JOHN: I’m willing to. I didn’t come for this.

  CLERK: I can get you back in prison quick!

  JOHN: He’s the one who’s escalating from

  A simple conversation to a riot!

  —Why? Because you want to stop your ears.

  BILL JENKS: I what? I what?

  JOHN: You want to stop your ears

  And hide your heart from the Holy Spirit’s prompting.

  BILL JENKS: Come again? Sorry—my ears are stopped—

  JOHN: Peruse the facts: You shoot my brother twice,

  He lets you skate, but you get busted later,

  Exactly at the proper time and place

  To land you in the Walls the same as me,

  And get you out the same as me, and put you here—

  The same as me. Is this coincidence?

  You and I are strangled up together.

  We’ve got our fates in a knot. And here we stand.

  Guided by the Holy Spirit, here we stand.

  BILL JENKS: I ain’t the quickest rabbit in the pack,

  I guess the record proves that much, but, God,

  I hope to Christ by now I’ve learned enough

  To leave that Holy Spirit shit alone.

  JOHN: Look. I recognized you. You knew that.

  I recognized your face a year ago,

  My first day on the yard. I watched you stand

  Exactly still, more left-out and alone

  Than any creature there, not halfway in

  Your own skin, more the newcomer

  Than me—but you’d been there two months.

  Never saw a prisoner looked so much

  Like somebody in prison. Every inch

  And ounce of you in bondage. Sure, they had

  The background on you, all the Christian bunch,

  But nobody could figure out your story—

  The famous shaman, healer of multitudes,

  Standing in the yard with this, like, music

  Coming down around your head, this

  Jazz falling apart around you, man…

  Look, my mother, I…my mother, sir…

  BILL JENKS: There’s nothing I can do to help your mother.

  JOHN: You have the gift, you have the power to heal,

  You can help whoever you decide.

  Don’t you see, you’re touched by the same fingers

  That turn the earth.

  BILL JENKS: Well, tell the fingers to get

  Their claws outa me!…I can’t help your mother!

  MASHA bangs the receiver against the pay phone unit repeatedly.

  MASHA: WHAT! A BUNCH! A MOTHAH! FUCKIN! COCK-

  SUCK!

  GAAAAAAAAH!

  [MASHA strikes the machine harder and harder. She

  doesn’t stop.]

  WAAAAAAAAH!!!

  [Keeps beating the machine. Sings like Bessie Smith:]

  GIMME A REEFAH

  AND A GANG A GIN

  SLAY ME ’CAUSE I’M IN MY SIN!

  [She’s berserk, assaulting the phone.]

  YAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

  Simultaneously, the CLERK erupts.

  CLERK: I have HAD IT HAD IT HAD IT HAD IT, BOY.

  Do you think I’m more than human?

  I’ve only got two hands!

  I can’t take care of everything at once!

  I don’t have superstrength and X-ray eyes

  To deal with you-all! I’m not Superman!

  I’m not Captain Marvel! I’m not the Hulk!

  To drag myself each morning from sweet dreams

  Into your sleazy Greyhound station nightmare

  Of God-forsaken apparitions with

  Madness and sadness congealing in their eyes

  And sell them TICKETS TICKETS TICKETS TICKETS!

  Look at this!—Look at this woman doing

  All a human can to destroy that thing!

  Nothing stands between the realm of sanity

  And total chaos but myself alone!

  I’m all alone at the bulwarks of the world!

  MASHA: HAAAAAAAH!! GAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

  MASHA lifts the nearest standing ashtray. She slings it mightily at the pay phone.

  CLERK stops openmouthed in mid-tirade. MASHA repeats the action, going at it full tilt.

  She busts the device clean off the wall and attacks it on the floor. Her fit worsens. She collapses, jerking, growling.

  OTHERS: Get her off the floor. Put her on a bench.

  G
et her lying down.

  Get her sitting up!

  Get something in between her jaws!

  Don’t let her bite!

  SYLVESTER enters from street door.

  SYLVESTER [aside]: There you are, you little magic thing!…

  STAND ASIDE, PLEASE, DOCTOR COMING THROUGH.

  GIVE WAY, THE DOCTOR’S IN THE HOUSE.

  UH UH UH UH DOCTOR COMING THROUGH.

  OTHERS: Thank goodness, Doctor. Hold her! Hold her!

  She is strong!

  Her spit is foaming like a case of rabies!

  SYLVESTER: Nothing to alarm ourselves about.

  CLERK: It’s typical! It’s standard stuff! It happens

  All day long in here! It’s par for the course!

  SYLVESTER: Loosen her uh loosen her uh…clothing.

  I deal with this stuff daily, too—the human

  Body, human physique, the human form…

  Did the patient make any predictions?

  Often this variety of seizure

  Takes them in a way they make predictions—

  No? Perhaps you didn’t recognize—

  Uh sometimes they uh sometimes—Have a look

  Now, at the racing form. Anything sound familiar?

  Any of those names of horses there?

  OTHERS: Missy, can you hear?

  Somebody get some water—

  SYLVESTER: I don’t like uh I don’t like to seem

  Presumptuous, but I’m in charge here now.

  Stand back and let me practice medicine!

  BILL JENKS: Where’s your bag?

  SYLVESTER: My bag?

  BILL JENKS: Your bag of tools.

  SYLVESTER: My bag? Where am I, 1882?

  I’m not a country doctor. I don’t drive

  A buggy through the daisies. That’s a ’Vette

  You’ll see out there, you care to look, the blue

  Corvette, the ’98. And I paid cash.

  And anyway we don’t need implements.

  We’re not on the brink of surgery here.

  A little air, a couple minutes’ rest is all.

  But I, myself, could use a little shot.

  What’re we sippin’ behind the desk today?