The god of hell: a play Page 4
EMMA
: Yes, that’s right. You are.
HAYNES
: You didn’t tell him that, did you?
EMMA
: What?
HAYNES
: That you had a guest down there—living in the basement?
EMMA
: No—no, of course not. You’re not “living” down there, anyway. There’s no hot plate, no bathroom.
HAYNES
:No, I mean, you didn’t even mention me, did you?
EMMA
: No.
HAYNES
: Good.
EMMA
: I didn’t.
HAYNES
: That’s good. And did he seem to buy that or did he seem to think you were lying?
EMMA
: Well, I wasn’t lying.
HAYNES
: No, I know that. You and I both know that, but what about him? Did he seem to accept what you were saying at face value? That you were telling the truth?
EMMA
: He didn’t seem the least bit interested in that.
HAYNES
: In what?
EMMA
: The truth.
(Suddenly, the doorbell rings. Very loud this time. They both jump and stare at the door. Pause.)
HAYNES
: (
heavy whisper
) That’s him!
EMMA
: (
whisper
) Who?
HAYNES
: (
whisper
) Him. Don’t answer it.
EMMA
: (
whispers back
) How do you know?
HAYNES
: (
whisper
) This is the way they operate. They’re relentless.
(Doorbell rings again. HAYNES bolts for the basement staircase. EMMA stops him by running in front of him without touching him.)
EMMA
: Who are they?
HAYNES
: Just don’t let him in. Whatever you do, don’t let him in!
EMMA
: Please, don’t go down in the basement, Mr. Haynes.
HAYNES
: You don’t know me. You’ve never seen me. I don’t exist.
(Doorbell rings again. Even louder. HAYNES bolts down staircase and disappears. EMMA alone.)
EMMA
: Oh, criminy! Jeepers!
(She crosses over to door, stops, but doesn’t open it. She yells through door.)
Who is it?
WELCH’S VOICE
: It’s me again, Emma! It’s only me.
(EMMA backs away at sound of his voice.)
EMMA
: Who?
WELCH’S VOICE
: You know who, Emma. I came by yesterday with the cookies. Remember?
EMMA
: What do you want this time? And how in the heck do you know my name?
WELCH’S VOICE
: I’d just like to ask you some more questions about the house.
EMMA
: No
! N
o more questions! You just get away from here. Go down and see my husband. He’s down there by the barn. You go down there and ask him your questions. Don’t ask me.
WELCH’S VOICE
: I’ve already seen your husband, Emma.
EMMA
: You have?
WELCH’S VOICE
: Yes, I saw him yesterday.
EMMA
: He told me he never saw you.
WELCH’S VOICE
: Well, I had a good long talk with him.
EMMA
: And what did he say?
WELCH’S VOICE
: He said he thought we could work something out.
(WELCH opens door and steps right in, closing door behind him. EMMA backs up.)
EMMA
: Don’t! Don’t you dare come in here! What’re you doing!?
WELCH
: He said you wouldn’t mind.
EMMA
: Well, I do mind! You can’t just come busting into people’s houses like this. Who do you think you are?
WELCH
: Busting? I wouldn’t exactly call this busting. The door was open—
EMMA
: The door was open because this is Wisconsin and we all leave our doors open in Wisconsin! It’s the open-door policy.
WELCH
: Well, that’s a charming custom.
EMMA
: It’s not a custom, it’s a trust. Now, get out!
(WELCH smiles and heads toward basement stairs.)
EMMA
: Where are you going now?
WELCH
: This issue about the basement still bothers me.
EMMA
: What issue? There’s no issue. Stay away from my basement!
WELCH
: Whether or not it can officially be called a room.
EMMA
: Officially?
WELCH
: I suppose, technically speaking, it could only be called a room if someone were actually living down there. Isn’t that right? A room is where someone lives. Otherwise it’s just a space. An empty space.
EMMA
: There’s no one living down there. I told you that.
WELCH
: I know you told me that, Emma, but we have other information.
EMMA
: What information? Who’s “we”?
WELCH
: Highly classified information. Now, I suppose we could resort to high-priority tactics if we were forced to, but I’d rather not go down that road if we can possibly avoid it.
EMMA
: What kind of tactics are those?
WELCH
: Flushing tactics.
EMMA
: Flushing?
WELCH
: For flushing out fugitives.
EMMA
: He’s not a fugitive!
WELCH
: Aah! So there is someone living down there, isn’t there, Emma?
EMMA
: No!
WELCH
: No?
EMMA
: He’s not a fugitive. He’s a friend of my husband’s. And he’s not even down there anymore. He was here for a day and then he left.
WELCH
: Where did he go?
EMMA
: I have no idea.
WELCH
: Just vanished.
EMMA
: Yup.
WELCH
: Just—walked off into the night. Poof!
EMMA
: Guess so.
WELCH
: Why don’t you go down there now and bring him up for me, Emma? Be a good girl.
EMMA
: There’s no one down there!
WELCH
: You know, we are very, very skilled at flushing rats out of their nests. We’ve had vast experience. You wouldn’t want to see a bunker buster come blasting into your little kitchen from heaven knows where, would you? Because we can arrange that, Emma. It’s just a phone call away.
EMMA
: What’s he done? He’s not a criminal, is he?
WELCH
: He hasn’t done a thing, Emma. Not a thing. We’d just like to speak to him. Now, I can go down there myself or you could help things along by coaxing him up here for me.
EMMA
: (
yelling downstairs
) Mr. Haynes! Mr. Haynes, are you down there? (
pause, no answer
) See? Nobody down there. Not a soul.
WELCH
: (
smiles
) Haynes? Is that what he’s calling himself now? Interesting.
EMMA
: There’s nobody down there!
WELCH
: (
loudly, so
HAYNES
can hear
) Well, I suppose we’ll just have to order up some smoke!
EMMA
: Smoke?
WELCH
: Some gas, maybe.
EMMA
: Gas? You’re not bringing smoke and gas into my home! My plants can’t take it.
WELCH
: Well, we could flood him out, I suppose. Takes a little longer, but just as effective. There’s always fire, but then we’d be losing the house, wouldn’t we?
EMMA
: I’m going down to get my husband!
(EMMA heads for the door.)
WELCH
: Good idea! You do that. Maybe he could help us out with this pesky Mr. Haynes.
EMMA
: (
turning to
WELCH
) Don’t you underestimate my husband, mister! Frank can be a very ill-tempered man if he wants to. It doesn’t take much to set him off.
WELCH
: I’m sure you’re right about that.
EMMA
: You better be gone when he gets back here. I’m telling you, he’s got a very short fuse. Last year we had some deer hunters break through our bottom pasture, and you should have seen Frank. He went absolutely berserk. Chased them off with a twelve-gauge.
(WELCH just smiles and chuckles at her. EMMA runs out onto porch and rings the school bell again. She calls out to FRANK.)
(outside) Frank!! Frank!!! Get up here, would you!!
(EMMA runs off porch, yelling for FRANK, and exits. Pause. WELCH, alone, talks down the staircase to an unseen HAYNES.)
WELCH
: Well, well, well—Mr. “Haynes,” is that it? Mr. Haynes? Very inventive. Deceptively simple. Almost poetic. “Haynes”—rhymes with “pains,” or is it “shames”? Possibly. Could even be “blames.” The choices are endless. Well, not exactly endless. Everything has its limits, I suppose. Everything runs into a brick wall sooner or later. Even the most heroic ideas.
(WELCH crosses to kitchen counter, sets his attaché case down on it, and pops the case open.)
Sooner or later it would come down to just a finite number of possibilities, wouldn’t it, Haynes? Brains, maims, flames, chains. Which is it? What’s it going to be?
(HAYNES appears at top of stairs, head slumped down, shoulders slouched. WELCH smiles at him, then pulls out the long string of tiny American flags from his case along with a large chrome staple gun. He climbs up on kitchen counter with the string of flags and stapler, continuing to talk to HAYNES. He starts stapling the string of flags to the cupboards above the sink.)
There he is! There he finally is. Looking just a wee bit sheepish and downtrodden. We’ve been hunting all over for you, buddy-boy. You’ve caused us a great deal of anxiety. Not to mention the exorbitant and unnecessary expense.
HAYNES
: How did you track me down?
(Everything is now being punctuated by the shots from the staple gun.)
WELCH
: You left a very luminous trail, Mr. Haynes. Technology’s a marvelous thing, though. Night vision. Infra-ray. It’s extraordinary how blind the naked eye is. No wonder people have so much trouble accepting the truth these days.
HAYNES
: I’m not going back, you know.
WELCH
: Let’s not start off on the wrong foot, buddy-boy.
HAYNES
: I’m not going back!
WELCH
: (
chuckles
) I’m afraid you’re going to have to now. You’re contaminated. You’re a carrier. What’re we going to do about that? We can’t have you free-ranging all over the American countryside like some kind of headless chicken, can we? You’ve already endangered the lives of your friends here, not to mention the Midwest at large. Now, that was pretty selfish of you, wasn’t it? Poisoning the Heartland?
HAYNES
: You can’t take me back there.
WELCH
: Oh, come on now, “Haynes”—you were getting along so well. You can’t just walk out in the middle of a project like that. You don’t want to be known as a quitter, do you? Besides, we have a brand-new mission for you. Something of extreme international urgency. I’m sure you’re going to want to be a part of it.
HAYNES
: I’m not going back there! The whole state’s going to explode. Colorado is going to be blown off the map.
WELCH
: Why do you people have this incredible propensity for wild exaggeration? There’s some minor leakage—we’ve acknowledged that. That’s why you were hired in the first place, if you recall.
HAYNES
: Minor leakage!
WELCH
: That’s all it was. The concrete wasn’t thick enough.
HAYNES
: The ground caught fire for thirty days! Not trees, not brush, but the raw earth!
WELCH
: Fires have a way of burning themselves out, buddy-boy It’s nature’s Band-Aid. Been going on for centuries. Chronicled. Spontaneous combustion. The Romans had it.
HAYNES
: This wasn’t lightning! This wasn’t some renegade Boy Scout campfire like you ordered the press to print!
WELCH
: It cleans things up, Haynes. Everything springs back to life in due time. We’re doing nature a favor, as a matter of fact. We’re provoking rebirth!
HAYNES
: You can’t just walk in here and take over. What are you doing to their house, anyway?
WELCH
: Just a little decorating for our think tank. We have a big meeting coming up on Tuesday.
HAYNES
: Where? Here?
WELCH
: Exactly.
(Throughout all this, WELCH keeps returning to his attaché case, pulling out more strings of American flags and stapling them up all over the house like some mad interior decorator.)
HAYNES
: No—look—you can’t just co-opt their house. These are friends of mine.
WELCH
: (
continues stapling
) We can do whatever we want, buddy-boy. That should be clear by now. We’re in the driver’s seat. Haven’t you noticed? There’s no more of that nonsense of checks and balances. All that red tape. All that hanging around in limbo, waiting for decisions from committees and tired-out lobbies. We’re in absolute command now. We don’t have to answer to a soul, least of all a couple of Wisconsin dairy farmers.
(HAYNES crosses toward windows and porch. He looks out to pastures below. WELCH continues to staple the string of flags.)
HAYNES
: I never should have come here.
WELCH
: We would have found you no matter what.
HAYNES
: What have you done with them? Where’d they go?
WELCH
: (
laughs
) Don’t be such an alarmist.
HAYNES
: Where did they go!?
WELCH
: They’re probably having a little powwow down at the barn. Talking things over.
HAYNES
: What things?
WELCH
: The future, Haynes! The bright, golden American future. You can just imagine what an enormous leap that is for a simple country couple like this—so out of touch. Living completely in the long ago. Stuck in some quaint pioneer morality.
HAYNES
: (
crossing back toward
WELCH
) They were just doing me a favor by letting me stay here. They’re completely innocent!
WELCH
: We’re not interested in punishing them, Haynes. On the contrary, we’re offering them a leg up. You, however, might be a serious candidate for punitive action.
HAYNES
: I don’t care what you do to me.
WELCH
: No heroics, please.
HAYNES
: I don’t!
WELCH
&
nbsp; : No?
HAYNES
: No.
WELCH
: There’s no memory anymore. That’s the problem. No memory at all. Pearl Harbor. The Alamo. The Bataan Death March. All gone. Vanished like they never even happened. You don’t want to start all over again, do you, Haynes?
HAYNES
: All over where?
WELCH
: You see? You don’t remember a thing. That’s exactly my point!
HAYNES
: Remember what?
WELCH
: The long, tedious procedure. The intensive training. The endless sleepless nights.
HAYNES
: That was a long time ago!
WELCH
: Yes! Now it begins to come back.
HAYNES
: No!
WELCH
: No?
HAYNES
: I was younger then.
WELCH
: Yes! Exactly. What would happen to your body now if you had to undergo the same ordeal? The same stress to your appendages.
HAYNES
: I could take it!
WELCH
: You could take it?
HAYNES
:Yes, I could!
WELCH
: The pain to your penis, for instance?
HAYNES
: No!!! No!!
(HAYNES suddenly grabs his crotch with both hands and holds on. A bolt of blue light shoots from his crotch. HAYNES just stands there, frozen, holding on to his crotch and staring out toward audience. WELCH stops stapling for a while, smiles at HAYNES.)
WELCH
: Some things do come back, don’t they, Haynes? Some things do manage to penetrate all the false heroics, all the flimsy ideology. We’re suddenly stung by our duty to a higher purpose. Our natural loyalties fall in line and we’re amazed how simple it is to honor our one true heritage. Don’t you find that to be the case now, Haynes?
(HAYNES, still frozen, clutching his crotch, makes a muffled whining sound of acknowledgment.)
We even know what the next step is, don’t we, Haynes?
(HAYNES nods vigorously.)
The debriefing. The recoding. We know all that, don’t we? We have it tucked away in our tiny dime-sized minds somewhere.
(HAYNES nods again, still holding his crotch.)
So, there’s really nothing left for you to do but to go back down in the basement and wait for our team to come. Isn’t that right, Haynes? Isn’t that what you need to do now?
HAYNES
: (
looking out at audience
) Do I really have to start all over?
WELCH
: I don’t know of any shortcuts. Do you, Haynes?