Sam Shepard: The god of hell: a play

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.