William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

Wait a minute, you said…

BAGBY

(TO SOLDIER)

Take it or leave it!

(POCKETING PAPERS AS THE SOLDIER WITHDRAWS, LIMPING PAST THEM TOWARD STAGE LEFT)

And be glad to have it while you're still alive…!

TART

(TO THOMAS)

They set it on fire as we finished dinner… but we can find another place, dear…

BAGBY

(FOLLOWING AS THOMAS STARTS OFFSTAGE RIGHT TOWARD THE FIRE)

I've just kept an eye on it now and again, sir…

THOMAS exits offstage right, BAGBY, the TART and THE SENATOR following in that order.

I suspected some trouble brewing tonight, and come down to defend it…

TART

(CALLING, TO THOMAS, FOLLOWING OFFSTAGE)

You're not running off, dear…? You coming back here to us at all…?

Alone on stage, the SOLDIER crosses limping slowly left, counting the money and stowing it inside coat as he reaches shadows. The sound of a child, crying as at opening of scene, brings his head up; he stops, and from darkness the YOUNG MAN leaps upon him and bears him to the ground where they struggle an instant, are still, and blackout, with the sound of the child's crying declining to a whimper.

— Now! Was that in it? that scene? Was there a scene like that in the movie? Jed? Any of you?

— Only I didn't quite get it Mister Crease, right at the end there where the…

— Didn't get what. It was a mugging wasn't it? Do you think muggings are a modern phenomenon?

— A what?

— A mod, a new invention, listen. All this crime, greed, corruption in the newspapers, you think they're just part of the times we're living in today? that our great Christian civilization is breaking down here right before our eyes? It's just the other way around. These petty swindles of Mister Bagby's outfitting the Union army, the only difference is all that was in the tens and hundreds of thousands and today it's in the millions and billions, false invoices, double billing, staggering cost overruns and these six hundred dollar toilet seats all wrapped up in the American flag?

Pick up the papers and it looks like our defense industry's one gigantic fraud, that nothing gets built without bribes and payoffs, that Wall Street's nothing but a network of fraud?

— Oscar…

— It's not the breakdown of our civilization that we're watching but its blossoming, greed and political corruption it's what America was built on in those years after the Civil War where it all got a start, so it's not whether corruption's a sign of decay but whether it's built into things right from the beginning. All these cases Bagby's talking about were in the newspapers then just like ours today, that's where I got them. This soldier selling his pay slip for food for his family those things really happened and this brutalized young man who mugs him, they're both victims of this world of vast overpowering greed and corruption and industrial slavery that built this great country almost overnight that's the irony, that they're each other's prey isn't that clear? whoever said you didn't get it?

— No I just meant the child, at the end there where there's this child crying, so you mean it's supposed to be this soldier's child crying because it's hungry and…

— It's no one's! It's no one's child it's the whole world's, it's the cry of desolation and innocence and, and of sadness and loss for all humanity in these two men, that they're each other's victims that's the tragic irony, that's what makes drama if there's a scene like this in the movie they stole it didn't they? in this complaint?

— Right there in the charge of unjust enrichment Oscar, see but the problem is…

— How can there be a problem! If you can't call a mugging unjust enrichment right on the face of it I don't know what the language is for!

— See but you have to prove it, now where you're talking about something really happened, based on a true story, things you saw in these old newspapers you're putting it all right out there in the public domain again where anybody's got a right to…

— I just said that's what makes great drama didn't I? the dramatic expression of the idea that…

— Oscar what your lawyer's trying to tell you is it's not a question of great drama. There's no question of tragic irony, no question of greed and corruption that built this great country overnight or whether it's a great play or the movie's a ghastly movie. It's all simply whether somebody profited taking something from you even if it wasn't great drama, even if it was something stupid and fatuous that was yours in the first place, isn't that what this circus is all about?

— All right then! Just, if you'll just stop interrupting Christina that's what I'm talking about, you're just wasting time and you don't have to call it stupid and fatuous either. Just because something really happened doesn't mean I can't use it in a play does it? Didn't drafting men for the Union army and people hiring substitutes really happen? That's where Mister Kane from the first act shows up here in this scene where Bagby's looking for something in the morning mail.

THOMAS

(COMING DOWNSTAGE TO HIM, HANDING HIM A PAPER)

Possibly this? A wholesale order for trusses?

BAGBY

(TAKING IT)

Yes… a small commission. There's many wearing them now, with the draft boards springing up all about. A rupture has become quite the thing, you might say. And… was there… nothing else?

THOMAS

What you have in your hand behind you.

BAGBY

This? Yes, I picked it up from the floor where it had fallen.

THOMAS

It didn't fall. I threw it there.

BAGBY

(READING FROM IT)

Yes, to 'report to the county seat within five days…' Well, that journey won't take you long, for this here is the seat of Schuylkill County, you know.

THOMAS

(TAKING THE PAPER, CRUMPLING IT AGAIN)

And you expect to see me marching off to the draft office in one of your trusses? Do you think I take this seriously?

BAGBY

A bit of influence, and you might have…

THOMAS

Have you looked at the paper? It will be over in a matter of weeks, of days…

BAGBY

That's still time enough to find yourself court-martialed, and when you can buy your commutation for three hundred dollars…

THOMAS

And you want me to pay three hundred dollars for a week's peace of mind?

BAGBY

That's what Section 13 of the enrollment act is for, you know, to provide for the better class of people like ourselves. Of course this commutation is only good until the next draft, and the rate things are going that might be tomorrow. You'd do better to pay a bit more, wouldn't you, to buy a substitute to go up in your place. I can dig one up for five hundred dollars, and then let the war last as long as it likes. You can put it out of your mind.

(AS THOMAS SITS DOWN, LOOKING AT NEWSPAPERS, WAVES HIM AWAY)

Of course if it was me, you know, if I was financially situated like you are, there's the owner of the iron works here, you may know of him? He raised a regiment of cavalry for twenty thousand dollars and for that they made him a colonel. And where is he? Why, in Washington, showing his uniform, rubbing his elbows at the White House with high officials and senators, and nuzzling their wives when they turn their backs. And what will become of him? They'll nominate him a brigadier general and set him off somewhere to guard an empty barracks until things settle down, and you'll see him back here with 'General' printed on his visiting cards…

(RETIRING A STEP UPSTAGE)

Shall I dig a man up for you, then?

THOMAS

Dig up nobody. It's all nonsense.

BAGBY

Nonsense? And when you're court-martialed and shot for a deserter, will that be nonsense?

THOMAS

(ABRUPTLY, LOSING PATIENCE)