William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

(HE SHUDDERS)

The horses had seen it, it was still in their eyes, their heads flung up and their nostrils wide and their eyes… wide opened on it still… It's still there, on a field that just that morning was nothing more. Why, you might have lived there half your life or you might never have seen it before. Fields, fences, trees, a creek… has it ever made any difference before if the fence were here? or there were a ditch? if the corn was cut, or the trees had leaves? Until the morning the sun comes up and finds it a battlefield? Why? Here? Not a mile, or twenty miles away but here! And now everything takes on meaning, now none of it could have been any different. Not a tree or a stone to crouch behind, none of it could have been any different, if men are dying? hidden in the corn? lying in the ditch? If these were trees? and that were barren? Then who would have lived and who would have died? Who would have suffered and who… gone free… Because if each tree, because if each stone and rail of fence had no reason to be right where it was that day, that instant, then our pain and death had no more meaning than the stones…

KANE

But when you said that you'd… you'd fought death, and won…

THOMAS

And I did! When that whole sky wheeled and burst, the woods swept clean up the wagon road and the cornstalks glittering stalks unsheathed behind the rail fence, where the stupid face of that chapel stared down across that creek at the house with its windows blazing with the sun as though it were afire. That bay mare had dragged me over the stones with one rein twisted around my wrist, and I pulled myself up on the strength of her terror. And when I brought down her head and fired, her legs came up like a folding toy. She didn't stagger or fall, she went down square… doubled up running from what was happening… But if all of it… had no more meaning than this?

(PACING AWAY, AND BACK)

I don't even… know myself anymore. On that battlefield, when I suddenly knew that the man I saw coming up against me, my opposite in every way… that he was not my enemy, but death, that we were fighting together… And since then, now… it's like meeting myself down some dark street, waylaid round a corner and thrown to the pavement, and left to fight myself off! Is that why you mistrust me then! Just for being a hero, was it? Yes as my mother said, 'being a hero in war…'

KANE

I? But I mistrust it no more than you do yourself, as a boy's idea, seeing the threat come head-on, and you run or you meet it, that's cowardice or… 'soldierly fortitude.' But courage itself it takes the courage of wisdom to stand trial when we never suspect it.

— Oscar, is…

— I said please, Christina! Please don't interrupt, what is it.

— Never mind then. It's just someone down on the lawn with a camera.

— With a, who! Who is it what are they doing!

— Oscar be careful, you'll tip over the whole…

— Well find out who it is! Taking pictures of, somebody spying out there they…

— Just calm down, my God. Who on earth would want to spy on us.

— That's exactly what I'd like to know. The way Kiester and these people sneak around there's such a thing as invasion of privacy isn't there? Can't that go in the complaint?

— If you haven't filed your complaint yet Oscar they don't even know who you are, so why should Kiester's people want to spy on you.

— I'm not talking to you Christina, will you just go and find out who that is out there? I'm talking to Mister Basic about this complaint.

— Thing is Oscar this is an action for infringement. You get privacy and things like that in there you just confuse things, run a good chance they throw the whole thing out, just stay right with your play there.

— All right then, what about the horses.

— What about the horses.

— The way he just described the horses on the battlefield, how death was still in their eyes, the horror, that was all in the movie wasn't it? the way that review described them in the movie?

— Describing them's one thing, show them right up there on the screen you can't prove they…

— You don't expect me to have horses crashing around dying on the stage do you? Because we have the battle, you'll see, it's at the end of the act but it's all effects, light and sound and the…

— You ever see Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade Oscar? Don't know how many horses got killed making that movie, actually injured and killed so bad they got the laws changed, these Kiester people didn't need to steal from you. Just claim they went to see Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade.

— Listen. I did not see Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade, no. That's the point, that's exactly what I'm afraid of, people connecting my name with this mindless nonsense if they think I took my play from Errol Flynn in The Charge of the Light Brigade there goes my whole reputation and loss of income as a scholar and a, a playwright, now what about that. What about that.

— Why you'll ask compensatory and triple damages for mental and professional distress.

— Oh. Good. That's what I meant yes, good that's what I, what's she doing out there look, they're coming right up on the veranda who's that woman, Christina? One of you open the window there so I can, Christina! Will you stop him taking pictures? Who are they!

— Maybe we better just clear out Mister Crease.

— Sit down! All of you, just sit down we're not finished, these constant interruptions you lose the whole thread of…

— Just go ahead Oscar, it's only this real estate woman getting pictures of the place for their brochure.

— Well stop them! It's just an invitation, people who rob houses that's where they get their ideas get them out of here!

— They're not going to rob the house, they…

— Just get rid of them will you? They've already broken the dramatic tension this whole scene depends on the, where are we now…

As KANE stares up at THOMAS, whose expression turns to one of perplexity, BAGBY appears upstage right disheveled and hurries down to them.

BAGBY

Here, the guard took me out for a look at them, getting their heads punched up at shaft seven, and what do you think we found? They'd come to set it afire, if you can believe it, shouting about having their rights, yes, and who do you think we found! Sprung out of the ground, out of the pit itself, blind on destroying, fighting anything just to fight… And who do you think we caught up with? The boy that assaulted you that night, in Norwegian Street where your house was burned. The same night that soldier got himself murdered there, and they know this boy done it. They're bringing him here, as I instructed, the guards are bringing him here for you to identify.

THOMAS

For me? I saw no murder.

BAGBY

No, not for that, for the murder they cannot prove though we know that he done it. To identify him for assault, and you'll see! If he will go trying to make a fool of justice, not owning up to the murder, he may wish that he had!

The YOUNG MAN, haggard, unshorn and dirty, is flung onstage with a final effort by the GUARD and BAGBY.

(CIRCLING THE YOUNG MAN WARILY)

Here's your savage, sir. A fine specimen, an't he? One of nature's noblemen, you might say. Do you know him? There, you might not recognize him at a glance. He an't got any prettier, hiding away until he was hunted down to earth… here, guard! Stand by here!

BAGBY gets the GUARD between himself and the YOUNG MAN, who stands looking askance at THOMAS; and THOMAS in turn appears to avoid looking too closely at him.

(TO THOMAS)

An't he the one that done it, sir? That laid for you that night?

(TO KANE)

He was lucky I happened along, you know, or the boy here might have killed him, for that's what he meant to do…