Double Naught: A Play In One Act

Double Naught a play in one act by S. A. Scoggin

S. A. Scoggin [email protected]

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CHARACTERS MR. SMITH, SENIOR is a prosperous businessman in his midsixties. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR, his son, is in his early thirties. MRS. SMITH is in her mid-twenties. She is hugely pregnant. MR. and MRS. LARGENT are introduced later.

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SETTING A well-appointed parlor at about 11:30 PM on December 31, 1899. Upstage, a flight of stairs rise out of sight. Downstage right, a partial wall contains a window which looks outside. Stage right is the door to the outer porch. Stage left is dominated by a huge ornate upright grandfather clock which does not tell the time. That task is left to a rather plain round timepiece on the mantle which keeps us aware of the approach to midnight. Stage left is also an interior door, to the pantry or kitchen. In the middle are an overstuffed couch and two armchairs open to the small fireplace. The walls are papered beautifully but are otherwise bare. Everything seems new, as if the owners have just moved in.

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(MR. SMITH, JUNIOR is studying the enormous clock. He is poking into it innards through a door opened in its side. At his feet is a toolbox. He looks down thoughtfully, picks up a screwdriver, and turns something inside the clock. He withdraws the screwdriver, thinks for a minute, then trades it for a pair of pliers which he uses to pull gently on something deep in the case. In the distance a brass band is playing a Sousa march over faint crowd noises: happy cries, shouts, roaring laughs. MRS. SMITH, in robe and slippers, waddles quietly down the stairs without her husband noticing. She flops onto the sofa, making the springs shriek. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR spins around and the pliers fly out of his hand.) MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Good God, woman! Are you - are you not well? (He rushes to her and kneels, taking her hand.) Have I woken you? Or is it MRS. SMITH My time? No, not yet. Soon enough, my love. What are you doing? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR (Quickly taking his hands away.) Nothing. MRS. SMITH 4

You were taking my pulse! you wicked old thing! you never showed concern for my pulse when you wooed me. Neither when you married me. Yet since I became with child, you are like some over worried trainer forever by the side of a prize filly. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR And such a filly. MRS. SMITH Yes, I have the girth to fit any saddle. And I feed by the bale. Yet though I feel like I have galloped ten furlongs, I cannot sleep like a thoroughbred. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR You realize that there are men - I could name you a dozen who work in our factory - who make no noise in their parlors in the evenings but drink their supper at the tavern and only crawl home in time to sleep. MRS. SMITH The racket does not disturb me. Your son - or daughter - is tumbling about like a Chinese acrobat. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR I am truly sorry. MRS. SMITH It is not your fault. No, I am corrected. It is your fault. What are you doing with the old man there? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Having a look at his bowels. MRS. SMITH If you cannot sleep, perhaps you should.... (She motions to the window.) MR. SMITH, JUNIOR (Suddenly stern.) You have heard me enough about that lot. MRS. SMITH You need not lecture me, Professor. I withdraw the thought and beg your forgiveness. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Granted. 5

MRS. SMITH Who would have dreamed that your many talents included clocksmithing. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Eleven months and you know all of me? I think not. MRS. SMITH I cannot fathom that on this same New Year’s Eve but one I was not aware that the world held you. And now we have created a new life. I am sure we have been married for one hundred years. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Ninety-nine years. MRS. SMITH Ah! You have soiled my tenderness with your spite. Now you must kiss me. (He embraces her. They kiss for a long moment.) MRS. SMITH Oh! Take my pulse now! MR. SMITH, JUNIOR (Returning to the clock, he picks up a spanner.) Off to bed with you and your enormous burden. MRS. SMITH Let me sit here for a while first and watch you resurrect the dead. Is there hope? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Were I a smith, of clocks, perhaps. I am only a rank amateur, a dilantante, tapping the springs. MRS. SMITH Shall you send it away to be restored? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR If Father’s story is to be believed, this patient has been waiting for his surgeon for thirty years or more. The inner workings must be corrupt by now. MRS. SMITH My last wish is to seem ungrateful. It is a wonder to look 6

upon, bell or no bell. And though it shows eight fortyseven perpetually, so it represents the truth twice a day, morning and night. A lesser timepiece might tick but be always dropping behind the world second by second or racing ahead of us into the next minute, and thus be never accurate(The crowd noise rises briefly and falls back to its previous level.) MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Mrs. Smith, your idle talk is wiser than the combined cackle of a score of our alleged wise men. MRS. SMITH Thank you, Mr. Smith. As I was saying, when your dear father presented his silent gift, I was too new to be bold. Then I was too busy moving our household here to be bold. And now, if I may be so bold: Why are we possessed of a clock which does not even attempt to keep up a pretense at timekeeping? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR (He drops his tool into the box and looks up at the face of the clock.) Well, this is the Tale of the Clock. As told by Mr. Smith the Elder to his gullible son: Before his elevation to the primacy of his country, even before his acceptance of command of her feeble army, George Washington, plantation man, builds his slaves their own chapel so that they might better throw off the theoretical shackles of their heathen superstitions and be cleansed by the light of the true Lord, that is, the Lord of the white man. Onto this chapel he raises a modest belfry, and into this belfry he hangs a bell cast from the molten remains of shackles of a very real sort salvaged from a slave ship which had foundered off the Virginia coast. It is said that the peal of this bell was so haunting in its timbre, so much like a thousand voices crying as one unto Heaven, that its tolling could enchant any who were within its ring, and the people journeyed from several states just to hear it once and then turn home. But the day Washington died, his loving human chattel rang the bell so long and so hard, enraged by grief, that it shattered with the scream of a dying angel. The bell then disappears from recorded history. 7

MRS. SMITH I am all a shiver. Are there ghosts later? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Patience. I said recorded history, did I not? The bell reappears transformed, bought up as scrap by a merchant who recognizes its historical value, and remade into collectibles large and small: snuff boxes, ink pots, and the like. And most of the inner works of a very fine timepiece. MRS. SMITH Our old man himself? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR The same, by this tale. Crafted in Chelsea, Massachusetts and sold to a Mr. Seward, father to the Seward of fame and passed onto him in his inheritance. Seward carried the clock, then very much a functioning measurer of the hours, minutes, and seconds, to Washington the city when he becomes one of the Cabinet under the ancient one. It was there in his library that fateful April morning that Seward entered, laden with an unbearable sadness, for he had just returned from a bedside vigil over his President, who had lain all night in a bed too small for his long old bones in a boardinghouse hard by Ford's while Booth’s bullet worked its slow terror in that mighty brain. Seward looked up to check the time. He found that the hands, constant for these several decades, had stopped, and had stopped forever, at 7:22 - the minute that Abraham Lincoln drew his last earthly breath. MRS. SMITH Oh! How enchantingly eerie! MR. SMITH, JUNIOR But a total fabrication. I will find within here a plate affixed by the real manufacturer somewhere about 1890, I would think. MRS. SMITH Then why search? Shut it back as it was before, and we may regale our guests and our grandchildren with that tale. I will darken the room and light candles all around. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Shall I serve lies and call it hospitality? 8

(A loud knock at the door. Without a word of permission or welcome, MR. SMITH, SENIOR flings open the front door and enters, carrying two fist fulls of mugs.) MR. SMITH, SENIOR Well, well! No one asleep? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR No, Father. Not even the muffling of the womb is enough to drown out your infernal brass band. MR. SMITH, SENIOR My dear - is it true? - I will go at once and mute them all. MRS. SMITH Please do not. The music is lovely. I could drift away quite easily to it, but sleep these days is only at baby’s convenience. Come and give us a kiss. (MR. SMITH, SENIOR goes and gives her a peck on the cheek, then hands her a mug.) MR. SMITH, SENIOR Freshly-brewed birch beer. Good for foaling mares. MRS. SMITH Why must I be a horse always? I want to be a cat. They can nap any old time. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR And for the stallion? (MR. SMITH, SENIOR brings him a mug.) MR. SMITH, SENIOR Rum punch to toast the New Year. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR (Raising his drink.) To you. But not to any year. MR. SMITH, SENIOR Thank you. 9

(He walks over to the clock.) Extracting satisfaction from the clock, are you? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR I cannot possibly go to bed with your mob of fools over there laughing and shouting. I thought I might do something productive. MR. SMITH, SENIOR There is still time to join us. Just for a moment. The men have all been asking after you. The wives gather around me, the children tug on my coat. Where is he, where is he? they cry. What do you say to a toast, three huzzays, and then back home quick as a wink? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR I say they should wake from their dream and let us sleep. MR. SMITH, SENIOR Very well. Your objection is again noted. MRS. SMITH (Rising ponderously.) Gentlemen, I will take my leave now. (MR. SMITH, JUNIOR rushes to her side and tries to support her.) MR. SMITH, SENIOR She flees from the promise of another lecture. MRS. SMITH Oh, posh! MR. SMITH, JUNIOR We will not quarrel tonight, dear. Peace on Earth and all those blessed tidings, you know. MRS. SMITH You are a week late. Strange for one otherwise strictly by the calendar. MR. SMITH, SENIOR Besides, there are no grounds to quarrel. I agree with you in all respects. Your position is irrefutable. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Yet you pay the piper to play that tune, knowing it to be 10

false. MR. SMITH, SENIOR We often party for no reason at all. Is this not some manner of reason enough? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR No, no, no! Rational men should shun parties on this eve. Snuff their lamps and go creeping about on stocking feet with wax balls stuffed into their ears to absorb the illogical tintinnabulations about in the land(Party sounds rise and fall.) MR. SMITH, SENIOR May we only celebrate with the leave of science and reason? Strike out Halloween then. And Easter. Christmas itself must fall on examination of available facts. Happy equinox to all! MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Harmless superstition is quite apart from this travesty, this celebration of a false beginning to a new century. MR. SMITH, SENIOR Many disagree with you. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR There can be no disagreement with fact. Even if we allow Pope Gregory’s manipulation, the plain and truth is that Christ’s birth began the year one, and the year one hundred was the one hundredth year - the end year of the first century. Not the first year of the second. And so until the year one thousand nine hundred, which is the last year of the nineteenth century, not the first year of the twentieth. And for all that unchallengable accounting of time, I care not so much for the veracity of my calendar as I do for what ensues if we choose to ignore it. That some of us - hear them out there! - will lie to ourselves, lie to our fellows, hear the testimony and not take it just so we will not suffer the wait of a year to celebrate? It is a malignant omen on which to open a new century, setting aside rational thought for the immediate pleasure of a revel. MR. SMITH, SENIOR So my little party has ruined your whole century, has it? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR 11

You jest, sir, but I am dead straight upon this. In some minutes, the bells will toll, our rockets will be lit, and all throats will be raw from shouting - for what? Scream for double naught. Voices hoarse, demanding amusement, damn the facts, entertain us, appease us, only do not reason with us. We want, we want, we want, and what the mob must have it must have now and not in one year. MR. SMITH, SENIOR Ha! Those are not demands you hear but prayers. Those you condemn for rushing toward a new century may be only desperate to escape this one. MRS. SMITH Flee our beloved century? Why, that would be like leaving one’s home of a hundred years. And shall we all not arrive in the next one at the same time no matter how much or how little we burn to go ahead? MR. SMITH, SENIOR Perhaps not everyone has such a contented home that they would stay as long as they might. MRS. SMITH It will be like a gold rush? A few men from every town, those who are wanderers anyway or who have no family and no prospects, will go off at first. Soon, word will come back from the departed that the creekbeds in the twentieth century are choked with nuggets. Then follow the men with their families and all possessions in wagons. Except we did not all go West, but we will all be heaved into the next century, wagon or no. MR. SMITH, SENIOR That...is just as it was. MRS. SMITH Father Smith. You were a forty-niner? MR. SMITH, SENIOR No, dear, I never had that kind of wanderlust. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Father means the great conflict. The war for the Union. Is that not right, sir? MR. SMITH, SENIOR Drink your punch. And you, madam, your beer. 12

MRS. SMITH I shall. And you had better wet your throat, for I sense the imminence of a tale. MR. SMITH, SENIOR A story? Who shall tell us a story? MRS. SMITH Why, you shall. I have yet to meet a veteran of the great conflict who did not have a story. A very long story. MR. SMITH, SENIOR (Shaking his head.) Then let me be the first. It was so long ago, and so uneventful. MRS. SMITH You have high standards. I have only memories of stifling afternoons at Madame Souvenlikes, memorizing Latin speeches and French couplets. That was uneventful. One distant cannon's blast will suffice for me. MR. SMITH, SENIOR Even if I had so much as a far off artillery barrage in my addled old brain, why should you want to hear of it now? In your condition; on this evening some are devoting to looking to a better future? MRS. SMITH Then you do have a tale, but you will not tell it because I am with child? You are to consider that it is a natural state for a woman, and I intend to be thus encumbered for the next several years. Then when will I hear your experiences? What will I have to tell of you to my children and they to their children unless you give me a history? I come into this family from a far distance. All that I know of you you must yourself tell me. It is hardly fair that you should know everythimg about my short life, and I know nothing of your full life. (MR. SMITH, SENIOR goes to the window and speaks as if adressing someone outside.) MR. SMITH, SENIOR Whenever this new century comes, I pray God that the young will finally take the occasion to consider all those past we labor so to educate them about. If they but attended to the least part of what all the countless young men were 13

calling out to them as they died.... The youth yet unborn will know that ancient men, supposedly wise and grown impartial through time's attenuation of passion, are no more than crotchety fools all too ready to take offense at slights the young would laugh away. But who must leave their homes when the bugle calls? Not the old men, but the callow obedient young. I enlisted in the cavalry, Company C of the 32nd Illinois. Beowulf was my horse's name. He was a roan stallion, fifteen hands high and as fast as an antelope. It was 1863, in the fall. We had new carbine rifles and the latest revolvers. Our saddles still smelled like the tannery, and they sent us to guard a supply train coming through the Cumberland Gap, right where a rebel division with two years of fighting behind them were raiding. I'll not trouble you with the maneuverings or disposition of forces leading to it, but we were taken. Most of the company was killed. Beowulf was shot three times. I asked a rebel sargent to finish him for me as a merciful favor. We were marched south. Some of the time we were packed into railroad cars. In the heart of one of the bitterest winters anyone could recall, we arrived in Georgia. They had built a crude stockade fence in a meadow outside of a town called Andersonville, big enough to hold ten thousand men close packed. But the confederacy could not even feed its own troops, let alone enemy prisoners, so the green rinds of bacon quit coming in very soon. Twenty thousand men, and still they came. The gates opened one time each day for the grimy bread like stones and mush as much insect as corn. Thirty thousand men, poured atop one another and still they came in. One year after I was captured, the pen held forty thousand men who shared the black water from one stagnant creek. God was traveling in Europe for two years, I think. Perhaps He was lying about in Venice or Paris; He was surely not in Georgia. We had corn meal, very coarse and unsalted for our manna, for all our fervent praying. Do you know what a constant diet of corn meal does to the human body? We would have chewed grass like goats if they would only have let us a little way beyond the fence. Your knees and elbows swell up and ache all day and night so you cannot sleep. Any tiny nick or scratch will not heal, worse than that, old scars open themselves back up as though remembering their birth. But the end comes when your teeth loosen themselves from the jaw and you cannot grind the stony meal with them any longer. And then because there is no milk or gruel or 14

Mother's soft white bread, you stretch out in your small patch of stinking mud and leave your wretched body and cares behind. They buried them in a single long pit. Not even the rebs had the energy to dig graves for them all. How many thousand died? You can go to Washington and look it up. It's all there, in the trial records, because they tried and hung the bastard who ran the place. His defense was that he, a simple Major, was obeying the orders of his superior officer, as though he could not look each and every day through the planks and see the Hell on earth that it must be every human's duty to prevent. And so he was hung, but it gave no comfort to the twelve lads from Company C of the 32nd Illinois who were in an unmarked ditch in the Georgia clay. Two of us made it out. The other one was my friend Ned Barclay. They took a picture of him when we got to the hospital at Annapolis, after the surrender. He terrified the doctors - battlefield surgeons all. Once they cut his rags away to see his two arms ending in stumps still full of maggots feeding on the gangrene, and his knees like melons and his legs that you could touch your fingers around. A cancer had eaten away the bottom of his jaw, and he weighed no more than the rifle I had lost an eternity before. I know, because I carried him in my arms like a bundle of kindling wood out of the stockade and laid him in the train that took us north. The day after they took his picture, he quit breathing. I think he was holding on so that picture could be made. He probably had the same feeling I had for two years - that this was one tale no one would want to believe. That is probably why I have little fondness for this nineteenth century and wish it to be damned to Hell and gone. (He walks to the door and leaves. MR. and MRS. SMITH are motionless for a long moment.) MRS. SMITH My dear, I do not mean this as a reproach, but...why did you not tell me...? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR My dear, because I did not know until this minute. I thought he was in the cavalry, but that.... I have never 15

heard him speak of it. I wonder that he told you. MRS. SMITH He was talking to you, husband, and you alone. I was an eavesdropper. But perhaps you do not realize yet the particular fear which engulfs the parent. Perhaps you will have to wait until the dear babe is in your arms, whereas I have had it since the first tentative little kick, this fear that you have made a grievous error to introduce the helpless loved one into a wicked uncaring world. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR I am no babe. MRS. SMITH Perhaps to a father, the son retains some part of the infant, needing protection and a shielding love, until one end of that bond lies in a grave. I am of a very rigid opinion that he has just tried to apologise for exposing you to a great many injustices which are not his fault at all. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR I yield to your perspicacity. You see things around here more clearly than I. I have only one correction to your views. I do not have to wait until our beautiful darling is out and about to be filled with apprehension about the course which history seems to be set upon. You see this blithering congregation out there - I am not so annoyed by their mistaken calendar-watching as I am by what it portends. If you take any one of them aside, alone, he will admit, yes, that the first century began with the birth of our Lord which began the year one and so the year one hundred was the one hundreth year of our history and thus the last year of the first century. And they will cheerfully admit the same counting by one hundred years leads us to the present night and the inescapable conclusion that the twentieth hundred years, the twentieth century, will begin one year from tonight. Not this evening. Yet in a mass, they cry out for a celebration because the year begins with a double naught. Are they too immature to wait one single year? Are they willfully denying the truth just so as not to miss a glass of spirit? I tell you, Mrs. Smith, that so many of our fellows should pass upon the fact so as to seek indulgence does not bode well for the coming century. MRS. SMITH You will excuse me if I will point out to you an obvious 16

thought. The Hebrews have their own number for this year, the Chinese another, and the ghosts of the Maya, the Aztec, the ancient Egytians, the modern Hindu and Muslim. I would be amazed if tonight most of the world were sound asleep with no thoughts at all upon the significance of the year. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Let those happy natives slumber in peace while they may, for I hear across the way there a number of white men who will soon fall upon them to take away their land, possessions, and gods. Now they clamor in false celebration. They have convinced themselves of a fraud, surrendered their reason without reservation. They are fertile land waiting only for some modern tyrant, a Napoleon of their twentieth century, to rouse them into ever larger demonstrations, start them with ever increasing lies. But tonight is suddenly redeemed. A family mystery has been solved. MRS. SMITH The clock? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Bother the clock. My greatgrandfather came to America to make his living as a master compounder. That is to say, he was a mixer of powder. He rolled black grains of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur. Much as we still do to this day, but his concoctions were deadly serious. He never tipped strontium nor cobalt into his mill. Smith's powder made the best fine red-mark grain for blasting and cannon, and he taught his secrets to my grandfather, and my grandfather taught them to my father. But after the great war for the Union, father gave up the military side of the business and changed most of the mill over to our firecrackers, skyrockets, Roman candles, fiery patriotic displays. All the many devices we sell to make a bang and a flash in innocence. I never knew until this moment that he quit supplying material of war not from financial intelligence but rather from moral compunction. MRS. SMITH But you still sell to the mines and the railroads. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Of course, my darling, and that brings us a fair return, but don't you see the mad grandness of his decision? He risked his whole inherited property, his livelihood and 17

life's work by turning his back on the obscene profits to be made from the Department of War. Do you think that the battleship Maine exploded because her powder was stabilized first-quality red grain? Do you think that Teddy's rough riders chose to fire government-issue cartridges filled with charges so adulterated that their rifles clogged after a dozen smoky, fizzing rounds? We are not the only manufacturer of powder, but we are now the only one which does not slink into Washington in the shadow of every jingoistic cry from Hearst's yellow sheets. We are the only one which does not own a Senator or two to ferry gold to the Secretary of War so that we might barrel up the sweepings from our factory floor and ship it off to cavalry and frigate amid the teary-eyed fanfare of great patriotic huzzahs. (He goes and puts on his coat.) MRS. SMITH Please do notMR. SMITH, JUNIOR Never mind me. I am not going to tame the rabble to my view. Not this night. I am going to find my father and take back every bit of abuse I am entered for upon his books. (He leaves. She lies back, listening to the crowd noise. Her back is to the door, so when it opens, she hears it but does not see MR. SMITH, SENIOR step quietly inside.) MRS. SMITH Mr. Smith? MR. SMITH, SENIOR The same, but I presume not the desired one? MRS. SMITH Father Smith! Did you meet your son outside? MR. SMITH, SENIOR No, I did not. Has he deserted you? MRS. SMITH He went out to find you. 18

MR. SMITH, SENIOR I see. He went north toward the festivities, but I was to the south, in the garden. MRS. SMITH At this hour in the dark garden? I trust you did not stumble over a hedge or turn your ankle upon a stone? MR. SMITH, SENIOR Thank you, no. I was there for the darkness, you see. And I came back to beg your forgiveness. I was beastly rude to you both. Try as I might, I do play the cranky old fool. MRS. SMITH Never in life, my dear. Now go and find your son before he causes a row. MR. SMITH, SENIOR I should think he will be back to look in on you before I might run him down in the crowd. I am amazed he left you alone at all. Not that I would judge him at all, mind you, but he has made you his devotion these several months running his duties at the plant by notes and drawings, and quite neglecting his poker and shooting fellows. But we do understand his thinking, don't we? MRS. SMITH I am sure. Don't I? His thinking would be his boundless love for his unborn child. With some sliver left over for me, I do hope. MR. SMITH, SENIOR Why.... He never told you. Of course not. He would not put that burden upon you for fear.... MRS. SMITH I don't understand. (He comes over and rests his hand on her shoulder.) MR. SMITH, SENIOR His mother. My dear, dear wife. She bled with the delivery and kept bleeding and kept bleeding. It could not be stopped. A pink bawling baby at her breast, she white as a lily and the bed glistening red. (MRS. SMITH bursts into tears.) 19

MR. SMITH, SENIOR I am sorry. I should not have presumed to tell you. MRS. SMITH When am I to be allowed to know these things of my own family? I have been here only this one year, but must I not know these things about you, my new loved ones? (MR. SMITH, JUNIOR enters, alarmed by the sight of her distress.) MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Darling, what trouble? MRS. SMITH (Composing herself.) Nothing at all. Tears of joy(Wide-eyed, she rises up in her seat and brings both hand to her belly.) MRS. SMITH Oh, my! I believe- yes, my water. It has broken. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR No, no, no. Impossible. You are a month away! It's too early. MRS. SMITH I agree, yet there it is. (She contorts from a painful contraction, biting her lip.) MRS. SMITH Oh! The child cannot read a calendar! MR. SMITH, SENIOR I shall ring the doctor. MRS. SMITH He is out of town until the day after tomorrow. (She has another contraction.) 20

MRS. SMITH By then we will be parents and grandparent. MR. SMITH, SENIOR Virginia Largent is a midwife. They are across the way at the party. (He runs out the door. MRS. SMITH rises slowly to her feet. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR sees her intent and helps her up.) MRS. SMITH Then I am off to my bed. Tell me, dear husband, is it the bed you were born in? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR No, it is new. Do you mind? (They advance slowly to and up the stairs.) MRS. SMITH Strangely, I do not. Oh, dear, I think I have quite ruined the sofa. I am too blunt, too forward and crude, but the pain has drive all my modesty far away before its cruel advance. Soon I will be in be in bed with a strange woman working her trade upon my delicate.... MR. SMITH, JUNIOR You have been introduced to Mrs. Largent. Her husband is the day foreman. MRS. SMITH Husband, you comfort me greatly. (They climb out of sight. The room is empty for a moment with only the distant sound of the party unabated, ignorant of the crisis. Then MR. SMITH, SENIOR reenters in a hurry, followed close behind by MR. LARGENT, a short swarthy man, and MRS. LARGENT, a thin woman taller than her husband. She sizes up the room, sweeps past them and hustles up the stairs.) 21

MRS. LARGENT (Off stage.) Thank you. Yes. Good bye. Good bye. (MR. SMITH, JUNIOR appears, coming down the stairs as if propelled by a push. He checks his progress and takes a step back up.) MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Will I fetch water? Bandages? MRS. LARGENT (Off stage.) A basin of warm water. Let someone else bring it. (MR. SMITH, JUNIOR comes slowly down the stairs and sinks into an armchair.) MR. LARGENT Never worry, Mr. Smith. Aggie has brought many into the world and she tells me she has yet to drop one. (MR. SMITH, JUNIOR glares at him.) MR. SMITH, SENIOR Mr. Largent has eleven children. (There is a long awkward silence.) MR. SMITH, SENIOR Son, it's time for our display. Give Mrs. Smith my blessings. (He leaves. MR. LARGENT, who has been standing quietly, sits nervously on the edge of the sofa. Another long silence, then the sharp crack of a skyrocket and its light reflected into the room. MR. LARGENT runs to the window.) 22

MR. LARGENT Will you have a gander at that? That was the new Deluxe Heaven Fire, the quarter charge with sodium. One of your best, Mr. Smith. (Another boom, red light casting his shadow into the room.) MR. LARGENT There's your Blessed Nova! Look at the cesium! How it fires the sky! Brilliant work! (The crown claps, whistles, cheers. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR comes over to the window. Another report, flash of white and green.) MR. LARGENT Oh, the Perseid Necklace! Sapphire and diamond! My very best congratulations, sir! MR. SMITH, JUNIOR The credit is all yours, Mr. Largent. They would be only my beautiful dreams without form but for you and your most valuable craftsmen. (A door opens off stage above.) MRS. LARGENT (Off stage, above.) Where is our water? Warm water, mind you - not scalding. Just boiled and let stand to cool. But not near any open window. You know the evil of the winter vapors about. And a very sharp knife. D'you hear? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR (Racing to the stairs.) A knife? MR. LARGENT A most usual implement in these matters - do not trouble your mind. I shall fetch the water. I know how she likes it. (He goes out the door stage 23

left.) MRS. SMITH (Off stage, above.) Dear heart and father-to-be, your rockets are unspeakably magnificent. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR I thank you, but should you be so excited? MRS. SMITH (Off stage, above.) You cannot know how I crave any distraction now. MRS. LARGENT (Off stage, above.) Please - we must have quiet! Where is my water? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Shall I have the display stopped? Is there any trouble? MRS. LARGENT No, No. I mean to have the patient lie still rather than trying to stand up in her birthing bed to see a firework a little better. Still, these crashes are prefered to a gaggle of mothers and grandmothers hovering about, each one offering up an unfailing remedy, a score of old family secrets and potions and spells. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Then all goes well? MRS. LARGENT (Off stage, above.) Well and most rapid. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Too rapid? (The door above is slammed shut. Several loud cracks and flashes close together. A short cry of pain from off stage, above. MR. LARGENT comes back bearing a basin, nods to MR. SMITH, JUNIOR, amd hurries up the stairs. He reappears, smiling.) 24

MR. LARGENT Shan't be long now. The New Year and a new child. What could be more happy? MR. SMITH, JUNIOR I bless you for your sentiment, but forgive me this answer to that question. It might be better if the child were not brought into a world where so many surrender reason for self-gratification. MR. LARGENT Still put out by the new century people, eh? I say you're better off ignoring the lot of them. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR What? Were you not there in the midst of the partying not long ago, preparing to celebrate a false and dangerously foolish moment? MR. LARGENT Oh, yes. But I pass no judgement. A party is a party, I say. Live and let live. We'll have another one next year on the true night. Soon it will be midnight and all's well, eh? (MR. SMITH, JUNIOR turns to the window where he looks up at the unstopping aerial bombardment.) MR. SMITH, JUNIOR The dreaded chime moves upon us. I thought I would have a soliloquy at the ready, a raving denunciation worthy to move the shade of the Bard. Down with the goddamn blind, the greedy, the cattle too simple to work out for themselves when one hundred years should be truly over. But I am drained. I have nothing left inside but prayer for this child and all those to follow, God willing. Keep them from the mad erratic desires of the populace. Shelter them until they can be of age and wisdom to break with this denial of reason and rule their world with logic and justice for a period of one hundred years, which they and all their world will know is not ninety-nine. And when my children's children's children have guided this world into that next great divide, the millennium itself, all will be joined in agreement on that most wonderful night in the winter of the year of our Lord 2001 that another thousand 25

years is granted this tired callow race. For the New Year of the year 2000 will have passed with but the usual clamor. The ignorant, the foolish, the disingenuous hucksters - all will be distant memories by that far-off time(A bang louder than the previous few cuts him off.) MR. SMITH, JUNIOR These begin the cannons. MR. LARGENT That's right. Two dozen half-charges with potassium, then the same with three-quarter charges. Elevating through the series, timed right up to end with your masterpiece, the twelve stroke of full charges ending with your Ominous Beast, the blessed eighteeen charger, fit to end any epoch upon, I say. It's the largest load we ever tried to lift up off the groundMR. SMITH, JUNIOR Wait. Did you say eighteen? My Ominous Beast? MR. LARGENT Eighteen, just as you drawn it out. We had to lay on a special casing to fit it all in. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR No! No! It was one point eight! Eighteen charges is insanity! MR. LARGENT Eighteen it was, clear as day(Bombs begin to go off, a slow rolling braodside of cannon fire and white flashing in the sky. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR leans out the window and begins to scream.) MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Father! Stop th(A shrieking detonation shakes the house. A blinding flash bleaches everything and everyone.) 26

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR My God! What have I done? Mr. Largent! The phone! Call for help! There must be dead(But instead of the cries of the dead, they hear applause and laughter. The distant crowd begins to sing "Columbia".) MR. LARGENT Don't sound like many have been killed over there. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR Thank Providence the shell rose up into the air. MR. LARGENT A good omen for the future. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR That it were, Mr. Largent. Oh that it were. May we never have cause or opportunity to construct such a rocket again, nor the world ever see its like. (Off stage, above, a final shout of effort. A pause, then the bawling of an angry newborn. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR runs halfway up the stairs.) MRS. SMITH (Off stage, above.) A son! MRS. LARGENT (Off stage, above.) A boy! MR. SMITH, JUNIOR May I come? (Hearing no reply, he goes up the stairs. The old upright clock begins to toll the half hour with an odd muffled bell. MR. LARGENT moves over and looks up at the face. MRS. LARGENT comes down the 27

stairs, wiping her hands.) MR. LARGENT Look at this, Mother. It is the queerest thing. MRS. LARGENT What, Father? MR. LARGENT This old clock. It has been stopped for thirty years and more and now it is running. Hear it tick? The last blast must have brought it back to the living world. MRS. LARGENT That awful rocket of yours left my ears numb, you old fool. Why did you make such a thing? Not only did it ring to wake the dead, it fairly popped the child right out of its mother and into my distracted hands. MR. LARGENT That was just our newest rocket, Mother. I think we will sell them right and left after that kind of advertising. But look at this! Is it not the omen of the world? MRS. LARGENT Omens, excuse me, be damned. (They exit.) END

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