Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse Read online

  Trailing a verdant dribble off their cuffs.

  Their T-shirts shrank right on them as we watched.

  BILL JENKS: “Palpitating”? “Verdant”? What a smarty.

  “What’s a censer?” What a smarty pants.

  Ain’t you a genius. Where’d you go to school?

  MASHA: I didn’t go. I didn’t need to go.

  BILL JENKS: You knew it all.

  MASHA: Enough to not get busted.

  BILL JENKS: But not to not divide infinitives.

  MASHA: Fucked-up grammar is not a crime in Texas.

  He smokes. Offers one. She ignores it.

  BILL JENKS: They cost a buck apiece inside…How much are

  you?

  MASHA: I dance. I’m not for sale. I dance.

  BILL JENKS: You strip.

  MASHA: I’m not exactly a ballerina, no.

  BILL JENKS: But you done quit the life. Or so I heard.

  MASHA: Heard when? When I was on the telephone?

  BILL JENKS: Yeah, and I could smell the putrid karma

  Percolating in the interaction,

  And I say this: Whatever’s going on

  With you and him can only improve with distance.

  MASHA: I didn’t see you around. Just prisoners.

  BILL JENKS: One was me. And then I bought the outfit…

  Pack of smokes…and we’re not prisoners.

  We’re out—How do!—We move among you now.

  MASHA: What were you in for? Dealer? Killer?—Rapist.

  BILL JENKS: Victim of religious persecution.

  MASHA: Jewish, huh?

  BILL JENKS: I was irregular.

  MASHA: And went to prison for it?—What’d you do,

  Diarrhea all over somebody?

  BILL JENKS: My conduct was irregular. That is,

  With money.

  MASHA: Sure. You stuck somebody up.

  BILL JENKS: I was convicted of commingling funds.

  It means a stick-up with a ballpoint pen.

  MASHA: Do tell. Co-mingling funds. Is that Chinese?

  BILL JENKS: Lady, is that the way you play your game?

  Hang around the Greyhound lookin’ down,

  Makin’ fun of other folks’s clothes—

  And Masha is a Russian nickname, sis.

  MASHA: No, it’s not. “Sis” is a nickname. Masha’s

  What I got at birth. My name is Masha.

  BILL JENKS:…Mar-sha—!

  MASHA: Yeah…

  BILL JENKS: Well, I like Masha better.

  MASHA: When I dance I’m Fey or I’m Yvette

  Or I’m Nicole and then I’m naked.

  BILL JENKS: Naked!

  MASHA: I start out topless and proceed from there,

  And logic does the rest.

  BILL JENKS: I’ll bet it does.

  I’ll bet it ends up running down the road

  Yodeling and firing off both guns.

  MASHA: You’re pretty slick with words.

  BILL JENKS: Ain’t but a tic.

  MASHA: I’ll bet your mouth gets you in trouble. Lots.

  BILL JENKS: And where would someone fresh from prison go

  To watch you executing logic so

  Ruthlessly and gracefully? To Heaven?

  Or someplace even higher?

  MASHA: Try the Texas.

  BILL JENKS: The Texas Bar?

  MASHA: The Big-As-Texas.

  BILL JENKS: …O!—

  Sylvester’s Big-As-Texas Topless Lounge!

  I guess I wasn’t off by very much:

  “Just fifty miles from Houston and right next

  To Paradise on Highway 35.”

  How do you get to and from? You got a car?

  MASHA: No, but I can always catch a ride.

  BILL JENKS: I do believe you can. I guarantee it.

  And what’s your next stop? Dallas?

  MASHA: I’m not sure.

  BILL JENKS: Not sure?

  MASHA: I need to pick the proper move.

  It’s heads or tails, and devil take the hindmost.

  BILL JENKS: Sounds like you better grab the first thang smokin’.

  MASHA: The tips were big as Texas—then the road

  Got all torn up, and now it’s like a tomb,

  And I got Peter Lorre for a boss, who just

  Keeps jacking up the price of doing business.

  BILL JENKS: I guess that happens all the time.

  MASHA: Huh-uh,

  It ain’t what you imagine. It’s much weirder,

  Wilder—unnatural—and no, no, no,

  It still ain’t what you’re thinking. It’s not sex.

  …You mentioned a wife.

  BILL JENKS: O! Yeah. I probly did.

  And did I mention that her lawyers mentioned

  A divorce?

  MASHA: It wasn’t really necessary.

  BILL JENKS: You turn me on. I think you make me wild.

  Smart women get me going. Thus my downfall.

  MASHA: Step right up and blame it on a woman…

  How long did Texas guard your purity?

  BILL JENKS: One and one-sixth years. That’s fourteen months.

  —And I went in there in a monastic spirit:

  I’ve been voluntarily celibate,

  And celibate, God willing, I’ll remain.

  MASHA: Well, you’ve been talking like your holy vow

  Escaped your mind and pulled your trousers down.

  BILL JENKS: Matter of fact it did. Wow. Fourteen months.

  …I like the way your heel’s a little dirty.

  I like the way you point your toes. I like

  That silvery sort of robot-colored sort of

  Sequined toenail polish.

  MASHA: You are sick!

  BILL JENKS: Wow. Just the sight of your foot makes me drool.

  Your human foot. Wow. Fourteen months locked up.

  MASHA: Aren’t there any humans with feet in there?

  BILL JENKS: Humans? Yeah. Humans too goddamn human:

  Misused and violent Negroes, and abused

  And violent Texas crackers, and confused

  Bilingual Meskin desperados—also

  Violent—and sweet, retarded boys

  Who can’t recall the violence they’ve done…

  Deranged mulattos, and mestizos scrambled

  In their natural brains…

  Saints and suckers stirring in a stew

  Of HIV and hepatitis C and walls

  And years. And, yes: I guess they’ve all got feet.

  But none of them ever dreamed of a foot like yours.

  MASHA: You’re not a lover, are you…You’re a preacher…

  BILL JENKS: Fourteen months exactly to the minute,

  The same as Elvis did in Jailhouse Rock.

  [He goes to the counter.]

  Got me a voucher for the Dallas bus.

  CLERK: Dallas’ll be along behind the Houston.

  BILL JENKS: The Houston bus came not an hour ago.

  CLERK: The Dallas end of things is crumbling.

  While Texas undertakes repairs, there’s just

  This formless ooze of throbbing vehicles

  From here to there and back that never moves…

  (I would love to strafe those motherfuckers…)

  BILL JENKS: That lady got a pulse?

  CLERK: That’s Granny Black,

  Mourning her man who died in the electric chair.

  Yeah, she was young and wild. And he was wilder.

  Crazy little gambler with a temper.

  Shot four niggers in a poker game,

  Killed ’em all though he held the winning hand.

  Well, you could get away with shooting one

  Or two along back then around these parts,

  But even colored you can’t slaughter by

  The dozens and not expect to meet Joe Byrd.

  MASHA: Joe Byrd?

  CLERK: The man with the electric chair.

  BILL JENKS: The e
xecutioner for fifty years

  Or something like that.

  CLERK: Captain Joseph Byrd—

  The guy they named the cemetery after,

  The resting place for prisoners, I mean.

  He executed seven hundred men.

  BILL JENKS: Well—not quite seven hundred.

  CLERK: It was plenty—

  You want facts and figures, read a book.

  She walks among the graves up there all night.

  Yeah. She’s a cheerful, harmless thing in daylight.

  Always dickering on the price to Dallas.

  Never has the price. Just comes to talk

  And settle down and sleep all afternoon.

  Nights you’ll spy her drooling on his grave,

  Wailing for the Resurrection, weeping.

  But ain’t she sweet and harmless in the daylight?

  BILL JENKS: Do you know what? If something moved you to,

  If curiosity prompted you, or pity,

  You could take three hundred steps from that

  Gray bench in those pretty blue shoes and stand

  Exactly in the holy chamber where

  Tonight they’ll execute a human being.

  MASHA: I read about it. Hey. If guys like you

  Weren’t punished, where’d we be? All you

  Deranged and violent mulattos and

  Your numerous other friends. If you

  Were just forgiven, where would we be then?

  BILL JENKS: In Heaven. Watching Masha shake her thang…

  Look. In the joint the cereal don’t go

  Snap crackle pop. It pewls and moans.

  The dogs don’t go bow-wow. They say, Achtung!

  They say, Jawohl! Sieg Heil! et cetera.

  The whistle doesn’t blow. It reams your brains.

  MASHA: They have a whistle?

  CLERK: Lady, they sure do.

  BILL JENKS: Every morning, middle of your dreams.

  You maybe did a little stretch?

  CLERK: Why, no…

  MASHA: I never got your name.

  BILL JENKS: Name’s Bill. Bill Jenks.

  MASHA: You realize your initials are “BJ.”

  BILL JENKS: It hadn’t escaped my attention entirely, no.

  MASHA:…So you’re a preacher. Or you used to be.

  BILL JENKS: So I don’t look familiar? Not at all?

  Really?

  MASHA: I very seldom cruise the links.

  BILL JENKS: Don’t you watch the TV?

  MASHA: I’m the show.

  BILL JENKS: It happens I was poorly represented.

  MASHA: Legally or journalistically?

  BILL JENKS: Both ways. And up and down and back and forth.

  When schism racks a flock, some sheep are torn.

  The shepherd too sometimes. That’s showbiz, folks.

  MASHA: Shepherd or showman?

  BILL JENKS: Shaman,

  Shaman of the Children of Jehovah.

  My scheme went wrong. My streetcar hopped the track.

  A woman was the ripple in the rail.

  MASHA: Were you a preacher or an engine driver?

  BILL JENKS: I was a shaman, babe, a shaman with a scheme.

  MASHA: Shepherd, shaman, engine driver—hey,

  All I know—you just got outa prison.

  BILL JENKS:…Crimes…No…Love…Love…Let me

  make my case…

  MASHA: O, Jesus Christ! Love! That’s a crazy word—

  Ain’t no bigger than a postage stamp,

  But go to pry the corner up, you’re peeking

  Upon a continent.

  BILL JENKS: OK, OK,

  I rest my case.

  MASHA: What case?

  BILL JENKS: Hell, I don’t know.

  If I had courtroom skills, I’d be a judge.

  I wouldn’t be no puppy-blind parolee

  Strolling around in pegged and checkered pants.

  At least they fit.

  MASHA: At least you think they do.

  BILL JENKS: Come on now, Masha, honey, have a heart.

  MASHA: Look, I’ve got a heart, and I’ve got feeling

  For the luckless, and I’ve even got two cousins

  Locked up—or one; they let the other loose.

  But I’ve got troubles too, that’s all. OK?

  BILL JENKS: You think I didn’t know that? It’s the Greyhound.

  This train don’t carry no senators’ sons.

  …God. Is it possible…on this day of days?

  …OK. It is. I’m sitting here…I’m drowning.

  To think the dropdown blues could ambush you

  The day they pour you from a prison cell,

  First day in years you own your own footsteps,

  First day the breezes carry a whiff of choice—

  Fifty bucks, your hair growing back,

  Your feet up, waiting for the two p.m.

  To Dallas, and drowning. A guy should be ashamed,

  You know? Humanity should be ashamed.

  MASHA: Because you didn’t want to leave them there.

  BJ purchases a Coke and sadly raises a toast:

  BILL JENKS: Negroes, Meskins, Crackers, and Mulattos—

  “Wardens, jailers, presidents and kings—

  All must bow to calendars and clocks.”

  I raise to you one ice-cold Coca-Cola…

  Shoot, I drank this stuff inside. Somebody

  Bring me something civilized!—a pale

  Green olive sharing a freezing bath

  Of Gordon’s with a solitary molecule

  Of sweet vermouth. I mean I like ’em dry.

  Can I get a “Hell yes”?

  CLERK: Hell yes!

  MASHA: Hell…

  BILL JENKS: Good…Low-erd…

  Meanwhile, JOHN CASSANDRA enters: large, rounded, slouching; somewhat the biker, but shaved and shorn and wearing prison-issue whites and work shoes.

  He totes a wooden cross taller than himself, his shoulder in the crotch of the crossbeam. This burden rolls along on casters fixed to its base.

  MASHA: What—a—blowjob!

  JOHN makes his way slowly toward the ticket counter.

  BILL JENKS: I think my order has been misconveyed.

  I asked for liquor. Not the crucifixion.

  I seek libation. Not religion. Well,

  Howdoo, Christian?—Or do I assume too much?

  MASHA takes a seat and stares in shiny-eyed silence at John.

  JOHN [to CLERK]: This here’s a Dallas voucher, from the

  Walls.

  BILL JENKS: You bought that thing!

  JOHN: Bought it or stole it, one.

  …Keep your sights!

  In the heights!

  Keep your eyes!

  On the prize!

  BILL JENKS:…I saw that gizmo leaning in a houseyard.

  I didn’t inquire was it available—

  Not to imply I’d have availed myself.

  JOHN: The sign said “For Sale.” The man named his price. I paid it.

  BILL JENKS: You blew your fifty bucks on Jesus.

  JOHN: Yep.

  BILL JENKS: On Jesus Christ, the famous savior guy.

  JOHN: I didn’t blow it on checkered pants and cancer.

  BILL JENKS: Now, here’s a man resists the cigarettes,

  A man with strength to stand against such things

  As checkered pants and, he’d have us assume,

  The random crimson Ban-Lon shirt. But, now:

  While golfing, aren’t you known to make a wager?

  JOHN: I don’t gamble, no. But I’d play golf

  If someone ever thought to ask me to.

  They’d have to show me how it works—you know—

  They’d have to point me down the fairlane.

  BILL JENKS: O Holy One: You ever take a drink?

  JOHN: Not the alcoholic kind.

  BILL JENKS: OK.

  JOHN: Or not no more, at least.

  BILL JENKS: Uh-oh
.

  That Not No More can get to be Right Now

  Right quick the day they let you out of jail.

  JOHN: I know. I gotta keep my eyes on Heaven.

  Keep your sights!

  On the heights!

  Keep your eyes!

  On the prize!—

  BILL JENKS:—Hey. Martin Luther. What about tattoos?

  What kind you got? Describe us your tattoos.

  JOHN: There’s not a one. I wouldn’t mark my body.

  BILL JENKS: Come on. You’ve gotta have one swastika.

  One Born to Raise Hell. And at least one silly

  Very Dixie-sounding woman’s name

  In a vague and fading heart—like Sally,

  Sally June. Or Junie May. Come on,

  What’s the name inside your heart?

  JOHN: It’s Jesus.

  Jesus Christ.

  BILL JENKS: O-K.—You want a Coke

  Before your bus? Before we nail you up?

  JOHN: No, thanks.

  MASHA: No, thanks, “BJ.”—Now, there’s

  A nickname you don’t want to take to prison.

  CLERK hands JOHN a ticket.

  CLERK: One to Dallas. Be about an hour.

  BILL JENKS: Give or take.

  JOHN: I see your radio.

  Your radio?

  CLERK: Well, I’m not hiding it.

  JOHN: I was gonna ask to have it on.

  CLERK: No sir. Nope. Got way way too much static

  Cluttering up the air in here already.

  I’m gonna have to make it policy.

  JOHN: Just at the hour? Just to catch the news?

  You could listen—look, I hate to ask—

  And you could tell me what the news is saying.

  They’re ruling on my mom today…My mother.

  Today’s her last appeal. She’s on Death Row.

  I hate to ask.

  CLERK: Also I hate to say:

  We execute great swarms of people here.

  No—we don’t fool around down here in Huntsville.

  Try ’em and fry ’em.

  BILL JENKS: Boys, don’t mess with Texas.

  CLERK: This is an appeal?