Rubble. James Cherry on tree trunk, regarding audience.
As James Cherry speaks, the lights fade.
JAMES CHERRY: I woke up this morning while the sun was
lying in the hair on my chest, and I had been dreaming,
something about a horse, a field, a woman, and sunlight,
and I got up out of bed and opened the window and felt air
on my face, and air on my neck. The wind sat in the wind
tree, and the tree greened, and it was a very clear
morning, of those latter days. I looked up into a mirror
and noticed that I was hollow-eyed, and looking like a
lemur; I shaved my chin and watched the red blood dribble
down my cheeks. I put on my muffler and earmuffs, my
dead-rabbit lined gloves, a strip of cow around my waist
to hold my pants up, and my pigskin wallet; outside the
block was lined with manchineel, and the palm trees
crackled like ice; flat-foot-floogie with the floy-floy,
soft shoe and a double shuffle and out past the church of
gargoyles. I went into the grocery, bought myself a
pomegranate and a squash, a head of cauliflower, some Tabasco sauce, and a chunky, and tasted each one with the
rough of my tongue while I watched the white thistle fall
onto dead leaves, among thorn apples; and all the
buildings disappeared and I was left standing alone on a
dark plain with slips of paper in my hand reading "Home,"
and "Job," and "Loved One"; and the weather of a sudden
became nasty, there were obstacles in my way, ill wind,
bitter pill, the path strewn with ugly fruit, adversity,
adverse circumstances, hardship, hard lines, hard case,
hard life, matter, rattle, embarrassment, black Halloween,
violent cartoon, forty days of rain, I boiled forty years
in the desert, and later had much trouble from a whale;
and it occurred to me that I am respected, fearfully
respected, because I am important in that I am excellent
at both this and that, I growl louder than the animals,
and for other reasons also, a lifetime full of reasons,
filled with accomplishment, believe me, I'd illustrate,
but I don't think so, I don't think I will; and I held out
my hands, and I saw that they were empty, and I saw that
it was good; and in concluding, in finishing up, for
whatever reason, I came home; and there in my kitchen was
a dark stranger; he had on much in the way of
embellishment and ornamentation; he took his black gun out
of his holster, looked at me and asked, "Do you know what
I do, James?" "I don't," I said, and that was a lie, I
knew well enough what he did, what he was here for, and
why he was here; "I'm a Federal Agent, an Officer of the
law," he said to me, "a United States Marshal, and I shoot
people; now I'm going to shoot you, James, with this, my
gun. Do you know what my gun does?" "Your gun," I said,
"punches holes into people." "Goodbye, James, that's
correct," he said, and shot me in the stomach. I fell
down and held myself; red and white fields of me were
leaking out; I thought, he shot me in the stomach! He
shot me in the stomach! The Marshal came up close to my
head and said, "That didn't do the job, James, so now I'm
going to shoot you in the ear." In one ear, I thought,
and out the other. He put his gun up against my head. I
did well to be angry, I thought, and play upon Calliope.
(Pause.) Then the Officer shot me in the ear. (Pause.) And
that's the story of how I was shot. (Pause.) That was the
end of this morning. (Pause.) And that's all I remember.
(Pause.) The rest is meat.
BLACKOUT
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