A Free Man of Color (11 page)

JEFFERSON
Jesus, who some say was the kindest man who ever lived—

JACQUES CORNET
We weren’t talking about Jesus.

JEFFERSON
When defending one’s self, one always quotes Jesus. In all the Four Testaments, never once does Jesus mention slavery. If the possible Messiah can’t bring up the subject, how can I?

JACQUES CORNET
You keep several hundred slaves at Monticello.

JEFFERSON
How many slaves on your plantation?

JACQUES CORNET
When I get back home, I will free my slaves.

JEFFERSON
How will they survive?

JACQUES CORNET
Like me, they will find their strength.

JEFFERSON
Do you not think that your strength comes from your father?

JACQUES CORNET
You mean, my
white
blood? My blood is my blood. I do not live in fractions. I demand that you act.

JEFFERSON
Have faith. The world always balances itself.

JACQUES CORNET
But when?

JEFFERSON
Patience. It’ll happen. Have faith. “This abomination must have an end.” I’m on your side! Hang on!

JACQUES CORNET
When you’re in bed with your dead wife’s slave who was also her half-sister, do you woo the dusky Miss Sally, your bronze Venus, with the joys of patience?

JEFFERSON
I refuse to be put on trial in a court of your contrivance.

JACQUES CORNET
Were you patient buying the mountaintop where you built your home? Did you say I really don’t have the money. I’ll wait until later. Hang on! Hang on? A gallows hangs on. You have such faith in the beneficence of the future that you need no faith in today. Mr. Jefferson, why wait! Why not deal with it now when you have the power! All I ask is that you listen to your own words. Make your words real. Change the future now. You’ll avoid a Civil War— Jim Crow—Dred Scott—lynching—back of the bus—whites only—assassination—degradation—

JEFFERSON
I really don’t like confrontation. I like to take quiet walks under the fig trees and experience the present. The “now” is where we are now. I’m comfortable in the now. Try it. Say Now.

The men appear.

JACQUES CORNET
Get back! They can’t own me.

JEFFERSON
I’m afraid they can.

JACQUES CORNET
Thomas Jefferson. The third president of the United States who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Are you out of your fucking mind!

Jacques Cornet rolls the Declaration of Independence into a ball and hurls it at Jefferson.

JEFFERSON
Excellent to be with you tonight. “All men are created equal.” Sometimes I curse writing those words. I did write other phrases I thought as winning.

JACQUES CORNET
Don’t go!

Exit Jefferson. The men advance on Jacques Cornet.

JACQUES CORNET
Back! This is still my play. I summon Meriwether Lewis.

Meriwether enters, in bear skins. A terrible change has befallen him.

JACQUES CORNET
My friend from the white spaces! I’ve reconsidered your kind invitation to join your Corps of Discovery. In spite of your paste of boiled beef and the absence of women, I and my maps will happily join you in the pages of history! Tell these men—(
He looks at pages of the new script
) No. this cannot be. It says this is the last night of your life. But you’re a success! Your journey—

MERIWETHER
Some of it is majestic. Some of it is bleak. But the truth is there’s no direct water route across this continent.

JACQUES CORNET
No western waterway?

MERIWETHER
Mountains sprang up to obstruct the water. Then, flat land.

JACQUES CORNET
Your expedition a failure?

MERIWETHER
People think everything a failure. People thought the purchase of Louisiana a failure. I kept hanging on.

JACQUES CORNET
Hang on! Hang on! Hang on! Your Corps of Discovery made no discovery?

MERIWETHER
Our boundaries. Is it really the last night of my life?

Jacques Cornet looks at the new script and nods.

MERIWETHER
No matter. Tell me the circumstances of the scene?

JACQUES CORNET
It says you’re staying at a shabby inn outside Nashville. You’ve been drinking, taking drugs. Your sense of failure is overwhelming.

MERIWETHER
Who kills me?

JACQUES CORNET
You.

MERIWETHER
Oh. (
Meriwether takes the new script and reads flatly
) “I failed Jefferson. I didn’t find the passage to the sea.” Let me try that again (
with emotion
). “I failed Jefferson. I didn’t find the passage to the sea. Four hundred years of explorers’ dreams . . . Columbus, Magellan, me.”

JACQUES CORNET
The innkeeper calls out: I will make your bed.

MERIWETHER
I don’t want feathers. I can only sleep on the floor. “Stage directions. He spreads his buffalo robe and bear skins on the floor.”

JACQUES CORNET
(
he makes that whistle of seduction
)
I step out of the azaleas. Hear the sound of the mockingbird.

MERIWETHER
It’s a sign of death when the mockingbird no longer mocks but speaks in his true voice.

JACQUES CORNET
This is what the mockingbird says in its true voice.

MERIWETHER
Failure. Our dreams once pulsed with the sexual charge of the unknown. Those dreams—now emasculated, thanks to me. I am a eunuch now that I lack my dreams.

JACQUES CORNET
We’ll keep your secret. People will like you much better.

MERIWETHER
Good. Because the reality is there is no promised land. No! Don’t tell me there is no promised land. Imagine going to the moon and finding nothing there.

JACQUES CORNET
Nothing. All my maps as worthless as Jefferson’s words . . .

MERIWETHER
No! Keep the maps. Never give up the enormity of this dream. Keep telling the lie. The United States will always be the last undiscovered terrain—even if
we have to move the white spaces inside our head. Always hold out the promise that you can find your passage to the west, to whatever it is—love everlasting, bottomless wealth, glory—

JACQUES CORNET
Freedom.

MERIWETHER
That dream must never die.

JACQUES CORNET
Nor must you! If that’s how you stay alive, then tell yourself the lie!

MERIWETHER
I don’t have that gift.

JACQUES CORNET
But I do!
A Free Man of Color or The Happy Life of a Man in Power. A Free Man of Color or How I Take Control. A Free Man of Color or How Jefferson Is a Liar. A Free Man of Color or How My Father Sold My Mother. A Free Man of Color or How Murmur Betrayed Me. A Free Man of Color or
—

MERIWETHER
The white spaces forever.

Meriwether shoots himself and dies.

SPARKS
Sold!

JACQUES CORNET
No!

Sparks advances and chains Jacques Cornet.

SPARKS
When I bought Pincepousse’s estate at his death with all its chattel, I claimed Margery and her child as mine.

Margery appears.

MARGERY
He sold my child. I don’t know where or to whom but he didn’t sell me. He kept me in the house. Jacques Cornet worked out in the field. I never stopped loving Jacques. I never saw him.

Creux appears and stands over Jacques Cornet.

CREUX
Oh United States, be watchful. If not, you’ll have Santo Domingo all over again! Be vigilant or your Negroes will riot and rape your women. Hordes of crazed Othellos will debase our unwilling Desdemonas and then dance on your corpses whilst eating ribs and devouring slashes of bright red melons. Carve this image in eternity’s stone: Bloody Toussaint is the definitive face of the Negro for all time! His rage shall never die! He wants you dead! Never lose your fear!

Murmur appears.

MURMUR
One day, Jacques saw his way. He escaped and vanished into unknown spaces. He never saw his son.

Dr. T, in rags, appears.

DR. T
Perhaps his son returned years later as Nat Turner, or as Malcolm—as any man who tried to make those words “All men are created equal” literal.

JACQUES CORNET
I see visions of the future when generations of Margerys and Murmurs and Dr. Toubibs and the girls of Mme. Mandragola will be trapped on rooftops in New Orleans, reaching up to heaven to be saved. I say those bitter words “Hang on!” And while I hang, I think about a time when I had my maps, when I wrote my play, when New Orleans meant paradise . . .

Haydn Trio in G Major. Third Movement. The ghosts of the people of New Orleans in 1801 appear in half light amidst wreckage.

DORILANTE
I mase double.

MME. MANDRAGOLA
I set that.

SPARKS
Mase double again!

MME. MANDRAGOLA
I set that and I win!

MORALES
Jacques, have some consideration. I can’t keep my wife waiting.

JACQUES CORNET
(
looks at his chains
)
1801. The last time men dressed like this.

DR. T
(
to us
)
Jacques Cornet.
A Free Man of Color or How One Man Became an American.

THE END