Bone Cage (3 page)

Scene 4

Sound of a car pulling up, door slamming, car peeling away.

KEVIN, bawling like a calf, is heard outside.

KEVIN

Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.

Loud thumping on the door. KEVIN staggers into the room, slightly illuminated by the porch light through the door. KEVIN is wearing a torn pair of underwear that he must hang on to, to keep from exposing himself. He stumbles around the kitchen knocking the chairs and collapses onto the floor.

The kitchen light comes on. JAMIE stands in the doorway. He has just woken up and is wearing only his jeans.

JAMIE

Jesus.
(Jesus.)

Kev. Kev.

Jesus, you got the shit beat out of you.

CHICKY comes in.

Get the door, Chicky.

CHICKY

Is he all right?

Throughout the scene, JAMIE handles KEVIN gently while verbally abusing him.

JAMIE

Well, he ain't in very good shape.

KEVIN starts to throw up as Jamie tenderly rolls him over on his side. CHICKY moves away from the stench.

No blood in it, at least. He can't be bad inside.

KEVIN starts roaring like a bull calf and flailing his arms about.

KEVIN

I'll kill you. I'll kill you, you. I'll kill you.

JAMIE

It's me, Jamie, you asshole.

CHICKY gets a bucket and cloth.

KEVIN

Jamie… Jamie.

KEVIN throws up again.

CHICKY starts to clean up.

JAMIE

What do you think you're going to do?

CHICKY

Clean up.

JAMIE

He'll do that tomorrow when he's good and hung over.

KEVIN

Who's that, Jame?

CHICKY

It's me, Kev.

KEVIN

I'm sorry, Chicky. I'm sorry I'm sorry.

JAMIE

Yeah you'll be sorrier, too. Sit up.

KEVIN

My head hurts.

JAMIE

Come on, sit up. You ain't hurt so bad that I won't take a couple of swings at ya myself if you don't do as I say.
Sit the F up!

KEVIN manages with help.

CHICKY

Who beat you, Kevin?

JAMIE

Merv, right?

I warned you, didn't I?

I should throw you out the goddamn door.

I should let you sleep in the goddamn manure pile tonight, where you belong.

CHICKY

How did he get out here?

JAMIE

Must have scared them.

Scared he was gonna choke on his own puke.

You got dropped off in the ditch like some useless piece of shit of

a dog.

CHICKY

Fuzzy, he's really hurting.

JAMIE

Help me get him up on the chair.

They manage to get him on a chair at the table. KEVIN lies with his head in his hands. CHICKY takes a blanket off the couch and wraps it around KEVIN.

Go to bed, Chick.

CHICKY

Aren't you taking him to emergency?

JAMIE

No.

CHICKY

What if he's hurt inside?

JAMIE

I've seen a hell of a lot worse, and they didn't see no doctor.

CHICKY

Call the Mounties on Merv.

JAMIE

They won't do nothing.

You call the cops, next thing you know you'll be lookin' like this.

JAMIE gently lifts KEVIN'S head. His face is bruised and his mouth is bleeding.

KEVIN

Chicky, I'm sorry… I threw up on your floor. I'm sorry.

CHICKY

It's okay, Kev. Are you okay?
(pause)
Kev?

KEVIN

I like you Chicky. I didn't mean to puke… look, look at that. Oh no.

JAMIE

He'll survive.

KEVIN

Oh God, I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself.

JAMIE

Go to bed, will you, so he'll shut up.

CHICKY leaves. JAMIE holds his face in his hands.

Let me look. Let's see your teeth. Jesus, you're some fucking lucky. Bet you've got some loose ones.

KEVIN

Jamie?

JAMIE uses a cloth to dab gently around his eyes and mouth. KEVIN shakes his head as if a thought has escaped him.

JAMIE

I told you, didn't I? I told you they just look for someone to get ugly at, didn't I?

KEVIN

I know you said. I know it.

JAMIE

That's right. Don't go to the camp with those guys, didn't I say?

KEVIN mumbles.

What? They said you was what?

KEVIN

I must be… I must be… if I never went then I must be… a bum boy.

JAMIE

They got what they wanted, didn't they? Merv got you up there.

KEVIN

They they they… was doing…

JAMIE

And that's what I told you.

KEVIN

They made me… they said if I didn't do it, they said they was gonna cut my balls up the…
(middle)
They made me… they made me…

KEVIN starts to bawl.

JAMIE

I don't want to hear what those pervs made you do. You keep that goddamn stuff to yourself. You hear me?

KEVIN nods holding his head.

Don't tell nobody. Nobody.

KEVIN

Make those fuckers pay.

JAMIE

You went swimming with the alligators.

KEVIN

Make those fuckers pay.

JAMIE

It was your own goddamn stupid fault. When your eyes is better, when every last bit of blue and green and yellow's all gone, I'm going to punch them black and blue to teach you a lesson.

KEVIN moans.

You can sleep in Clarence's chair, it cleans up easier.

JAMIE guides him to the chair and settles him in. He notices

the manila envelope and opens it staring intently at the artist

rendition.

KEVIN

I'm sorry, Jamie.

JAMIE turns the picture over and reads the back. He puts it back.

I'm sorry, Jamie.

JAMIE

F— sorry, Kev.

Merv's got nothing to do except truck pulp and think up trouble.

I'm telling ya something now because you ain't going to remember what I've told you tomorrow.

KEVIN is half-awake through this.

KEVIN

I'll 'member, Jame.

JAMIE

No you won't.

Unless you've got
extend the memory
for alcohol blackouts.

I don't want you to remember what I'm telling ya anyway because this is something you have to figure out for yourself. You got to take Merv on now. YOU. Because if I have to help you, Merv's gonna have your balls forever.

KEVIN

No no no no.

JAMIE

Don't you bawl. Go to sleep.

JAMIE starts to go back to bed.

KEVIN

Jame. They was talking about your stag. They gonna get you

drunked up and dress you up in women's clothes. They was

saying they're all going to bring bras and stuff. Merv gonna bring

a maxi-pad he said, to stuff down your panties. After you pass out he gonna take you into town and leave you in the Tim Horton's parking lot dressed like that.

JAMIE

Okay, Kev. Good thing you told me.

KEVIN

Good on me, eh, Jamie?
(He beams, laughing through smashed lips.)

JAMIE

Good on you, bud.

Sleep it all off.

JAMIE leaves.

Lights out.

 

Scene 5

Midnight, Sunday night. CLARENCE sits in the chair staring at the television screen. The head and shoulders of Travis are on the screen but move in a whirling motion.

CLARENCE

Stop doing that now… stop moving for Chrissakes. I got to talk to you. There's this place in Scotland, where they got it now that they can clone people. Don't matter how long you've been dead, alls they need is a chip of your bone to get your DNA and they can make you all over again. I've been thinking if we took one of Chicky's eggs and DNA from you… well that's the thing ya got to let me do the thing… ya got to not care about it so you'll be born again. The government's doing it now. The USA government has Johnny and Robbie Kennedy living little kids now, but they'll be back. Then you'll see. There will be resurrections, just like that Bible picture you loved, of people out of their graves, looking cured of dirt-bike accidents, and cancers and, well, not AIDS, they'll make a rule about that, but you'll be born again. I'll live to see that, Trav, I'll live to see that, by God.

The sound of CHICKY and KRISTA arriving.

They are “shhhhhing.”

CLARENCE swallows his drink and scrunches down in his chair like he is sleeping. CHICKY comes in with KRISTA. KRISTA is wearing a shower hat made out of a paper plate with all the ribbons and bows attached from the gifts she opened.

KRISTA stops at the door, noting that the TV is on, and gestures at CHICKY that she won't come in. CHICKY walks over to the TV, turns it off.

CHICKY

He's dead to the world.

KRISTA

He'll wake up if he hears me.

CHICKY holds up an empty rum bottle.

CHICKY

Not sleeping… passed out.

KRISTA

You going to put him to bed?

CHICKY

(Gross.)
Not likely.

Take that stupid thing off.

KRISTA

I like wearing it.

I was totally surprised.

When they all shouted
surprise
, I almost pissed myself.

CHICKY

I thought you had guessed.

KRISTA

No, I swear.

I was so mad when Carol said that.

Who invited her?

CHICKY

It was an open shower.

KRISTA

She just came to say it.

CHICKY

(tired)
Yeah, Carol's a bitch.

KRISTA

If I was you, I'd get pregnant, too.

CHICKY

Right.

KRISTA

Reg would have to leave her then.

CHICKY

Why?

KRISTA

I mean he would want to. He must want you to have his babies.

I want to have Jamie's. Don't you want to have his babies?

CHICKY

I haven't used birth control since I was sixteen.

He might have left her back then, if I had got knocked up.

KRISTA

I hate that expression.

CHICKY laughs.

She is such a cow.

CHICKY laughs.

What are you gonna say when you see him?

CHICKY

Congratulations.

KRISTA

Maybe you should see a doctor.

CHICKY

What for?

KRISTA

Maybe you just got to have some little operation like Mom did. Get your tubes flushed? Well it worked for Mom. She tried to have kids for ten years. She got her tubes flushed, and then Kevin and me came one, two, like that.

CHICKY

Anyway, I know why I can't have his baby.

KRISTA

Why?

CHICKY

God's saying to me, “You're screwing another woman's husband.

I will not allow his seed to grow in your womb.”

KRISTA

If God had that rule, your mother never would have had you.

CHICKY

What do you know about it?

KRISTA

Nothing. I heard he was a married man, is all.

CHICKY

Did you “heard” who the married man was?

KRISTA

Nobody knows, do they? Sorry. Anyway “
God saying
,” that's weird holy-roller stuff. You don't even go to church.

CHICKY

This has nothing to do with the church, this is about the balance of… I don't know. When I lay down in my bed at night, and I put my hand here, I can feel Reg's sperm running under my fingers… like lamprey eels running up the river. Me not having a baby seems like the way of the world, or something.

Like the world has rules.

Like because of what Mom did to Trav, she caused his cancer.

KRISTA

Nobody can cause a brain tumour.

CHICKY

When she left us he was three years old. The doctor said that tumour started when he was three years old. Maybe when she told him the first time, she told him she was going to come and get him, she said those words, “I'll get you next week, Trav,” and then she didn't. Well
those words
were inside his head with no place to go, so they seeded in his brain, a spore of a tumour started, and got fed all those years with her broken promises until Trav was nine years old and it was incurable.

KRISTA

Carol being pregnant has got you down, Chicky, you don't think that.

CHICKY

A tumour grew inside his brain and he died.

When Jamie goes on about retards and homosexuals, I think God's going to make one of your children retarded or gay… Jame boy. See if he doesn't.

KRISTA

That's a nice thing to say. They'll be my kids too.

CHICKY

Don't marry him.

KRISTA

What?

CHICKY

I'm serious.

KRISTA

We just came from my wedding shower that
you
put on for me.

CHICKY

You want the wedding, the dress, the scroll tied with a fuchsia ribbon.

You want to see the teachers' faces when you walk into graduation with a gold band on your finger.

But do you want Jamie?

KRISTA

I'm marrying him, aren't I?

CHICKY

He can be so hard. You've seen him be hard. He's getting worse.

KRISTA

He won't be like that when he's happy.

CHICKY

With you?

KRISTA

He wants to marry me.

CHICKY

Why?

KRISTA

Because. I. Love. Him. Your mother never did. His father goes on and on about Travis Travis Travis as if Jamie was never born. I guess because he's marrying me, now his sister hates him too.

CHICKY

Sister? I've been his
mother
, even before Mom left us, since I was

five years old I was his mother. I carried him, I fed him, I held him,

I kissed his little peach-fuzz head when he cried, me.
(pause)
I was his mother.

KRISTA

You're jealous then, because he's leaving you.

CHICKY

I want him to leave. I want him to go somewhere, anywhere far away.

If he marries you, he'll never leave.

KRISTA

Why should he? He's got a job here.

CHICKY

He's told Earl he's quitting.

KRISTA

(pause, recovers)
He'll hire him back, he always does.

CHICKY

But Jamie hates the work.

KRISTA

He's got to stop thinking about it is all. The pay is good. We want to build right away.

CHICKY

Would you go with him if he got work someplace else?

KRISTA

We don't have land someplace else, we got land here. We're going to start building soon. It's going to be the house of the village.

CHICKY

Wait one year. Have the wedding next year.

KRISTA

That's a great thing for my maid of honour to say. Everything is set, ready.

God, well don't be my maid of honour if that's how you feel.

CHICKY

Okay. I won't.

KRISTA

What? You're some
(pause)
witch aren't you?

She walks out. CLARENCE stirs as though waking up.

CHICKY

Get your ears full?

Lights out.