Bone Cage (8 page)

JAMIE

(mildly)
Sounds good, sis.

CHICKY

I mean it.

JAMIE

(mildly)
F'ing A.

CHICKY

You're married now, we can leave together.

JAMIE

Yup… next spring.

CHICKY

Why not now?

JAMIE

Do you know how much it costs to fly a helicopter from this life to a new life?

CHICKY

But you said you're going to get the money together, right?

JAMIE

Twenty-five thousand, no
forty thousand
dollars 'cause we're flying at night.

CHICKY

Fuzzy…

JAMIE

Yeah…

CHICKY

Doesn't mean you can't do it. Krista can get a job. She's not totally helpless.

JAMIE

Ah ah ah. Answer me this. If helicopter A left helipad B at C midnight and helicopter X left helipad T at 8 a.m. flying F
backwards
, how much math would you have to know to get to the goddamn fucking moon.

He throws the beer bottle towards the moon.

CHICKY

Jamie…

JAMIE

Hey, I know the answer and the answer is “Fucked if I know.”

CHICKY

You can learn the math. You're not dumb.

JAMIE

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CHICKY

I can't wait until spring, Jamie. I'm leaving tonight while I am too scared to stay.

She picks up her handbag.

You coming back to the car? Your bride is waiting.

JAMIE

In a minute. Nature calls. You were a mother of a sister to me, Chicky.

CHICKY

You're Krista's problem now.

CHICKY moves in to give him a hug but he neatly avoids it.

JAMIE

You going so I can take a whiz, or what?

CHICKY

See ya. I'll call.

CHICKY goes up the bank.

Lights down.

 

Scene 15

Lights up. KRISTA makes her way down the bank in her wedding dress. She has JAMIE's white tux jacket draped around her shoulders. The bottom of the dress is muddy.

KRISTA

Jamie, I've been waiting forever. Look at my dress. Mud won't come out either.

Jamie we got to get back to the dance. Jamie! You said you was only stopping to have one smoke then we was going back.

KRISTA sees his wedding shoes next to the shore.

Jamie. Jamie.

Lights up on “the high,” the top of the bridge frame. JAMIE, drunk, sways slightly as he looks down at her.

JAMIE

Nice dress. You look like a ghost.

KRISTA

It's wrecked, thanks to you.

Get down here and get your shoes on.

JAMIE

You ain't the boss of me.
(laughs)

KRISTA

We got our wedding guests at the firehall.

JAMIE

They ain't the boss of me, either.

KRISTA

You didn't have to get mad at me.

You were the one telling everyone we're going to B.C.

I never said I would go to B.C., Jamie.

JAMIE howls like a coyote.

Don't be doing that, you're not jumping.

Jamie, you hear me, you are not jumping off the high on our wedding night. Jesus, Jamie, it's dark! You can't see where you're jumping to.

JAMIE howls again, louder, wilder.

If you jump, Jamie, I will never talk to you again.

You listen. I won't, not one word I won't. I'll be like Chicky's being to me, for the rest of our lives.

I won't talk to you, Jamie, you frigging, Jamie.

JAMIE howls but it is broken off. JAMIE disappears from sight.

JAMIE

Jesus Jesus Jesus sweet fucking Christ

The waters never seemed so far away.

I ain't drunk enough! Jesus, I ain't drunk enough.

Ain't I in the water yet?

Where's that fucking hole?

I see it now.

I see it.

Fucking Christ I'm missing it.

It's way the fuck over there.

It's too fucking late. I'm hitting the water.

It's like entering Krista when she's dry and I'm hard.

Pop pop pop my backbones are whipping back my neck

Snapping my head like a chain strung too tight letting go.

Jesus, is this it?

This is it then?

Krista out there standing by the water got her hands cupped like she's gonna say my name.

Gonna call me back.

I stare up, up through the surface waiting for Krista to say,

waiting for her words to break through the blue of it.

But then the water is like a screen and I'm watching our life together played out.

I'm seeing it, Krista, our life you and me.

I see that baby you got curled inside of you that you don't know about yet, only he's four years old.

He's four and he's just shit himself because of the beating I laid on you

So I slap you again to teach him not to shit himself.

And I see that Christmas, I'll put the tree and all the presents out in the snow

Because you forgot to get my beer

And it's Christmas Eve and I don't got my goddamn beer.

Krista

Krista call my name

And I'll come out of the water

And we'll go back to the dance.

Next week when we know about the baby in you, Earl's gonna call me up. Tells me he's gonna sell the tree processor. Tells me if I buy it he'll hold the mortgage for me. And I do it 'cause maybe it's the way a dumb ass can get somewheres. And I'm inside the machine every night, I'm doing it, taking the woods down in two counties 'cause there is always the payment, the goddamn
fucking
(this is Jamie's most deeply felt moment – it is of a fox forced to chew off its own leg to escape the steel trap)
payments.

The alcohol's always right there, too, so I don't have to think about why I never went away that time.

The bird in the cage is me.

I am the bird of death, with the soul of the woods in my beak.

Only I can't say that stuff except with my fists.

One night I must have been changing a hose they tell ya.

I must've disconnected the kill switch on the seat they say.

I took a stupid chance and she shifted and I lost my balance or

I jumped and over she went on to me they tell you, and the cops are at the door telling you I'm dead.

But you ain't sad, you're scared.

When they give you my wallet you find the ticket to the jewellery store in town.

You find out I got forty dollars down on a heart ring for you for Christmas. When you put that ring on your finger the bad things,

the ugly things is all gone.

You pay it off and you wear it telling the boys how it was a surprise and how much I really loved you.

And I can't say if I hadn't died that day if I ever would have paid it off 'cause maybe you would have made me mad.

Or I needed to fix the truck and I might have gone in and got my money back.

I see it all, Krista.

I see it all.

If you call my name, just once

If you say it, say “Jamie”

My backbone strings itself together

Heals itself just like that
(snaps fingers)
and I'll come out of the river,

You'll dance in your wedding dress

And everything will happen just as I've said.

Alls you got to say is “Jamie”

Say “Jamie” and all this will come to pass.

There is a very long pause as KRISTA waits for JAMIE to break the surface.

KRISTA

I swear to God.

I swear to God.

I told you not to.

I told you.

You ain't coming up

You ain't coming up.

You shit

I hate you.

You fucking fucker.

Please.

Please.

Please.

Jamie.

JAMIE walks out to her. He picks up his shoes. He holds out his hand. KRISTA notices the knife on the beach. She picks it up and hands it to Jamie. As they walk over the bridge JAMIE is staring straight ahead and KRISTA is staring up at his face.

The end.

Acknowledgements

To Tessa Mendel, who both dramaturged and directed the first production of
Bone Cage
. Thank you for your tough, insightful questions. Your unwavering belief in my work these past fifteen years has been a lifeline.

This play was written with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. A first draft of
Bone Cage
was commissioned by Mulgrave Road Theatre through a Nova Scotia Arts Commissioning grant.

The playwright gratefully acknowledges the support of Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre, the National Arts Centre's On the Verge 2005, Exodus Theatre, ScriptLab (Toronto), Playwrights Workshop Montreal, Theatre B.C. National Play Competition 2002, Forerunner Playwrights Co-op, Ship's Company Theatre, and Nova Scotia Tourism, Culture and Heritage.

Special thanks to: Andrea Dymond, Natasha MacLellan, Pamela Halstead, Tessa Mendel, Philip Adams, Jenny Munday, Paula Danckert, Janis Spence, Leah Hamilton, Laura McLauchlan, Karen Klee Atlin, Lenora Steele, Chris Heide, John Dunsworth, Christine Birnie, Angela Rebeiro, Annie Gibson, Jodi Armstrong, Don Hannah, Peter Rogers, Garnet C. Banks, Tom Banks, Dan and Diana Banks, Claudia Mitchell and my parents Garnet and Kathleen Banks.

About the Playwright

Other plays by
Catherine Banks
include
Eula's Offer
,
The Summer of the Piping Plover
(UpStart Theatre);
Three Storey Ocean View
(Mulgrave Road Theatre, Toronto Equity Showcase); and
Bitter Rose
(Women's Theatre and Creativity Centre).
Bitter Rose
has aired on Bravo! Canada. Her work has been performed in Manitoba, Toronto and St. John's at the LSPU Hall.
Three Storey Ocean View
won the Silver Medal in the 1995 du Maurier National Play Competition and was nominated for a Merrit Award for best new play in 2000.
Bone Cage
was awarded the Special Merit prize in the 2002 Theatre B.C. New Play Competition, was showcased at the National Arts Centre's On the Verge 2005 and won the 2008 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama. Catherine is also the recepient of the 2008 Nova Scotia Established Artist Award. Her work is poetic, darkly humorous, courageous and beautifully theatrical. Some of her characters, Lud in
Three Storey Ocean View
and Clarence in
Bone Cage
, have been described as Atlantic Gothic. She currently lives and writes in Sambro, Nova Scotia.

Bone Cage
© Copyright 2007 Catherine Banks

The poem “Bird Cage,” F.R. Scott's translation of “Cage d'Oiseau” by Saint-Denys Garneau is used with the permission of William Toye, Literary Executor to the Estate of F. R. Scott.

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Front cover painting
Flooded Stand of Pine
by Karen Klee-Atlin. Acrylic on wood,

45 x 45 x 9 cm, 2007.

Cover Design and Production Editor: JLArt

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada.

ISBN: 978-1-77091-034-8

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