Authors: Stewart O'Nan

The Vietnam Reader (13 page)

OZZIE. Settle down! Relax.

DAVID. I want to leave! I want to leave! I want to leave. I …
(And he smashes into the stairs, goes down, flails, pounding his cane.)
want to leave.

OZZIE and HARRIET. Dave! David! Davey!

DAVID.… to leave! Please.
He is on the floor, breathing. Long, long silence in which they look at him sadly, until Harriet announces the problem’s solution.

HARRIET. Ozzie, get him some medicine. Get him some Easy Sleep.

OZZIE. Good idea.

HARRIET. It’s in the medicine cabinet; a little blue bottle, little pink pills.
(And
when Ozzie is gone up the stairs, there is quiet. She stands over David.)
It’ll give you the sleep you need, Dave—the sleep you remember. You’re our child and you’re home. Our good … beautiful boy.
And front door bursts open. There is a small girl in the doorway, an Asian girl. She wears the Vietnamese
ao dai,
black slacks and white tunic slit up the sides. Slowly, she enters, carrying before her a small straw hat. Harriet is looking at the open door.

HARRIET. What an awful … wind.(She shuts the door.)
Blackout. Guitar music.
A match flickers as Harriet lights a candle in the night. And the girl silently moves from before the door across the floor to the stairs, where she sits, as Harriet moves toward the stairs and Ozzie, asleep sitting up in a chair, stirs.

HARRIET. Oh! I didn’t mean to wake you. I lit a candle so I wouldn’t wake you.
(He stares at her.)
I’m sorry.

OZZIE. I wasn’t sleeping.

HARRIET. I thought you were.

OZZIE. Couldn’t. Tried. Couldn’t. Thinking. Thoughts running very fast. Trying to remember the night David … was made. Do you understand me? I don’t know why. But the feeling in me that I had to figure something out and if only I could remember that night … the mood … I would be able. You’re … shaking your head.

HARRIET. I don’t understand.

OZZIE. No.

HARRIET. Good night.
(She turns and leaves Ozzie sitting there, gazing at the dark. Arriving at David’s door, she raps softly and then opens the door. David is lying unmoving on the bed. She speaks to him.)
I heard you call.

DAVID. What?

HARRIET. I heard you call.

DAVID. I didn’t.

HARRIET. Would you like a glass of warm milk?

DAVID. I was sleeping.

HARRIET,
after a slight pause.
How about that milk? Would you like some milk?

DAVID. I didn’t call. I was sleeping.

HARRIET. I’ll bet you’re glad you didn’t bring her back. Their skins are yellow, aren’t they?

DAVID. What?

HARRIET. You’re troubled, warm milk would help. Do you pray at all anymore? If I were to pray now, would you pray with me?

DAVID. What … do you want?

HARRIET. They eat the flesh of dogs.

DAVID. I know. I’ve seen them.

HARRIET. Pray with me; pray.

DAVID. What … do … you want?

HARRIET. Just to talk, that’s all. Just to know that you’re home and safe again. Nothing else; only that we’re all together, a family. You must be exhausted. Don’t worry; sleep.
(She is backing into the hallway. In a whisper)
Good night.
(She blows out the candle and is gone, moving down the hall. Meanwhile the girl is stirring, rising, climbing from the living room up toward David’s room, which she enters, moving through a wall, and David sits up.)

DAVID. Who’s there?
(As she drifts by, he waves the cane at the air.)

Zung?
(He stands.)
Chào, Cô Zung.
(He moves for the door, which he opens, and steps into the hall, leaving her behind him in the room.)
Zung. Chào, Cô Zung.
(And he moves off up the hallway. She follows.)
Zung! …
Blackout. Music.

[LATER IN ACT ONE:]

DAVID,
changing, turning.
I have some movies. I thought you … knew.

HARRIET. Well … we … do.

OZZIE. Movies?

DAVID. Yes, I took them.

RICK. I thought you wanted to sing.

OZZIE. I mean, they’re what’s planned, Dave. That’s what’s up. The projector’s all wound and ready. I don’t know what you had to get so angry for.

HARRIET. Let’s get everything ready.

OZZIE. Sure, sure. No need for all that yelling.
He moves to set up the projector.

DAVID. I’ll narrate.

OZZIE. Fine, sure. What’s it about anyway?

HARRIET. Are you in it?

OZZIE. Ricky, plug it in. C’mon, c’mon.

DAVID. It’s a kind of story.

RICK. What about my guitar?

DAVID. No.

OZZIE. We oughta have some popcorn, though.

HARRIET. Oh, yes, what a dumb movie house, no popcorn, huh, Rick!
Rick switches off the lights.

OZZIE. Let her rip, Dave.
(Dave turns on the projector; Ozzie is hurrying to a seat)
Ready when you are, C.B.

HARRIET. Shhhhhhh!

OZZIE,
a little child playing.
Let her rip, C.B. I want a new contract, C.B.
The projector runs for a moment (Note: In proscenium, a screen should be used if possible, or the film may be allowed to seem projected on the fourth wall; in three-quarter or round the screen may be necessary. If the screen is used, nothing must show upon it but a flickering of green.)

HARRIET. Ohhh, what’s the matter? It didn’t come out, there’s nothing there.

DAVID. Of course there is.

HARRIET. Noooo … It’s all funny.

DAVID. Look.

OZZIE. It’s underexposed, Dave.

DAVID,
moving nearer.
No. Look.

HARRIET. What?

DAVID. They hang in the trees. They hang by their wrists half-severed by the wire.

OZZIE. Pardon me, Dave?

HARRIET. I’m going to put on the lights.

DAVID. NOOOOO! LOOK! They hang in the greenish haze afflicted by insects; a woman and a man, middle aged. They do not shout or cry. He is too small. Look—he seems all bone, shame in his eyes; his wife even here come with him, skinny also as a broom and her hair is straight and black, hanging to mask her eyes.
The girl, Zung, drifts into the room.

OZZIE. I don’t know what you’re doing, David; there’s nothing there.

DAVID. LOOK!
(And he points.)
They are all bone and pain, uncontoured and ugly but for the peculiar melon-swelling in her middle which is her pregnancy, which they do not see—look! these soldiers who have found her—as they do not see that she is not dead but only dying until saliva and blood bubble at her lips. Look … Yet … she dies. Though a doctor is called in to remove the bullet-shot baby she would have preferred … to keep since she was dying and it was dead.
(And Zung silently, drifting, departs.)
In fact, as it turned out they would have all been better off left to hang as they had been strung on the wire—he with the back of his head blown off and she, the rifle jammed exactly and deeply up into her, with a bullet fired directly into the child living there. For they ended each buried in a separate place; the husband by chance alone was returned to their village, while the wife was dumped into an alien nearby plot of dirt, while the child, too small a piece of meat, was burned. Put into fire, as the shattered legs and arms cut off of men are burned. There’s an oven. It is no ceremony. It is the disposal of garbage! …
Harriet gets to her feet, marches to the projector, pulls the plug, begins a little lecture.

HARRIET. It’s so awful the things those yellow people do to one another. Yellow people hanging yellow people. Isn’t that right? Ozzie, I told you—animals—Christ, burn them. David, don’t let it hurt you. All the things you saw. People aren’t themselves in war. I mean like that sticking that gun into that poor woman and then shooting that poor little baby, that’s not human. That’s inhuman. It’s inhuman, barbaric and uncivilized and inhuman.

DAVID. I’m thirsty.

HARRIET. For what? Tell me. Water? Or would you like some milk? How about some milk?

DAVID,
shaking his head.
No.

HARRIET. Or would you like some orange juice? All golden and little bits of ice.

OZZIE. Just all those words and that film with no picture and these poor people hanging somewhere—so you can bring them home like this house is a meat house—

HARRIET. Oh, Ozzie, no, it’s not that—no—he’s just young, a young boy … and he’s been through terrible, terrible things and now he’s home, with his family he loves, just trying to speak to those he loves—just—

DAVID. Yes! That’s right. Yes. What I mean is, yes, of course, that’s what I am—a young … blind man in a room … in a house in the dark, raising nothing in a gesture of no meaning toward two voices who are not speaking … of a certain … incredible
… connection!
All stare. Rick leaps up, running for the stairs.

RICK. Listen, everybody, I hate to rush off like this, but I gotta. Night.

HARRIET. Good night, Rick.

OZZIE,
simultaneously.
Good night.
David moves toward the stairs, looking upward.

DAVID. Because I talk of certain things … don’t think I did them.

Murderers don’t even know that murder happens.

HARRIET. What are you saying? No, no. We’re a family, that’s all —we’ve had a little trouble—David, you’ve got to stop—please—no more yelling. Just be happy and home like all the others—why can’t you?

DAVID. You mean take some old man to a ditch of water, shove his head under, talk of cars and money till his feeble pawing stops, and then head on home to go in and out of doors and drive cars and sing sometimes. I left her like you wanted … where people are thin and small all their lives.
(The beginning of realization)
Or did … you … think it was a … place … like this? Sinks and kitchens all the world over? Is that what you believe? Water from faucets, light from wires? Trucks, telephones, TV. Ricky sings and sings, but if I were to cut his throat, he would no longer and you would miss him—you would miss his singing. We are hoboes!
(And it is the first time in his life he has ever thought these things.)
We make signs in the dark. You know yours. I understand my own. We share … coffee!
(There is nearly joy in this discovery: a hint of new freedom that might be liberation. And somewhere in the thrill of it he has whirled, his cane has come near to Ozzie, frightening him, though Harriet does not notice. Now David turns, moving for the stairs, thinking.)
I’m going up to bed … now … I’m very … tired.