Soul of a Whore and Purvis (4 page)

BOOK: Soul of a Whore and Purvis
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CLERK
: I'm really not the one to tell. Greyhound

Doesn't hire clerks to sit in judgment.

JOHN
: You think they care who killed that girl?

She was in for worse stuff than my mom.

They needed to close the book on it, they needed

A simple picture for the media,

And so they put my mother in a frame.

CLERK
: Hey, I don't sit here judging. All I know

Is what the TV wants for me to know,

Like all Americans everywhere. That girl

Was sort of innocent, too—I mean, the years

Of booze and dope had bleached her brain to white,

To where she couldn't even tell her name.

She'd woken up in bed with some deceased

Farmer with the handle of a dagger

Jutting from his neck—or, I don't know,

A belly full of buckshot—anyhow,

The whole bed squishy with his murdered gore

And this amnesiac harlot rolling in it

Like a log in a flood. So, you say the crimes

You can't remember? Well, she did her time

Without a memory of
any
thing, until

Another prisoner kills her with a broomstick.

These are the details of a blameless life.

And if your mother's blameless, too, another

Innocent heading for the axe—all right:

Now you know what universe you're in.

But I will listen to the radio.

BILL JENKS
: For I've been purged with tears! Baptized by water!

Washed in saving blood! And turned out blank

And white as platinum on a sunny morning—

[
As
FIRST BUS DRIVER
enters
]

Which bus is this?

CLERK
:                             The Magic Bus, I guess,

Materializing most miraculously.

Have I got everybody's vouchers here?

Has everybody got their tickets? [
To
MASHA
] Ma'am?

He's gonna want a ticket. Ma'am?

DRIVER 1
:                                                   OK,

I'm hardly pausing to relieve myself.

Line 'em up and march 'em on, let's roll.

Folks, come on, I haven't got till Xmas.

You wanna get your big old cross aboard?

JOHN
: I didn't think you'd haul it.

DRIVER 1
:                                     Crosses, stars,

Hearts-and-arrows, circles, figure eights—

It pays, it rides. This ain't no limousine.

BILL JENKS
: This ain't no paradise.

MASHA
:                                       This ain't no blowjob!

DRIVER 1
: Hey, Patoot. You better curb the lingo.

'Board for Houston, Texas! Rock and roll!

JOHN
: But I don't go to Houston, Mr. Driver.

DRIVER 1
: Today you do. The northbound lanes have had it.

You want the Dallas bus, then be prepared

To languish. This day, everybody's Houston.

Yeah—sooner or later, everybody's Houston.

Git it while you can! Last call for Houston!

DRIVER 1
exits.

BILL JENKS
: Sooner or later Houston gets us all.

CLERK
: Well, sorry—I can't rewrite all y'all:

Your vouchers say to Dallas. And, now, ma'am:

I'd like to write you up for Dallas, since

The fact is otherwise you're loitering.

MASHA
: Fact is I know a blowjob when I see one.

Fact is I'm here to use the phone.

Sound of bus leaving.

CLERK
: There she goes…She didn't waste no time.

Folks, we're on the bus schedule from Hell.

BJ
extends his hand to
JOHN
.

BILL JENKS
: William Jennings Bryan Jenks. The first.

JOHN
: That's funny. 'Cause my dad is named like that:

Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra…Yeah.

BILL JENKS
: Cassandra. There's a name I've always hated.

JOHN
: Also the first. His folks misspelled it, though.

BILL JENKS
: Misspelled “the first”?

JOHN
:                                             No. “Holmes.”

BILL JENKS
:                                             Don't call me Holmes.

This ain't the 'hood.

JOHN
:                               No—They forgot the
L
.

H-O-L-M-E-S. Get it? “Holmes.”

BILL JENKS
: Don't call me Holmes. I ain't your homey, John.

JOHN
: Don't call me John. Aah—

BILL JENKS
:                                   Well, then, what's your name?

JOHN
:—Shit. It's John. But not like
that
, I mean.

Just call me John like
John
. Like it's my
name
.

BILL JENKS
: I see. And—missing any letters, John?

JOHN
: My dad is missing the
L
in his, is all.

BILL JENKS
: “Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra.” Wow.

I think your family may be known to me.

You wouldn't have a brother?

JOHN
:                                               I'd have two.

BILL JENKS
: Would one be Mark?

JOHN
:                                           We call him Cass.

BILL JENKS
: I had some dealings with a Mark Cassandra

From California. Actually, I shot him.

Actually, more than once. I shot him twice.

Not twice on one occasion—once

On each of two quite separate occasions.

Once by mistake—the second time, on purpose.

Popped him like a Coney Island clown.

JOHN
: I know all about it. He's my brother.

BILL JENKS
: Mark Cassandra.

JOHN
:                                   Yes, sir. Mark Cassandra.

BILL JENKS
: I don't think we're going to be friends.

A
SECOND BUS DRIVER
enters.

DRIVER 2
: Folks, I got as many seats as you got butts

To fill 'em up, but what I lack is time

To mess around and all, so git along,

And all aboard, and off we go, and so on.

JOHN
: Ma'am, can you point me where to put this cross?

DRIVER 2
: I don't believe I will. That's not allowed.

The glory train don't carry no religious

Signifying statues of any type,

No banners, emblems, images, or icons,

No crosses, crescents, Hebrew hexagrams,

No Guadalupey Ladies, no Buddhistic

Eight-armed elephants from Hindustan;

None but the uncreated, changeless, true,

Eternal, kind of gray and kind of blue

Dog in flight. I guess you could say pewter.

Pewter is the color of the greyhound.

Houston! Austin! San Antonio!

JOHN
: You're going to
Houston
, is it, ma'am?

BILL JENKS
:                                                     Far—out.

JOHN
: But—what about the bus to Dallas?

DRIVER 2
:                                                 Houston,

Houston, Texas! San Antonio!

JOHN
: But we just had a gal in here announced

That
she
was the Houston bus.

DRIVER 2
:                                           Nope. She was Dallas.

A Dallas driver will generally lie.

That's why I stay the heck away from Dallas.

Heck, they killed the president in Dallas.

Houston's the place you need to be.

BILL JENKS
: But then, of course,
you
could be lying, too.

DRIVER 2
: That's absolutely the case. You're catching on.

Yes. I could be a lying Dallas driver…

Aboard for Houston! If thou dost believe!

[
Exits; fading O.S.
]

…Ten nine eight seven six five four three two…

Sound of bus leaving.

JOHN
: This is total bullshit. Nothing less.

BILL JENKS
: If they can mess with you, they mess with

you.

That's a fact of nature here in Texas—

I'm speaking as a Mississippian—

But, also: Don't you ask for disrespect

By traveling your way in prison whites?

I speak now as a Mississippian

With nothing but the highest, deepest, fullest

Regard for your West Coast Cassandra clan,

Excluding, naturally, that full-on, rank,

Hellborn, Hellbound slut-soul, your brother Mark,

Who spawned his own self fucking his own mother.

JOHN
: That's some rowdy talk! You better hope

The prison preaching holds, and I stay Christian!

BILL JENKS
: I'd never've done my time without that kid

Making himself such goshdarn fun to shoot.

JOHN
: He dropped the charges.

BILL JENKS
:                               That was good of him—

JOHN
: He'd never send a guy to jail. He's just

A crook himself. But, now, revenge—

Revenge is something I'd be counting on.

It's truly amazing he passed up on that;

It's basically miraculous he failed

To hunt you down and gut you like a frog.

BILL JENKS
: He did run me to ground—the second time.

That's partly why I let him have another.

The first time was by accident, and then

Instead of letting bygones just be bygones,

Here he comes
again
—

JOHN
:                                         To make
amends.

…That's right. My brother's sober now

About a year and seven months: I'm
proud
.

BILL JENKS
: Amends? Amends?

JOHN
:                                          Like in the twelve-step program.

Number nine, you go and make amends.

BILL JENKS
: Alcoholics Anonymous, you mean?

He never said.

JOHN
:                         You didn't let him say.

BILL JENKS
: Then let
me
say the little lunatic

Stole near a pound of my cocaine, then
flushed
it.

How was he going to make amends for that?

They're squaring off—
CLERK
intervenes—

CLERK
: John Cassandra!—well, they cut your hair

And shaved your beard, but I think you're the man

Stood on the roof of a parking ramp in Dallas

Shooting folks and threatening suicide.

JOHN
: I didn't shoot nobody.

CLERK
:                                  Shooting
at.

JOHN
: In the
direction
where they
were
, let's say—

BILL JENKS
: I guess it's fortunate no Kennedys

Happened to be strolling by that day.

CLERK
: Just settle down. Just settle down. RIGHT NOW.

JOHN
: I'm willing to. I didn't come for this.

CLERK
: I can get you back in prison quick!

JOHN:
He's
the one who's escalating from

A simple conversation to a riot!

—Why? Because you want to stop your ears.

BILL JENKS
: I what? I what?

JOHN
:                                  You want to stop your ears

And hide your heart from the Holy Spirit's prompting.

BILL JENKS
: Come again? Sorry—my ears are stopped—

JOHN
: Peruse the facts: You shoot my brother twice,

He lets you skate, but you get busted later,

Exactly at the proper time and place

To land you in the Walls the same as me,

And get you
out
the same as me, and put you
here
—

The same as me. Is this coincidence?

You and I are strangled up together.

We've got our fates in a knot. And here we stand.

Guided by the Holy Spirit, here we stand.

BILL JENKS
: I ain't the quickest rabbit in the pack,

I guess the record proves that much, but, God,

I hope to Christ by now I've learned enough

To leave that Holy Spirit shit alone.

BOOK: Soul of a Whore and Purvis
5.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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