- JOHN:
- [Singing under his breath] Till the... [He can't remember the next word] ... hm. Till the da-da da da, da da, da da...
[John puts the trunk down, heavily, startling Mark.]
- MARK:
- Er...
[John doesn't hear him. He fiddles with the lock, but can't open the trunk]
- MARK:
- Excuse me.
[John notices him, finally]
- MARK:
- [Self-consciously] Hi. Um, I'm Mark Osterwzyt. I drove up from the City...
- JOHN:
- Nice place.
- MARK:
- Uh, yeah. I guess.
- JOHN:
- The city, I mean.
- MARK:
- Uh-huh. It's...
- JOHN:
- My parents live there.
- MARK:
- Oh.
- JOHN:
- They always say they don't mind the animals, but I sure would.
- MARK:
- [speechless for a second, then:] I'm looking for the Preacher.
- JOHN:
- They all are, Joseph. All of humanity. Wheeling their way
from the land of the living through the land of the dead to placate
the angry gods. Bringing their cats, dogs, parakeets, small children
to be blessed; returning home rearranged -- neural molecules
uprooted, transported, forever altered from the journey. They bring
their dreams, their hopes, their favorite candied sweets, and they take
away nothing, content. They all are, Henry. All of humanity.
[a brief pause]
- JOHN:
- Wheeling their way from the land of the living.
- MARK:
- Um... [No reaction from the transfixed John.]
[a brief pause]
- JOHN:
- Through the land of the dead.
- MARK:
- Like I said, I'm looking for the Preacher. What's his name,
again?
[a brief silence]
- JOHN:
- Bringing their hamsters, frogs, alligators, and misbehaving
nephews to be blessed, returning deranged...
[a briefer pause]
- MARK:
- The Preacher?
[The same rhythm persists]
- JOHN:
- ...molecules rearranged, bringing chocolate...
[Another pause]
- JOHN:
- ...and turkish delight -- I like turkish delight, I eat it when it
arrives, and claim divine consumption of mortal delicacies...
- MARK:
- This is weird.
- JOHN:
- ...They take away nothing. Content. Content as clams...
- MARK:
- This is very weird.
- JOHN:
- ...Clams ignoring the immiment threat of the chowder...
[Suddenly snapping back:] That's what we are, Ed. Harbingers
of chowder.
- MARK:
- [Suddenly hopeful] The Preacher?
- JOHN:
- Sit down.
- MARK:
- What?
- JOHN:
- SIT DOWN.
[He flails, looks for a chair.]
- MARK:
- Um, where?
- JOHN:
- SIT!
[A moment of confusion. Mark sits on the trunk, which
immediately begins to throb and glow red-orange. John glares. Mark
reseats himself on the floor, far from the trunk. John remains standing.]
- JOHN:
- Let me tell you about the Preacher. Do you dream?
- MARK:
- Yes...
- JOHN:
- Good. Dreams are good. Good. Do you read?
- MARK:
- Yeah.
- JOHN:
- The Gospel? The true word?
- MARK:
- Um. Some of it.
- JOHN:
- Not the whole thing? Not the entire living gospel from cover to
cover, as avidly as you'd read a trashy novel with half-nude women
cavorting in unwholesome ways on the cover? Have you done this?
- MARK:
- Sometimes. No. What part do you want answered?
- JOHN:
- Frankly I don't blame you. But that's how the interrogation
goes, you see. [Suddenly] Have you read Mark?! The second
book in the New Testament, the words of God himself? [Another
sudden gear-shift] I don't suppose the answer matters much.
[Mark is at a loss for an answer]
- JOHN:
- HAVE YOU?
- MARK:
- Yes.
- JOHN:
- MARK'S TRUE GOSPEL?
- MARK:
- Well, yes. At one point. I think.
[Mark is thoroughly shaken at this point.]
- JOHN:
- Hey, don't take it so hard. I'm just doing my job, is all.
- MARK:
- Perhaps I'd better leave.
- JOHN:
- No, please don't.
- MARK:
- I really should. I don't belong here. I don't understand this,
at all.
- JOHN:
- Please stay. I'll lay off the fire and brimstone for a while.
Honest.
- MARK:
- Who are you?
- JOHN:
- Oh, sorry. John. John's the name. John, um... just John.
- MARK:
- I wanted to talk to the Preacher.
- JOHN:
- Well, you can't. Not yet, not now, at least. Let's talk about
something else.
[A long silence.]
- JOHN:
- Well?
- MARK:
- Look, I don't know what's going on here. This is all very
strange. I drove up here for the service...
- JOHN:
- All the way to Fort Cooper from the City?
- MARK:
- Yeah. I saw an ad in the Times.
- JOHN:
- Really? You saw the ad?!
- MARK:
- A little tiny-print classified proclaiming the World's End.
- JOHN:
- Fantastic! [He does a little dance of joy. Mark
watches, baffled.]
You saw the ad! Incredible! [Turning to Mark abruptly]
Tell me all about it.
- MARK:
- Well, there's not really all that much to tell.
- JOHN:
- No, no, no -- you must tell me everything! I wrote the ad!
You read the ad! It's incredible! [Singing] When the Bug
river da da-da da da... [Spoken] I can never remember the
words... isn't that strange? So, tell me.
- MARK:
- Well, it's kind of strange. I've been having these odd
dreams recently...
- JOHN:
- Dreams! Fantastic!
- MARK:
- ...and for some reason I've been beating the bush for ... I
don't know what. Supernatural stuff. Out of the
ordinary. Spiritual.
- JOHN:
- Pneumatic pneumonia! And you saw the ad! Dreaming of hippos and seeing the ad!
- MARK:
- [Taken aback] Did I mention the hippopotami?
- JOHN:
- Of course you did! Of course! Large orange-and-lavendar
hippopotami, dancing bears, twelve-foot turtles, magicians with a
penchant for lawn furniture - everything!
- MARK:
- You wrote the ad?
- JOHN:
- You'd like my family. You should meet my family. Dad would be
so proud!
- MARK:
- Proud?
- JOHN:
- [Seriously] My whole family is full of lunatic
inventors. I'm rather the odd duck of the family -- a poet! I
travel with the Preacher and do the press releases. My father always
says I'll never make anything of myself this way. Not like him, he
says. He was a year younger than I am when he was my age, he says,
and he had already invented the Drink-o-matic. It mixes drinks --
perfectly! Every time. Every single time! It's really quite
amazing. I'll show him what I'm made of! And dear Auntie with her
safety pebble-foam for the bath -- baking me cookies because she
feels sorry. Condescension! I'll show the lot of them! We'll go at
once. You don't mind, do you?
- MARK:
- But the Preacher...
- JOHN:
- Oh, never mind the Preacher. The Preacher's a quack.
- MARK:
- But...
- JOHN:
- I've got a new car. [Looks expectantly at Mark.]
- MARK:
- That's nice. What does this have to do with the Preacher?
- JOHN:
- No, come on, ask me what kind.
- MARK:
- [Tentatively] What kind of car is it?
- JOHN:
- It's a Jewish car!
- MARK:
- A Jewish car?
- JOHN:
- It stops on a dime, then picks it up!
- MARK:
- [Doesn't laugh] That's a really bad joke.
- JOHN:
- Well, they all are, you know. The bad ones are always funniest.
- MARK:
- No, I mean it's bad. Not good. Not... right. Anti-semitic.
- JOHN:
- Are you Jewish?
- MARK:
- Does it matter?
- JOHN:
- [Conceding easily] No, I suppose not. I'm sorry. You're right.
- MARK:
- [Pressing his point home] I mean, it's hateful to even
joke about stereotypes like that. How would you like it if I made a
mean joke about white protestants?
- JOHN:
- I don't know. Try me.
- MARK:
- Um, I really don't know any. [Screws up his forehead,
racks his brain. Fails. Defeated:] But that's the point. You make
jokes like that because you've never been hurt by a ethnic joke. If
they made every classroom in American come up with jokes about white
middle-class Americans, and every school-child grafitti these jokes
-- the crueler the better! -- across every white wall in the land,
America would be a much nicer place.
[A short silence]
- MARK:
- I want to talk to the Preacher now.
- JOHN:
- They all do, Luke. They all do.
- MARK:
- You said the Preacher was a quack.
- JOHN:
- And so he is.
- MARK:
- And?
- JOHN:
- What?
- MARK:
- Will you stop dancing around the subject and tell me what in
God's name is going on here? For God's sake!
- JOHN:
- I'll make a note. [Shakes himself, suddenly] Now why
did I say that?
- MARK:
- Okay, listen. I had this really weird dream...
- JOHN:
- About hippopotami, yes!
- MARK:
- Right, I told you about that. And the locomotive?
- JOHN:
- That, too!
- MARK:
- And so I travelled all the way up here to San Francisco from the
City in a stinking black-soot-spewing train...
- JOHN:
- No dirigible? No car?
- MARK:
- No. A train. Travelled all the way up here to hear the
preacher. And I found this little run-down shack...
- JOHN:
- ...We call it home...
- MARK:
- ...and people dancing and jumping and singing river songs, and
this... this... force -- pushing people around, shaking the whole
place, and so I stick around. There's something here. I don't know
what. [An orange-and-lavender-striped hippopotamus bolts out
of the steaming trunk and charges out of the room, taking a wall with
it. Mark does not notice this. John does, imperceptibly. The trunk
continues to steam, subtly. The Preacher continues to sleep, softly.] And now I want to talk to the Preacher,
find out what the heck this is all about, and instead you're giving me
the soft shoe routine, terminally hip, telling tasteless ethnic jokes and rambling on
about your family with sincerity forever... Speak, fortuneteller! Is
this a jest?
[John is speechless. He dare not say. Mark leaves.]
- JOHN:
- [Mumbling, with long pauses between sentences.] Behold, I send my messenger before thee. ... I
came not to call the righteous to repentence, but the sick. ... Thou
shall not lie. ... A great multitude from Galilee followed him. ...
[Mark reenters]
- MARK:
- I forgot my hat. [Looks for his hat]
- JOHN:
- [Still mumbling] ... Have ye never read what David did,
when he had need, and hungered?
- MARK:
- Wait. I didn't forget it. I didn't wear a hat. [Puzzled confusion
for a second, while John continues mumbling]
- JOHN:
- ... He went into the house of God, and ate the showbread, which is
not lawful to eat but for the priests...
[Mark resolves his momentary confusion, and makes for the
door again]
- JOHN:
- My name's not John, you know.
[Mark stops]
- JOHN:
- Well, my first name is John, but that's not what they call me.
Would you consider that a lie? I wouldn't, really, but I think
technically...
[Mark starts to leave again]
- JOHN:
- Wait!
- MARK:
- Tell me about the Preacher.
- JOHN:
- He's right there. [Points to the sleeping man.]
[Mark goes to wake the Preacher, is stopped by John.]
- JOHN:
- Don't. Listen to me.
- MARK:
- Why should I? You've done nothing but put me in harm's way,
speaking of self-begotten bad infinities. If this man
is the preacher, then I want to speak to him!
- JOHN:
- [Desparately. In a whisper.] He's a quack. Be quiet. Listen to me.
[Indeed, at this moment the man on the bed stirs slightly.
Having not moved at all during any of the preceding (at times very
loud) dialog, his rest begins to be disturbed more and more as the
conversation grows more hushed.]
- MARK:
- Tell me.
- JOHN:
- We started out normal enough. Perfectly normal. Your typical,
average, Republican lower-middle-class American. Just like our
neighbors. Most of our neighbors. Not at all like the neighbors
across the street, who burned long hair cats as an act of rebellion and
mutilated flag-decorated birthday cakes in horrible ways. Not at all
like them. Good Christian folk. True, not one of us in the family
had enough schooling to actually read the Bible on our shelf, but we went to
Church regular, Christmas and Easter.
- MARK:
- And the Preacher?
- JOHN:
- He and I went away to college. A good, Bible-believing school.
Oral Roberts or Jack Daniel's or something like that. I forget,
exactly. Maybe it was Princeton. [His monologue comes to a halt.]
- MARK:
- [Prodding] And?
- JOHN:
- We learned to read. We started reading. Reading everything.
Everything! Underwear labels. Instructions on the side of the
toothpick box. Kant. Dave Barry. An avant-garde Holocaust poet, so
deep that he never even mentions the Holocaust! Very deep.
You'd think he just picked words out of a dictionary! Dante.
Jenkin. Ringo Starr.
- MARK:
- He writes?
- JOHN:
- Fascinating stuff! Fascinating! `Planetary Orbits and the
Meaning of Fish.' `Things That Go Bump in the Night, and How I Learned
to Eat Them.' The `Cabalist's Cookbook' - great recipe for chicken
and dumplings. Also instructions on serving mankind.
- MARK:
- [Again, prodding] The preacher.
- JOHN:
- Well, that was the last thing we read.
- MARK:
- The preacher? The cookbook?
- JOHN:
- No, the Bible. Once we started that, it was nothing else ever
again. The treasures inside! The Holy Gospel of Matthew we read just
fine. But Mark...
[He trails off]
- MARK:
- What happened with Mark?
- JOHN:
- The things in Mark! Miracles! Teachings! Enough to drive a man
mad! Not that we started out mad. We started out convinced.
Inspired. Imitators of Christ. [A pause. John resumes,
without prompting this time] The preacher taught Mark. Incessantly.
Every word out of his mouth became a proclamation of Markic truth. I
followed him. Became his disciple. We decided to relive Mark. From
beginning to end. We cast out moneychangers. We re-enacted miracles.
And people followed. How we sang! Beautiful hymns! [And,
true to form, he breaks out in song. This time, he remembers all the
words:]
Till Bug River washes away my things,
I'll be there for you
There in the air, with my wings
high, miles and miles above the hay hooray.
- MARK:
- And then?
- JOHN:
- Quiet!
[The trunk steams. The trunk throbs. The Preacher awakes]
