Read-Aloud Plays | Page 9

they were in the Old Testament with their jugs and their wooden plows. I mean, we aren't near so big as the things we do, while those old fellows were so much bigger. We smile at them, but if some day one of our machines fell over on us what would we do about it?
THE MAN
I wonder.
THE BOY
I went through a big factory just last week. One of my friends' father is the manager, and all I could think of was what could a fellow do who didn't like it, who didn't fit in.... Nowadays most everybody seems competent about factories or business or something like that--you know--and they've got hold of everything, so a fellow's got to do the same thing or where is he?
THE MAN
That's the first question, certainly: where is he? But where is he if he does do the same thing?
THE BOY
Why, he's with the rest. And they don't ask that question....
THE MAN
I'm afraid they don't. It would be interesting to be there if they should begin to ask it, wouldn't it?
THE BOY
Yes.... I'd like to be there when some I know ask themselves! But they never will. Why should they?
THE MAN
Don't you mean how can they?
THE BOY
Yes, of course. They don't ask the question because the big thing they are doing seems to be the answer beforehand. But it isn't! Not compared with the Old Testament. So we have to ask it for ourselves. And that's why I came here....
THE MAN
Oh. You want to know where they are, with their power, or where you will be without it?
THE BOY
Where I'll be. I hate it! But what else is there to-day?
THE MAN
Why, there's you.
THE BOY
But that's just it! What am I for if I can't join in? I came to you.... You don't mind my talking, do you?
THE MAN
On the contrary.
THE BOY
Well, everybody I know is a part of it, so how could they tell me what to do outside of it? I've been wondering about that for a year. Before then, when I was just a boy, the world seemed full of everything, but now it seems to have only one thing. That or nothing. Then one day I saw a photograph somebody had cut out of a Sunday paper, and I thought to myself there's a man who seems outside, entirely outside, and yet he has something. It wasn't all or nothing for him ... and I wondered who it was. Then I found your book, with the same picture in it. You bet I read it right off! It was the first time in my life I had ever felt power as great as skyscrapers and railroads and yet apart from them. Outside of all they mean. Like the Old Testament. Those poems!
THE MAN
You liked them?
THE BOY
It was more than that. How can a fellow like the ocean, or a snow storm?
THE MAN
Is that what you thought they were like?
THE BOY
Why, they went off like a fourteen inch gun! Not a whine about life in them--not a single regret for anything. They were wonderful! They seemed to pick up mountains and cities and toss them all about like toys. They made me feel that what I was looking for was able to conquer what I didn't like.... I said to myself I don't care if he does laugh at me, I'll go and ask him where all that power is! And so I came....
THE MAN
There's Rex now--over across the road. He's wondering who you are. He sees we are friends, and he's pretending to be jealous. Dogs are funny, aren't they? But you were speaking about my poems. It's odd that their first criticism should come from you like this. You must be about the same age I was when I began writing--when I wanted above anything to write a book like that, and when such a book seemed the most impossible thing I could do. Like trying to swim the Atlantic, or live forever.
THE BOY
It seemed impossible? I should think it would be the most natural thing in the world, for _you_--like eating dinner.
THE MAN
That's the wonderful thing--not the book, but that I should have come to write it!
THE BOY
But who else could write it?
THE MAN
At your age I thought anybody could--anybody and everybody except myself.
THE BOY
Really?
THE MAN
Really and truly. You've no idea what a useless misfit I was.
THE BOY
But I read somewhere you had always been brilliant, even as a boy.
THE MAN
Unfortunately ... yes. That was what made it so hard for me. Shall I tell you about it?
THE BOY
I wish you would!
THE MAN
Brilliance--I'll tell you what that was, at least for me. I wrote several things that people called "brilliant." One in particular, a little play of decadent epigram. It was acted by amateurs before an admiring "select" audience. That