Short Plays

At the door. Coward! He is thrown out. Blanco Dearly beloved brethren⁠— A Boy Same to you, Blanco. Laughter. Blanco And many of them. Boys: this is a rotten world. Another Boy Lord have mercy on us, miserable sinners. More laughter. Blanco Forcibly. No: that’s where you’re wrong. Don’t flatter yourselves that you’re miserable sinners. Am I a miserable sinner? No: I’m a fraud and a failure. I started in to be a bad man like the rest of you. You all started in to be bad men or you wouldn’t be in this jumped-up, jerked-off, hospital-turned-out camp that calls itself a town. I took the broad path because I thought I was a man and not a snivelling canting turning-the-other-cheek apprentice angel serving his time in a vale of tears. They talked Christianity to us on Sundays; but when they really meant business they told us never to take a blow without giving it back, and to get dollars. When they talked the golden rule to me, I just looked at them as if they weren’t there, and spat. But when they told me to try to live my life so that I could always look my fellowman straight in the eye and tell him to go to hell, that fetched me. The Boys Quite right. Good. Bully for you, Blanco, old son. Right good sense too. Aha‑a‑ah! Blanco Yes; but what’s come of it all? Am I a real bad man? a man of game and grit? a man that does what he likes and goes over or through other people to his own gain? or am I a snivelling crybaby that let a horse his life depended on be took from him by a woman, and then sat on the grass looking at the rainbow and let himself be took like a hare in a trap by Strapper Kemp: a lad whose back I or any grown man here could break against his knee? I’m a rottener fraud and failure than the Elder here. And you’re all as rotten as me, or you’d have lynched me. A Boy Anything to oblige you, Blanco. Another We can do it yet if you feel really bad about it. Blanco No: the devil’s gone out of you. We’re all frauds. There’s none of us real good and none of us real bad. Elder Daniels There is One above, Blanco. Blanco What do you know about Him? you that always talk as if He never did anything without asking your rotten leave first? Why did the child die? Tell me that if you can. He can’t have wanted to kill the child. Why did He make me go soft on the child if He was going hard on it Himself? Why should He go hard on the innocent kid and go soft on a rotten thing like me? Why did I go soft myself? Why did the Sheriff go soft? Why did Feemy go soft? What’s this game that upsets our game? For seems to me there’s two games bein’ played. Our game is a rotten game that makes me feel I’m dirt and that you’re all as rotten dirt as me. T’other game may be a silly game; but it ain’t rotten. When the Sheriff played it he stopped being rotten. When Feemy played it the paint nearly dropped off her face. When I played it I cursed myself for a fool; but I lost the rotten feel all the same. Elder Daniels It was the Lord speaking to your soul, Blanco. Blanco Oh yes: you know all about the Lord, don’t you? You’re in the Lord’s confidence. He wouldn’t for the world do anything to shock you, would He, Boozy dear? Yah! What about the croup? It was early days when He made the croup, I guess. It was the best He could think of then; but when it turned out wrong on His hands He made you and me to fight the croup for him. You bet He didn’t make us for nothing; and He wouldn’t have made us at all if He could have done His work without us. By Gum, that must be what we’re for! He’d never have made us to be rotten drunken blackguards like me, and good-for-nothing rips like Feemy. He made me because He had a job for me. He let me run loose till the job was ready; and then I had to come along and do it, hanging or no hanging. And I tell you it didn’t feel rotten: it felt bully, just bully. Anyhow, I got the rotten feel off me for a minute of my life; and I’ll go through fire to get it off me again. Look here! which of you will marry Feemy Evans? The Boys Uproariously. Who speaks first? Who’ll marry Feemy? Come along, Jack. Now’s your chance, Peter. Pass along a husband for Feemy. Oh my! Feemy! Feemy Shortly. Keep your tongue off me, will you? Blanco Feemy was a rose of the broad path, wasn’t she? You all thought her the champion bad woman of this district. Well, she’s a failure as a bad woman; and I’m a failure as a bad man. So let Brother Daniels marry us to keep all the rottenness in the family. What do you say, Feemy? Feemy Thank you; but when I marry I’ll marry a man that could do a decent action without surprising himself out of his senses. You’re like a child with a new toy: you and your bit of human kindness! The Woman How many would have done it with their life at stake? Feemy Oh well, if you’re so much taken with him, marry him yourself. You’d be what people call a good wife to him, wouldn’t you? The Woman I was a good wife to the child’s father. I don’t think any woman wants to be a good wife twice in her life. I want somebody to be a good husband to me now. Blanco Any offer, gentlemen, on that understanding? The boys shake their