Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse
Denis Johnson
In Memory of Luís Saguar
Contents
Soul of a Whore
Characters
Part I
Part II
Part III
Epilogue
Purvis
Characters
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Scene 6
Scene 7
About the Author
Soul of a Whore
Soul of a Whore was developed by Campo Santo, the resident
theater company for San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts
(executive director Deborah Cullinan; founders Margo Hall,
Luís Saguar, Sean San José, Michael Torres), and premiered at
Intersection in February 2003, with the following cast:
Donald E. Lacy, Jr.
HT; Dr. Nasum
Delia MacDougall
Masha
Liam Vincent
Clerk
Catherine Castellanos
Granny Black; Nurse Vandermere;
Bess Cassandra
Brian Keith Russell
Bill Jenks
Michael Torres
John Cassandra
Marcie Prohofsky
Bus Driver 1; Stacy
Alexis Lezin
Bus Driver 2; Jan; Stevie
Cully Fredrickson
Sylvester; Will Blaine
Danny Wolohan
Simon; Jerry
Design Team: Suzanne Castillo (costumes), James Faerron (sets),
Jim Cave (lighting), Drew Yerys (sound), Dan Hamaguchi (graphics),
Jim Roll (original music: “If I Had a Nickel”).
Production Team: Jeff Fohl (photography), Melyssa Jo Kelly
(assistant lead), Michaela King (assistant), Lena Monje (sound operator),
Adam Palafox (research), Honey Roberts (assistant), Elizabeth
Rodriguez (costumes assistant), Elizabeth Scott (properties).
Directed by Nancy Benjamin
Characters
Masha
HT
Bill Jenks
John Cassandra
Clerk
Granny Black
Sylvester
Simon Blaine
Nurse Vandermere
Will Blaine
Jan Blaine
Stacy Blaine
Dr. Nasum
Jerry Cavenaugh
Stevie
Bess Cassandra
2 Bus Drivers
O.S. Female and Male Voices
O.S. Voice of Jimmy Boggs
O.S. Voice on Radio
Texas in the years 2000–2002.
Scenes might be set through the use of props and a few backdrops.
An ellipsis […] beginning a line is meant to suggest a pause.
Part I
Dark stage.
HT’s voice [sings]: Let the Midnight Special
Shine a light on you
Pinpoint spot lights a sign, overhead left: “SURPLUS STORE.”
WOMAN [O.S.]: Guys, I need your papers of parole
And state ID to cash that check, OK?
MAN [O.S.]: Dump your whites up there on the second level.
The second level is where you dump your whites.
Use the changing room, sir, will you please?
WOMAN [O.S.]: Your middle name is printed on that check,
Then go ahead and spell your whole name out.
Sign the back side: first name, middle name
If middle name is printed on your check,
And then your last name; and I want your writ
Of discharge or parole certificate
And your official Texas state ID;
Or else your check will not be honored here.
HT’s voice [sings]: Let the Midnight Special
Shine a ever-lovin’ light on you
Lights up: Greyhound station in Huntsville, Texas. Plastic
pews; standing ashtrays; Coke machine; door to Surplus Store;
ticket counter; pay phone.
CLERK behind the counter, silent. On the counter a handbell.
He bangs it when the mood strikes. Sometimes furtively he nips
clear liquid from a screw-top canning jar. He’s got a little radio.
MASHA talks on the phone. Very brief shiny blue sleeveless
dress and big blue platform sandals with white straps. White
sunglasses; great big blue-and-white purse.
HT, a black man: wants the phone; needs change.
HT [sings]: Shine a mothaluving light on you…
MASHA [on phone]: I won’t come back till you stop making me—
OK! Come on!—you just come zooming up
To Huntsville like some crazed, spawning salmon:
I’m on my bus before you hit the highway.
…I just don’t want to. Things like that, they aren’t—
Huh-uh, not demeaning, just, it’s more—
Unnatural. I mean, for me. Or, well,
For anyone. And I’m not even sure
I really do it, even when it happens,
I mean in any verifiable…“Uh!”
“Uh uh uh uh uh!”
Can’t you get that worked on, ugly man?
Can’t they drill your head and fix that stutter?
…Your bank account is real. I realize that.
I truly just don’t have the gift. I don’t.
There’s such a thing as luck, you know—like isn’t
Luck what everybody’s betting on?
Wait a minute, got to feed the baby,
Baby’s hungry—[to HT] Sir, it’s gonna be
A little while—OK?—’cause I’m addressing
Certain urgent business—so, could you—?
HT: Man get crazy when his bus don’t come.
MASHA [on phone]: If you can hear me, I’m depositing—
HT: I just live in Willard, but the bus
Won’t go there. Got to go see Houston first.
MASHA: “You ever get to Houston,
Boy, you better walk right.”
HT: I will. I do. I got no sheet in Houston.
MASHA: It’s just a song.
HT: I never been arrested
Any way or shape or form in Houston.
MASHA: It’s just a song. It’s just a song.
HT: Lead Belly.
Sure. I know the song. But I’m just saying.
—The guys get outa prison yet today?
CLERK: At noon, like always. Bus already left.
HT: Uh-oh. The Houston bus?
CLERK: The Dallas bus.
MASHA [on phone]:—No, no! I didn’t say the Greyhound station!
My cousin—good ol’ Cousin Gus is coming,
Not the bus. I wouldn’t go by Greyhound
Ever except in abject desperation!
Meanwhile, an old woman in black enters from street door.
GRANNY BLACK: Hot! Hot! And while I fry in my own fat
I hear my dead relations singing in Heaven.
I ain’t a-gonna drive on that highway!
You don’t get me behind no chariot wheel!
Ninety miles of carburetors steaming
Like cauldrons in a line from here to Dallas.
Is it carburetors, now? Or radios?
Or what’s the things that steams, where you put water?
CLERK: That’d be the radiator.
GRANNY BLACK: Radiator!
Well!—unless you like that funny music,
I guess you’d best not wet your radio.
This is eigh
teen twenty-five for one
To Dallas. I won’t give a penny more.
They like to raise the rates with every breath
They drag, and someone’s got to hold the line.
MASHA:…No! It ain’t the money! Money stinks!
I haven’t got the gift! I haven’t got the power!
Just a minute, let me feed this thing—
[Deals with coins, etc.]
Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? HELLO!
My call is what? Well! You sound sweet as pie!
You sound just like my mother, operator—
I want my dollar ten, or you can kiss
My Rebel ass.—Hung up on by a robot!
This is how the vandalism starts!
CLERK: Now, honey, don’t molest my telephone.
[To HT] No. Don’t ring the bell. The bell’s for me.
HT: Lemme have it all in quarters, please.
CLERK: Try the change machine.
HT: It doesn’t work.
MASHA [offering coins]: Two bucks for a fistful. Gamble.
HT: Thanks.
You didn’t see a guy…
CLERK: A dozen guys.
A couple dozen guys. The usual—
You know. The Dallas took the most of ’em.
The usual recidivists in transit.
HT: You see a guy, a white guy, maybe looked
A little not so much a criminal?
CLERK: All human beings look like criminals.
HT goes to the phone.
GRANNY BLACK: Hot! Hot! Hear how this poor old woman
sizzles!
I pity the crappies and crawdads on account
I feel now what it hurts like to be cooked.
CLERK: It’s twenty dollars fifty cents to Dallas.
GRANNY BLACK: Eighteen twenty-five. No more, no less.
CLERK: It doesn’t work that way.
GRANNY BLACK: It used to do!
It used to was a twenty-dollar bill
Counted!—once upon a memory.
I’ll sit down here and let you ponder that…
I’ll let you ponder where the whole world went…
MASHA: I’m not worried if he’s after me.
By now he’s probly halfway out of Texas,
Blazing a trail for Huntsville, Alabama.
CLERK: Huntsville was named after Huntsville. You knew
that.
MASHA: Uh—no. I didn’t. But it stands to reason.
CLERK: After the one in Alabama. That’s
The explanation for all the confusion, see?
HT [on phone]: Hello? It’s all—It’s jammed. Hello?
Completely.
Fine. You busted it. Are you content?
MASHA: I’m just as happy as a clam in shit.
HT: O yeah? I think you got that saying wrong.
MASHA: I think you never saw a clam in shit.
HT: When’s the Houston come?
CLERK: It comes as scheduled.
HT: Scheduled when?
CLERK: It’s not that type of schedule.
It’s theoretical. Four a day.
HT: In theory.
CLERK: No, the vehicles themselves are real,
But all the rest is veiled in mystery
Because from here to goodness idiots
Are tearing up the road and moving it
West eleven inches. Traffic’s stuck
For hours at a time in all directions:
Miles and miles of stationary drivers
Contemplating this minute adjustment.
HT: Sound like the joint.
CLERK: It kinda does, at that.
HT: You been inside?
HT gets himself a Coke.
MASHA: …He’ll hop the barricades.
He’ll ride the back roads and the shoulder, then
He’ll drive on top of all the other cars.
He will. He’s on his way. I get no rest.
HT: Gah-dam, gah-dam, gah-dam!
CLERK: Excuse me, sir.
HT: I think it might be eating me alive.
CLERK: Crazy folks are not allowed in here.
HT: Crazy folks are too allowed in here.
Is this the Greyhound stop in Huntsville, Texas?—
Crazy folks get born and die in here.
CLERK: I know you, sir. They call you Hostage Taker.
HT: Yeah, yeah, it’s good to see you, good to see you.
Man, the bus don’t come and the bus don’t come.
Man, I got to get on down the road.
Man, this whole block used to jump with gypsy
Hot-shot cabs’ll take you there right now—
For twenty bucks they’re gonna fly to Houston,
Dallas, anyplace on earth—and they
Got reefer, they got beer, they got tequila—
CLERK: I thought they sprung you couple months ago.
HT: Sooner or later all God’s chillun be free.
[Raises his Coke]
“Wardens, jailers, presidents and kings—
They all must bow to calendars and clocks.”
CLERK: Then what puts you in Huntsville not a block
From where you did hard time? Guilt? Or nostalgia.
Or some concoction of the two.
HT: Touché!
CLERK: Touché?
HT: Touché! That’s what you say! You say
“Touché!” when someone jabs you with a word.
CLERK: I jabbed you what? I jabbed—
HT: You see…
You dig…You don’t begin your day with things
Like taking hostages on the agenda.
“Things to Do: Do NOT take hostages.”
You march inside, extend your weapon towards
The various faces, and receive the money.
PO-lice DO not COME sahROUND-ing you!
Megaphones and telephones and shit!
And no one’s hurt! And NO ONE GOES TO PRISON.
…I’m waiting on a guy. But I can’t wait.
CLERK: If you can’t wait, I guess you’re better off
To don’t. So see you later, Hostage Taker.
MASHA: I thought you said the bus—you live in—where?
HT: I never tell the truth. It’s too confusing.
You wanna get a drink? Or take a walk?
Something? Maybe feel the feelings of
The outside world? Fresh air?
MASHA: No thanks, I’m good.
HT: I didn’t mean—
MASHA: I know.
HT: I didn’t mean—
MASHA: But I’m just comfortable. I’m good right here.
HT exits through Surplus Store.
CLERK: Now, there’s a guy got bubbles in his brain.
…Well, looky here: The show’s not over, folks.
BILL JENKS enters from the street door.
MASHA: You are sucking on me with your eyes.
You’re staring like a laser beam.
BILL JENKS: My wife was here
She’d read my mind and kill me on the spot.
…Did I hear someone singing, while ago?
CLERK: Just some bubble-brain with vocal cords.
BJ offers MASHA a smoke. She ignores it; finds her own.
BILL JENKS: You hang around the Greyhound all the time?
MASHA: Don’t mistake me, hon.
BILL JENKS: For what?
MASHA: For what you think.
BILL JENKS: And what am I thinking?
MASHA: That’s for me to know.
She lights his smoke.
BILL JENKS [smoking]: I’m ready to believe in God again!
MASHA: Could you, like, hold the revival over there?
BILL JENKS: The gods combust our dreams for sport and suck
The fumes. Our spirits serve as censers.
MASHA: Shit.
You dudes are never right when you come out.
[Smoking] What’s a censer?
BILL JENKS: It’s the—hell, you know—
<
br /> Those things they burn the incense in at Mass?
Come on, don’t kid around—a name like Masha—
MASHA: From where do you know my name?
BILL JENKS: From here.
I overheard. Your lovely back was turned.
You breathed your name into the telephone.
MASHA: That was my boss! I didn’t breathe a-tall!
BILL JENKS: Masha’s Russian. You could be Orthodox:
They’re always swinging censers.
MASHA: Let ’em swing,
’Cause I ain’t Russian! I’m from Texas, son.
BILL JENKS: So where’d you get the Masha from? Odessa?
MASHA: Hell if I know. It’s my name, is all…
You’re not from Texas.
BILL JENKS: No, ma’am. Mississippi.
But I was mostly raised in California.
Don’t get me wrong, I love you Texas women.
MASHA: How long were you in prison for? This time?
BILL JENKS: What makes you think I’ve been incarcerated?
MASHA: The checkered pants, the polo shirt, those big
Enormous shoes, no belt, that stubbly head—
The outa prison used-up fashion show.
BILL JENKS: They don’t have threads like these in prison, doll.
Except the shoes. And shoes like these are common.
MASHA: You cashed your fifty at the Surplus Store
And dumped your whites and bought the nearest thing.
Last week the streets were full of guys with boot-camp
Haircuts sporting stripèd Ban-Lon shirts
And almost iridescent green bell-bottoms.
Pouring rain outside, and here they come,
This mob of palpitating free men kind of
