Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (10 page)

Yeah! Christ! —is right . . .

[
Brick breaks loose and hobbles toward the
gallery.

[
Big Daddy jerks his crutch from under Brick
so he steps with the injured ankle. He utters a hissing cry of anguish, clutches
a chair and pulls it over on top of him on the floor.
]

Son of a—tub of—hog fat . . . .

BRICK:

Big Daddy! Give me my crutch.

[
Big Daddy throws the crutch out of
reach.
]

Give me that crutch, Big Daddy.

BIG DADDY:

Why do you drink?

BRICK:

Don't know, give me my crutch!

BIG DADDY:

You better think why you drink or give up drinking!

BRICK:

Will you please give me my crutch so I can get up off this floor?

BIG DADDY:

First you answer my question. Why do you drink? Why are you throwing your life
away, boy, like somethin’ disgusting you picked up on the street?

BRICK
[
getting
onto his knees
];

Big Daddy, I'm in pain, I stepped on that foot.

BIG DADDY:

Good! I'm glad you're not too numb with the liquor in you to
feel some pain!

BRICK:

You—spilled my—drink . . .

BIG DADDY:

I'll make a bargain with you. You tell me why you drink and I'll hand
you one. I'll pour you the liquor myself and hand it to you.

BRICK:

Why do I drink?

BIG DADDY:

Yea! Why?

BRICK:

Give me a drink and I'll tell you.

BIG DADDY:

Tell me first!

BRICK:

I'll tell you in one word.

BIG DADDY:

What word?

BRICK:

DISGUST!

[
The clock chimes softly, sweetly. Big Daddy
gives it a short, outraged glance.
]

Now how about that drink?

BIG DADDY:

What are you disgusted with? You got to tell me that, first. Otherwise being
disgusted don't make no sense!

BRICK:

Give me my crutch.

BIG DADDY:

You heard me, you got to tell me what I asked you first.

BRICK:

I told you, I said to kill my disgust!

BIG DADDY:

DISGUST WITH WHAT!

BRICK:

You strike a hard bargain.

BIG DADDY:

What are you disgusted with?—an’ I'll pass you the
liquor.

BRICK:

I can hop on one foot, and if I fall, I can crawl.

BIG DADDY:

You want liquor that bad?

BRICK
[
dragging
himself up, clinging to bedstead
]:

Yeah, I want it that bad.

BIG DADDY:

If I give you a drink, will you tell me what it is you're disgusted with,
Brick?

BRICK:

Yes, sir, I will try to.

[
The old man pours him a drink and solemnly passes it to
him.

[
There is silence as Brick
drinks.
]

Have you ever heard the word “mendacity"?

BIG DADDY:

Sure. Mendacity is one of them five dollar words that cheap politicians throw back
and forth at each other.

BRICK:

You know what it means?

BIG DADDY:

Don't it mean lying and liars?

BRICK:

Yes, sir, lying and liars.

BIG DADDY:

Has someone been lying to you?

CHILDREN
[
chanting in chorus off stage
]:

We want Big Dad-dee!

We want Big Dad-dee!

[
Gooper appears m the gallery
door.
]

GOOPER:

Big Daddy, the kiddies are shouting for you out there.

BIG DADDY
[
fiercely
]:

Keep out, Gooper!

GOOPER:

‘Scuse
me!

[
Big Daddy slams the doors after
Gooper.
]

BIG DADDY:

Who's been lying to you, has Margaret been lying to you, has your wife been
lying to you about something, Brick?

BRICK:

Not her. That wouldn't matter.

BIG DADDY:

Then who's been lying to you, and what about?

BRICK:

No one single person and no one lie . . . .

BIG DADDY:

Then what, what then, for Christ's sake?

BRICK:

—The whole, the whole—thing . . . .

BIG DADDY:

Why are you rubbing your head? You got a headache?

BRICK:

No, I'm tryin’ to—

BIG DADDY:

—Concentrate, but you can't because your brain's all soaked with
liquor, is that the trouble? Wet brain!

[
He snatches the glass from Brick's
hand.
]

What do you know about this mendacity thing? Hell! I could
write a book on it! Don't you know that? I could write a book
on it and still not cover the subject? Well, I could, I could write a goddam
book on it and still not cover the subject anywhere near
enough!!—Think of all the lies I got to put up
with!—Pretenses!
Ain't
that
mendacity? Having to pretend stuff you don't think or feel or have any
idea of? Having for instance to act like I care for Big Mama!—I
haven't been able to stand the sight, sound, or smell of that woman for forty
years now!—even when I
laid
her!—regular as a piston . . . .

Pretend to love that son of a bitch of a Gooper and his wife Mae and
those five same screechers out there like parrots in a jungle? Jesus!
Can't stand to look at ‘em!

Church!—it bores the bejesus out of me but I
go!—I go an’ sit there and listen to the fool
preacher!

Clubs!—Elks! Masons! Rotary!
—crap!

[
A spasm of pain makes him clutch his belly.
He sinks into a chair and his voice is softer and hoarser.
]

You
I
do
like
for some reason, did always have some kind of real feeling
for—affection—respect—yes, always . . . .

You and being a success as a planter is all I ever had any devotion to
in my whole life!—and that's the truth . . . .

I don't know why, but it is!

I've
lived with
mendacity!—Why can't
you
live with
it? Hell, you
got
to live with it, there's
nothing
else
to
live
with
except mendacity, is there?

BRICK:

Yes, sir. Yes, sir there is something else that you can live with!

BIG DADDY:

What?

BRICK
[
lifting
his glass
]:

This!—Liquor . . . .

BIG DADDY:

That's not living, that's dodging away from life.

BRICK:

I want to dodge away from it.

BIG DADDY:

Then why don't you kill yourself, man?

BRICK:

I like to drink. . . .

BIG DADDY:

Oh, God, I can't talk to you . . . .

BRICK:

I'm sorry, Big Daddy.

BIG DADDY:

Not as sorry as I am. I'll tell you something. A little while back when I
thought my number was up—

[
This speech should have torrential pace and
fury.
]

—before I found out it was just this—spastic—colon.
I thought about you. Should I or should I not, if the jig was up, give you this
place when I go—since I bate Gooper an’ Mae an’ know that they
hate me, and since all five same monkeys are little Maes an’
Goopers.—And I thought, No!—Then I thought, Yes!
—I couldn't make up my mind. I hate Gooper and his five same monkeys
and that bitch Mae! Why should I turn over twenty—eight thousand acres
of the richest land this side of the valley Nile to not my kind?—But
why in hell, on the other hand, Brick, should I subsidize a goddam fool on the
bottle?—Liked or not liked, well, maybe
even—loved!—
Why should I do
that?—Subsidize worthless behavior? Rot?
Corruption?

BRICK
[
smiling
]:

I understand.

BIG DADDY:

Well, if you do, you're smarter than I am, God damn it, because I don't
understand. And this I will tell you frankly. I didn't make up my mind at all
on that question and still to this day I ain't made out no
will!—Well, now I don't
have
to.
The pressure is gone. I can just wait and see if you pull yourself together or if
you don't.

BRICK:

That's right, Big Daddy.

BIG DADDY:

You sound like you thought I was kidding.

BRICK
[
rising
]:

No, sir, I know you're not kidding.

BIG DADDY:

But you don't care—?

BRICK
[
hobbling
toward the gallery door
]:

No, sir, I don't care . . . .

Now how about taking a look at your birthday fireworks and getting some
of that cool breeze off the river?

[
He stands in the gallery doorway as the
night sky turns pink and green and gold with successive flashes of
light.
]

BIG DADDY:

WAIT!—Brick . . . .

[
His voice drops. Suddenly there is
something shy, almost tender, in his restraining gesture.
]

Don't let's—leave it like this, like them other
talks we've had, we've always—talked around things,
we've—just talked around things for some rotten reason, I don't
know what, it's always like something was left not spoken, something avoided
because neither of us was honest enough with the—other . . . .

BRICK:

I never lied to you, Big Daddy.

BIG DADDY:

Did I ever to
you?

BRICK:

No, sir . . . .

BIG DADDY:

Then there is at least two people that never lied to each other.

BRICK:

But we've never
talked
to each other.

BIG DADDY:

We can
now.

BRICK:

Big Daddy, there don't seem to be anything much to say.

BIG DADDY:

You say that you drink to kill your disgust with lying.

BRICK:

You said to give you a reason.

BIG DADDY:

Is liquor the only thing that'll kill this disgust?

BRICK:

Now. Yes.

BIG DADDY:

But not once, huh?

BRICK:

Not when I was still young an’ believing. A drinking man's someone who
wants to forget he isn't still young an’ believing.

BIG DADDY:

Believing what?

BRICK:

Believing . . . .

BIG DADDY:

Believing
what?

BRICK
[
stubbornly
evasive
]:

Believing . . . .

BIG DADDY:

I don't know what the hell you mean by believing and I don't think you
know what you mean by believing, but if you still got sports in your blood, go back
to sports announcing and—

BRICK:

Sit in a glass box watching games I can't play? Describing what I
can't do while players do it? Sweating out their disgust and confusion
in contests I'm not fit for? Drinkin’ a coke, half bourbon, so
I can stand it? That's no goddam good any more, no help—time
just outran me, Big Daddy—got there first. . .

BIG DADDY:

I think you're passing the buck.

BRICK:

You know many drinkin’ men?

BIG DADDY
[
with a
slight, charming smile
]:

I have known a fair number of that species.

BRICK:

Could any of them tell you why he drank?

BIG DADDY:

Yep, you're passin’ the buck to things like time and disgust with
“mendacity” and—crap! —if you got to use that
kind of language about a thing, it's ninety—proof bull, and I'm
not buying any.

BRICK:

I had to give you a reason to get a drink!

BIG DADDY:

You started drinkin’ when your friend Skipper died.

[
Silence for five beats. Then Brick makes a
startled movement, reaching for his crutch.
]

BRICK:

What are you suggesting?

BIG DADDY:

I'm suggesting nothing.

[
The shuffle and clop of Brick's
rapid hobble away
from his father's steady, grave
attention.
]

—But Gooper an’ Mae suggested that there was something not
right exactly in your—

BRICK
[
stopping
short downstage as if backed to a wall
]:

“Not right"?

BIG DADDY:

Not, well, exactly
normal
in your friendship
with—

BRICK:

They suggested that, too? I thought that was Maggie's suggestion.

[
Brick's detachment is at last broken
through. His heart is accelerated; his forehead sweat-beaded; his breath
becomes more rapid and his voice hoarse. The thing they're discussing,
timidly and painfully on the side of Big Daddy, fiercely, violently on
Brick's side, is the inadmissible thing that Skipper died to disavow
between them. The fact that if it existed it had to be disavowed to “keep
face” in the world they lived in, may be at the heart of the
“mendacity” that Brick drinks to kill his disgust with. It may be
the root of his collapse. Or maybe it is only a single manifestation of it, not
even the most important. The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play
is not the solution of one man's psychological problem. I'm trying
to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy,
flickering, evanescent—fiercely charged!—interplay of live
human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis. Some mystery should be left
in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is
always left in
the revelation of character in life, even
in one's own character to himself. This does not absolve the playwright
of his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply as he
legitimately
can: but it should steer him away
from “pat'’ conclusions, facile
definitions which make a play just a play, not a snare for the truth of human
experience.