Frolic of His Own (22 page)

T
HOMAS

What you have in your hand behind you.

B
AGBY

This? Yes, I picked it up from the floor where it had fallen.

T
HOMAS

It didn't fall. I threw it there.

B
AGBY

(READING FROM IT)

Yes, to ‘report to the county seat within five days . . . ' Well, that journey won't take you long, for this here is the seat of Schuylkill County, you know.

T
HOMAS

(TAKING THE PAPER, CRUMPLING IT AGAIN)

And you expect to see me marching off to the draft office in one of your trusses? Do you think I take this seriously?

B
AGBY

A bit of influence, and you might have . . .

T
HOMAS

Have you looked at the paper? It will be over in a matter of weeks, of days . . .

B
AGBY

That's still time enough to find yourself court-martialed, and when you can buy your commutation for three hundred dollars . . .

T
HOMAS

And you want me to pay three hundred dollars for a week's peace of mind?

B
AGBY

That's what Section 13 of the enrollment act is for, you know, to provide for the better class of people like ourselves. Of course this commutation is only good until the next draft, and the rate things are going that might be tomorrow. You'd do better to pay a bit more, wouldn't you, to buy a substitute to go up in your place. I can dig one up for five hundred dollars, and then let the war last as long as it likes. You can put it out of your mind.

(AS
THOMAS
SITS DOWN, LOOKING AT NEWSPAPERS, WAVES HIM AWAY)

Of course if it was me, you know, if I was financially situated like you are, there's the owner of the iron works here, you may know of him? He raised a regiment of cavalry for twenty thousand dollars and for that they made him a colonel. And where is he? Why, in Washington, showing his uniform, rubbing his elbows at the White House with high officials and senators, and nuzzling their wives when they turn their backs. And what will become of him? They'll nominate him a brigadier general and set him off somewhere to guard an empty barracks until things settle down, and you'll see him back here with ‘General' printed on his visiting cards . . .

(RETIRING A STEP UPSTAGE)

Shall I dig a man up for you, then?

T
HOMAS

Dig up nobody. It's all nonsense.

B
AGBY

Nonsense? And when you're court-martialed and shot for a deserter, will that be nonsense?

T
HOMAS

(ABRUPTLY, LOSING PATIENCE)

I've seen that, do you hear? That's . . . enough!

B
AGBY

Seen . . . what, sir?

T
HOMAS

(GLANCING UP TOWARD UPSTAGE RIGHT)

Just tend your business, Bagby. A particularly unattractive bundle of it just arrived at your desk.

As THOMAS speaks, KANE has appeared at desk upstage right carrying a small case, and is heedlessly entering door as BAGBY hastens to intercept him.

B
AGBY

(TO
KANE)

Here, where are you going? You don't just march in and see him like he was a public monument. I'm the man you see here.

K
ANE

(STOPPING, AS
THOMAS
TURNS SLOWLY TO LOOK, CONFUSED)

You might be . . . Mister Bagby?

B
AGBY

You got my name at the barber shop in Coal Street, did you? Let's see your teeth.

(KANE
OBLIGES)

Not that you'll need them for eating. And you've got all your fingers and toes, have you? You'll do, if your breath don't knock them flat first. Go back to that barber shop, do you hear? Tell them I sent you. Mister Bagby, do you hear? They'll know what to do with you. Trim you up and get this thing off your face, why, they may find a boy of twenty hiding behind it! And then you come back here to me, do you hear? And I'll take you down and enroll you. Now get on!

T
HOMAS

(STANDING, SLOWLY)

Wait a minute!

B
AGBY

(TURNING TO HIM, HOLDING
KANE
'S ARM)

You want him, sir?

(STANDING OFF, LOOKING
KANE
OVER AGAIN)

I'll be frank now, on second look, he don't look like he'll get far. They can't shave that belly off him in a hurry, and his breath would stop a train. I'll dig up better by sundown.

K
ANE

(ALMOST APOLOGETIC)

I'm sorry if I've misled you, sir. All I have to volunteer is my wares here. I'm a commercial traveler in tobaccos,

(COMING DOWNSTAGE TO DESK)

and I've a fine bright leaf that may interest you . . .

T
HOMAS

(COMING ROUND, PROFFERING A CHAIR BESIDE THE DESK)

Yes, sit down. You'll forgive Mister Bagby here. His enthusiasm to recruit, feed, worm, and outfit the entire Union army from head to toe sometimes gets the better of him.

(TO
BAGBY,
DRILY)

Though I hadn't realized you were recruiting.

B
AGBY

I, sir? Yes, volunteering my services, you might say. Why, since Lee crossed the Potomac there hasn't been a moment's peace, and a man must come forward and lend a hand . . .

T
HOMAS

And you've been lending hands from the mines? Is that why the payroll is smaller every time I look at it?

B
AGBY

And why not, with the mines closed down? If we've been ordered to suspend operations until the draft is ended, should we let the poor men go unemployed?

K
ANE

Yes, I understand Harpers Ferry has fallen, and General McClellan is marching out of Washington with every division he can pull together to meet them before they reach the Pennsylvania line here. I passed a fine set of lads drilling down near the river . . .

B
AGBY

Them? Buckeyes, you mean? And do you think they're getting ready to fight Lee and Jackson? They're getting themselves ready to fight off the draft officers, that's what they're doing.

K
ANE

(HIS FACETIOUSNESS LOST UPON
BAGBY)

Such an attitude must make your noble efforts quite difficult.

B
AGBY

Ah, but it's not that I don't see their point, you know, now the word is out that it's no more than a war to free the naygers. Why, they've had high wages here in the mines. Do they want to go off and get killed fighting to free a lot of naygers that will come in and work for a penny a day? Why, the President himself said when it started that he had no power or intention of freeing the naygers, and now? Well, I've learned from a friend, he's a highly placed man down in Washington, that he's already written a proclamation freeing the naygers! Yes, he wrote it this summer, the President did, and he's read it off to his Cabinet there. Yes, preserve the Union! with four million naygers running around free? Why, the woods is full of them right now, and do you expect a nayger to go back into slavery once he's been as free to come and go as yourself?

K
ANE

(WITH SUDDEN ILL-CONCEALED INTEREST)

Reading such a thing to his Cabinet hasn't freed anyone.

B
AGBY

And who should he read it to, you? He'd be a laughing stock if he read it out in public now, the way things are going. No, he must wait for a victory. Then people will listen and it will make sense. With a real victory behind it, he can give the slave states a choice of coming back into the Union or having their slaves freed right under their noses.

T
HOMAS

A victory? Winning a battle, what difference will that make. No, you'd better say winning the war!

K
ANE

(THOUGHTFULLY)

But even a battle . . . and a battleline advancing as a crusade . . . While the South is waiting for France and England to intervene, if only to free the cotton. And they might still in a rebellion, yes, in a civil war, but . . . a crusade against slavery?

B
AGBY

Yes, and the victory is all the President lacks to make it so! There's nobody seen what war can be, that hasn't seen the next battle!

BAGBY exits importantly upstage right.

T
HOMAS

(LEVELLY)

You dislike me, don't you Kane. You showed it at Quantness when we met. What is it you want, then.

K
ANE

(TURNING, AGREEABLY)

Or perhaps it's just my unfortunate manner? Yes, my manner may be like your scar there, the expression it gives you? When I walked in, you looked outraged to see me, but . . . surely you were not?

T
HOMAS

And that cotton, what's happened to it? Was it ever shipped from Wilmington?

K
ANE

It was shipped. That's what I've come to tell you about . . .

T
HOMAS

And what's happened to it? There are obligations attached to it, and I've heard nothing. I had a special interest in that cotton, you know, an arrangement I made with the Major, and I've heard nothing. No remittance, nothing . . .

K
ANE

The shipment was impounded by the French government.

T
HOMAS

Im-pounded? but . . . I owe nothing, I left no debts . . .

K
ANE

A firm of French shipbuilders got out a lien against it. The ones who are building the battle ram Stonewall. The cotton was shipped from a Southern port, and they hadn't been paid . . .

T
HOMAS

A ram! But . . . by heaven! I'm being pressed for those profits now, the shareowners here . . . a ram! What the devil are they building a ram for!

K
ANE

To break the blockade . . .

T
HOMAS

The blockade! Why, damn the blockade, what does it matter now? With the army that's sweeping up here? Lee has probably invaded Pennsylvania itself while we sit here, he's right on our doorstep, and they're worried about a blockade? The whole thing will be over in a matter of days.

K
ANE

I seem to recall your saying that the last time we met.

T
HOMAS

(WITH DEFIANT ANNOYANCE)

Well, and . . . isn't it?

K
ANE

But not as it would have ended then, with a hundred thousand Union troops massed on Richmond.

T
HOMAS

Yes but . . . damn it, that's not the point now! Don't you see the shape things are in here? These militia drafts and the rest of this nonsense? They're terrified. The Southern armies will sweep through like hail in a cornfield.

K
ANE

(QUIETLY, EYEING
THOMAS'
BOOTS)

In boots like that, they might.

(AS
THOMAS
CLAPS HIS BOOT AND STANDS IN EXASPERATION)

You talk as if Lee's army were . . . a machine. You've seen it. Have you forgotten? Men and boys without shoes? Ragged, forced marches on one dry biscuit? Why . . . is there ever a . . . body left on the battlefield, to be buried in a whole pair of pants?

T
HOMAS

Do you think I don't still live it at night! . . . When the battle is over, it's not the men. Do men look dead that you stumble over? No, they've seen nothing, the death that happened had nothing to do with them, or life. But the horses . . . !

(HE SHUDDERS)

The horses had seen it, it was still in their eyes, their heads flung up and their nostrils wide and their eyes . . . wide opened on it still . . . It's still there, on a field that just that morning was nothing more. Why, you might have lived there half your life or you might never have seen it before. Fields, fences, trees, a creek . . . has it ever made any difference before if the fence were here? or there were a ditch? if the corn was cut, or the trees had leaves? Until the morning the sun comes up and finds it a battlefield? Why? Here? Not a mile, or twenty miles away but here! And now everything takes on meaning, now none of it could have been any different. Not a tree or a stone to crouch behind, none of it could have been any different, if men are dying? hidden in the corn? lying in the ditch? If these were trees? and that were barren? Then who would have lived and who would have died? Who would have suffered and who . . . gone free . . . Because if each tree, because if each stone and rail of fence had no reason to be right where it was that day, that instant, then our pain and death had no more meaning than the stones . . .

K
ANE

But when you said that you'd . . . you'd fought death, and won . . .

T
HOMAS

And I did! When that whole sky wheeled and burst, the woods swept clean up the wagon road and the cornstalks glittering stalks unsheathed behind the rail fence, where the stupid face of that chapel stared down across that creek at the house with its windows blazing with the sun as though it were afire. That bay mare had dragged me over the stones with one rein twisted around my wrist, and I pulled myself up on the strength of her terror. And when I brought down her head and fired, her legs came up like a folding toy. She didn't stagger or fall, she went down square . . . doubled up running from what was happening . . . But if all of it . . . had no more meaning than this?

(PACING AWAY, AND BACK)