Double Naught: A Play in One Act

8/14/2019 Double Naught: A Play in One Act

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Double Naught

a play in one act

by

S. A. Scoggin

S. A. Scoggin

[email protected]


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CHARACTERS

MR. SMITH, SENIOR is a prosperous businessman in his mid-

sixties.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR, his son, is in his early thirties.

MRS. SMITH is in her mid-twenties. She is hugely pregnant.

MR. and MRS. LARGENT are introduced later.


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SETTING

A well-appointed parlor at about 11:30 PM on December

31, 1899.

Upstage, a flight of stairs rise out of sight.

Downstage right, a partial wall contains a window which

looks outside. Stage right is the door to the outer porch.

Stage left is dominated by a huge ornate upright

grandfather clock which does not tell the time. That task

is left to a rather plain round timepiece on the mantle

which keeps us aware of the approach to midnight. Stage

left is also an interior door, to the pantry or kitchen.

In the middle are an overstuffed couch and two

armchairs open to the small fireplace. The walls are

papered beautifully but are otherwise bare. Everything

seems new, as if the owners have just moved in.


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(MR. SMITH, JUNIOR is

studying the enormous clock.

He is poking into it innards

through a door opened in its

side. At his feet is a

toolbox. He looks down

thoughtfully, picks up a

screwdriver, and turns

something inside the clock.

He withdraws the screwdriver,

thinks for a minute, then

trades it for a pair of

pliers which he uses to pull

gently on something deep in

the case.

In the distance a brass band

is playing a Sousa march overfaint crowd noises: happy

cries, shouts, roaring

laughs.

MRS. SMITH, in robe and

slippers, waddles quietly

down the stairs without her

husband noticing. She flops

onto the sofa, making the

springs shriek. MR. SMITH,

JUNIOR spins around and the

pliers fly out of his hand.)

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Good God, woman! Are you - are you not well?

(He rushes to her and kneels,

taking her hand.)

Have I woken you? Or is it -

MRS. SMITH

My time? No, not yet. Soon enough, my love. What are youdoing?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

(Quickly taking his hands

away.)

Nothing.

MRS. SMITH


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You were taking my pulse! you wicked old thing! you never

showed concern for my pulse when you wooed me. Neither when

you married me. Yet since I became with child, you are like

some over worried trainer forever by the side of a prize

filly.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

And such a filly.

MRS. SMITH

Yes, I have the girth to fit any saddle. And I feed by the

bale. Yet though I feel like I have galloped ten furlongs,

I cannot sleep like a thoroughbred.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

You realize that there are men - I could name you a dozen

who work in our factory - who make no noise in their

parlors in the evenings but drink their supper at thetavern and only crawl home in time to sleep.

MRS. SMITH

The racket does not disturb me. Your son - or daughter - is

tumbling about like a Chinese acrobat.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

I am truly sorry.

MRS. SMITH

It is not your fault. No, I am corrected. It is your fault.

What are you doing with the old man there?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Having a look at his bowels.

MRS. SMITH

If you cannot sleep, perhaps you should....

(She motions to the window.)

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

(Suddenly stern.)

You have heard me enough about that lot.

MRS. SMITH

You need not lecture me, Professor. I withdraw the thought

and beg your forgiveness.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Granted.


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MRS. SMITH

Who would have dreamed that your many talents included

clocksmithing.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Eleven months and you know all of me? I think not.

MRS. SMITH

I cannot fathom that on this same New Years Eve but one I

was not aware that the world held you. And now we have

created a new life. I am sure we have been married for one

hundred years.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Ninety-nine years.

MRS. SMITH

Ah! You have soiled my tenderness with your spite. Now youmust kiss me.

(He embraces her. They kiss

for a long moment.)

MRS. SMITH

Oh! Take my pulse now!

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

(Returning to the clock, he

picks up a spanner.)

Off to bed with you and your enormous burden.

MRS. SMITH

Let me sit here for a while first and watch you resurrect

the dead. Is there hope?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Were I a smith, of clocks, perhaps. I am only a rank

amateur, a dilantante, tapping the springs.

MRS. SMITH

Shall you send it away to be restored?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

If Fathers story is to be believed, this patient has been

waiting for his surgeon for thirty years or more. The inner

workings must be corrupt by now.

MRS. SMITH

My last wish is to seem ungrateful. It is a wonder to look


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upon, bell or no bell. And though it shows eight forty-

seven perpetually, so it represents the truth twice a day,

morning and night. A lesser timepiece might tick but be

always dropping behind the world second by second or racing

ahead of us into the next minute, and thus be never

accurate-

(The crowd noise rises

briefly and falls back to its

previous level.)

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Mrs. Smith, your idle talk is wiser than the combined

cackle of a score of our alleged wise men.

MRS. SMITH

Thank you, Mr. Smith. As I was saying, when your dear

father presented his silent gift, I was too new to be bold.Then I was too busy moving our household here to be bold.

And now, if I may be so bold: Why are we possessed of a

clock which does not even attempt to keep up a pretense at

timekeeping?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

(He drops his tool into the

box and looks up at the face

of the clock.)

Well, this is the Tale of the Clock. As told by Mr. Smith

the Elder to his gullible son: Before his elevation to the

primacy of his country, even before his acceptance of

command of her feeble army, George Washington, plantation

man, builds his slaves their own chapel so that they might

better throw off the theoretical shackles of their heathen

superstitions and be cleansed by the light of the true

Lord, that is, the Lord of the white man. Onto this chapel

he raises a modest belfry, and into this belfry he hangs a

bell cast from the molten remains of shackles of a very

real sort salvaged from a slave ship which had foundered

off the Virginia coast. It is said that the peal of this

bell was so haunting in its timbre, so much like a thousand

voices crying as one unto Heaven, that its tolling couldenchant any who were within its ring, and the people

journeyed from several states just to hear it once and then

turn home.

But the day Washington died, his loving human chattel rang

the bell so long and so hard, enraged by grief, that it

shattered with the scream of a dying angel. The bell then

disappears from recorded history.


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MRS. SMITH

I am all a shiver. Are there ghosts later?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Patience. I said recorded history, did I not? The bell

reappears transformed, bought up as scrap by a merchant who

recognizes its historical value, and remade into

collectibles large and small: snuff boxes, ink pots, and

the like. And most of the inner works of a very fine

timepiece.

MRS. SMITH

Our old man himself?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

The same, by this tale. Crafted in Chelsea, Massachusetts

and sold to a Mr. Seward, father to the Seward of fame andpassed onto him in his inheritance. Seward carried the

clock, then very much a functioning measurer of the hours,

minutes, and seconds, to Washington the city when he

becomes one of the Cabinet under the ancient one. It was

there in his library that fateful April morning that Seward

entered, laden with an unbearable sadness, for he had just

returned from a bedside vigil over his President, who had

lain all night in a bed too small for his long old bones in

a boardinghouse hard by Ford's while Booths bullet worked

its slow terror in that mighty brain. Seward looked up to

check the time. He found that the hands, constant for these

several decades, had stopped, and had stopped forever, at

7:22 - the minute that Abraham Lincoln drew his last

earthly breath.

MRS. SMITH

Oh! How enchantingly eerie!

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

But a total fabrication. I will find within here a plate

affixed by the real manufacturer somewhere about 1890, I

would think.

MRS. SMITH

Then why search? Shut it back as it was before, and we may

regale our guests and our grandchildren with that tale. I

will darken the room and light candles all around.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Shall I serve lies and call it hospitality?


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(A loud knock at the door.

Without a word of permission

or welcome, MR. SMITH, SENIOR

flings open the front door

and enters, carrying two fist

fulls of mugs.)

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Well, well! No one asleep?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

No, Father. Not even the muffling of the womb is enough to

drown out your infernal brass band.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

My dear - is it true? - I will go at once and mute them

all.

MRS. SMITH

Please do not. The music is lovely. I could drift away

quite easily to it, but sleep these days is only at babys

convenience. Come and give us a kiss.

(MR. SMITH, SENIOR goes and

gives her a peck on the

cheek, then hands her a mug.)

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Freshly-brewed birch beer. Good for foaling mares.

MRS. SMITH

Why must I be a horse always? I want to be a cat. They can

nap any old time.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

And for the stallion?

(MR. SMITH, SENIOR brings him

a mug.)

MR. SMITH, SENIORRum punch to toast the New Year.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

(Raising his drink.)

To you. But not to any year.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Thank you.


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(He walks over to the clock.)

Extracting satisfaction from the clock, are you?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

I cannot possibly go to bed with your mob of fools over

there laughing and shouting. I thought I might do something

productive.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

There is still time to join us. Just for a moment. The men

have all been asking after you. The wives gather around me,

the children tug on my coat. Where is he, where is he? they

cry. What do you say to a toast, three huzzays, and then

back home quick as a wink?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

I say they should wake from their dream and let us sleep.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Very well. Your objection is again noted.

MRS. SMITH

(Rising ponderously.)

Gentlemen, I will take my leave now.

(MR. SMITH, JUNIOR rushes to

her side and tries to support

her.)

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

She flees from the promise of another lecture.

MRS. SMITH

Oh, posh!

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

We will not quarrel tonight, dear. Peace on Earth and all

those blessed tidings, you know.

MRS. SMITH

You are a week late. Strange for one otherwise strictly bythe calendar.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Besides, there are no grounds to quarrel. I agree with you

in all respects. Your position is irrefutable.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Yet you pay the piper to play that tune, knowing it to be


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You jest, sir, but I am dead straight upon this. In some

minutes, the bells will toll, our rockets will be lit, and

all throats will be raw from shouting - for what? Scream

for double naught. Voices hoarse, demanding amusement, damn

the facts, entertain us, appease us, only do not reason

with us. We want, we want, we want, and what the mob must

have it must have now and not in one year.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Ha! Those are not demands you hear but prayers. Those you

condemn for rushing toward a new century may be only

desperate to escape this one.

MRS. SMITH

Flee our beloved century? Why, that would be like leaving

ones home of a hundred years. And shall we all not arrive

in the next one at the same time no matter how much or how

little we burn to go ahead?

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Perhaps not everyone has such a contented home that they

would stay as long as they might.

MRS. SMITH

It will be like a gold rush? A few men from every town,

those who are wanderers anyway or who have no family and no

prospects, will go off at first. Soon, word will come back

from the departed that the creekbeds in the twentieth

century are choked with nuggets. Then follow the men with

their families and all possessions in wagons. Except we did

not all go West, but we will all be heaved into the next

century, wagon or no.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

That...is just as it was.

MRS. SMITH

Father Smith. You were a forty-niner?

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

No, dear, I never had that kind of wanderlust.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Father means the great conflict. The war for the Union. Is

that not right, sir?

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Drink your punch. And you, madam, your beer.


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MRS. SMITH

I shall. And you had better wet your throat, for I sense

the imminence of a tale.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

A story? Who shall tell us a story?

MRS. SMITH

Why, you shall. I have yet to meet a veteran of the great

conflict who did not have a story. A very long story.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

(Shaking his head.)

Then let me be the first. It was so long ago, and so

uneventful.

MRS. SMITH

You have high standards. I have only memories of stiflingafternoons at Madame Souvenlikes, memorizing Latin speeches

and French couplets. That was uneventful. One distant

cannon's blast will suffice for me.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Even if I had so much as a far off artillery barrage in my

addled old brain, why should you want to hear of it now? In

your condition; on this evening some are devoting to

looking to a better future?

MRS. SMITH

Then you do have a tale, but you will not tell it because I

am with child? You are to consider that it is a natural

state for a woman, and I intend to be thus encumbered for

the next several years. Then when will I hear your

experiences? What will I have to tell of you to my children

and they to their children unless you give me a history? I

come into this family from a far distance. All that I know

of you you must yourself tell me. It is hardly fair that

you should know everythimg about my short life, and I know

nothing of your full life.

(MR. SMITH, SENIOR goes tothe window and speaks as if

adressing someone outside.)

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Whenever this new century comes, I pray God that the young

will finally take the occasion to consider all those past

we labor so to educate them about. If they but attended to

the least part of what all the countless young men were


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calling out to them as they died.... The youth yet unborn

will know that ancient men, supposedly wise and grown

impartial through time's attenuation of passion, are no

more than crotchety fools all too ready to take offense at

slights the young would laugh away. But who must leave

their homes when the bugle calls? Not the old men, but the

callow obedient young.

I enlisted in the cavalry, Company C of the 32nd Illinois.

Beowulf was my horse's name. He was a roan stallion,

fifteen hands high and as fast as an antelope. It was 1863,

in the fall. We had new carbine rifles and the latest

revolvers. Our saddles still smelled like the tannery, and

they sent us to guard a supply train coming through the

Cumberland Gap, right where a rebel division with two years

of fighting behind them were raiding. I'll not trouble you

with the maneuverings or disposition of forces leading to

it, but we were taken. Most of the company was killed.Beowulf was shot three times. I asked a rebel sargent to

finish him for me as a merciful favor.

We were marched south. Some of the time we were packed into

railroad cars. In the heart of one of the bitterest winters

anyone could recall, we arrived in Georgia. They had built

a crude stockade fence in a meadow outside of a town called

Andersonville, big enough to hold ten thousand men close

packed. But the confederacy could not even feed its own

troops, let alone enemy prisoners, so the green rinds of

bacon quit coming in very soon. Twenty thousand men, and

still they came. The gates opened one time each day for the

grimy bread like stones and mush as much insect as corn.

Thirty thousand men, poured atop one another and still they

came in. One year after I was captured, the pen held forty

thousand men who shared the black water from one stagnant

creek.

God was traveling in Europe for two years, I think. Perhaps

He was lying about in Venice or Paris; He was surely not in

Georgia. We had corn meal, very coarse and unsalted for our

manna, for all our fervent praying. Do you know what a

constant diet of corn meal does to the human body? We wouldhave chewed grass like goats if they would only have let us

a little way beyond the fence. Your knees and elbows swell

up and ache all day and night so you cannot sleep. Any tiny

nick or scratch will not heal, worse than that, old scars

open themselves back up as though remembering their birth.

But the end comes when your teeth loosen themselves from

the jaw and you cannot grind the stony meal with them any

longer. And then because there is no milk or gruel or


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Mother's soft white bread, you stretch out in your small

patch of stinking mud and leave your wretched body and

cares behind. They buried them in a single long pit. Not

even the rebs had the energy to dig graves for them all.

How many thousand died? You can go to Washington and look

it up. It's all there, in the trial records, because they

tried and hung the bastard who ran the place. His defense

was that he, a simple Major, was obeying the orders of his

superior officer, as though he could not look each and

every day through the planks and see the Hell on earth that

it must be every human's duty to prevent.

And so he was hung, but it gave no comfort to the twelve

lads from Company C of the 32nd Illinois who were in an

unmarked ditch in the Georgia clay. Two of us made it out.

The other one was my friend Ned Barclay. They took a

picture of him when we got to the hospital at Annapolis,

after the surrender. He terrified the doctors - battlefieldsurgeons all. Once they cut his rags away to see his two

arms ending in stumps still full of maggots feeding on the

gangrene, and his knees like melons and his legs that you

could touch your fingers around. A cancer had eaten away

the bottom of his jaw, and he weighed no more than the

rifle I had lost an eternity before. I know, because I

carried him in my arms like a bundle of kindling wood out

of the stockade and laid him in the train that took us

north.

The day after they took his picture, he quit breathing. I

think he was holding on so that picture could be made. He

probably had the same feeling I had for two years - that

this was one tale no one would want to believe.

That is probably why I have little fondness for this

nineteenth century and wish it to be damned to Hell and

gone.

(He walks to the door and

leaves. MR. and MRS. SMITH

are motionless for a long

moment.)

MRS. SMITH

My dear, I do not mean this as a reproach, but...why did

you not tell me...?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

My dear, because I did not know until this minute. I

thought he was in the cavalry, but that.... I have never


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heard him speak of it. I wonder that he told you.

MRS. SMITH

He was talking to you, husband, and you alone. I was an

eavesdropper. But perhaps you do not realize yet the

particular fear which engulfs the parent. Perhaps you will

have to wait until the dear babe is in your arms, whereas I

have had it since the first tentative little kick, this

fear that you have made a grievous error to introduce the

helpless loved one into a wicked uncaring world.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

I am no babe.

MRS. SMITH

Perhaps to a father, the son retains some part of the

infant, needing protection and a shielding love, until one

end of that bond lies in a grave. I am of a very rigidopinion that he has just tried to apologise for exposing

you to a great many injustices which are not his fault at

all.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

I yield to your perspicacity. You see things around here

more clearly than I. I have only one correction to your

views. I do not have to wait until our beautiful darling is

out and about to be filled with apprehension about the

course which history seems to be set upon. You see this

blithering congregation out there - I am not so annoyed by

their mistaken calendar-watching as I am by what it

portends. If you take any one of them aside, alone, he will

admit, yes, that the first century began with the birth of

our Lord which began the year one and so the year one

hundred was the one hundreth year of our history and thus

the last year of the first century. And they will

cheerfully admit the same counting by one hundred years

leads us to the present night and the inescapable

conclusion that the twentieth hundred years, the twentieth

century, will begin one year from tonight. Not this

evening. Yet in a mass, they cry out for a celebration

because the year begins with a double naught. Are they tooimmature to wait one single year? Are they willfully

denying the truth just so as not to miss a glass of spirit?

I tell you, Mrs. Smith, that so many of our fellows should

pass upon the fact so as to seek indulgence does not bode

well for the coming century.

MRS. SMITH

You will excuse me if I will point out to you an obvious


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thought. The Hebrews have their own number for this year,

the Chinese another, and the ghosts of the Maya, the Aztec,

the ancient Egytians, the modern Hindu and Muslim. I would

be amazed if tonight most of the world were sound asleep

with no thoughts at all upon the significance of the year.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Let those happy natives slumber in peace while they may,

for I hear across the way there a number of white men who

will soon fall upon them to take away their land,

possessions, and gods. Now they clamor in false

celebration. They have convinced themselves of a fraud,

surrendered their reason without reservation. They are

fertile land waiting only for some modern tyrant, a

Napoleon of their twentieth century, to rouse them into

ever larger demonstrations, start them with ever increasing

lies.

But tonight is suddenly redeemed. A family mystery has been

solved.

MRS. SMITH

The clock?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Bother the clock. My greatgrandfather came to America to

make his living as a master compounder. That is to say, he

was a mixer of powder. He rolled black grains of saltpeter,

charcoal, and sulfur. Much as we still do to this day, but

his concoctions were deadly serious. He never tipped

strontium nor cobalt into his mill. Smith's powder made the

best fine red-mark grain for blasting and cannon, and he

taught his secrets to my grandfather, and my grandfather

taught them to my father. But after the great war for the

Union, father gave up the military side of the business and

changed most of the mill over to our firecrackers,

skyrockets, Roman candles, fiery patriotic displays. All

the many devices we sell to make a bang and a flash in

innocence. I never knew until this moment that he quit

supplying material of war not from financial intelligence

but rather from moral compunction.

MRS. SMITH

But you still sell to the mines and the railroads.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Of course, my darling, and that brings us a fair return,

but don't you see the mad grandness of his decision? He

risked his whole inherited property, his livelihood and


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life's work by turning his back on the obscene profits to

be made from the Department of War. Do you think that the

battleship Maine exploded because her powder was stabilized

first-quality red grain? Do you think that Teddy's rough

riders chose to fire government-issue cartridges filled

with charges so adulterated that their rifles clogged after

a dozen smoky, fizzing rounds? We are not the only

manufacturer of powder, but we are now the only one which

does not slink into Washington in the shadow of every

jingoistic cry from Hearst's yellow sheets. We are the only

one which does not own a Senator or two to ferry gold to

the Secretary of War so that we might barrel up the

sweepings from our factory floor and ship it off to cavalry

and frigate amid the teary-eyed fanfare of great patriotic

huzzahs.

(He goes and puts on his

coat.)

MRS. SMITH

Please do not-

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Never mind me. I am not going to tame the rabble to my

view. Not this night. I am going to find my father and take

back every bit of abuse I am entered for upon his books.

(He leaves. She lies back,

listening to the crowd noise.

Her back is to the door, so

when it opens, she hears it

but does not see MR. SMITH,

SENIOR step quietly inside.)

MRS. SMITH

Mr. Smith?

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

The same, but I presume not the desired one?

MRS. SMITHFather Smith! Did you meet your son outside?

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

No, I did not. Has he deserted you?

MRS. SMITH

He went out to find you.


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MR. SMITH, SENIOR

I see. He went north toward the festivities, but I was to

the south, in the garden.

MRS. SMITH

At this hour in the dark garden? I trust you did not

stumble over a hedge or turn your ankle upon a stone?

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Thank you, no. I was there for the darkness, you see. And I

came back to beg your forgiveness. I was beastly rude to

you both. Try as I might, I do play the cranky old fool.

MRS. SMITH

Never in life, my dear. Now go and find your son before he

causes a row.

MR. SMITH, SENIORI should think he will be back to look in on you before I

might run him down in the crowd. I am amazed he left you

alone at all. Not that I would judge him at all, mind you,

but he has made you his devotion these several months -

running his duties at the plant by notes and drawings, and

quite neglecting his poker and shooting fellows. But we do

understand his thinking, don't we?

MRS. SMITH

I am sure. Don't I? His thinking would be his boundless

love for his unborn child. With some sliver left over for

me, I do hope.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Why.... He never told you. Of course not. He would not put

that burden upon you for fear....

MRS. SMITH

I don't understand.

(He comes over and rests his

hand on her shoulder.)

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

His mother. My dear, dear wife. She bled with the delivery

and kept bleeding and kept bleeding. It could not be

stopped. A pink bawling baby at her breast, she white as a

lily and the bed glistening red.

(MRS. SMITH bursts into

tears.)


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MR. SMITH, SENIOR

I am sorry. I should not have presumed to tell you.

MRS. SMITH

When am I to be allowed to know these things of my own

family? I have been here only this one year, but must I not

know these things about you, my new loved ones?

(MR. SMITH, JUNIOR enters,

alarmed by the sight of her

distress.)

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Darling, what trouble?

MRS. SMITH

(Composing herself.)Nothing at all. Tears of joy-

(Wide-eyed, she rises up in

her seat and brings both hand

to her belly.)

MRS. SMITH

Oh, my! I believe- yes, my water. It has broken.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

No, no, no. Impossible. You are a month away! It's too

early.

MRS. SMITH

I agree, yet there it is.

(She contorts from a painful

contraction, biting her lip.)

MRS. SMITH

Oh! The child cannot read a calendar!

MR. SMITH, SENIORI shall ring the doctor.

MRS. SMITH

He is out of town until the day after tomorrow.

(She has another

contraction.)


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21

MRS. SMITH

By then we will be parents and grandparent.

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Virginia Largent is a midwife. They are across the way at

the party.

(He runs out the door. MRS.

SMITH rises slowly to her

feet. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR sees

her intent and helps her up.)

MRS. SMITH

Then I am off to my bed. Tell me, dear husband, is it the

bed you were born in?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

No, it is new. Do you mind?

(They advance slowly to and

up the stairs.)

MRS. SMITH

Strangely, I do not. Oh, dear, I think I have quite ruined

the sofa. I am too blunt, too forward and crude, but the

pain has drive all my modesty far away before its cruel

advance. Soon I will be in be in bed with a strange woman

working her trade upon my delicate....

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

You have been introduced to Mrs. Largent. Her husband is

the day foreman.

MRS. SMITH

Husband, you comfort me greatly.

(They climb out of sight. The

room is empty for a moment

with only the distant sound

of the party unabated,

ignorant of the crisis. ThenMR. SMITH, SENIOR reenters in

a hurry, followed close

behind by MR. LARGENT, a

short swarthy man, and MRS.

LARGENT, a thin woman taller

than her husband. She sizes

up the room, sweeps past them

and hustles up the stairs.)


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22

MRS. LARGENT

(Off stage.)

Thank you. Yes. Good bye. Good bye.

(MR. SMITH, JUNIOR appears,

coming down the stairs as if

propelled by a push. He

checks his progress and takes

a step back up.)

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Will I fetch water? Bandages?

MRS. LARGENT

(Off stage.)

A basin of warm water. Let someone else bring it.

(MR. SMITH, JUNIOR comes

slowly down the stairs and

sinks into an armchair.)

MR. LARGENT

Never worry, Mr. Smith. Aggie has brought many into the

world and she tells me she has yet to drop one.

(MR. SMITH, JUNIOR glares at

him.)

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Mr. Largent has eleven children.

(There is a long awkward

silence.)

MR. SMITH, SENIOR

Son, it's time for our display. Give Mrs. Smith my

blessings.

(He leaves. MR. LARGENT, whohas been standing quietly,

sits nervously on the edge of

the sofa. Another long

silence, then the sharp crack

of a skyrocket and its light

reflected into the room. MR.

LARGENT runs to the window.)


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23

MR. LARGENT

Will you have a gander at that? That was the new Deluxe

Heaven Fire, the quarter charge with sodium. One of your

best, Mr. Smith.

(Another boom, red light

casting his shadow into the

room.)

MR. LARGENT

There's your Blessed Nova! Look at the cesium! How it fires

the sky! Brilliant work!

(The crown claps, whistles,

cheers. MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

comes over to the window.

Another report, flash ofwhite and green.)

MR. LARGENT

Oh, the Perseid Necklace! Sapphire and diamond! My very

best congratulations, sir!

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

The credit is all yours, Mr. Largent. They would be only my

beautiful dreams without form but for you and your most

valuable craftsmen.

(A door opens off stage

above.)

MRS. LARGENT

(Off stage, above.)

Where is our water? Warm water, mind you - not scalding.

Just boiled and let stand to cool. But not near any open

window. You know the evil of the winter vapors about. And a

very sharp knife. D'you hear?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

(Racing to the stairs.)A knife?

MR. LARGENT

A most usual implement in these matters - do not trouble

your mind. I shall fetch the water. I know how she likes

it.

(He goes out the door stage


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24

left.)

MRS. SMITH

(Off stage, above.)

Dear heart and father-to-be, your rockets are unspeakably

magnificent.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

I thank you, but should you be so excited?

MRS. SMITH

(Off stage, above.)

You cannot know how I crave any distraction now.

MRS. LARGENT

(Off stage, above.)

Please - we must have quiet! Where is my water?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Shall I have the display stopped? Is there any trouble?

MRS. LARGENT

No, No. I mean to have the patient lie still rather than

trying to stand up in her birthing bed to see a firework a

little better. Still, these crashes are prefered to a

gaggle of mothers and grandmothers hovering about, each one

offering up an unfailing remedy, a score of old family

secrets and potions and spells.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Then all goes well?

MRS. LARGENT

(Off stage, above.)

Well and most rapid.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Too rapid?

(The door above is slammed

shut. Several loud cracks andflashes close together. A

short cry of pain from off

stage, above. MR. LARGENT

comes back bearing a basin,

nods to MR. SMITH, JUNIOR,

amd hurries up the stairs. He

reappears, smiling.)


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25

MR. LARGENT

Shan't be long now. The New Year and a new child. What

could be more happy?

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

I bless you for your sentiment, but forgive me this answer

to that question. It might be better if the child were not

brought into a world where so many surrender reason for

self-gratification.

MR. LARGENT

Still put out by the new century people, eh? I say you're

better off ignoring the lot of them.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

What? Were you not there in the midst of the partying not

long ago, preparing to celebrate a false and dangerouslyfoolish moment?

MR. LARGENT

Oh, yes. But I pass no judgement. A party is a party, I

say. Live and let live. We'll have another one next year on

the true night. Soon it will be midnight and all's well,

eh?

(MR. SMITH, JUNIOR turns

to the window where he

looks up at the

unstopping aerial

bombardment.)

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

The dreaded chime moves upon us. I thought I would have a

soliloquy at the ready, a raving denunciation worthy to

move the shade of the Bard. Down with the goddamn blind,

the greedy, the cattle too simple to work out for

themselves when one hundred years should be truly over. But

I am drained. I have nothing left inside but prayer for

this child and all those to follow, God willing. Keep them

from the mad erratic desires of the populace. Shelter themuntil they can be of age and wisdom to break with this

denial of reason and rule their world with logic and

justice for a period of one hundred years, which they and

all their world will know is not ninety-nine. And when my

children's children's children have guided this world into

that next great divide, the millennium itself, all will be

joined in agreement on that most wonderful night in the

winter of the year of our Lord 2001 that another thousand


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years is granted this tired callow race. For the New Year

of the year 2000 will have passed with but the usual

clamor. The ignorant, the foolish, the disingenuous

hucksters - all will be distant memories by that far-off

time-

(A bang louder than the

previous few cuts him off.)

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

These begin the cannons.

MR. LARGENT

That's right. Two dozen half-charges with potassium, then

the same with three-quarter charges. Elevating through the

series, timed right up to end with your masterpiece, the

twelve stroke of full charges ending with your Ominous

Beast, the blessed eighteeen charger, fit to end any epochupon, I say. It's the largest load we ever tried to lift up

off the ground-

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Wait. Did you say eighteen? My Ominous Beast?

MR. LARGENT

Eighteen, just as you drawn it out. We had to lay on a

special casing to fit it all in.

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

No! No! It was one point eight! Eighteen charges is

insanity!

MR. LARGENT

Eighteen it was, clear as day-

(Bombs begin to go off, a

slow rolling braodside of

cannon fire and white

flashing in the sky. MR.

SMITH, JUNIOR leans out the

window and begins to scream.)

MR. SMITH, JUNIOR

Father! Stop th-

(A shrieking detonation

shakes the house. A blinding

flash bleaches everything and

everyone.)


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stairs, wiping her hands.)

MR. LARGENT

Look at this, Mother. It is the queerest thing.

MRS. LARGENT

What, Father?

MR. LARGENT

This old clock. It has been stopped for thirty years and

more and now it is running. Hear it tick? The last blast

must have brought it back to the living world.

MRS. LARGENT

That awful rocket of yours left my ears numb, you old fool.

Why did you make such a thing? Not only did it ring to wake

the dead, it fairly popped the child right out of its

mother and into my distracted hands.

MR. LARGENT

That was just our newest rocket, Mother. I think we will

sell them right and left after that kind of advertising.

But look at this! Is it not the omen of the world?

MRS. LARGENT

Omens, excuse me, be damned.

(They exit.)

END

Double Naught: A Play in One Act

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Transcript of Double Naught: A Play in One Act