Tuesday, December 23, 2008

William Gibson, "Butterfingers Angel"

ANGEL. "Hail thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. For thou hast found favor with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. And he shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever: and of his kingdom there shall be no end."

MARY. What?

ANGEL. "Thou hast found favour with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great--"

MARY. What?

ANGEL. Mary, I can't go on repeating this time after--

MARY. Who are you?

ANGEL. I am the angel of the Lord.‘

MARY. (pause) You?

ANGEL. Yes.

MARY. You're just a --

ANGEL. No.

MARY. You said conceive, what?

ANGEL. "Conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and-- "

MARY. Have a baby?

ANGEL. Yes.

MARY. I can't, I haven't got a husband. I haven't even got a boy friend! I hate boys, you must have the wrong Mary.

ANGEL. "The Holy Ghost shall--" I beg your pardon?

MARY. I said you must have the wrong Mary.

ANGEL. Is that possible?

MARY. Possible, there's three Marys just in this building, everybody is named Mary! that's the trouble with this place, people get the same ideas over and over—

ANGEL. Oh, I-- I am sorry--

MARY. What for?

ANGEL. My mistake, I--

MARY. Everybody makes mistakes here.

ANGEL. No, I make too many, it's not only here. They know how I get things wrong, they said this time get it right or don't come back.

MARY. Don't--?

ANGEL. Come back.

MARY. Your nose is sweating!

ANGEL. Yes, when I make a mistake.

MARY. I won't tell anybody, stop sweating.

ANGEL. Thank you. I was looking for--

MARY. Act more confident, for an angel.

ANGEL. I-- had it here--

MARY. Look confident you get more things right, it's how I do, most people don't know the difference anyway--

ANGEL. Apartment 328, Hadeganim Towers.

MARY. Down the hall, take the elevator to the third floor, when you get off go right through the fire doors, second door on your right, door's kind of kicked in.

ANGEL. Yes, you're very confident.

MARY. I ought to be, that's my apartment. (Beat) Oh, my--

ANGEL. Mary.

(beat)

MARY. (finally) You see-- you were right!

ANGEL. Yes.

MARY. (points up) They were wrong!

ANGEL. No.

MARY. Yes, if I haven't got a husband or a boyfriend or--

ANGEL. No.

MARY. --something male--

ANGEL. It's a virgin birth.

MARY. A what?

ANGEL. Listen, Mary. "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing that shall be born of thee--"

MARY. Without even asking me?!

ANGEL. "--shall be called the Son of God. For with God nothing shall be impossible"‘

MARY. I have other plans!

ANGEL. What plans?

MARY. To go to Jerusalem, I'm saving every cent--

ANGEL. You'll go to Jerusalem.

MARY. --to make something of myself!

ANGEL. Mary, be still! I tell you God is to be born of your womb, and live on the earth as a man, and all men shall see in him the love that shakes the stars, and you have other plans?

MARY. I do, I do, give up everything I thought of all my life, for what?

ANGEL. A firstborn Son.

MARY. Diapers!

ANGEL. Who will light the world.

MARY. That's what they all think! Why me?

ANGEL. I have no idea.

MARY. Go back and tell them I said never.

[She stalks out with her wash]

ANGEL. I can't go back! They said-- (But he is alone. He closes his notebook, drops it, and gazes up.) God? God? I don't see what to do. God, it is very dark
on the earth, and if I can't see my way, how can these creatures? They have not much light in them. Oh, I know you know that, it's why your light is to become flesh, so that men will live more joyously in love than in hate, and see one another as themselves, but this-- girl is a brat. God, you can't make a silk purse out of a-- (thinks better of it) Well, I think there's been a mistake, not mine. And if so, and I'm not to come back till it's right, it will be dark here for some time. Is that what you want? God?

[Mary walks back with the washbasket]

MARY. I thought it over. I'm sorry I lost my head, that's how sometimes I think things over. Let's sit down.

ANGEL. Of course.

MARY. I heard what you said.‘

ANGEL. Oh, I am sorry--

MARY. Don't keep apologizing, I am a brat.

ANGEL. I was speaking to someone else--

MARY. I don't think he's out there.

ANGEL. You're an atheist too?

MARY. Did you ever see him out there?

ANGEL. Well, not exactly--

MARY. I thought you were so important.

ANGEL. Oh, no. The important ones are--

MARY. I don't think he's out, I think he's in. I know why it's me.

ANGEL. You do.

MARY. It's to start with me because-- See, I'm not the only brat, there's eighteen in my family, all with black beards except me. It was nineteen but the baby fell off the balcony and died, only she didn't fall, they were drunk and dropped her. It's like living with crazy wolves, you better be a brat. I'm surrounded by morons, I hate everybody I know. And I shouldn't. See one another as themselves, did you make that up?

ANGEL. No.

MARY. So it's to start with me. How do we begin?

ANGEL. It's begun.

MARY. Well, I always get things right, I mean nobody wants a baby with three feet, especially this one. So I-- I'm scared, I never-- never was so scared in all my life, why am I so scared?

ANGEL. Mary.

MARY. Hold my hand! Oh God, let him be healthy and happy, I don't care if he's all that special or even a girl, just let me deserve this baby! Did I say that?

ANGEL. Mary, I'm scared too, hold my hand. It's a-- terrifying thing we--

MARY. Terrifying, what'll I tell my family? They'll kill me in that place--‘

ANGEL. You can't go back there, they--

MARY. I live there, where'll I sleep?

ANGEL. --they throw babies off balconies! I'll speak to Joseph.

MARY. Joseph?

ANGEL. Joseph.

MARY. Joseph--

ANGEL. Mary, from now on I'll take care of you.

MARY. And I'll take care of you, I have to go now--

[She makes for the washbasket, the Angel after her]

ANGEL. No, be careful!

MARY. What?

ANGEL. Don't lift any heavy objects--

MARY. I'm healthy as a whale--

ANGEL. No. (He gets the washbasket from her) I'm responsible for this baby.

MARY. Well. Just don't spill it, please.

ANGEL. Mary, you must be more trusting now--

MARY. I know.

ANGEL. And humble.

MARY. I am humble, it's my strongest point-- (they exit)

Excerpted from "The Butterfingers Angel, Mary and Joseph, Herod The Nut, and the Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree" (1974) by William Gibson - not the science fiction William Gibson, but rather the "Miracle Worker" William Gibson. This scene was used by permission in Pacific Theatre's FIRST CHRISTMAS: AN ENTERTAINMENT, and again in FIRST CHRISTMAS: A THEATRICAL CELEBRATION.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Truman Capote, "A Christmas Memory"

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather!"

The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something, We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together—well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she was still a child. She is still a child.

"I knew it before I got out of bed," she says, turning away from the window with a purposeful excitement in her eyes. " Help me find my hat. We've thirty cakes to bake."


My friend has never been to a picture show, nor does she intend to: "I'd rather hear you tell the story, Buddy. That way I can imagine it more. Besides, a person my age shouldn't squander their eyes. When the Lord comes, let me see him clear." In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry.

Of the ingredients that go into our fruitcakes, whiskey is the most expensive, as well as the hardest to obtain: State laws forbid its sale. But everybody knows you can buy a bottle from Mr. Haha Jones. And the next day, having completed our more prosaic shopping, we set out for Mr. Haha's business address, a "sinful" (to quote public opinion) fish-fry and dancing cafe down by the river. We've been there before, and on the same errand; but in previous years our dealings have been with Haha's wife, an iodine-dark Indian woman with brassy peroxided hair and a dead-tired disposition. Actually, we've never laid eyes on her husband, though we've heard that he's an Indian too. A giant with razor scars across his cheeks. They call him Haha because he's so gloomy, a man who never laughs.

As we approach his cafe (a large log cabin festooned inside and out with chains of garish-gay naked light bulbs and standing by the river's muddy edge under the shade of river trees where moss drifts through the branches like gray mist) our steps slow down. Even Queenie stops prancing and sticks close by. Queenie, our tough little orange and white rat terrier who has survived distemper and two rattlesnake bites. People have been murdered in Haha's cafe. Cut to pieces. Hit on the head. There's a case coming up in court next month.

I knock at the door, Queenie barks, my friend calls: "Mrs. Haha, ma'am? Anyone to home?"

Footsteps. The door opens. Our hearts overturn. It's Mr. Haha Jones himself! And he is a giant; he does have scars; he doesn't smile. No, he glowers at us through Satan-tilted eyes and demands to know: "What you want with Haha?"

For a moment we are too paralyzed to tell. Presently my friend half-finds her voice, a whispery voice at best: "If you please, Mr. Haha, we'd like a quart of your finest whiskey."

His eyes tilt more. Would you believe it? Haha is smiling! Laughing, too. "Which one of you is a drinkin' man?"

"It's for making fruitcakes, Mr. Haha. Cooking. "

This sobers him. He frowns. "That's no way to waste good whiskey."

We pay him with nickels and dimes and pennies. Suddenly, as he jangles the coins in his hand like a fistful of dice, his face softens. "Tell you what," he proposes, pouring the money back into our bead purse, "just send me one of them fruitcakes instead."

"Well," my friend remarks on our way home, "there's a lovely man. We'll put an extra cup of raisins in his cake."

The black stove, stoked with coal and firewood, glows like a lighted pumpkin. Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke. In four days our work is done. Thirty-one cakes, dampened with whiskey, bask on windowsills and shelves.

Who are they for?

Friends. Not necessarily neighbor friends: indeed, the larger share is intended for persons we've met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who've struck our fancy. Like President Roosevelt. Like the Reverend and Mrs. J. C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last winter. Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year. Or Abner Packer, the driver of the six o'clock bus from Mobile, who exchanges waves with us every day as he passes in a dust-cloud whoosh. Or the young Wistons, a California couple whose car one afternoon broke down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on the porch (young Mr. Wiston snapped our picture, the only one we've ever had taken).

Now a nude December fig branch grates against the window. The kitchen is empty, the cakes are gone; yesterday we carted the last of them to the post office, where the cost of stamps turned our purse inside out. We're broke. That rather depresses me, but my friend insists on celebrating—with two inches of whiskey left in Haha's bottle. Queenie has a spoonful in a bowl of coffee (she likes her coffee chicory-flavored and strong). The rest we divide between a pair of jelly glasses. We're both quite awed at the prospect of drinking straight whiskey; the taste of it brings screwedup expressions and sour shudders. But by and by we begin to sing, the two of us singing different songs simultaneously. I don't know the words to mine, just: Come on along, come on along, to the dark-town strutters' ball. But I can dance: that's what I mean to be, a tap dancer in the movies. My dancing shadow rollicks on the walls; our voices rock the chinaware; we giggle: as if unseen hands were tickling us. Queenie rolls on her back, her paws plow the air, something like a grin stretches her black lips. Inside myself, I feel warm and sparky as those crumbling logs, carefree as the wind in the chimney. My friend waltzes round the stove, the hem of her poor calico skirt pinched between her fingers as though it were a party dress.

Enter: two relatives. Very angry. Potent with eyes that scold, tongues that scald. Listen to what they have to say, the words tumbling together into a wrathful tune: "A child of seven! whiskey on his breath! are you out of your mind? feeding a child of seven! must be loony! road to ruination! remember Cousin Kate? Uncle Charlie? Uncle Charlie's brother-inlaw? shame! scandal! humiliation!"

Queenie sneaks under the stove. My friend gazes at her shoes, her chin quivers, she lifts her skirt and blows her nose and runs to her room. Long after the town has gone to sleep and the house is silent except for the chimings of clocks and the sputter of fading fires, she is weeping into a pillow already as wet as a widow's handkerchief.

"Don't cry," I say, sitting at the bottom of her bed and shivering despite my flannel nightgown that smells of last winter's cough syrup, "Don't cry," I beg, teasing her toes, tickling her feet, "you're too old for that."

"It's because I am too old. Old and funny."

"Not funny. Fun. More fun than anybody. Listen. If you don't stop crying you'll be so tired tomorrow we can't go cut a tree."

She straightens up. Queenie jumps on the bed (where Queenie is not allowed) to lick her cheeks. "I know where we'll find real pretty trees, Buddy. And holly, too. With berries big as your eyes. It's way off in the woods. Farther than we've ever been. Papa used to bring us Christmas trees from there: carry them on his shoulder. That's fifty years ago. Well, now: I can't wait for morning."

Morning. Scented acres of holiday trees, prickly-leafed holly. Red berries shiny as Chinese bells: black crows swoop upon them screaming. Having stuffed our burlap sacks with enough greenery and crimson to garland a dozen windows, we set about choosing a tree. "It should be," muses my friend, "twice as tall as a boy. So a boy can't steal the star." The one we pick is twice as tall as me. A brave handsome brute that survives thirty hatchet strokes before it keels with a creaking rending cry.

*

Our next project is the fashioning of family gifts. Tie-dye scarves for the ladies, for the men a homebrewed lemon and licorice and aspirin syrup to be taken "at the first Symptoms of a Cold and after Hunting." But when it comes time for making each other's gift, my friend and I separate to work secretly. I would like to buy her a pearl-handled knife, a radio, a whole pound of chocolate-covered cherries (we tasted some once, and she always swears: "1 could live on them, Buddy, Lord yes I could—and that's not taking his name in vain"). Instead, I am building her a kite. She would like to give me a bicycle (she's said so on several million occasions: "If only I could, Buddy. It's bad enough in life to do without something you want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want them to have. Only one of these days I will, Buddy. Locate you a bike. Don't ask how. Steal it, maybe"). Instead, I'm fairly certain that she is building me a kite—the same as last year and the year before: the year before that we exchanged slingshots. All of which is fine by me. For we are champion kite fliers who study the wind like sailors; my friend, more accomplished than I, can get a kite aloft when there isn't enough breeze to carry clouds.

Christmas Eve afternoon we scrape together a nickel and go to the butcher's to buy Queenie's traditional gift, a good gnawable beef bone. The bone, wrapped in funny paper, is placed high in the tree near the silver star. Queenie knows it's there. She squats at the foot of the tree staring up in a trance of greed: when bedtime arrives she refuses to budge. Her excitement is equaled by my own. I kick the covers and turn my pillow as though it were a scorching summer's night. Somewhere a rooster crows: falsely, for the sun is still on the other side of the world.

"Buddy, are you awake!" It is my friend, calling from her room, which is next to mine; and an instant later she is sitting on my bed holding a candle. "Well, I can't sleep a hoot," she declares. "My mind's jumping like a jack rabbit. Buddy, do you think Mrs. Roosevelt will serve our cake at dinner?" We huddle in the bed, and she squeezes my hand I-love-you. "Seems like your hand used to be so much smaller. I guess I hate to see you grow up. When you're grown up, will we still be friends?" I say always. "But I feel so bad, Buddy. I wanted so bad to give you a bike. I tried to sell my cameo Papa gave me. Buddy"—she hesitates, as though embarrassed—"I made you another kite." Then I confess that I made her one, too; and we laugh. The candle burns too short to hold. Out it goes, exposing the starlight, the stars spinning at the window like a visible caroling that slowly, slowly daybreak silences. Possibly we doze; but the beginnings of dawn splash us like cold water: we're up, wide-eyed and wandering while we wait for others to waken. Quite deliberately my friend drops a kettle on the kitchen floor. I tap-dance in front of closed doors. One by one the household emerges, looking as though they'd like to kill us both; but it's Christmas, so they can't. First, a gorgeous breakfast: just everything you can imagine—from flapjacks and fried squirrel to hominy grits and honey-in-the-comb. Which puts everyone in a good humor except my friend and me. Frankly, we're so impatient to get at the presents we can't eat a mouthful.

Well, I'm disappointed. Who wouldn't be? With socks, a Sunday school shirt, some handkerchiefs, a hand-me-down sweater, and a year's subscription to a religious magazine for children. The Little Shepherd. It makes me boil. It really does.

"Buddy, the wind is blowing."

The wind is blowing, and nothing will do till we've run to a Pasture below the house where Queenie has scooted to bury her bone (and where, a winter hence, Queenie will be buried, too). There, plunging through the healthy waist-high grass, we unreel our kites, feel them twitching at the string like sky fish as they swim into the wind. Satisfied, sun-warmed, we sprawl in the grass and peel Satsuma oranges and watch our kites cavort. Soon I forget the socks and hand-me-down sweater. I'm as happy as if we'd already won the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize in that coffee-naming contest.

"My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when he came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are"—her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone—"just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."


This version of the story was slightly edited from the radio version created by Mr. Capote, who can be heard reading it on "This American Life's Holiday Gift-Giving Guide." The full story can be found here.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Luci Shaw, "December"

December

A forty-eight hour fall with more to come.
Our life suspended. The flakes, heavy and

discrete, grow on roof and rail to loaves of snow.
The generous sky meeting with ground’s gratitude

breeds a pearly light with no shadow. We up the heat
against the forecast’s drop. Voices on the phone agree,

it’s beautifully dangerous. Stay close to home.
Somewhere the repeated, muted sound—a shovel

shifting its soft, square load from a sidewalk—
each scrape a single word in a white poem.

Luci Shaw
12-21-08