(Philosophically) Well . . . that’s how it goes.
He ambles back to the telephone, picks it up, listens. So I do not yell, threaten, or rouse my blood.
He holds the phone out toward the audience so it can hear the tumult and the shouting inside the earpiece.
Who would hear me?
He hangs up. Silence. The pub lights go out. The pub vanishes.
While I’m waiting at the old house way out in the Irish wild, I take a little drink (Drinks), get into my coat and cap (Does so), and go out (Goes) into the night to look at the clear stars. Until at last, down through the night forest the nineteen-thirty-one Chevrolet comes thrashing, peat-turf-colored on top like Mike himself, and inside the old car—
Through the darkness from stage left comes MIKE, gliding on a car seat with an apparatus to hold the steering wheel. The car, no more than seat, steering wheel, doors, circles the stage. From it comes the gasping, choking sound of a very old vehicle indeed, MIKE and his framework auto stop dead-center stage. The engine, with a hiccup, strangles and dies.
Mike?
MIKE (waving easily) None other!
THE YOUNG MAN opens the car door. Ain’t it a fine warm evenin’?
THE YOUNG MAN (hesitates; rubs jaw) Mike . . . ? Have you ever visited Sicily or Spain? The south of France?
MIKE No, sir.
THE YOUNG MAN Paris, the north of France, even?
MIKE
I guess you’d say the furthest south I’ve ever been is the Tip-perary shoreline, sir.
THE YOUNG MAN I see.
He gets in. He looks at MIKE, breathes the air, exhales, slams the door.
Well . . . it’s a fine warm evening, Mike.
MIKE You hit it right on the head, sir!
We hear the motor roar, shadows and stars move on the scrim behind them, the men’s bodies bounce a little.
THE YOUNG MAN Mike, how’ve you been since?
MIKE (wheeling the car slow and easy)
Ah, I got me health. Ain’t that all-and-everything, with Lent comin’ on tomorra?
THE YOUNG MAN (muses) Lent. What will you give up for Lent, Mike?
MIKE
I been turnin’ it over. (Sucks the cigarette which hangs from his lip until his face glows cherry-red) And why not these terrible things ya see in me mouth?
THE YOUNG MAN Cigarettes?
MIKE
Dear as gold fillings and a dread congester of the lungs they be! Put it all down, add ’em up, and ya got a sick loss by the year’s turnin’, ya know. So ya’ll not find these filthy creatures in me face again the whole time of Lent—and, who knows, after!
THE YOUNG MAN Bravo!
MIKE (suspicious at this outburst; glancing over) I see you don’t smoke yourself.
THE YOUNG MAN Forgive me.
MIKE
For what! Bravo, says I to meself if I can wrestle the Devil’s habit two falls out of three!
THE YOUNG MAN Good luck, Mike.
MIKE And do you know something? I’ll need it!
We hear the motor roar. The stars over Ireland swirl this way and that behind the car moving in darkness. At this point, THE YOUNG MAN quietly rises up and steps down from the car and addresses the audience.
THE YOUNG MAN
Well, now! We’re on our way! But I want to make a few points . . .
He reaches out and with one hand swings the car about so it points its hood and bumpers stage left. The car purrs happily on, MIKE at the wheel, smoking and humming to himself.
Look upon Mike. The most careful driver in all God’s world, including any sane, small, quiet, butter-and-milk producing country you’d want to name. Mike, all innocence—a saint!— when compared to those drivers who switch on paranoia each time they fuse themselves to their bucket seats in Los Angeles, Mexico City, or Paris!
We hear various cars roar by, see flashes of light, hear honking of horns, MIKE philosophically watches the imaginary cars pass, waving them on with calm good nature.
Compare him to those blind men who, forsaking tin cups and white canes, but still wearing their Hollywood dark glasses, laugh insanely down the Via Veneto in Rome, shaking brake-drum linings like carnival serpentine out their race-car doors!
During the above we hear the approach of a carnival of cars, sput-sputs, hornets, wasps, swarms of big and little blasters and blowers, and mixed with it hilarious voices, shouting, many horns: picnic day at Indianapolis Speedway.
MIKE smiles at it all, blinking gently, driving along between the bogs. The voices, horns, motors avalanche away into silence.
THE YOUNG MAN circles the car, turning it till MIKE faces another way, before he continues the lecture.
But Mike, now . . . See his easy hands loving the wheel in a slow clocklike turning . . .
The car makes a vast, lovely swirl around a bend in the road— we can guess as much by the magical rotation of MIKE’S arms.
Listen to his mist-breathing voice all night-quiet as he charms the road . . .
MIKE (singing) “As I was walking Through Dublin City . . . Around the hour of twelve at night . . .”
THE YOUNG MAN
… his foot a tenderly benevolent pat on the whispering accelerator . . .
MIKE (singing softly) “I saw a maid, So fair was she . . .”
THE YOUNG MAN . . . never a mile under thirty, never two miles over . . .
MIKE (singing) “. . . combing her hair by candlelight.”
THE YOUNG MAN steps back into the car and settles himself, looking kindly on this older man.
THE YOUNG MAN
Mike, Mike, and his steady boat gentling a mild sweet lake where all Time slumbers. Look: compare. And bind such a man to you with summer grasses, gift him with silver, shake his hand warmly at each journey’s end.
MIKE {reaching for the hand brake) Here we are! The Royal Hibernian Hotel!
THE YOUNG MAN What a fine lilting name!
MIKE (thinks on it) The Royal Hibernian Hotel! Sure, it falls right off the tongue!
THE YOUNG MAN climbs OUt.
THE YOUNG MAN It does. See you tomorrow, Mike!
The car drives off into darkness.
MIKE God willing!!
The car is gone, THE YOUNG MAN turns and walks in a grand circle, vanishing for a moment behind a curtain but reappearing on the instant, checking his watch.
THE YOUNG MAN
Now. Let twenty-three hours of sleep, breakfast, lunch, supper, late nightcap pass, and here I come again, another midnight . . .
He suits word to action, going in and coming out the door far stage right.
Out the door of that Georgian mansion, to tread down the steps to feel Braillewise in fog for the car which I know bulks there.
The stage has darkened during part of this speech, and in the dark, unseen by the audience, the car has returned, MIKE in it, to center stage. We hear the car faintly now. The lights are beginning to come up as THE YOUNG MAN gropes forward.
MIKE Ah, there you are, sir!
THE YOUNG MAN Mike. (To the audience) I climb in. I give the door its slam.
He slams the door. And then . . .
The car gives a great spasming jerk, THE YOUNG MAN grabs his hat, grabs the dashboard, grabs MIKE’S knee.
Mike!
With a thunderous roar, the car is off, vibrating. The sound is furious. The black background behind the car rushes and flurries with lights and shadows; the car spins and turns.
Mike!
MIKE (smiles benevolently) Yes, sir.
THE YOUNG MAN Mike!
MIKE Yes, sir!
THE YOUNG MAN (staring) Sixty miles an hour, Mike.
MIKE Seventy!
THE YOUNG MAN Now it’s seventy-five!
MIKE Is it!
The Young Man Eighty
Mike (looks) So it is.
The Young Man Eighty-five! Can that be right?
Mike It is, it is.
The car turns in a great thunder of shadowy light, in huge river-ings of hill and meadow thrown on the backdrop.
THE YOUNG MAN leaps out and watches the car with MIKE bent over the wheel gripping it hard, his smile a leer.
It is, it was, indeed! There went Mike and me with him! Ninety full miles an hour! From the blazing mouth of the cannon we bounced, skidded, cast ourselves in full stoning ricochet down the paths, over the bogs, through the trees! I felt all Ireland’s grass put down its ears when we, with a yell, jumped over a rise!
MIKE Ninety-five! Do you see that! Ninety-five!
The car whirls, rushes.
THE YOUNG MAN Mike, I thought—Mike!
MIKE puffs his cigarette feverishly. Pink light comes and goes on his creased face.
Mike was changed as if the Adversary himself had squeezed and molded and fired him with a dark hand. There he was, whirling the wheel roundabout, over-around, here we frenzied under trestles, there knocked crossroad signs spinning like weathercocks! I studied Mike’s fine face. A fine face no longer!
He moves close. The motor sounds die away so we can hear better, study better. The car still rocks and turns slightly this way and that while THE YOUNG MAN philosophizes, standing beside it, perhaps pointing in at MIKE’S face with a flashlight.
The wisdom drained from it. The eyes, neither gentle nor philosophical. The mouth neither tolerant nor at peace. It was a face-washed raw, a scalded peeled potato.
Thunder up for a moment. Flashing lights, MIKE leans avidly forward. The thunder fades, THE YOUNG MAN is back in the car now.
MIKE (loud, raucous) Well, how you been since, sir!
THE YOUNG MAN Mike, your voice! It’s changed!
MIKE Changed?!
THE YOUNG MAN (to the audience)
A clarion, a trumpet, all iron and brassy tin! Gone the warm fire. Gone the gentle grass. (To MIKE now) Mike, has a dire thing come into your life, a sickness, a sorrow, a sore affliction?
MIKE (amazed, loud) Now why would you think that?
THE YOUNG MAN (touches the car) And, Mike, is this the same car you drove last night?
MIKE None other!
THE YOUNG MAN (to the audience)
But it was changed, too.
