“John Henry’s Hammer”
by David Byrne and Sean MacPhee
All guys are girls, all girls are guys! Act accordingly!
4 girls, one guy? (but playing the opposite sex)
Dramatis Personae:
BRAD “RED” KORJCZYK - a man at the Museum. Doesn’t like museums.
MERRIC KOLEYNA - a man who likes fish and seafaring mammals
RAPUNZEL EUSTICE XEL’NAGA, called PUNZEL - a pretty lass of twenty-nine years, is embarrassed at having a boy’s middle name. All lines, except at the end, delivered in a bloodcurdling scream.
LEFT - one of the museum robbers
RIGHT - the other museum robber
Proper Props:
Green flyswatter
John Henry’s Childhood Hammer
a knapsack
rope
(lights fade up)
(Open, MERRIC and RED are seated in adjacent bathroom stalls situated in center stage. RED is to MERRIC’s right and MERRIC is to RED’s left. RED has a knapsack. Offstage right, PUNZEL screams like a girl as per the gender laws of this play. PUNZEL screams a loud terrified foreboding scream.)
MERRIC: So, did you see the blue whale on the third floor? That was pretty neat.
RED: Yeah, (draws out “yeah”, mingled with a small, weathered sigh) My kids love that thing.
MERRIC: (facing RED’s direction) Oh yeah? You know, an adult blue whale can grow as long as three school buses! (pauses, grinning) And weigh as much as four-hundred thousand pounds! (pauses longer, grin slips, looks down, pats a nervous beat on his thighs with his hands, then quickly faces RED’s direction and blurts out, perky and excited by the information:) And that’s as much as twenty-four African elephants!
RED: (obviously bored throughout MERRIC’s fact-spewing, looks towards MERRIC’s stall for a moment of it, then turns to look towards the opposite stall) You read that, too? (curls forward on his legs and squints, to read something on the stall wall)
MERRIC: Yeah, but I’m more of a Manatee man myself.
RED: (still squinting at the wall) Heh, bet you didn’t read this: “Antsy for a Nancy? Make it fancy! 862 268 4574.”
MERRIC: (titters) Oh, let me get out my PDA and-
RED: (interrupting, in a very serious tone) No, man, you don’t want to do that. (pauses, shaking head) Not with Nancy. (longer pause) Not the Nancy I knew.
PUNZEL: (offstage right) FAITH AND BEGORRA, THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!
MERRIC: (blinks twice, allowing outcry to sink in) You know what I always used to like? Those 3D puzzles.
RED: (turning back to stage right stall wall, squinting and reading) I hate ‘em. (reads the stall wall) “Ichthyologists know where the hole is”.
MERRIC: C’mon, Red, how come you don’t like 3D puzzles?
RED: They’re too whimsical. Here’s another number. “Tough landlord? Han Solo owe you money from a botched smuggling run? Bitchy girlfriend? Need an affordable bounty hunter? Hit up the hit man, at 814 404 6632. (mock darkly) Ask for Hive.”
MERRIC: I would love to kill my landlord! Ha ha, just kidding. But he’d be better off dead. His wife doesn’t respect him, and he has absolutely no practical skills at all, y’know, I mean, he’s sort of an idiot, really. And whenever he tries to fix anything, he only breaks it more, y’know, or breaks some other part of the house. I’m like, “Hey dipshit, a hammer doesn’t fix everything”, y’know? But I don’t say that to him. You know, because he does rent me my apartment, and I don’t really want to move anywhere else, but… he also doesn’t like my fish. He really should die. What was Hive’s number?
RED: (distractedly) What? Hive? (paws at the air to wave away flies) God damn flies. Probably breeding in the toilet bowl.
MERRIC: Really? (shrugs) I haven’t noticed. Hey Red, you might say it’s like a Hive of flies in here, right?
RED: (speaks coldly and directly) No I wouldn’t. Flies don’t live in hives. (Reaches into his knapsack, and pulls out a green flyswatter) Anyway, Mark-
MERRIC: Merric.
RED: What? (brandishes flyswatter threateningly at MERRIC’s stall, and glares)
MERRIC: My name is Merric, not Mark.
RED: Damn Irish. Anyway, you don’t want a bathroom stall hit man. (after following a fly with his eyes, on the word “hit,” swats it when it “lands” on the floor in front of him. RED stays in this position.) They’re bad news. I used to know this guy Bruce, he called a hit on his boss with one of those, and, well, no one really knows, there was a mix up or something. Anyways, Bruce came home to find his family and all his carpeting, gone. (shrugs) Never saw either again. I think Bruce went crazy or something.
MERRIC: That’s awful.
RED: Man loved his carpet.
MERRIC: (hangs head) Yeah, I just got a few rugs on my floor.
PUNZEL: (From Offstage Right:) OH MY GOD, GET OFF OF ME, GET OFF OF ME!
MERRIC: (Raises head, starts talking directly after PUNZEL begins, MERRIC is speaking more loudly to be heard over the screaming. When the screaming stops in the middle of the sentence, MERRIC keeps speaking loudly, but quickly realizes that he’s being too loud and nervously decrescendos) The floor is genuine hardwood oak, so I don’t want it covered but I don’t want it to get all scuffed… up.
(pause)
RED: Well-
(PUNZEL bursts in, screaming, interrupting RED, and PUNZEL is closely followed by LEFT and RIGHT. LEFT and RIGHT are dressed in black suits and wear sunglasses. They pounce on PUNZEL.)
PUNZEL: You’ll go to hell! You’ll all go to hell!
LEFT: (grabbing PUNZEL by the arm) Hell is just a tool of the man, lady. It’s not compatible with the belief in a benevolent God.
RIGHT: (grabbing PUNZEL by the other arm) Seriously man, how can we judge what is and is not compatible if we are tied to the mortal world?
(LEFT and RIGHT drag a struggling PUNZEL out stage right)
LEFT: (as they’re leaving) Mortal world? Where do you get this stuff?
(Once LEFT and RIGHT and PUNZEL are safely gone, RED and MERRIC feel it is safe to talk again)
RED: Well that should take care of most of the mess.
MERRIC: Ready to go, then?
RED: Yeah.
(MERRIC and RED get up off of their toilets. RED exits his stall, and MERRIC collapses forward onto the floor.)
RED: You shouldn’t be on a bathroom floor, there, Merric. A buddy of mine in the Army licked the floor of a latrine once, on a dare. Around the bottom of the bowl. He screamed for three days before he died.
MERRIC: (looks pitifully up at RED) My legs are numb.
RED: (snaps) My patience is numb.
MERRIC: (baffled) Your pa-? Your patience is numb? That doesn't even make sense!
RED: I'll tell you what doesn't make sense. (Turns and points at audience) Doing dope.
MERRIC: (Stands up with the helping hand of RED) Yeah, that's right Red. (to audience) Hi kids, my name is (insert actor's name), and I play the part of Merric Koleyna in the play "John Henry’s Hammer". But what you don't know about me is that I have a Twelve inch scorpion living in my dorm room. It got that way because of dope. Now I can't shower.
RED: And when you stink your friends are limited.
MERRIC: And like Edward Robert, Earl of Lytton said, (prophetically) "We may live without friends, we may live without books; but civilized man can not live without cooks." (MERRIC and RED look at each other, RED is proud of the recital, MERRIC is deep in thought.) I don't really know how that applies.
RED: (fervently) But we pray in his name!
MERRIC: (whips around to face audience) Because he was an Earl! (Mockingly, points at audience) What are you? Not an Earl, I bet!
(RED and MERRIC shake hands and charge stage right, i.e. exit the bathroom. Shouts from LEFT and RIGHT are heard such as “What’s going on?” and “Who the hell are you?” and “Sweet shade of Jasper!”)
(lights fade to black, or whatever)
END SCENE 1