The Mission (Scene 1)

by Jay Squires

Cast of Characters

Jay: A young man in his early 20s, sent on a mission by his grandfather. Sensitive and intelligent, he is keenly aware of what could be the terrible product of his mission.
Bett: A woman in her mid-70s. She presents herself with dignity, yet without the vanity often associated with it. At her core, she is honest with herself, which leaves her vulnerable to melancholy over choices not made.

SETTING: The darkness of a predawn. In a small clearing near the plateau at the crest of a mountain, Down Center. A large rock in center, sloping down the rear of it, with a crude seat carved in the front. The “seat” portion faces the audience but angled to the left enough that the sloping rear can be seen. A path, behind the rock, meanders stage left, to the right and left again, on an incline to upstage. Foliage (or the suggestion of same) can be seen on either side of the path on its winding way upstage. Since it is pre-dawn, the stage lights should be dim and the actors’ flashlights will play more prominently.

AT RISE: JAY and BETT are in a clearing, near the crest of the mountain.

Bett: Let’s linger here a while young man
and within my flashlight’s yellow arc,
I’ll watch you lay
one impatient finger-drumming hand
upon the pocks of the rock’s gentler slope;
and while you turn your light on me, I’ll delicately slot
my seven decades of practiced poise
into this perfect granite notch
that the millennia of winter winds
up the western slope
have hollowed for today’s respite.
You smile at my excesses!

(And then she adds)

It’s your Grandpa’s smile.
You know, the way the corners upturn.

Jay: … So I’ve been told.

Bett: Uncanny … Well,
it was here we took our last breather back then,
your grandfather and I …
just as you and I are now.
With but two differences:
there were no roads back then, braceleting the sides of the mountain,
coiling higher and higher to the spot where you parked your car,
leaving us a hike of a paltry mile to where we now take our rest.

(She pauses to give herself a cautious two-fingered prod
above the knee then a tentative squeeze in the fleshier part of her thigh; and then, frowning, she continues):

Bett: Ours, back then, were trim and muscular limbs,
yes! but nonetheless, it took two more hours
to trudge with kerosene lantern for light,
up from the meadowed baseline to this refuge …
having the same goal as now:
to reach the precipice before the dawn.

(And then she is still,
but when her reverie hangs too long in the cool-darkened silence
the young man nudges):

Jay: You counted two differences.
And the second difference, Your Honor?

Bett: Your Honor, ha! In the town below you may address me thus,
and I swear I’ll glow with vagrant pride;
but in these mountains, there is no protocol.
Betty, I was then, and in these mountains, Bett I am still.

(And in the beam of his light
she turns her head and eyes to him
as she throws him the prod):

Bett: You don’t seem to share Jay’s impetuosity.
That is the other difference, you see;
it was his impetuosity
that urged him to go alone
those next hundred yards;

(And she tosses the light’s beam past his shoulder and beyond him)

from this rock to—see?—to where the trail there bends
beyond the scrub and rises to the precipice.

(He follows where her crooked finger points, then
returns his disbelieving eyes):

Jay: Grandpa left you here? He wouldn’t—

Bett: Oh, but he would. And did. But don’t misunderstand.
It was not from lack of caring, but rather an opulence
of caring that sent him on ahead alone to reaffirm
that his imagination’s canvas and palette
were just as he’d left them the week before;
Oh, young man, don’t frown! That part of him
that was, at his core, authentic then
would be blasphemy if not authentic now.
He could no more not do it that day
than could he, on my parents’ porch’s swing
not entwine his hand with mine
and drone a humdrum bramble of mundanities.

(And here she pauses to smile—he thinks
to punctuate the poetic excess of her coinage—
and so he uses the moment to interject):

Jay: Grandpa’d been there first alone?

Bett: He had, and so enrapt
he was by its grandeur that,
despite my most staid and studied protestations,
he obsessed that together
we would climb this mountain
and together would gaze across—

(She repeats to the twin mounds of
spongy pine needles the toes of her shoes
had formed, and then carefully kept apart):

... would gaze across—

[Studying her eyes’ sad vacancy,
the young man half-whispers]:

Jay: “To gaze across that ancient spread …”

Bett: Oh! Jay!

Jay: I shouldn’t have.

Bett: Oh, but yes. It’s just as if—
just now as if—as if I heard a voice
from a half-century before;
But you couldn’t have known—
I saw him throw it, wadded, over the edge.

Jay: I have it.

(And with his finger
he taps his temple):

Jay: I have it.

Bett: Oh, please then, the first lines,
the lines I thought forever were
carved in my memory and now that
porous sponge oozes out just dum da dum da
da-dum da-dum.

Jay: The lines I think your brain is searching for are:
“Let us linger a moment more
I promise then we’ll go;
A moment more to gaze
Across that ancient spread. See?
Those distant and marvelous peaks?
See them there? Those peaks—”

(And with tear-brimmed eyes, she adds):

Bett: …“Which eat endlessly the valley
Somewhere beneath the smoldering plain.”

(For a moment, neither speaks. She daubs her eyes
with a square of linen she drew from her sleeve
while he watches and tries to envision the child
his Grandfather loved. And in a smaller voice
he asks):

Jay: Shall I go on?

Bett: Not now, please.

Jay: As you wish.

Bett: If you don’t mind, I’ll just have you
pry me from the prison of this rock and if I
succeed in straightening out these ancient legs
and convince my egg-shell knees
to bear my weight …

[He moves, smiling, to the front of her and
holds out his hands]

Bett: … then I’ll let you be
my crutch for the final hundred yards.

(Reflectively):

When you’re eighteen—but you know this!—
The step is truer, the lungs fuller, the trail leveler
even when, with forsaken, wounded pride,
I follow alone, mumbling, and grumbling behind.

[And as he guides her toward the trail,
gingerly over the soggy leaves and needles—
her elbow as fragile as a bird in the nest of his palm—
he glimpses the glances
she tries, in the muted light, to hide]:

Bett: Let us agree (she says, at last) the sins of
the grandfather now are visiting the grandson.

(To which he quickly protests):

Jay: But I don’t mind.

(Then, on the incline of the trail
she lays a cool-soft palm upon his arm
and with a voice strained with the fatigue of the climb
she asks, trying to sound, he thinks, oblique and casual):

Bett: How was it Jay mentioned me to you?

Jay: It was after I read his poem.

(Hesitantly, she offers):

Bett: He gave it to you to read?

Jay: He’d published it on a website he subscribed to. I read
dozens of his other things there but
this one seemed somehow truer.

Bett: Truer, you say?

Jay: Truer, yes, or more honest. Most
his stuff was silliness and junk
he wrote to enter contests there.

(At that point, she stops him, not fifty feet
from the graying crest. Turning him toward her,
she holds his shoulders in her hands
and seems to study his face):

Bett: Tell me this, please. I need to know before
we’re there …. Did Jay tell you what he did
after reading me his poem?

Jay: After the poem?

Bett: His cause for flinging that wadded ball of
words over the edge?

Jay: No…

(She is silent, he reckons, a full minute and
as he is about to urge her on to the summit
she releases her grip on his shoulders):

Bett: But he did ask you to find me?

Jay: Yes…

Bett: Allow this foolish old woman one question more:
Is your Grandmother still alive?

Jay: Perhaps. We’ll never know.
Grandpa’s wife, you mean?
Yes, yes she left him
when Dad was only ten.
Grandpa raised my Dad
and Aunt Betty by himself.

Bett: He named her Betty (she says,
not as a question). But then, it’s a common
enough name. And your Dad’s?

Jay: His name? Jay as well—Jay Junior.

Bett: Ah (she says. And then), Here ... as you let me
lean my weight against you these last few yards,
can you suffer one more question?

Jay: Of course I can.

[Then, the last five yards being the steepest
as it widens to the crest—compacted and slick
underfoot—he angles his arm down her back
and clasps her elbow in his palm]:

Jay: We’re too near our goal
to take a nasty fall.

(And he lapses into silence, waiting
for the framing of her question).

Bett: Why …

(she starts, presses her lips together
and starts again)

... I can’t help but wonder why …

Jay: Why what?

Bett: Why didn’t he … (And shaking her head), Is he ill?

Jay: Grandpa? I’m sorry, I—

Bett: He always fancied himself as impervious,
as invulnerable; a touch of fool immortality in his blood. Why—

Jay: I thought you knew.

Bett: I knew? Oh …

[And his arm across her back feels the instant of her insight;
the loose flesh briefly shivers into it,
and were it not for this last incline’s strain on them,
he’d have thought the simultaneous sagging of her knees
to be from the same unsolicited messenger]:

Jay: Here, I’ve got my footing.
We’ll not fall. Lean against me
these last few feet. Here …

(He boosts her up to the level ground
and pulls himself up after her, and
after she doubles over, wheezing and coughing,
she seems to rush to say):

Bett: Of course I knew! Ha! You mean he made you
fulfill a promise he was unwilling to perform this side of the grave?

Jay: He always did love you.

(She turns away, and in a moment says):

Bett: If we are to look out upon the muse
that breathed into his poem
go with me along this leveler trail
and through this ground-clinging fog
that strangely hugs one’s ankles,
hovering there and no higher.

END OF SCENE 1

I hope you enjoyed this first scene and will be gracious enough to read scene 2 when it posts.

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Recognized

Some of you FanStory old-timers might have felt a resonance with something you read five years ago. It's true, another version of this play was written back then but in a different format, though it was still a play. I have since updated it, made some significant changes, and offer now a smoother and better read.

My thanks for the photo by JaromÃ???????Ã??????Ã?????Ã????Ã???Ã??Ã?Âr Kavan on Unsplash

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A Play in Free Verse

The Mission (Scene 1)

by Jay Squires

Cast of Characters

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