The Fear of 13 (NHB Modern Plays) (eBook)

1: LISTEN UP

MAN 1 speaks to the audience – out of time.

MAN 1. Time… can be a blisteringly fast thing, where in the blink of an eye – ten years are gone from your life, but the next week is agony.

It’s like you look at your watch, and instead of a face – it’s a calendar and it flips.

But then you look out the window… and it takes all day for the sun to go down…

I’ve always wanted to tell someone that.

A PRISON GUARD speaks to the audience.

GUARD. LISTEN UP!

I mean, you all should already know this, but I’ll say it again.

No photography, no phone calls, no pagers.

For Chrissakes, just nothing that fucking beeps.

No matter how many times you’ve heard this, there always seems to be one.

And let’s hope you went to the bathroom out in the lobby.

’Cause now that you’re in here, that’s fucking it. You gotta piss, cross your legs.

No cookies, no candies with crinkly-ass wrappers, no chicken chow mein.

Why would you eat in here? Eat at home.

No cigarettes, no crack cocaine, no needles, no drugs, no teddy bears.

If you want a female officer for the final pat-down, I don’t have any free today, so try next week.

JACKIE. Excuse me?

GUARD. All visitors will dress appropriately.

Women, for the love of God, will wear a bra.

JACKIE (to the audience). Did – did he just check if I am? – the fuck?

GUARD. But no bras with underwire, as you may not pass the final metal detector.

Nothing hoochie, nothing with writing – sexual, sarcastic, political, or otherwise.

Visitor last Monday took his sweater off to reveal a T-shirt that said:

‘Surely not everybody was kung fu fighting.’

I’m not sure what that coded message means, but it wasn’t funny, and humor has no place on a shirt.

(To JACKIE.) No pens, no paper.

JACKIE. – sorry, but we-we have special permission from the warden –

GUARD. You don’t.

JACKIE. I – Sorry – I-I think we do.

The GUARD takes JACKIE’s notebook, rips paper out, hands the paper back, keeps the metal binding.

GUARD. No metal.

Okay! You will proceed into your assigned visiting booth, until your Death Row inmate is brought out. You will be informed when visiting time is up.

Lights shift. MEN enter. The GUARD performs a security pat-down on JACKIE.

Arms!

JACKIE (to the audience). The Pennsylvania prison system was developed by the Quakers.

GUARD. Spread ’em.

JACKIE (to the audience). Who – I don’t know if you can tell, but the Quakers aren’t a whole lotta fun.

A hundred and forty men in B-block. Level five, high maximum security. Each of them in solitary.

GUARD. One hour, then time!

Snippets from these one-on-one interviews, in and out of time, not realism. The MEN speak to JACKIE, who sits at a table with a pen and paper.

MAN 4. You! What’s your name again?

JACKIE. You already asked me.

MAN 4. Sorry, I don’t keep things in my head too / good.

JACKIE. Jackie –

MAN 5. I like that name.

JACKIE. Jackie Schaffer –

MAN 5. I’m gonna roll that name in my mouth.

MAN 6. My cell is thirty-eight square feet – bed, sink, no window, no natural / light.

MAN 1. I am in my cell twenty-three hours a day / except –

MAN 4. One hour outside, fucking / bullshit.

MAN 3. One hour a day to exercise by yourself.

GUARD. You’re on Death Row. What do you need exercise for anyway?

MAN 2. And if the guards are being pricks /… or whatever –

GUARD. Hey!

MAN 2. If you have a problem with another guy, they put you both in a cage, knowing as soon as they walk off –

MAN 3 takes a swing and a fight breaks out.

MAN 6. – you’ll beat the shit out of each other.

MAN 4. Guards do it to have some / fun.

MAN 1. Gladiator-ing, they call it.

MAN 2.…Yeah, I mean, I’d say it’s not great.

JACKIE. – nice to meet you, too.

MAN 3. Can I borrow a piece of your paper?

GUARD. No touching the window.

MAN 3. I JUST WANNA GET RID OF MY GUM –

GUARD. Where the fuck did you get gum?

MAN 3. – oh shit.

JACKIE. Hiiii. My name is Jacqueline Schaffer?

I’m here with – with my friend Pamela Tucker? – the lead organizer of an abolitionist group from Pittsburgh?

MAN 4. Why you say everything like a question? Grow some balls.

JACKIE. We. Go around – monthly to visit incarcerated people such as / yourself –

MAN 1. You mean, prisoners on Death Row? It’s okay – I know where I am.

JACKIE. – to, uh, check on their mental state? Since most people live on Death Row for over a decade –

MAN 2. Decade? Shit, I been here sixteen years.

MAN 5. Twelve.

MAN 6. Ever seen the line at the DMV?

That’s to pay a parking ticket.

For the US to execute you, there’s a lot more paperwork.

JACKIE. We’re checking to see if the population of Death Row prisoners is treated fairly… Are you? Treated fairly?

MAN 1. What do you / think?

MAN 6. Fuck / no –

JACKIE. And you just tell me about yourself.

MAN 1. If you really want hear about it, you’ll probably want to know what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kinda crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

JACKIE. That is not your story.

MAN 1. Yes, it is.

JACKIE. That’s Catcher in the Rye.

MAN 1. You’ve read that book…?

JACKIE. – yeah.

MAN 1. I’ve never known anyone who’s read that book.

JACKIE. I’ve never known anyone who hasn’t.

MAN 1. Have you spoken with anyone else here?

JACKIE. You are the sixth person I’ve interviewed at this facility today.

MAN 1. And –

JACKIE. And. The others are – lamenting how the coffee’s mud. They don’t usually open with Salinger.

MAN 1. Have you tasted the coffee?

JACKIE. What’s your name?

MAN 1. Nick. You’re new?

MAN 1 will be called NICK from here.

JACKIE. No.

NICK. No?

JACKIE. Yes. No. Can you tell?

NICK. You’re not wearing a wedding ring.

JACKIE. I’m not married.

NICK. Even the unmarried volunteers wear wedding rings. I think you get harassed less.

GUARD. VISITING TIME IS UP!

JACKIE moves her normal ring to her ring finger.

Alone, JACKIE speaks to the audience.

JACKIE. My friend Pam is the one who convinced me to start volunteering here…

She’s that kind of friend time doesn’t apply to – like she’s a lawyer, and a great mom, and runs literal marathons, and this entire prison volunteer program, and still, somehow, makes overnight oats. I think of myself as a very high-functioning person, but I am not Pam.

GUARD. Arms!

JACKIE.…Pam tells me it’s better not to look up the crimes of the people I’m talking to.

You meet them today, not on the day that got them here.

If I’m supposed to treat them just like anybody else… Pam says it’s better not to know.

GUARD. One hour, starting now.

MAN 2. You don’t know anything about / me.

MAN 3. You can hook me up with some of them conjugals?

JACKIE. No. But Pam, for example, advocated for someone in Muncy. The prison had the wrong spelling of everyone on his visitation list. Eight years – no visitors, because of typos.

NICK. You’re a lawyer?

JACKIE. PhD student.

NICK. In law?

JACKIE. Poetry.

NICK. You gotta be kidding me.

JACKIE. Is that a / problem?

NICK. I like Charles Bukowski as much as the next guy, but poets aren’t who you want working your exoneration.

JACKIE. Are you hoping – to get exonerated?

NICK. I am not hoping for anything.

Beat.

JACKIE. So, tell me your story.

NICK. My story? It’s long and loops around / and –

JACKIE. You could start from the beginning…

NICK. – it’s hard.

JACKIE. Maybe because in life there isn’t necessarily such a thing as a clear beginning?

NICK. There’s always a beginning.

JACKIE. I just mean one thing leads to the next, and that leads to something else, and if you’re not careful you – can wake up an entirely different person than you set out to be.

Beat.

NICK.…The day I arrived maybe?

JACKIE. I’ll just / listen.

GUARD. Listen up for when I call time!

2: DAY ONE

NICK speaks to JACKIE. As he tells his story, it plays out around him. He is both in...