The Fire Bringer — Excerpt

from Act II, Scene i


Savannah, Georgia, late 1864
Lepius Lee’s living room
Chorus: female slaves loaned to assist Lepius




Solomeya, salting the living rom for a spell, talks with Elijah. Beyond the hospital, Lepius Lee has been treating patients out of his backyard; finishing up with them, the Chorus enters.

1 CHORUS
I had one grizzled codger, pard-spotted in bruised lacerations, every one tamed a juror in his verdict of health, all unanimous in their dread consent, that he bid me bribe them each with balms, that blind Judge Fortune’d be no wiser, the prosecutor too drowned in papers, the defense desperate to sake a boon, and the tabloid audience shock-shaken with a rare verdict of life. Then he declared medicine greater than gold, me an auriferous nymph, and my ass twin’d circled hills mineraled to mine in squeezes and bites. So I slapped him another juror to his pool, which pooled him and geyser’d gases of love, all bad air from a noxious earth, for his breath was more foul than his mind, his mind more foul than his body, that he declared me Queen of Sheba, so I smacked him again, ring hand this time, which quieted contemplation or knocked him cold—hard to say when deep thinkin’ ‘n’ thoughtlessness look quite the same in men. Hello, Elijah: still praying Layli and Ve a pash?

ELIJAH
More fervently the longer they last.

3 CHORUS
The bigger the flame the faster the candle burns.

ELIJAH
Pray it began a stub.

2 CHORUS
Happiness begins in the mirror. What now, Sister Cat? Salting the earth or casting a spell?

SOLOMEYA
Both: for protection.

1 CHORUS
Be it protection from our patients: what we cure kills us, or has a feel: their bones feel breaking to move, yet they can manage a pinch t’ violate their angels.

SOLOMEYA
Instinct and drive make or unman, thus feathered seraphs become bat-winged beasts, and back again; and many who seek beatitude find feral damnation: empyreal grace and lust, humility and hellish wrath possible all in one shell, and not all in one’s control, for the daemon tempts what the daimon understands: we’re all chimeras, defined by the creatures we amalgam.

ELIJAH
Or the people, traits or purpose.

SOLOMEYA
But what are we without time’s arbitration?

3 CHORUS
Give me something with claws that I can make bastards as warning to our race. Could we stand as we truly are the masters would cower before us.

SOLOMEYA
The doctor proves the exception.

4 CHORUS
That family’s the best of ‘em I’ve known, but that’s lesser praise than they deserve.

2 CHORUS
The fever symbols the deeper rot.

1 CHORUS
As the greatest evils induce in the good.

ELIJAH
As a society is defined by it’s most vulnerable person: all lower in that wake.

Enter Layli and Ve from the front door.

LAYLI
A bright mid-morning.

VE
I think it past noon.

1 CHORUS
Happy day, Miss Layli. You’re sun-baked by flamming lips, but become the more you grow t’ him and flower in his presence. Won’t you herald us your dappled knight?

VE
Don’t you know me? You’re my father’s.

LAYLI
Oh, yes! sorry: this is Ve, son to old Roe. I hope you like him. I promise he’s as genuine as he is generous, as respectful as respectable, as noble in bearing as he is in being, his good intents making a better man, and one day, by his father’s tutelage and his own stunning sensibilities, a great one.

2 CHORUS
Pleasure in acquaintance, young Master Roe. And what minstrelsy of nature has known your day together?

LAYLI
We dallied through the lush garden square and sat the sycamore fountain.

VE
It felt we owned the city, as all others have taken early retirement to their demanding beds t’ enfolding dreams of better things.

3 CHORUS
Well, we couldn’t dream of life here without Layli either: she’s our pixie-shine and sparkle that trails the fairy-dust we broom ‘n’ bottle to glitter feelin’ blue.

VE
You could sell that, were it not priceless.

LAYLI
Is my father at home? I so long for him finally to see V in my context, a meeting of like to like we’ve temporized too long.

SOLOMEYA
Your father’s duteous sense summoned him to a house call: if lifelessness finds him there and its undead afterglow he’ll be promptly back.

VE
I can’t decide my day on a candle’s whim. This is a sunlight of fathers: and your’s gone, I must hie to mine. and write lessons on the back of the noon, for there is much to do for you to make my inheritance proud. I’ll call on you tomorrow, with the lark.

LAYLI
Sleep cheats time til then.

Layli embraces Ve.

VE
Adieu, mademoiselle. I must say farewell now or never leave.

LAYLI
Never leave!

VE
Farewell.

Ve exits out the front door.

4 CHORUS
Men taught me long ago that golden words haven’t much currency, and are as bendable to the touch as the man that utters them: as pretty as bankrupt, but your knight has gold on his sword-tongue and in his purse, and both to spare.

LAYLI
He spoils me with each, yet each’s weight’s empty if they flow from a gilded heart and not a golden one, but his is a carbuncle ‘amongst cola that burns a hotter flame without depletion; a miracle of nature, he emeralds other gems with envy of his peerless cut, mere baubles to his blush.

3 CHORUS
A man once beat me so brutal rubies grew from my cheeks, but then, taking inspiration, I painted his canvas red.

ELIJAH
Nature follows your sole, as though the waters of life flowed a trickling stream off the ripples of your dress’ tail, flowering in following.

Enter Lepius from the front door.

LAYLI
Father! It’s seemed a day and night since you’ve been gone.

Layli embraces Lepius.

LEPIUS
An endless night and sunless day: just space for sky. I’m sorry familiar business ‘s made me so unfamiliar: not known to you is to hardly know myself, a shadow delineated but undefined. But with the first frost our holidays commence and shall not stop til the last snow’s melted: Christmas will last a month, with presents everyday, a candle-laden tree in every room, festoons of holly swathing ceiling and awningways, yuletide desserts, carols in the dark, sledding through the drifts, haunted tales by darkening firelight, hot chocolate at every time of day—my work will be done til the rains return.

LAYLI
That their fertility brings death.

LEPIUS
And with each death a new birth, as winter harbinger spring, each to their season.

LAYLI
But man passed here never knowing summer.

LEPIUS
A mistake in Nature I seek to correct.

LAYLI
Is that natural? Can Nature be wrong?

LEPIUS
Nature and natures can be sometimes beautiful, sometimes monstrous, but it’s most natural to better our own, and help better others. What’s right for Nature isn’t always what’s right for us. If Nature grows a garden, then a gardener recultivates the plot, who’s correct?

LAYLI
Hierarchized Nature’s one and many.

LEPIUS
But who determines the order? Science or taste?

LAYLI
Your taste has always been for science.

LEPIUS
I try helping nature to better herself, relieving my fair lady of her more destructive tendencies, but she can be a capricious school girl, has thrown her lessons at me more than once, stormed away to play many a time, and uses my own logic against me, which makes me smile and her proud, but still I square her circle. Oh, how rude of me: hello everyone!

CHORUS
Hello, Mr. Lepius!

ELIJAH
How do you do, sir?

LAYLI
Father, there was something I wished to speak to your heart: there’s somebody I’ve been spending my days with, that makes long hours short and whirling.

LEPIUS
And who can twirl your smiles so?

LAYLI
A shadow known to you, for a shadow before you has he been, his father’s that never saw him in the sun and hid his face.

LEPIUS
Not a clue: I see lots of shadows, even talk to some, well, the nice ones.

LAYLI
He’s Evarius, son to old Roe, and heir to his industry.

LEPIUS
Evarius! Of course! I should have known the way you were flapping lashes at him the day we arrived, like you couldn’t believe what you wee seeing and had to keep re-rechecking his face; and for him you were the only one of us there: he studied you like he had a test on the matter. Why', he’s a fine young man! Attentive as he is studious, as charming as congenial, polite and politic, respectful and resolute, opinions like his part were pre-written by a master hand. Aw, Layli, I’m ecstatic for you! (they embrace)

LAYLI
Thank you, daddy!

LEPIUS
You must have him over to dine: your mother will eat him up and be too full for her meal, and I can’t wait to get to know him felicitously, beyond the bravissimo of the golden child and straight to the suavity of the golden suitor, who eats with his eyes, walks with his spleen, and talks with his stomach. But beyond the golden armor, what shall be said?

LAYLI
That’s what I was just next going to ask! Oh, father, you make me happier than a duck in a shower, than a starving desert bloom embracing the long-lost rain. You’ll find him even more a knight un-appareled, without embosséd gloss, a paragon of virtue and chivalric beyond measure. I’m going to tell mother the news.

Layli exits up the stairs.

LEPIUS
So, how’re we doing? Couldn’t keep my patient abroad, I’m hoping we’re doing better here.

2 CHORUS
Everyone’s livin’, if y’ can call it that: breathin’, but more raggedy than the worst-dressed bum, conscious, if pain constitutes, talkin’, if babble had a point, movin’, if shaken’ once a while’s such. There’s one can’t feel his toes and swears we amputated. One can’t feel his chest. One his hands. Another his head, swears it floatin’ and he’s lookin’ down. We were just about to check on ‘em, give ‘em some chipped ice and watermelon nectar, when you ‘rived back.

LEPIUS
Do so, if you would: they swear it’s ambrosia of the gods, and as they can eat nothing else, makes them godlike: treat them as such, and laurels garland you for graces.

CHORUS
Yes, sir.

The Chorus exits to the back.

ELIJAH
How was relieving? Was there anything left?

LEPIUS
Unexpectedly, to compound the horror. Ever hopelessly unprepared, amidst the smell of rotting straw, I entered the heat and sick of the hell-mouth choking. The air sweat delirium, and the flies massed deafening, til my eyes adjusted to the pitch and bodies molded from the dark, all gone between the puddles of filth, like the wreck of a heavy rain, everything shining in black vomit. Suddenly I saw what I’d been feeling: glowing yellow eyes hollowed, the only light with the boarded sun: a boy, shaking terrified, they bulged to falling with a conscious aware of his steaming, putrefied organs, the boiling rivers of blood cooking his brain, death’s measured approach. Nothing could be done but talk him through the passage. He never looked at me, but stared the coming; he never spoke, but gasped breath quick and deep, as I sat their ceasing. But leaving left a suckling corner, a mother decomposing into the rancid milk a starving newborn ravaged, green slim dribbling, to the hospital screaming, yet I could not raise my head, even as the ragged mobs mauled for cures between clasped hands and bended knees and desperate eyes, but moved my impotence as a dead leaf falls, begging pardon of the breeze.

SOLOMEYA
Some fall and some float; you could have been his wings, as you freed the suckling child from a tragic fate of knowing nothing else: through your darkness and despair, your pain saved lives today, and shone where all else faded.

LEPIUS
We can only hope, and hoping makes us bold, daring to venture where angels fear, to whom hope’s a forgone thought when all thought’s foreknown, unnecessary to their perfection. All the horrors of the world flying the polluted space on fell wings, yet hope locked safely in our breast, what can they screech to match? We but sqeak it cracked to let it shine, and what can they do but flee, flouted by their lack, outdone by what they sought to overdo, their terrorized now their terror ere the sun rises.

ELIJAH
Hope enacted by new hope grows til we emit a second sun, bursting our casings and flooding the world, making a new day by the light’s bearer.

LEPIUS
You both fill out the waned, and I thank you for reminding me of myself. Elijah, can you go out back and prepare the beds be brought in?

ELIJAH
At once, sir.

Elijah exits out the back.

LEPIUS
Sitting in that falling house, searching the desolate visage of that doomed boy for soothing words that could allay his desperate flight, his feet already off the ground, I thought of you, and spoke as I imagined you would. What would you have said?

SOLOMEYA
Whatever you said.

LEPIUS
You have gold-making words; on good days I can manage only silver.

SOLOMEYA
I don’t deny myself in giving gold to you: your bounty returns it me that I’m richer than I started, even if it is silver, which I always did like better as I’m richer by the moon, whose profile’s improved with your face on it.

LEPIUS
As the sun with your’s, hairs become rays, that your wisdom’s infused.

SOLOMEYA
I would not be the sun; let us share the moon. Slavery’s like the sun, and often under it: they both rise at the same time, both lay strokes on the back, both exhaust, both claim the same dominance and both long parched me til the fountain of your mind’s garden quenched my thirst: you have a fire in your head and a cloud in your mouth.

LEPIUS
Your mind burns brighter and without fuel, your mouth more naturally fantastic: your sentence may begin a lion, turn dragon by the middle, and end as a swan in repose, laying eggs of persuasion in the ponderous ear.

SOLOMEYA
My talking ring spoke of you; I felt your power before we met. I want you to have it, have long longed to give (she gives him her ring): all of myself but myself: think of me in it’s constant dialogue; ask anything, but beware: it will only riddle what you need to know.

LEPIUS
I had another dream this night; would you and your jewel conspire against it?

SOLOMEYA
For you, always.

LEPIUS
Under a sicklied yellow sky a giant walks alone, a furnace of bronze and metal black, banded in ribbon, it smites the last tree of the waste, from whose destruction a mountain of dead stone erupts, becoming the world, the colossus of living metal at it’s tragic peak under a great and blaring sun, with rays like many small and crawling hairs, and at it’s center a six-pointed star, entrapped and bifurcated, that powers the raging beast.

SOLOMEYA
An Abomination of Desolation. Dreams can omen prophesy, piercing the veil of time to talk backwards, seeking in the seeker what’s sought in himself. But I think this nightmare no more than the giddy extrapolation of your fears, the daily horde you cure haunting with the next day’s legion, their disease’s numbers growing fast than hands can heal, but an imperative of what may happen should you falter in your quest. Your enemy is a universe of death, and life will out if you will have it.

LEPIUS
I thank your seer’s three eyes for knowing me better than I myself, and seeing in me better than I deserve.

SOLOMEYA
All I have is all you deserve.

Celestie enters at the top of the stairs.

CELESTIE
Ah! Finally! You’d leave me to pine to a point. If I kill all the sick, will I finally get some time with you? I’ll burden my soul to play with your hair.

LEPIUS
Is that the greater good?

CELESTIE
For me: good that you’re home, good my fantasy here realizes, good that your patients are good enough to pardon your good time, good again that. I can now get drunk on you and save my good wine, and good for Layli with her good news that she now has a good knight to damsel her about the knees.

Solomeya exits to the back.

LEPIUS
As ever you bring the good along, but the best in you.

CELESTIE
So what’s with this gallant, little Roe: rowing’s in the name, but I’ll teach her to tie a leash, keep her close in keeping him close, and out the butt-end of other girls’ skirts; Evarius: maybe he plays various parts in himself, that she may have a new man every day; I’ll teach her sewing, to tailor the suit of his suit to her—it’s more fun to pick their clothing anyway, though dolls behave better, and know when to quiet.

LEPIUS
Then a scarecrow’s the perfect suitor.

CELESTIE
All men are stuffed; the question is what with—this one with gold it seems. Think he’ll propose affiance? I have so many dress ideas: she must be petal’d, that’s certain. I told her to drain him of his holdings and lock it in a box of which she alone’s mistress to the key, for if he tend her allowance she’ll be a whimpering puppy or a dirty, knee-sore beggar or a house slave who must earn on her back; he make the money and she keep assurance in the counting and the spending, or the spending then the counting; she has her duties, he his.

LEPIUS
Layli hasn’t a head for that: she’s for growing things, not diminishing them.

CELESTIE
Gold well kept is gold well grown: she’ll water it with her feminine wiles, showing interest by sowing interest, checkered skirts for checkered dealings, dainty arms wide with mighty holdings, a Rumplestilzkin on the wheel, weaving gold from dross: a looming looming if he speaks of her as she him. She describes him like a giant among creatures, that will unframe doors in walking through, break chairs though he politely sit ‘em, and deafens with booming lungs whispered remarks; we must reinforce the floorboards lest his gentle step stomp ‘em through; she’ll reimburse our finance once she gets a hold of his.

LEPIUS
A potential giant: his father cages him from growing ‘fore his time, though his mind’s as keen as the interest Fortune’s taken in ‘im. I’ve met him; he’s been ‘round the house.

CELESTIE
Where have I been? Dreaming, dozing, both? I saw no giant. Did he see me? Was I presentable? Suitors see in their lover’s mother their spouse’s future, as times will be, and if he saw my gorgon look passing the top of the stairs—well, he’d already be stone I expect.

LEPIUS
Thank God I’ve built my immunity.

CELESTIE
We both make concessions of the morning, between my monster face and your dragon breath.

LEPIUS
I love your snakie strands.

CELESTIE
Like Medusa by the fiery lake, but at least hell has a cold section, unlike the swamp mires of these sweating moors.

LEPIUS
I like how you glisten like a goddess model in glow.

CELESTIE
Then you like an oily fish—am I a tench?

LEPIUS
A mermaid scaling me. The heated animals, like the people, grow more mad than you.

CELESTIE
I dare them.

LEPIUS
They’re running away and drowning in the swamps; birds turn truant from their songs and fly to the recesses to sing in shadow. Even streetlamps suicide, exploding and catching fire, while animals enslaved are beaten to death by the sun and collapse in the swashy fields. Nature mutinies nature in violent overthrow in every degree with every degree.

CELESTIE
I get the boarded windows, keeps the nasty air out, but what about the hearth-blaze? Must we keep that consuming? The air is on fire, the temperature in degree triplicate; Hestia will understand the allievement; I’ve asked her, she’s fine.

LEPIUS
It’s supposed to cleanse the air from impurities.

CELESTIE
Well, it leaves me feeling everything but pure: clothes aren’t supposed to stick, aren’t supposed to feel starchy, smell chemical, like a laboratory’s discharge, like a sin to lug, and I don’t do sins, I take a bath and curse the dirty water, yet rise immediately to sweat again! and so sink back til the water puckers its amours, rising a raisin and giving in to the drip, walking like a chaffed monkey to shake it off, soused like a herring, but flapping more, and tasting better; and the flies! I see the flies more than I see you; they’re my new companions, even started naming them, just gotta remember they’re vomiting on me every time we touch and they diet on feces—so, friends.

LEPIUS
It’s called formalin, the disinfectant.

CELESTIE
I don’t care what form it is, it smells like a virgin’s twat.