(MUSIC)
GK: I know I shouldn't take up your time talking about my personal problems, but it's been hard for me to deal with the fact that in two weeks our season is coming to an end and I feel anger and a sense of abandonment about this, just as I felt as a child when school ended and I had to face that vast emptiness of summer vacation. I loved school, it gave structure and meaning to my life, I loved the bells going off, the Pledge of Allegiance, and sometimes I got to make announcements over the public address system, and vacation was --- (PATHOS MUSIC) --- it was horrible. Day after day, you'd wake up to nothing. You see, children, this was back in the days when children had to amuse ourselves. Nowadays, your parents drive you around to summer activities and you go to one camp after another and people entertain you from morning until night, but back then ----- we would play in the dirt with blocks of wood, that's all there was. Once in awhile a car would go by and we'd watch it (CAR SPEEDS PAST). That was our amusement.
TR (SWEDISH MUMBLING)
GK: My father was a humble woodcutter and of course this was the prairie of Minnesota so there wasn't much wood, and so my parents had time on their hands and you know that leads to large families, so I was the 18th of 21 children. My mother didn't even know which one I was.
CF: Go outside and play, Vern, I'm too busy to talk to you now.
GK: My name isn't Vern, Mom. It's Ralph.
CF: Whatever. Go outside.
GK: Don't you feel as if you ought to nurture me or anything?
CF: Later. Go outside.
LYDIA: You heard her. Go outside.
GK: I'm going.
LYDIA: It's that way.
GK: I know where it is. ----You're so cruel, Janelle.
(PATHOS MUSIC)
GK: "Go outside". It was my parents answer for everything. You asked them for a quarter, they said,
TR (SWEDISH): What you need a quarter for, you're always asking for quarters, go outside.
GK: You asked them if maybe we could go on a summer vacation this summer, they said,
TR (SWEDISH): Are you nuts? Boy, the price of gasoline these days. I stopped for gas today and I just about fell over. I about fell over. What you need a vacation for? You got all outside to play in.
GK: Couldn't we just go for a little vacation trip?
CF: With twenty kids? Are you kidding?
GK: Twenty-one, mom.
CF: Whatever. Go outside.
GK: We lived in a shoe out in the middle of nowhere. It was crowded and it smelled about as you'd expect a shoe to smell. Families don't live in shoes anymore, that was changed years ago, shoe laws were passed, but we lived in one, and it's something you never forget. The food was unappetizing ---- cornflakes for breakfast and bologna sandwiches for lunch and macaroni hot dish for supper. (SQUISH AND SLOP) It was food that made you want to sit down and take a load off your feet.
TR (SWEDISH): Yeah. That's for sure.
GK: We never went anyplace or did anything. It wasn't like kids today, who are always jetting off to England or South America or Japan ---- high schools today have travel programs, kids can go anywhere they like --- when I was a kid, we would line up chairs in the living room and play bus. We'd all get in our chairs and pretend we were going someplace.
TK: (AMATEURISH RRRRMMM OF BUS PULLING AWAY)
RACHEL: So where are we going, Buddy?
GK: He can't talk. He's the driver. You're not supposed to hold unnecessary conversations with him.
RACHEL: You're not the boss of me.
GK: I think we're going to Colorado. To the Rocky Mountains.
RACHEL: I didn't ask you. I asked him.
GK: I'm sorry. If you don't want me here, I'll go.
RACHEL: You can't leave when the bus is moving.
CF: Why don't you kids go outside?
(LONESOME PRAIRIE MUSIC)
GK: Outside, there were only a few sheds and a little tree and then miles of prairie as far as you could see. Our old cow (COW) lay on her back with her legs in the air, she was so exhausted from having to give milk for twenty-one children ---- she had to be fed by hand (COW), she was too tired to graze. (PIG) And the pig sat beside her. He was missing his left hind leg. He wore a wooden leg there. We'd had that leg for Christmas, and we were saving the other one for the 4th of July. (CHICKEN) And then there was my chicken, Francine. (CHICKEN) She was the only one I could talk to. She and I were so close. (CHICKEN) She was all I had.
Nowadays, kids have dozens of friends. They make friends at music camp and soccer camp and math camp and church camp. Some kids go to four or five different camps every summer. And these are luxury camps they go to. Camps where each kid has a bed. We didn't have that, growing up. There were fourteen beds in our shoe. That was it.
TR (SWEDISH): You want a place to sleep, you better go to bed early.
GK: I'd go to bed at four in the afternoon. I wasn't even sleepy, but you had to grab a bed while you could still get one. I meet kids today who have their own rooms ---- their own rooms --- I can't believe it. I had to share a room with eleven brothers and sisters. They were so cruel to me. I'd get undressed for bed and.....
LYDIA: You know what? your wrists are real skinny.
GK: They are not.
RACHEL: Are too.
GK: My wrists are normal.
LYDIA: They're real skinny. I saw wrists like that in the National Geographic. I think you got polio.
GK: I do not.
LYDIA: You got some kinda disease, I know that. So don't touch me.
GK: I do not.
RACHEL: Maybe you got rickets or something.
GK: I don't!
RACHEL: That's not normal to have wrists like that.
GK: I am normal. I am.
LYDIA: You've got a wrist disease. So don't touch me. I don't want to have wrists like that.
(DARK MUSIC)
GK: My sisters' cruel remarks have followed me now for forty-seven years. I have been through all kinds of therapy---
CF: I'm curious why, after all these years, you've never mentioned your youngest sister. Janelle.
GK: Who?
CF: And I can't help but notice that when I mention her, you pull on your shirt cuffs. Is there something happening here that we ought to look at?
GK: No. Nothing.
CF: You have such long cuffs, I notice. All the way down to your knuckles. They almost cover your hands. Is there a reason for this?
GK: I just like long cuffs. ----(BRIDGE) And I can still hear my voice as a child. (REVERB) I am normal. I am. (DARK CHORDS)
GK: Now this has all changed, and whenever a child says anything even slightly mean to another child, the whole family goes into counselling for weeks, but back when I was a kid, once I said to my dad, Dad, could we sit in a circle and talk about how distant and hard you are and then we can all cry and maybe things'll get better ---
TR (SWEDISH): How can you talk to your father like that? Go on. Go outside.
GK: And when people keep telling you to go outside it's only a matter of time before you run away. (FOOTSTEPS. SLOW. ON GRAVEL)
(WIND ACROSS PRAIRIE. DISTANT HOWL.) So many times I thought about running away, but then I thought, no, they'd never notice if I did, nobody would even come looking for me. My mother'd say,
CF: Where's what's his name, the little guy, Vern----
TK (TEEN): I'm Vern, Mom.
CF: The other one. The sad-faced one.
TR (TEEN): You mean Janelle?
LYDIA: Very funny, Danny. Real humorous.
TR (SWEDISH): I'm not sure I know which one you mean....
LYDIA: The skinny one with the glasses and the big baggy pants with the belt buckle up under his chin and the skinny wrists....
RACHEL: Oh yeah, now I know who you mean.
LYDIA: I forget his name ---- is it Buddy?
TR (TEEN): Very funny, Janelle. Real comical.
CF: Is it Harry?
RACHEL: No, Harry is the one with the big feet.
CF: Oh well. Whatever. At least he's outside.
(MUSIC)
GK: But one day I was out hoeing corn and it was a hot day and the row of corn was so long and the shoe was so far away, I thought, "Heck, I might as well go to New York." So I did. (CHICKEN) Francine came with me. Like so many shy and troubled young men, I became a rock and roll star, (GUITAR CHORDS, TR MONSTER PUNK VOCALISM) and I painted my face green with an eye in the middle of my forehead and I wore platform shoes and at the end of the show I took a chain saw (CHAIN SAW) and I cut the chicken's head off (CHICKEN EXCITEMENT) and afterward I'd sit exhausted in the dressing room, with Francine (CHICKEN), and clean the fake blood off her feathers, and I'd ask myself, "Why am I doing this?"
LYDIA: It's a cry for help, isn't it. You're cutting the head off a chicken with a chain saw as a way of compensating for having skinny wrists.
GK: Anyway, I earned a gazillion dollars and now I have about four or five homes, I don't remember how many exactly, and (CHOPPER) I commute by helicopter out to my weekend home, Foxcroft, down in Florida (SURF, GULLS), and it's a beautiful place, there's a pool (DIVE, SPLASH) and there's a shooting range (RIFLE SHOTS, RAPID SUCCESSION) and there's horseback riding (WHINNY) and all sorts of things to do, and yet it can't make up for what I suffered as a child. Those years in the shoe will always linger on, a dark background in my memory.
CF: So the chicken was your main source of emotional stability? your anchor---
GK: I didn't think of her as a chicken. I thought of her as Francine.
CF: You loved her, didn't you. You loved that chicken.
GK; She was all I had.
CF: I'm not condemning you.
GK: I remember how we'd sit and talk--- she used to sleep at the foot of my bed---- she was so beautiful----
CF: Is this why you came to me? a psychiatrist who is very thin and nervous, with a big pointy nose?
GK: I don't know. Do you think so?
CF: Is this why you asked me to always wear this feather jacket during our sessions?
GK: I don't see the connection.
CF: And this floppy red cap you gave me?
GK: It's a nice cap.
CF: You like it when I talk and get excited and my voice rises and my red cap flops around and I wave my arms ---- you like that?
GK: Are you suggesting that----
CF: I'm not here to judge you. I'm here to talk with you. I'm here to listen.
GK: Kids today. They go to camp. They have their own beds. They live in houses. They don't live in shoes. They don't know what it's like. They've never met anyone like Francine.
CF: And that's why you're bitter about the show ending its season and leaving you with---
GK: I've got nothing to do.
CF: I think we've raised some very important issues today.
GK: Thank you.
CF: You just keep that little white feather in your pocket and the summer will pass before you know it.
GK: Okay.
CF: I've invited some people you know to come and join us today.
GK: Oh? Who----- Janelle! Jeanine!
LYDIA: Hi.
RACHEL: We heard you were in therapy.
LYDIA: We brought our own Kleenexes.
RACHEL: You want us to hug you?
CF: Yes. I know this means a lot to your brother that you came, and I thought we could sing a song together. Okay? Good.
(ALL IN A CHICKEN DUET, SIDE BY SIDE, WITH A.S. AND P.D.)
© 1997 by Garrison Keillor