Happy Birthday, Wanda June, Kurt Vonnegut [ereader for android .txt] 📗

dangerously physical, seizing a battle-ax)

Action! Interaction! Give and take! Challenge and response!

He splits a coffee table with the ax.

PAUL

(rushing in with his

.22 rifle at a high port arms)

Mom?

HAROLD

What's this?

PAUL wilts instantly, attempts to make his rifle inconspicuous, harmless, meaningless.

HAROLD

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

What's this?

PAUL

Nothing.

HAROLD

That's a rifle you have?

PAUL

No.

HAROLD

Of course it is. Is it loaded?

PAUL

No.

HAROLD

Open the bolt!

PAUL obeys. A cartridge pops out.

HAROLD

That's a cartridge, if I'm not mistaken. Gunpowder, bullet, cartridge case, and fulminate of mercury percussion cap--all set to go.

PAUL

I was cleaning it.

HAROLD

Pick up that cartridge and slip it back into the chamber--where it belongs.

PAUL

Gee whiz, Dad-HAROLD

Welcome to manhood, you little sparrowfart! Load that gun!

PAUL

(bleatingly)

Dad-file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (123 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

HAROLD

Too late! It's man to man now. Protecting your mother from me, are you? Protect her!`

PENELOPE

He's a child!

HAROLD

With an iron penis three feet long. Load it, boy.

PENELOPE

You're begging him to kill you?

HAROLD

If he thinks he's man enough.

PENELOPE

(amazed by sudden insight) That's really what you want. You become furious when people won't make you dead.

HAROLD

I'm teaching my son to be a man.

PENELOPE

So he can kill you. You hate your own life that much. You beg for a hero to kill you.

HAROLD

I plan to live one hundred years!

PENELOPE

No you don't.

HAROLD

If that's the case--what's to prevent my killing myself?

PENELOPE

Honor, I suppose.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

HAROLD

What a handsome word.

PENELOPE

(wonderingly)

But it's all balled up in your head with death. The highest honor is death. When you talk of these animals, one by one, you don't just talk of killing them. You honored them with death. Harold--it is not honor to be killed.

HAROLD

If you've lived a good life, fought well-PENELOPE

It's still just death, the absence of life--no honor at all. It's worse than the blue soup by far-that nothingness. To you, though, it's the honor that crowns them all.

HAROLD

May I continue with the rearing of my son?

(to PAUL)

Load that gun!

PAUL shakes his head.

HAROLD

Load it!

PAUL refuses.

HAROLD

Then speak, by God! Can you fight with words?

PAUL

I don't want to fight you. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (125 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

HAROLD

Get mad! Tell me you don't like the way I treat your mother! Tell me you wish I'd never come home!

PAUL

(weakly)

It's your house, Dad.

HAROLD

(throwing up his hands) Everybody simply evaporates!

(including the

audience, inviting it to share his indignation) There are guest issues to be fought out here--or to be argued, at least. The enemy, the champion of all who oppose me, is in East St. Louis with his mother and his aunt! I have so far done battle with a woman and a child and a violin.

PENELOPE

The old heroes are going to have to get used to this, Harold--the new heroes who refuse to fight. They're trying to save the planet. There's no time for battle, no point to battle anymore.

HAROLD

I feel mocked, insulted, with no sort of satisfaction in prospect. We don't have to fight with steel. I can fight with words. I'm not an inarticulate ape, you know, who grabs a rock for want of a vocabulary. Call him up in East St. Louis, Penelope. Tell him to come here.

PENELOPE

No.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

HAROLD

(emptily, turning away) No.

Pause. He contemplates PAUL.

HAROLD

And my son, the only son of Harold Ryan--he's going to grow up to be a vanisher, too?

PENELOPE

I don't know. I hope he never hunts. I hope he never kills another human being.

HAROLD

(to PAUL, quietly) You hope this, too?

PAUL

I don't know what I hope. But I don't think you care what I hope, anyway. You don't know me. (indicating PENELOPE) You don't know her, either. I don't think you know anybody. You talk to everybody just the same.

HAROLD

I'm talking to you gently now.

PAUL

Yeah. But it's going to get loud again.

PENELOPE

He's right, Harold. To you, we're simply pieces in a game--this one labeled "woman," that one labeled

"son." There is no piece labeled

"enemy" and you are confused. Lion doorbell roars. PAUL goes to answer it. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (127 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

HAROLD

There won't be anybody out there. That's the new style: nobody anywhere. PAUL, aghast, admits NORBERT WOODLY. WOODLY is high as a kite on his own adrenaline.

PENELOPE

(aghast, chokingly) Get out of here.

WOODLY

It's really that bad?

He comes farther into the room, bravely.

PENELOPE

You fool, you fool.

WOODLY

Oh--look at the poor, crucified violin, would you?

HAROLD

It died for your sins.

WOODLY

This little corpse is intended as a lesson?

HAROLD

There's a certain amount of information there.

WOODLY

Lest we forget how cruel you are.

PENELOPE

(moving to the telephone) I'm going to call the police.

HAROLD

(frighteningly)

Don't!

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

WOODLY

I agree.

WOODLY closes the door. PENELOPE backs away from the phone, drifts toward PAUL, who still holds his rifle.

HAROLD

This is man to man.

WOODLY

It's healer to killer. Is that the same thing?

HAROLD

What brought you back?

WOODLY

The same hairy, humorless old gods who move you from hither to yon.

"Honor, " if you like.

HAROLD

(to PENELOPE)

He's a champion after all.

WOODLY

Of the corpses and cripples you create for our instruction--when all we can learn from them is this: how cruel you are.

PENELOPE

This is suicide.

(to PAUL)

Go get the police.

HAROLD

Stop!

PAUL stops.

HAROLD

There's going to be no bloodshed here. I know how he'll fight--the only way he can fight: with words. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (129 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

The truth.

(to WOODLY)

Am I correct?

WOODLY

Yes.

HAROLD

I can defeat him with anything from flavored toothpicks to siege howitzers. But he got it into his