Dust on the Wind

A play in 3 acts

Cast of Characters

Ms Flora Winters

Mr Pericles Henry

Washington Winters

Setting

The small country town of Hope Springs - Nebraska - August - 1947

Act 1

A room in Ms Flora's boarding-house.

{Henry enters with a well-travelled suitcase he places next to the single bed. The furniture is a mix of old and new, under-loved and over-polished. There is a wardrobe; bedside table; chest of drawers; curtains at the window; a rug on the floor. The empty left sleeve of Henry's suit jacket is pinned to his lapel.}

{Flora Winters is young for a widow, on the right side of forty, and still an attractive woman, even if, perhaps, she has forgotten so. Her hair is pinned and twisted into a tight bun, as if, were it ever free, it might unleash some wild and uncontrollable passion.}

Flora: It's not much, and you'll have to share a bathroom, but it's clean. Breakfast is at eight. Supper at seven. No guests in your room after ten. I don't abide with smoking inside, or coarse language, or taking the name of Jesus Christ, Our Saviour, in vain.

Henry: I've never taken the Lord seriously enough to feel the need to profane him.

Flora: That's as may be. My son will bring up the desk you asked for.

{A boy of twelve struggles to fit what is obviously a hall-side table through the doorway.}

Flora: Mind the architraves!

Wash: Yes'm. It's heavy!

{Henry takes the table from the boy, lifting it easily with one arm, and places it against the wall, under the window with its drab and wash-faded curtains.}

Wash: We never had a real-life war hero before.

Henry: They're a dying breed.

Flora: We change the linen Tuesdays and Fridays. I'll clean your room then.

Henry: That's fine. You won't disturb me.

Flora: You're right, I won't. I expect you'll be somewhere else. Doing whatever it is you do.

Henry: I'm sure I'll find something to occupy my time.

{Ms Flora leaves. Wash lingers; hands in pockets.}

Henry: What do you do for fun?

Wash: This is Nebraska. Fun hasn't been invented yet.

Henry: Do you read?

Wash: Some.

{Lifting his suitcase onto the bed, Henry opens it and takes out a much read paper-back he tosses underhand to the boy.}

Wash: The O-dee-see?

Henry: You can learn a lot from the Greeks. A man may fail to impress us with his looks, but a god can crown his words with beauty.

Act 2

{Henry sits at the desk, gazing out through the window, tapping the stub of a pencil on a blank page of an open note-pad. Washington enters the room, cradling a globe of the world.}

Wash: I can't find Troy. Can you show me?

Henry: Would that I could, dear boy, but it doesn't exist. If it ever did, it's buried under the sands of time.

{Washington sets the globe down on the desk, obstructing Henry's view of the note-pad, and the recriminating absence of anything of note.}

Wash: Everybody's talking about your speech at the Town Hall tonight.

Henry: Dust on the wind. Old people. Mothers with small children. All that was left of them was charred bone and ash. Of all the creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man. It is what happens, when they die, to all mortals. The sinews no longer hold the flesh and bone together, and once the spirit has left, all the rest is made subject to the fire's strong fury.

Wash: You talking about the bomb?

Henry: Bombs. There were two of them.

Wash: My father was on the Indianapolis. He died before they could rescue him.

{Henry rests a comforting hand on the boy's cocked hip.}

Henry: And if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep, even so I will endure. For already have I suffered full much, and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.

{Mistaking the touch for something other, Washington sits on Henry's knee.}

Wash: We're not supposed to. The Bible says so.

Henry: Each man delights in the work that suits him best.

Act 3

{Morning. Henry is packing his suitcase.}

Henry: What a lamentable thing it is that we should blame the gods. To say they cause our suffering, when we, ourselves, increase it by our folly. It is a man's own wickedness that brings him suffering; worse than any which destiny allots him. Sing to me of the man, the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. A man who has suffered much, and wandered much, has pleasure out of his sorrows. And if something crude, of any kind is said, let the winds take it. For all is as dust on the wind.