Soul of a Whore and Purvis by Denis Johnson Page A

suppose.
    BILL JENKS : Nope. Calendars and clocks, my man.
    And bars and walls and years, et cetera.
    HT : Do you understand a little better now?
    Now do you understand why I killed those people?
    JOHN : I know who understands: God understands.
    HT : God is just a little jumped-up white man.
    That was God in the Houston library.
    White man in the public library.
    â€¦I can’t stop the thoughts,
    I’m cookin’ too hot!
    [ Leaving ]
    My suit?…Take a look at yours!
    BILL JENKS : Give you a sign? Here’s a sign…He gone—
    Into the sea of Spam and Wonder bread…
    Sidney. Sidney. I ain’t Tony Curtis.
    I’m strictly Looney Tunes! I’m Daffy Duck!
    Woo-woo! Woo-woo.
    Sirens; train whistle.
    JOHN :                            …Give me something of yours.
    BILL JENKS : Something? My what. My shoe? What something? What?
    JOHN : Something that’s lucky or important or that means
    Something.
    BILL JENKS :           Lucky.
    JOHN :                               Like your Derringer.
    BILL JENKS : I’m not sure I’m in favor of gun control.
    JOHN : We glue it to the cross, and you’ll be healed.
    BILL JENKS : I’m not sure I’m in favor of being healed.
    JOHN : This is how the Mexicans cure their troubles.
    BILL JENKS : By gluing items on the cross. With Jesus.
    JOHN : Trinkets, yeah, things that have touched them, tokens,
    Things to represent their scars and glories.
    To sacrifice. To crucify their sorrows.
    Train whistle.
    BILL JENKS :…It’s always the most relentlessly simple things
    That tear at you and break your heart. Like trains.
    [ Sirens ]
    SO LONG, SIDNEY!
    JOHN :                                      Maybe he can’t be helped.
    But did you really have to be a shit?
    JOHN exits into the house.
    BILL JENKS :…Where on earth did you get that silly notion?
    Don’t you know what the emblems are about?
    They don’t stick pagan symbols on the cross.
    Them Catholics have the whole thing codified,
    Everything’s got a meaning—all this stuff:
    These crossbones are the bones of Adam,
    Said to be buried at the foot of the true cross.
    These are the hammers and these the nails that banged
    The Savior to the tree in agony.
    These aren’t lucky dice—except for the guy
    Who won his garments—they cast lots, remember?
    The Roman soldiers gambled for his clothes.
    They stripped Christ bare, and one went home a winner.
    Where do you get this stuff? Here is the sun
    Whose face the storm obscured when Christ was killed,
    And here is the moon that bled. Where do you get
    Your silly notions, John?…The moon that bled.
    BILL JENKS raises his Derringer, takes aim: CLICK.
    BLACKOUT

Scene 2
    Twenty days later.
    Corner of Tenth and J Streets in front of Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas.
    JOHN CASSANDRA , costumed as a clown, poses on his cross.
    Â 
    Hubbub, voices O.S. [fading out]: Shoot her full of poison,
    Throw her in a grave!
    Shoot her full of poison,
    Throw her in a grave!
    [ others: ] Two! Four! Six! Eight!
    There’s no rhyme or reason
    To capital punishment!
    Two! Four! Six! Eight!
    There’s no rhyme or reason
    To capital punishment!
    [ others: ] Justice for the innocent!
    Killing for the killers!
    Justice for the innocent!
    Killing for the killers!
    Lights up on Public Information Office across the street from the Walls:
    JERRY and STEVIE. JERRY at the window.
    JERRY : Stevie, has Texas gone and joined the circus?
    Or is it the universe, or just my life
    That’s grown a populace of runts and freaks?
    STEVIE : Jerry, should I toss this coffee out?
    JERRY : I have a daughter, Stevie: you touch my daughter,
    I’m gonna jump straight up somebody’s ass.
    Is that a concept of too wide a girth
    To fit inside our brains?
    STEVIE