The Man Who Had All the Luck by Arthur Miller Page A

want me to do! I’m a fool, what can I do!
    DAVID [ wrenches PAT away from the couch. Stands over AMOS]: Listen, you! [ Leans over and pulls AMOS by the collar to a sitting position. AMOS sits limply, sobbing. ] He made a mistake. That’s over with. You’re going to drill on base play. You got a whole life. One mistake can’t ruin a life. He’ll go to Cleveland. I’ll send him to New York . . .
    HESTER enters quietly.
    The man can be wrong. Look at me! The man can be wrong, you understand!
    AMOS shakes his head.
    AMOS: He’s right.
    DAVID releases him and stands looking down at him. AMOS gets up slowly, goes to a chair and sits.
    He’s right. I always knew I couldn’t play the bases. Everything the man said was right. I’m dumb, that’s why. I can’t figure nothin’. [ Looks up at PAT.] There wasn’t no time, he said, no time for nothin’ but throwin’ that ball. Let ’em laugh, he said, you don’t need to know how to figure. He knew it all. He knows everything! Well, this is one time I know something. I ain’t gonna touch a baseball again as long as I live!
    PAT [ frantically ]: Amos, you don’t know what you’re saying . . . !
    AMOS: I couldn’t ever stand out on a diamond again! I can’t do it! I know! I can’t! [ Slight pause. ] I ain’t goin’ to let you kid me anymore. I’m through. [ He rises. PAT sobs into his hands. ]
    DAVID [AMOS keeps shaking his head in denial of everything ]:
    What do you mean, through? Amos, you can’t lay down. Listen to me. Stop shaking your head—who gets what he wants in this world!
    AMOS [ suddenly. ]: You. Only you.
    DAVID: Me! Don’t believe it, Amos. [ Grabs him. ] Don’t believe that anymore!
    AMOS: Everything you ever wanted . . . in your whole life, every . . . !
    DAVID: Including my children, Ame? [ Silence. ] Where are my children?
    HESTER: Dave . . .
    DAVID [ to HESTER]: I want to tell him! [ To AMOS.] What good is everything when nothing is good without children? Do you know the laughingstock it makes of everything you do in the world? You’ll never meet a man who doesn’t carry one curse . . . at least one. Shory, J.B., Pop, you, and me too. Me as much as anybody!
    HESTER: Don’t, Davey . . .
    DAVID [ with a dreadful triumph ]: No, Hess, I’m not afraid of it anymore. I want it out. I was always afraid I was something special in the world. But not after this. [ To AMOS.] Nobody escapes, Ame! But I don’t lay down, I don’t die because I’ll have no kids. A man is born with one curse at least to be cracked over his head. I see it now, and you got to see it. Don’t envy me, Ame . . . we’re the same now. The world is made that way, as if a law was written in the sky somewhere—nobody escapes! [ Takes AMOS ’s hand. ]
    HESTER [ almost weeping she cannot restrain ]: Why do you talk that way?
    DAVID: Hess, the truth . . .
    HESTER: It’s not the truth! . . . You have no curse! None at all! DAVID [ struck ]: What . . . ?
    HESTER: I wanted to wait till the scout signed him up. And then . . . when the house was full of noise and cheering, I’d stand with you on the stairs high over them all, and tell them you were going to have a child. [ With anger and disappointment and grief. ] Oh Davey, I saw you so proud . . . !
    DAVID [ twisted and wracked, he bursts out ]: Oh, Hess, I am, I am.
    HESTER: No, you don’t want it. I don’t know what’s happened to you, you don’t want it now!
    DAVID [ with a chill of horror freezing him ]: Don’t say that! Hester, you mustn’t . . . [DAVID tries to draw her to him. ]
    HESTER [ holding him away ]: You’ve got to want it, Davey. You’ve just got to want it!
    She bursts into tears and rushes out. He starts after her, calling her name . . . when he finds himself facing AMOS.
    AMOS: Nobody escapes . . . [DAVID stops, turns to AMOS.] . . . except you. [