Baghdad on the Wabash and Other Plays and Stories

Baghdad on the Wabash

And other Plays and Stories

Larry Crane

Published internationally by Breadabane Press

Portland, Maine

Copyright Larry Crane. 2013

SMASHWORDS EDITION

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material is subject to a royalty. All rights including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of these plays by educational institutions. Inquiries as to the stock and amateur rights for Baghdad on the Wabash, Chicken Tonight, Aiming off, A Little More Connecticut, and Smoke, should be addressed to the author: capenewagen@roadrunner.com

Contents

Introduction

A Pig for Love

Learning Something

Smoke

A Little More Connecticut

Chicken Tonight

Aiming Off

Baghdad on the Wabash

Introduction

Good stories are told in all sorts of ways. This book is a collection of stories presented either as a play or a short prose narrative. Many readers will not have encountered a play script before. If you’re one of them, rev up you imagination and picture yourself in the front row.

Two short stories are the first entries in the collection. A Pig for Love tells of a couple celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary, and finding themselves replaying an old record. In Learning Something, a young man spends a week in New York as a part of his training for a job in the brokerage business.

Four ten-minute plays follow. In Smoke, a marital separation encourages an old friend to try to rekindle romance. A Little More Connecticut brings married veteran actors together with an ambitious young director to rehearse a made for TV movie. Aiming Off finds Alma and Brandon getting together at a forest preserve to negotiate the terrain of their brittle relationship. Chicken Tonight explores how an unlikely friendship can develop in a supermarket.

Baghdad on the Wabash is a full length play, and is the major work in the collection. The fractured Beech family assembles on the banks of the Wabash River in Illinois to receive the remains of Jim Beech who has been missing in action in war. Into this troubled reunion steps Sydney, the 15 year old daughter of the fallen soldier with an irreverent prickliness and questioning attitude that motivates the family to find a way to do the right thing.

A Pig for Love

Millicent peeked into the conference room and said Billy had a call from the missus. He excused himself to answer it.

She wouldn't back off, Millicent explained.

All right, Billy said.

No way in the world did he want to ‘diss’ his client. Never did he want his people to think Mila had him on a short leash. He took the call at the reception desk.

Mila spoke in brusque urgent tones. The time was now. They were going out. To The Roosevelt.

Billy glanced around at the office staff, then turned his back on them. C'mon, Mila.

It's what I want to do.

It's not a good time for me, he said.

You asked me what I want to do.

We'll talk about it.

No. This is what I want, she said.

Mila.

Tonight.

Tonight. Shit. All right, he said.

It was a familiar pattern: the pressure builds over months, months in which he's oblivious.Then, pow. So, he would take care of it. It would blow over.Then it registered: the little reminders. Their anniversary was coming up. Not such a big one. Well, pretty big. Their twelfth. Ehh. The kids were not at home. It was quiet in the house. She was at her little table in the bedroom applying finishing touches. She didn't look at him, didn't say anything, even when he pressed his face close to her cheek. They were in the zone.

She wore a half-slip and a strapless bra. He sat on the edge of the bed where he could watch her eyes in the mirror. She had on blue eye shadow and pastel lipstick. Her hair was piled up like she used to do it when they were going out back a century or two. She had gone to a load of trouble for this. He stretched out resting his head in his hand and watched. She still didn't say anything. His eyes followed her into the bathroom. The slip clung to her girlish butt, revealing white panties, garter belt, and sheer stockings which contrasted sensationally with her tan calves. Still she said nothing. She came back and stood in front of him fooling with her hair.

She took the yellow party dress from the hanger and stepped into it, drawing the top up over her breasts and the spaghetti straps over her shoulders. The dress followed her form from her ribs to her knees with no room to spare. She stood before the mirror, ran her hands along her sides to her hips, turned to view herself from behind, and caught him watching her. Don't just lie there. Zip me, she said.

He hadn't spent a lot of time chasing her. Theirs had been the sparest of honeymoons. Where was it again? Cape May. He had made up his mind what she should be long before he met her. His favorite photograph of her froze her dazzling smile as she skated over the ice of Nolteen's Pond.  In it, she was perfectly blond, perfectly ebullient, and she looked him straight in the eye. The Ice Queen. When he called from Fort Benning and told her he had something important to say, she came down, and four weeks later they were joined for life in the First Baptist Church of Cusseta, Georgia.

Those days were fast and full of excesses. He was proud, she was cool and they didn't need to discuss much of anything. Two perfect babies appeared from nowhere before his three year Army hitch was up. Now he was out and chin-deep in an electronics partnership in Paterson. They had enough money and plenty of everything it could buy. He often told her they would relax one of these days and start to live a little. But years flew by, three at a time, it seemed. He lived at the office. She stayed bolted to Girl Scouts and soccer games. It occurred to him sometimes that she maybe didn't care as much as she used to.

She had booked The Roosevelt and a stretch limousine to get them there. Although she didn't say it, he sensed that she wasn't going to let four or five hundred bucks stand between them and nirvana. Like, let go, blow a wad in nothing flat. What's money got to do with it? Coins and her, they went together. It was silent in the car. He glanced over from time to time, and in the gliding light she seemed to be sitting up abnormally straight. It accentuated her shoulders and neck.

We still at war? he said, smirking.

You should have switched to your tux. You saw how I was dressed.

They give slobs like me special dispensation.

Funny boy, she said.

What did I do this time, Mila?

We haven't done shit in years.

You get anything you want.

Up yours, sweetheart, she said, eyes flashing.

He wanted to laugh out loud when she said things like that, wildly erotic things. He fought to hold his face deadpan. As soon as they had been shown to a table for two, one level off the dance floor, she left to go to the ladies room. 

They had been to The Roosevelt once before, in the early days before they were married, in one of his crazy spasms of bad judgment. Lester Lanin was the band leader and because of Lester, the tab piled up beyond his piddling means before they even finished their appetizers. What in God's name possessed him? But she dug in her little purse without hesitation, plucked out tens and twenties and fifties, then pressed them into his hand. The waiter bent close to his ear and whispered something like: Go home to mommy, buster. The experience occupied the top spot in Billy's personal pantheon of humiliation, and even now induced a semi-audible groan that he managed to suppress. Mila had to know she was dragging him back into it.

The short balding frog in black waistcoat who approached the table was that very same waiter. He was sure of it. Before the man could introduce himself, Billy complained that the table wobbled even though it didn't. Then while the man made a show of fixing the problem, Billy fired off his order of martinis, straight up. Absolut. Hold the olives. Ice on the side. He drummed his fingers on the table as he inquired if Froggy was ever going to