darylsplays

Night.
Crickets.

JESS
My name is Jess Niles. I’m 53 years old, and good Lord, am I really? And I want to tell you about my yard.
Don’t go, don’t go, please, it’s just, that wasn’t a good way to open, but just hear me out, all right?
My yard is special, I’m sitting in it right now, I’m talking to you from it, I won’t steer you wrong. Hear me out.
Good.
So.
I live in a bungalow on a street full of history and change and many colors, and I have a much larger backyard than you’d expect this close to the heart of the city where there are sometimes fireworks and sometimes gunshots and sometimes children’s laughter and sometimes screams of grown adults. I have a deep lot. Not too wide, but deep, like you could hit golf balls out here deep.
And deep as in deep-deep-dig-deep. The house is 100 years old, but the yard, the earth was here long before that, collecting things.
The house, it was a mess when my husband, Tom, and I first saw it 24 years ago, so it was the yard that sold us, that helped us see past the termites and the rot and the sliding foundation, it was the yard that sold us then when our boy John was still in diapers, and um…
…
Night.
Crickets.
…
The empty house.
No, no, the yard, the yard. The site that has just kept on giving.
My intrepid little John.
He would dig out here with his toy shovel and his bucket looking for worms and beetles and interesting rocks, and he’d always uncover the “before” instead. The family before. The family before that. The before before before. A crooked line of granite stones that were remnants of a flower bed. The rusted frame of a little toy car that looked to be war-era steel. A cat skeleton complete with collar—that of course spawned many questions which I, being an academic but a questionable mother, would answer in complete truths. Round, full truths about death, heavy with details.
John could take it.
In fact, he’d shut me down if I tried giving him less.
My boy. All the way.
Tom, he would see us as space people then, just landed and unaccustomed to the softer aspects of the human heart.
…
(Calling out)
Tom, is that you?
I thought I heard the front door.
…
LAUGHING HARSHLY.
…
Sometimes I think I hear his bare feet in the middle of the night, making the floorboards creak like an old ship.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Sometimes I wish I were one. I think maybe I’m here by error. That they’re all gone, and I’m still here because someone somewhere made a mistake.
Something tells me I’ve made plenty.
…
NIGHT.
CRICKETS.
…
I, um…
I am Jess Niles, and I…
I live alone.
I-I live alone, and I, um…I think…I think it’s caused me to dig a hole and hide myself in it.
No, that’s too purposeful, that implies I made a decision. I just, I don’t…I don’t get out of my old house much. My old self. I’m in a rut. Self-imposed. And everything sort of…all the days bleed together.
The past, the longtime-ago-past is so sharp, but yesterday, last week, I grasp for them, the specifics, but they’re just blank space. Black air. Dark matter. No more…round, full truths. Who said that? Who am I quoting? That’s a good quote.
Never mind.
It doesn’t matter because that’s not why I have you here. I need to tell you something before it turns into blank space.
Something wonderful.
My rut is broken.
It was broken today by my neighbor who gave me a plant. A whole tray of plants. What are they, what are they? Um. Herbs. No, no. Mint! A variety. Chocolate and spear and mint…mint.
And I’m no gardener, but by God, he handed me those, and I knew right away, I am going to plant these!
I am going to plant these right fucking now!
Just a moment, my fire is dying.
…
POKING AT FIRE.
NIGHT. CRICKETS.
…
I’m no gardener and no fire keeper either. I had to drag this log from an empty lot. I saw someone peeking at me through their blinds. I waved instead of pretending I didn’t see her, which is unlike me. Isn’t it? It feels unlike me, and I tell you, she couldn’t pull herself away from that window fast enough, except that she got hung up in the cord and made a rather clumsy exit.
…
POURING SOME WINE.
…
I’m having some wine.
You should have some too, while you listen, or some fizzy water if that’s how you do things. Sometimes I don’t go down easy. A friend once told me that. I wonder if it was also a friend who tried to hide my wine.
I found it anyway. I don’t go down easy, nor do I give up.
Don’t let anyone hide your wine.
…
TAKING A SIP.
…
So a few hours ago, I went out into the old shed where the boys used to trim bonsai and graft trees and pot and repot and pot and repot—Tom worked in insurance so plants were his escape from actuarial tables and worst-case scenarios. (SIGH)
…
I went out to that shed that was thick with dust and cobwebs and a flat snake carcass dried like an old handbag and scurrying insects like million-legged tiny aliens dropping from the crook of the opened door as if someone was pouring them from a glass, the sound squishy and alive and making the underside of my skin turn goosepimply, and I felt like a criminal for being horrified by the grotesqueness of it all, so I just, I soaked it in, and then I soldiered on.
I found a trowel and a proper full shovel, I wasn’t sure how much of a fight the ground was going to put forth. And I found some ancient potting mix, but that doesn’t go bad, Earth doesn’t go bad, does it? It just gets richer with time. More full. As creatures die in it and decompose. As they die and…I was driving, I was driving the car.
…
Sorry, um.
…
DRINKING SOME WINE.
…
I found a spot in the dappled sun, under the peach tree. My neighbor said “under the peach tree” when he gave me the plants, he must have because I wrote it on my hand in black marker so I-so I wouldn’t forget.
And I knelt in front of a section of ground that seemed already primed, where the rain and wind and sun had cleared away leaves and left the top soil soft and giving, and there was a beautifully-striped stone there dotted with sparkling minerals as if to mark it.
I brushed away the loose soil then started into the next layer, darker, ruddy because of the red clay we have here. I found a fat wriggly worm, and I started to call out to my boy without thinking, then I, um…then, I, um, I kept digging, jabbing that little trowel in to make a perfect happy home for some chocolate mint, where I could watch it grow and sprout new buds and forget…forget my…
…
POKING THE FIRE ABSENTLY, THEN WITH MORE FORCE AS IF TRYING TO PRY SOMETHING LOOSE.
…
Why am I telling you this? Why am I telling you all this? I’m telling you because I hit something.
…
CLINK OF A METAL TROWEL HITTING A HARD OBJECT
…
I dug with my hands then. I still have black under my nails, I’ve taken my yard with me, and I like that, maybe I’ll take it everywhere forever.
I dug with my hands until I could see the edges of a box. No, be specific, it’s a tin, a metal tin.
This tin.
…
TAPPING HER FINGERS ON THE TIN.
…
I wish you could see it. It’s remarkable. It’s from Wyoming and has the flair of a side-of-the-road tourist stand selling knick-knacks and questionable artifacts. The top has mountains dotted with pines and backed by a red-orange sky, and in the foreground is a majestic bison with her calf. It makes me think of a magical childhood trip I took with my parents out west. And the time we took John to Yellowstone when he was 8, and we could fully give in to the adventure of it all. It makes me think of…I don’t know, it’s just…familiar, it…
…
TAPPING HER FINGERS ON THE TIN.
…
I haven’t opened it.
I wanted to open it with you. A witness. In case I forget it ever happened. Where it came from.
Will you be my witness?
…
CRACKING INTO THE TIN
…
Wait.
I can’t.
I haven’t been upfront with you.
You should know that, before you agree to witness.
I was driving the car that took my boys. I was driving, and they’re gone, and I have a jagged scar that starts near the top of my head and ends in the corner my right eye, and I run my finger along it all day and at night when I can’t sleep or anytime my brain tries to hide the truth of me from myself, and then I remember, if not the very night, if not the curve of the road or the sound of the brakes and metal and emptiness that must have followed, because that’s what it always sounds like in movies, then the fact of the event, the fact of my guilt and how all I took for granted is gone.
So.
Let’s open this tin and forget about me for a damn minute and marvel at someone else and how we’ve discovered them in the ground, no need for a skeleton or any of that.
…
THE TOP COMES OFF THE TIN COMPLETELY
SHE GASPS WITH WONDER
…
Oh.
It’s very…
Personal.
…
CLOSING THE TIN
…
It’s someone’s everything.
I don’t know.
…
DRINKING SOME WINE.
OPENING IT AGAIN.
…
I thought there would be more.
But it’s only an envelope.
And this.
Bow rosin. For a cello bow.
…
HANDLING THE ROSIN.
OPENING IT.
TAKING IT IN THROUGH HER NOSE, DEEPLY.
EMOTIONAL MEMORY.
…
Ohhhhh.
That smell. Piney woods inside a cedar chest.
…
John played the cello.
…
NIGHT.
CRICKETS.
…
OPENING THE ENVELOPE.
IT SCARES HER A LITTLE, SO SHE AVOIDS.
…
It’s a letter, but it doesn’t look very old.
You can trust me on this, I’m an archaeologist. I saved that as a surprise. Are you impressed?
No, me either.
I haven’t done anything important in some time.
Because of my scar. What’s underneath it. Or not underneath anymore.
…
SIGH
…
I have to open this, don’t I? The signs are all here that I do. Not very subtle signs either, now that I think about it. That glittery rock.
Wait, where did I get this tin?
How-how did I get this? Did you give it to me?
It says peach tree on my hand.
Peach tree!
Mint plants!
All right, okay, I’m here, I’m with you, don’t worry.
Here I go.
…
OPENING THE FOLDED PAPER.
…
GASP.
…
It’s from—
…
FRONT DOOR OPENING CLOSING…
FOOTSTEPS…
BACK DOOR OPENING
…
John?

JOHN
Hi, Mom.

JESS
This is my boy, John. He left me this letter in a buffalo tin in the ground. He leaves it for me every day so when I forget he’s not gone, I can remember again.

I’m an archaeologist, and I’m also a mom.
Every day.

Come sit with me, son.
Tell me what you did today.

END.