A Play in Three Acts

Dramatis Personae:

Tornado: Ageless and naked.

Attorney: smallish, hunchback, forehead shines like the water of a smooth lake, wears a suit pulled tight, buttons like rivets about to give, speaks out of the right side of his mouth.

Police Interrogator: wears a fake mustache, trench coat, etcetera.

Police Investigator: combat boots, traditional police attire, also wearing a fake mustache, etcetera.

Time

3 May 1999

Setting

Police interrogation room, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

All three characters are gathered around a rectangular table and the tornado takes slow drags off a cigarette. The Interrogator, Investigator, and Attorney sit in near darkness, and steam rises off the respective coffee cups of the three individuals. The only light, aside from a small, iron-barred window, is a high-wattage lamp pointed directly at the tornado, though the tornado doesn’t sweat, is unfazed. The room is sterile, almost institutional, and though it’s not apparent, looks as if it would smell like an open jar of formaldehyde with a pig fetus bobbing in it, or like an urban efficiency with a steady gas leak waiting for a match to be lit.

Act I

Interrogator (laying a dead armadillo on the table next to the remnants of the mobile Doppler radar): Do these look familiar to you? Any recollection?

Investigator (setting a sundial on the table as if the time would change under the artificial light):

You’ve got thirty minutes for a confession.

Interrogator: Where were you last night?

Tornado (head tilted upwards, reminiscing of something like childhood):

Interrogator: You’re avoiding the question. Tell us where you were you last night. I’m through

playing games with you.

Attorney: You don’t have to answer that.

Tornado (taps out cigarette on the back of his own hand, lights another, looks at the cement, cold

as a vacated trailer park):

Interrogator (licks fingertips and fashions mustache in a way that appears compassionate and

understanding): Will you speak to the survivors?

Investigator (looks down, zips up his fly): There are no survivors, only casualties.

Attorney: You don’t have to answer that.

Interrogator: Will you speak to the casualties? The Clerk of Courts impaled on a statue of the

Virgin Mary, the reverend bludgeoned with the pipes from the organ, the prom queen

asphyxiated with fishnets, wearing her anorexic chic gown while doing the electric slide

across the disco ball promenade?

While the Interrogator lists off the dead, a likeness of each, all of whom are wearing fake mustaches, struts across the stage as if it were a runway for a fashion show: pivot, pause, strike the pose, and lay down a wilting begonia.

Investigator: We caught you with a mouth full of cattle, hands clenched with the turnpike’s

guardrail. I can’t even afford myself the mention of the school bus or what you did at the

convent, the humiliation of the former-Miss America.

Tornado (slow, meticulous drag from a cigarette, French inhales, bends to ground as if with

heartburn):

Interrogator: Will you speak to families of the deceased?

Tornado (Steel look of indifference that recalls hollow water pipes. Each of his audible

heartbeats mimics a busy tone, the crumble of static on the weather channel as the wires cut, the tense noise between gunshot and deadweight):

Interrogator: This wasn’t your first rodeo, was it, cowboy?

Attorney: You don’t have to answer that.

Investigator (folds hands, looks at the floor, fashions mustache downward, attempting to

look older and knowledgeable as he provides what he considers to be insight): They say it starts young: a robin fallen from the nest underfoot. A garter snake set on fire, twisting like the fuse to faulty dynamite. A frog broken with a shovel and still. They say young, but mean impressionable, like modeling clay, silly putty. The brain, that is, the frontal lobe, perhaps, cerebral cortex, by chance. The intricate workings, both malleable and hostile. At once a blind hamster on a wheel and a sniper’s hidden turret.

Attorney (falls to his knees and cups his face as if to drink from his own palms): You don’t have

to answer that. Is there not an ounce of justice in this town? (starts weeping)

The lights go dim. Near calm darkness, like storm clouds swallowing the sky. Only the throb of the cigarette’s ember can be seen, like a pulse rapidly increasing with each breath drawn in, as if a weathervane misplanted in the refurbished arboretum, but still pointing at a gentle north-northeast pull.

Act II

Roughly two hours have passed. Smoke builds along the ceiling and the beige paint on the walls begins to curl as if nails were run across the surface while trying to keep the shutters from shuttering. The light in the room is thinner, duller. The three men have grown weary, dark rings grow beneath their eyes. The interrogator has removed his mustache and is pacing the room, wall to wall. The tornado is methodically quiet and has yet to move, aside from drags on the cigarettes.  Ashtray has spread itself on to the table, like the larva of an inchworm.

Interrogator (wipes sweat from brow): What of the suction vortices? The Better Business Bureau

demolished, burning like the pyre we ceremoniously neglected, the ashes of pamphlets

hovering like fruit flies, the lifespan of an hour, all next to a woman in a poodle skirt,

undisturbed, her pigtails remaining ordered.

Attorney: You don’t have to answer that.

Tornado (Lights another cigarette, scans the ceiling as if it’s risen since he arrived, while

contemplating the room’s barometric pressure, the mango-scented air freshener that tries

to mask the smoke, the cold front coming in the next couple of hours)

Investigator (Removes his bulletproof vest and mustache. Places both on the table. Pulls a fake

soulpatch from his pocket and places it below his lip): There’s an eyewitness

testimony and surveillance equipment that put you at the scene, where you were seen

behaving like a child in midst of a temper tantrum. Nothing the world has seen before.

You have yet to produce an alibi. Who will corroborate with a monster like you?

Interrogator: (Leaning over the table, knuckles pressed down in a red fist, looks directly at the

tornado): The mayor is willing to plea bargain, the judge can be persuaded. Make

your statement, there’s no reward for feigning innocence, like an assassin with black

flecks of residue on his hands. Just tell us you did it.

Attorney (removing his sports jacket to reveal an impressive accumulation of sweat stains that

resemble various states, including Texas): You don’t have to answer that.

Tornado (Chain smoking now. Two cigarettes at a time. Rubs chin, ruminating of ballistics,

and begins to hear severe weather sirens, but notices no one else in the room reacts to

the increasingly loud drone. Starts to fidget):

Interrogator (growing agitated and disciplines his mustache, which starts peeling from his face

due to the room’s increasing humidity): Tell us where you were last night.

Investigator (removes soulpatch and applies fake, bushy eyebrows to his face for the added

effect of anger): You’re going up the river for sure.

Attorney: And, this, your idea of justice.

The room fades to black. The sound of thunder drowns out the possibility of communication between the characters. Next, lightning makes the characters’ movements seem frantic and disjointed, like the strobe lights of a haunted house. All three men pace about nervously. The tornado sits frozen in his seat. The interrogator gesticulates wildly. The investigator repeatedly slams his fisted hand onto the table. The attorney rises to get a face full of the investigator’s coffee. All the while, the tornado hardly appears to be breathing and the lightning continues, making the room mute, the men are mechanical animals. An eerie calm befalls the room, but not the men it contains.

Act III

At this point, both the Interrogator and the Investigator have removed all fake body hair attachments, giving them the appearance of being clean shaven, and then they don gray wigs like those of our Founding Fathers to intensify their seriousness and distain for the tornado. Also, same as before, the runway models of the deceased cross the stage, only this time they pick up the flowers that were left earlier, clench them in their teeth, and exit with an exaggerated gait. In the background, a bass drum, something jungleish, is pounding increasingly faster as the scene progresses.

Interrogator: The pregnant matron, the near-sighted paperboy . . .

Investigator: The Episcopalian church, the Chuck-E-Cheese . . .

Attorney: This is rape of the justice system . . .

Tornado (continues his frantic mannerism as the sound of the severe weather siren gets louder and louder inside his head):

Interrogator: the roller skating waitress, the Girl Scout troop selling Thin Mints . . .

Investigator: the one hour photo, the taxidermy . . .

Attorney: an embarrassment to all things American . . .

Interrogator: a criminal, a murderer . . .

Investigator: a pirate, a pervert  . . .

Interrogator: contemptible swine . . .

Attorney: according to our justice system he is innocent until proven . . .

Interrogator: I will fry you myself so God help me . . .

Investigator: your prints were all over this abomination that no man has been subjected to

as long as man has controlled the earth . . .

Interrogator: the next drop of light you see outside of this life will be Lucifer himself getting

ready to sodomize you with a lightning rod glowing so hot from Hell’s flames it makes

Arizona seem like an icebox . . .

Attorney: I see justice has gone out the window. What’s next; habeas corpus no longer applies?

Investigator (visibly sweating): the orphanage, the tanning salon, the massage parlor . . .

Interrogator (spitting in the face of the tornado): you pagan . . . you heathen . . . you terrorist.

What do you have to say for yourself, you filthy . . .

Attorney: You don’t have to answer . . . .

A clap of thunder louder than a Learjet kills the lights. The interrogation lamp explodes, dusts the room with sparks and glass. The room is engulfed in sounds resembling a trash compactor filled with a Volkswagon and a jigsaw. The lightning continues to make the men’s movements animated until they fall to the floor, heads squeezed between knees, arms hugging necks, as if in elementary school again. The tornado still motionless. The rolls of thunder cease. The lightning cracks its last whip. The room goes dark for two minutes and some change. The only presence is the continued glow of the cigarette.

A slide guitar starts playing a slow and sorrowful tune, something like Robert Johnson or Leadbelly. The walls have collapsed and the men vanish as a fragile but natural-colored light comes on.

Tornado (sitting on his chair, alone on a stage blacker than space, lighting another cigarette and

about ten jack-o-lanterns on the floor, clears throat and dusts self off and stands up,

puts on a fake mustache and a gray wig, speaks as if giving a eulogy at his mother’s funeral):

The winds. There will be no more winds.

I’ve swept myself through my last panhandle,

the last of this dustbowl, my inevitable last words

must not be guilty pleas. I will not cut up my clothes,

light candles along the sidewalks lining the homes

that couldn’t support themselves, leave teddy bears

in the Wal-Mart parking lot with flowers on their laps,

nor throw my body prone on the chamber doors

of some church. I’ve got nothing against the chains

of Marathon stations displaced in spots the road

doesn’t inhabit. No ill regards for the paper boxes,

the piano emporium, nor the plastic surgery practice,

all of which lay in my silhouette, like a deer clipped

by a semi, crawling toward the berm. I suggest no

apologies, but seek no malevolence to well in my eyes.

I’ll produce a confession when the sirens stop heeding

my arrival, allow me to pass through, a cough on the radar.

How I cope with loss of myself: these arms outstretched,

palms cupped upwards, asking for that which I cannot

cram into my mouth, cannot spit out a mouth of teeth for.

I thought I was the tongue soothing chapped lips,

I thought I was the switch goading the electric chair,

thought I was the lamb swallowing all but the lion’s mane.

Fin

Note: The 3 May 1999 outbreak in the Oklahoma City area produced over 50 touch downs, many in urban and suburban areas. Over $1 billion in property losses were tallied, with around 50 fatalities. One of the twisters was reported to have a peak wind speed of about 315 mph, as determined by mobile Doppler radar, making it the strongest wind ever recorded on Earth (www.sky-fire.tv).