Maybe the most unrelenting play yet! Yipes!

After HotCity did Demons, my friend Nancy mused that I must be incredibly put together to be able to write about such screwed up people without being consumed by them. I like to think that she's right. I think she's right. Right?

Disclaimer for the posted play: My dad and I get along REALLY REALLY REALLY well. Except when he bugs me about health insurance. Although I now have health insurance thanks to him bugging me. So, I guess, he wins.

TOWER

Scene 1
Lights up. SAMMY, alone on the stage, is looking straight up. He is carrying a sack lunch. There is a distant yelling that gets closer and closer as the lights fade. And then, in darkness, the sound a body makes when it hits the pavement after falling a few miles.

Scene 2
Lights up. There is a broken body face up almost exactly where SAMMY had been standing. The body reaches his hand up to SAMMY. SAMMY is looking down at the body. The lights fade.

Scene 3
Lights up. SAMMY is facing the audience as far away from the body as the stage will allow.

MAN 1 enters with a briefcase that he immediately drops and goes to the body.

MAN 1

Oh my god Oh my god. Hey man. Hey are you alright. Oh god you're not alright. You're not alright. Alright what do I do?

MAN 1 realizes he is going the throw up and runs offstage and throws up offstage and runs back to the body.

Ummmm...hey you you there hey! Call 911. Hey you! Oh shit oh shit.

SAMMY

I'm sorry.

MAN 1

What? Hey. Hey! Somebody call someone!

SAMMY

I can't.

The body reaches his hand up to MAN 1. And MAN 1 leans down to listen to the body.

MAN 1

What? I can barely, what? No I can't...what?

SAMMY

In the middle of the street there is a dead man.

MAN 1

Shhhhhh. He's saying something! He's not dead yet. Somebody help!

SAMMY

And that man was my father.

MAN 1

He's trying to say something. You're his son? Get over here!

SAMMY

And he wants to tell me all that he didn't tell me when he was alive.

MAN 1

He's not dead!.

SAMMY

But my father once told me never listen to ghosts because they are lying sonsofbitches so I am talking to you instead.

MAN 1

Help!

WOMAN 1 enters with a purse from which she has pulled a cellphone.

WOMAN 1

Omigod what happened?

MAN 1

He just fell. He fell from the sky.

WOMAN 1

What?

MAN 1

Just call someone.

WOMAN 1

I'm calling, I'm calling. Jesus Christ Jesus Christ.

SAMMY

He didn't fall from the sky.

MAN 1

What? What? I can barely hear you. Sammy. Are you Sammy? Sammy's here. Sammy's here. What? I know. He won't come. Should I make him come?

SAMMY

The sky wouldn't have let him fall. The sky loved him. It cradled him his whole life.

MAN 1 goes to SAMMY

MAN 1

Hey man, you gotta get over there your dad he's/

SAMMY punches MAN 1so that he falls, unconscious.

SAMMY

My dad once told me a story about his childhood.

WOMAN 1

Hello? 911? Yes there is man in the middle of the road.

SAMMY

He and his friends built a kite our of sheets and broom handles and wire.

WOMAN 2 enters with a grocery bag leading CHILD by the hand.

CHILD

Mommy look.

WOMAN 2

Don't look sweety.

CHILD

He's all flat. Did he fall.

WOMAN 2

Sweety I said don't look.

SAMMY

And everybody laughed at them and said it couldn't fly and his parents just shook their heads and went back to playing gin because it was Sunday afternoon.

WOMAN 1

Yes. In the middle of the road. Where? Where? I don't know where? Where are we?

WOMAN 2

Corner of 5th and 2nd.

CHILD

What happened to that man over there?

WOMAN 1

At the corner 5th and 2nd. No I'm not hurt. No, nobody is hurt except the guy lying in the middle of the road. No he's not drunk he's dying!

SAMMY

But the design was flawless and they took it to the field and my father wouldn't let anyone fly it but him and the sky laughed at him because it saw its own stubborness in this boy and it pulled the kite harder and harder until the kite lifted my father into the air.

WOMAN 2 has gone over to MAN 1

WOMAN 2

Hey are you okay? Hey you. Honey, stay back.

SAMMY

They found him an hour later three miles away. Smiling as he picked the bugs out his teeth and the feathers and leaves out of his hair. "Like goddamn Peter Pan."

CHILD

Did he fall too?

WOMAN 2

Hey are you alright.

MAN 1

I'm fine.

MAN 1 gets up and returns to the body.

WOMAN 2

What happened?

MAN 1

He fell out of the sky.

SAMMY

From that moment on, he was in the sky whenever possible.

MAN 1 (about the body)

What is he saying?

WOMAN 1

I'm on the phone with 911. I don't know.

SAMMY

He climbed every tree to its highest branch and never fell. He visited his grandmother whenever he could because she lived in Oregon and he had to fly there. When he was 16 he dropped out of school to join the air force. Never shot down. Never shot down once. He retired to fly stunt planes and then he found skydiving and realized that he didn't even need a plane anymore. He could fly without wings. The sky let him.

WOMAN 2

He's asking for a Sammy.

MAN 1

That's that guy over there.

WOMAN 2

We should go get him.

MAN 1

No. No.

SAMMY

But it was all too temporary for him. He always had to come back to earth. To eat. To sleep. To marry. To make me.

WOMAN 1

The ambulance we be here in 3 minutes.

MAN 1

I don't know that he has 3 minutes.

WOMAN 2

He's asking for him.

MAN 1

That Sammy guy won't come over.

WOMAN 2

Well, how do you know if you don't ask him.

MAN 1

I asked him.

WOMAN 2

Well, I'm going to ask him.

SAMMY

That was the only story he ever told me.

WOMAN 2

Hey your dad's over there and/

SAMMY punches WOMAN 2 so that she falls, unconscious. The groceries spill every where.

SAMMY

That and the advice about not trusting ghosts.

MAN 1

Hey man I know you're upset but/

SAMMY punches MAN 1so that he falls, unconscious.

CHILD

Mommy? Mommy? Hey mommy.

SAMMY

Because when I was seven he started building a tower. A tower that he could live in that would be tall enough so that he could always be in the sky.

CHILD runs to WOMAN 1

CHILD

I think my mommy's hurt.

WOMAN 2

Why don't you wait over here. The ambulance is on the way. Hello? Hello are you still there? Yes can you send the police too? Oh they're already coming great. Great. There's a man here punching people. I don't know if he is drunk or not? He might be.

SAMMY

And every day I would come here and bring him lunch. My mom would make it and I would carry it down and he would come down and pat my head and grab this sack and go back up again without so much as a "hey son".

CHILD

I think he's dying.

WOMAN 1

He is dying.

CHILD

Do something.

WOMAN

We have to wait for the ambulance.

CHILD

Why?

WOMAN

Because we don't know the right thing to do sweetheart.

CHILD

We could ask him.

WOMAN 1

I don't think he'd know either.

SAMMY

Every day for 40 years.

CHILD

Hey mister. What can I do? Huh? Sammy? Oh is that your son? He's real mean. He punched my mom. What? You have to tell him something. Well can you tell me? I don't think he's coming over. I don't know, were you mean to him?

SAMMY

It’s about 3 miles high by this point. He’s a local hero.

CHILD

I’ll write it down if you want.

SAMMY

What a shit.

CHILD

I think he’s dead.

WOMAN 1

Are they close? How close? No I think we’re losing him. I don’t know if there’s a pulse hold on. Nope no pulse. Okay. Okay hurry.

SAMMY goes to the body and stares at him like he did in Scene 2. CHILD goes to WOMAN 2.

END OF PLAY