Copyright ©
2015 by Richard Seltzer
Synopsis
An old man and his nephew cope
with death, the one by living
with gusto and laughing in the face of death, the other by
devotion to duty and
self-sacrifice, and both find salvation in an old dog.
Cast of Characters
SEAN - 60 years old.
Well-groomed, in a business suit.
He didn't dress up for a special occasion, rather this is
how he always
dreses. He is
successful in his own eyes
and in the eyes of others.
When unsure
of himself, he adjusts his tie to restore his self-confidence.
ADOLPH
O'LEARY - His
uncle, 90 years old, exuberant,
self-satisfied. Imagine George Burns. He wears old jeans and a
ragged
shirt. He's a
gambler who has won and
lost and who takes his losses in good spirits, with no regrets.
Place
Outside an apartment building
in Atlantic City.
Time
A morning in 2013
Heel, Hitler
Setting:Outside an apartment
building in Atlantic City.
At Rise:ADOLPH sits on the
front steps, old army bugle in
hand, a basket with a blanket by his side. He struggles to blow
a cacophonous
blast on the bugle. SEAN enters far right, hesitant and
conflicted.
SEAN (stepping forward)
Uncle Adolph?
ADOLPH
(recognizes
SEAN, smiles and stands)
Sean?
Is
that you? You in an old man's body. (laughs) For you to be
that old, my life
must be speeding -- doing 90, in a 30 mile-an-hour zone.
That's not my fault,
officer. The accelerator's stuck.
SEAN
(laughing)
Long
time
no see.
ADOLPH
Said
the
blind man.
SEAN
Cuba
si.
ADOLPH
Said
the
travel agent.
SEAN
Yankee
no.
ADOLPH
And
he
should know better.
SEAN
You're
still
quick.
ADOLPH
Better
quick
than dead.
(SEAN
AND
ADOLPH high-five then hug)
SEAN
I've
missed
you, Uncle Adolph.
ADOLPH
Well,
if
you arrived tomorrow instead of today, you'd have missed me
again. I'll be
shipping out to a nursing home in the morning.
SEAN
So
I heard. Shit.
ADOLPH
(touching
helmet and bugle)
You
caught
me playing with sutff I can't take with me. Dying should be
easier. You
don't expect to keep your stuff then. But ripping it away
while the body's
still warm, -- downsizing, they call it. Death by a thousand
cuts, I call it.
SEAN
Can
I
help? Do you need anything?
ADOLPH
A
new life. Size eight. Rubber sole.
SEAN
(chuckles)
Same
old
Adolph.
ADOLPH
How did we get so far out of
touch? Before you went off to
college, I was your fountain of wisdom, and you were a thirsty
lad. It did my
heart good to sound wise to you, when, to myself, I sounded like
a fool.
SEAN
I'm a pro at procrastination. We make an odd pair.
ADOLPH
A losing hand.
SEAN
I've lost it already. That's
what brings me here. When I
heard about the nursing home, that got me off my ass, but I
needed to see you
on my own account. I
need to bounce some
ideas off you, like I did in the old days.
ADOLPH
Pray tell. No, don't pray. Just
tell.
SEAN
You
remember
your story about the bugle boy, back in World War II?
ADOLPH
I
wish I could forget it.
SEAN
The
day
before your unit was due to ship out, you got orders to
transfer to an army
band.
ADOLPH
(puts
his helmet on again)
And
a
fine band of brothers it was.
SEAN
Your
old
unit wound up in the Battle of the Bulge, and everybody was
captured. Then
on the way to prison camp, the Allies bombed the train. And
there was only one
casualty -- the bugle boy who took your place, died.
ADOLPH
Right.
My
O'Leary luck. The fuck of the Irish.
SEAN
That's
what
you said. You win some. You lose some. You said that loud and
often. But
what you didn't say was even louder than what you did say. You
were singled
out. You were
saved for a reason. You
had a destiny to fulfill. Your story told
me that we each have a path that we should follow, a straight
and narrow, a
reason for our living. Life's about duty and self-sacrifice. What we do matters
in the grand scheme of
things.
ADOLPH
Ah,
yes
-- the grand scam of things. I never cared for that way of
looking at life.
SEAN
You
don't
care now. But there was a time when you did. Dad said the
bugle-boy story
changed you. You were pre-med. Dedicated. And you came out of
the war mellow
and happy-go-lucky -- the guy I love, who we all love; not the
straight-laced
guy you were before.
ADOLPH
I
saw the light, and it was good. Better a world of chance than
one made of
destiny and duty. Cast a cold eye on life, on death. And raise
a pint to those
who came before.
SEAN
Your
banter
was enough for me years ago. But now I need to talk to the
sober,
serious you, the pre-war you.
Talk to me
straight, Adolph, please. I need your advice.
ADOLPH
You
of
little faith. There's wisdom in wordplay, my lad. Language knows more
than we do. It lives. It
grows. We use it. We change it. We learn from it. It's like a
game of tag, from
one generation to the next.
SEAN
Horseshit.
ADOLPH
Like
that,
too. Today's shit -- tomorrow's fertilizer. In the beginning
is the word.
At the end is the turd. We're all manure in the end.
SEAN
I
get it. You still see the world that way. That's the life
you've led, and
you're proud of it. But I can't live that way. I crave for
meaning and purpose.
I need a path to follow. That bugle boy story of yours
inspired me. That story
helped me tough it out, year after year. I could go to work in
the morning. I
could hold my marriage together. Then the story changed.
ADOLPH
What
do
you mean it "changed'?
SEAN
The
bugle
boy.
ADOLPH
(does
double-take)
What?
SEAN
I
was so proud of my life and of that story of yours that had
inspired me, that I
wrote about it and posted it on the Web. And somebody
searching for himself,
found that story and contacted me.
ADOLPH
Wasn't
it
Socrates who said, "Google thyself"?
SEAN
The
bugle
boy.
ADOLPH
Google
boy?
SEAN
The
guy
who died in your place -- he contacted me.
ADOLPH
(taken
aback, no longer joking)
You
have
changed, my boy. Now you believe in ghosts?
SEAN
He's
alive.
That story you heard was false.
ADOLPH
(sober,
sits, takes off his helmet, stamps his feet, takes a deep
breath)
Shit.
I
joked about that story, but I never doubted it. (pauses) And
it turns out
that I was making fun of nothing. There was no connection
between his life and
mine. It feels strange hearing that now. I wonder if I really
believed myself
when I poo-pooed the idea that I was singled out, that I had a
destiny, that
anybody could have a destiny, when I preached that things just
happen.
SEAN
Yes,
things
just happen -- that's what took the wind out of my sails. I
couldn't
believe in Santa Claus or God; but, for years, the bugle boy
story gave me
faith that life can have a purpose. And without that faith, I
couldn't go to
work in the morning; I couldn't make my marriage work.
ADOLPH
It
was a sleeping dog story.
SEAN
What?
ADOLPH
(stands
again, animated)
Let
sleeping
dogs lie.
SEAN
Life
isn't
a joke.
ADOLPH
But
it
is. It has to be. Otherwise,
the
weight of responsibility would be too much. Step right up, my
boy. This is the
chance of a life time. Take a good look. The house lights are
on. You can see
the makeup and props. It's all a show. So enjoy the show.
Carpe diem, carpe
night-em, carpe everything-you-can-get-em. We need to
kick-start the rest of
your life.
SEAN
And
how
the hell are you going to do that?
ADOLPH
Let's
walk
the dog, and talk the talk.
(ADOLPH
leans
over the basket and looks down at it tenderly)
SEAN
Dog? I thought that
was a basket of dirty laundry. You have a dog in there?
ADOLPH
That's about all I
have. A dachshund, 20 years old, blind in one eye and lame in
one leg. I can't
take him with me to the nursing home. This will be my last
walk with him. The
vet will put him down tomorrow.
SEAN
Shit.
ADOLPH
Amen. Shit almighty.
I should have taught him that trick. That would have been a
good one -- shit,
Rover, shit.
ADOLPH (leans over
the clothes basket and continues)
Heel!
SEAN
Adolph,
the
dog isn't moving.
ADOLPH
(stroking
the blanket, then picking up the basket)
Then
I'll
take matters into my own hands, and walk the basket. It won't
be the first
time. But it will be the last. We won't last much longer.
(pause) Heel, Hitler!
SEAN
Hitler?
(ADOLPH
starts
walking, carrying the basket. SEAN walks beside him.)
ADOLPH
Yes,
of
course. Hitler's the dog's name. That's what I named him when
I adopted him
last year.
SEAN
You
adopted
an old lame dog?
ADOLPH
Of
course. Do you think I'd want to name a healthy young dog
"Hitler"?
What would be the joke of that?
SEAN
Joke?
What
joke?
ADOLPH
This
is
my revenge for what that upstart in Germany did to my good
name. That's the
essence of a man -- his good name. Like my father always told
me -- "You
might lose your money. You might lose your health. There's
nothing you can do
about that. But your good name -- don't let anybody take that
away from
you." When Hitler took my name, I knew I had to do that dog
thing to get
my name back. But I kept putting it off, and it wasn't until
last year that I
got around to it. And, now, I guess it's too late. Nobody gets
the joke. Kind
of like me. My life's a shaggy dog story that's gone on so
long that nobody's
going to notice the punch line at the end.
SEAN
That
could
have its upside.
ADOLPH
Which is?
SEAN
If an old
man dies and nobody
notices, does he really die?
ADOLPH
(laughs and slaps SEAN on the
back)
Like old
soldiers and bad movies, he
just fades away.
SEAN
That's
life. That's death. It rains.
It shines. Sometimes it shits. But what the hell is "it" --
the great
all-powerful "it" that does everything?
ADOLPH
The
it-ness protection program...
Don't go looking for "it". That's the wrong game. You knew the
meaning of "it" in kindergarten.
SEAN
What?
ADOLPH
You're
"it" or I'm
"it". And we pass the power of it-ness from one to the other.
That's
the meaning of life. That's my tell.
SEAN
Go tell
it on the mountain.
ADOLPH
Life's a
play. Let's play
SEAN
But
what's the answer? -- the real
answer, not just wordplay.
ADOLPH
Check the Internet. The answer
to everything is there --
e-bay, e-trade, e-sop. I'm the reed and you're the oak. I bend,
but you don't.
Integrity has its price. The wind rips you out of the ground.
SEAN
But what
is "it"? The
great and powerful "it"? What's the point of it all?
(ADOLPH
and SEAN have walked a full
circle around the stage. They stop by the front stairs. ADOLPH
puts down the
basket)
ADOLPH
(tags SEAN)
I was
"it", and now you
are. Glory in your moment.
SEAN
(smiling)
So we're
playing tag?
ADOLPH
We're too
old to run and hide, but
with a slap on the back, we can pass the power of "it-ness"
back and
forth. We can pass our legacy of magic from one generation to
the next.
(ADOLPH
picks
up the bugle and hands it to SEAN)
ADOLPH
(continues)
Here's
my
old bugle. Take it. It's yours now. And if ever again you fear
you're
blowing your chance at life, blow this instead. And when you
hear that I'm gone...
SEAN
Play
"Taps"
for you.
ADOLPH
No.
Play
"The Boogey Woogey Bugle Boy of Company C."
SEAN
And
tap
dance to it.
ADOLPH
That's
the
spirit.
ADOLPH
(continues,
leaning over the basket and addressing the dog)
Hell,
Hitler.
Hell, bloody Hell, I'll miss you, Hitler.
ADOLPH
(continues,
picking up the basket and handing it to SEAN.)
Take
this,
too, in remembrance of me. He's the chance of a life time.
Keep him
close. Make him heel.
SEAN
I
promise to protect him from sick jokes.
ADOLPH
Give
that
boy a round of applause and a square meal. And let's hope that
the
performance of our lives earns us an encore.
SEAN
(lifting
the basket high and talking to it)
It
ain't over yet, kid. The show goes on. Don't give up the shit.
We won't put you
down. Carry on, trooper. Heal, Hitler, heal. Maybe the vet can
heal you.
CURTAIN