and the sins of our fathers
[a lagniappe of the work in progress, A Republic of Books, more of which may be found elsewhere on this ethereal site]
**
Act 3: Scene 4
Skinny dipping in the Glenmacnass
Duggin’s Bar. Peter Duggin is behind the bar on a quiet Wednesday night. Doreen is on a break. Michael enters and sits at center left.
DUGGIN
What’s the latest screw, Michael?
MICHAEL
My income taxes.
DUGGIN
I didn’t think you had much of that to deal with.
MICHAEL
No. But I haven’t kept the proper records, it seems. I keep everything. Every receipt goes in a box. But so much of it’s electronic now. Hard to remember what something was that I paid two dollars and fifty-eight cents for three years ago. A bottle of Windex or packet of condoms.
DUGGIN
No problem there. We know you didn’t buy any condoms.
MICHAEL
Right. How about yourself?
DUGGIN
(Duggin lets Michael quaff the top two inches of ale in silence before he answers).
I’ve got to be going back to Wicklow. My father’s in a bad way.
MICHAEL
Sorry to hear it.
DUGGIN
He wants to die at home, but the house is falling down around him and it’s likely to fall down first.
MICHAEL
How old is he now?
DUGGIN
Eighty-four.
MICHAEL
Your mother has passed?
DUGGIN
No. Yeah. She’s just passed along to Dublin to live with her sister. She wants him to sell the house to a developer and use the money to come to America so she can give Doreen a little hell. Better I go back to Wicklow and try to reason with my father. It may be my last chance. Though I’ve never been able to reason with him before.
MICHAEL
A man’s home is his castle.
DUGGIN
I grew up there. It’s no castle. The sills were rotted so bad that when I was a boy I had a fight with my brother and—mind, the two of us didn’t weight more than a hundred pounds together—we took a section of a wall outside with us.
MICHAEL
Why does he want to keep it? No place else to go?
DUGGIN
That would be the elder care facility for him. He would rather go up to the top of Mullach Cliabhain and drown himself in the water there.
MICHAEL
What do you think you’ll do, then, bring him here?
DUGGIN
Nah. I’ll hire a fellow to fix the roof and work on the sills. Dad won’t budge until he’s cold through and through. He told my mother recently that he’d move if she would go up and swim naked with him in the Glenmacnass like they did sixty years ago. But she told him no good came of that then and she wouldn’t do it again.
MICHAEL
Sounds like something worth doing again—or at least once before you die.
DUGGIN
I tried it myself once. The water is that cold. You’d need another body to get you warm again.
MICHAEL
And she won’t live in the house?
DUGGIN
She hasn’t in ten or twelve years.
MICHAEL
Because of the roof?
DUGGIN
No. Because she didn’t want him poking her in the night anymore.
MICHAEL
(Michael drinks a few inches of ale before answering)
Your house is pretty small. Doreen’s mother, Estelle, has already got the guest room. Where would your mother live if she came here?
DUGGIN
Her knees are no good. I’d have to get rid of all that crap in the garage and finish that out so she could be on the ground.
MICHAEL
Sounds like a project.
DUGGIN
A lighter one if you’d come and take all of the books away that you talked us into buying through the years.
[Doreen returns and listens in]
MICHAEL
I don’t have the money for it, Peter. I’d have to pay you later.
DUGGIN
That’ll be fine. If you can. If you can’t, take’m away anyway
MICHAEL
I’ll send Jack over to box it up. When’s best?
DUGGIN
Sunday. When we’re closed.
MICHAEL
I’ll tell Jack. He’s laying low right now.
DUGGIN
How’se that? Is he sick?
MICHAEL
He’s keeping shy of the Feds.
DUGGIN
Is he illegal?
MICHAEL
No. Just off the grid, a little.
DUGGIN
I know that feeling. I lived that way for ten years before I got Doreen to marry me.
DOREEN
He used to be cuter
MICHAEL
That was before I took her for a swim in the Glenmacnass.
DOREEN
He bet me I wouldn’t go in. Look what I won!
(She spreads her had out over the bar)
MICHAEL
I think you told me that you were doing roofing for a living back then. So why don’t you just do your dad’s yourself?
DUGGIN
He’d just tell me I did it wrong.
MICHAEL
Yeah. I can see that.
DOREEN
What is all this shit then with you? They’ve nothing better to do?
DUGGIN
(Shaking his head and jacking a thumb at Doreen)
I married her for her tongue.
(Doreen slaps at him)
MICHAEL
No. I don’t think so. I’m just the existential threat, so to speak. The books are the problem. The authorities have to find a way to get rid of the books. The educational system doesn’t teach the citizen to read, anyway. Just scan. And not to think. Certainly not to reason. But still, that’s only a start. As things break down, some of the abused might see that the answers are right there in the old volumes. They’ll have to rid themselves of the troublesome books. And me, I’m just the superfluous man now.
DUGGIN
‘Superfluous’ Wonderful word! That’s the memoir of your Mr. Nock, isn’t it. The Memoirs of a Superfluous Man? You got me to read that twenty years ago.
MICHAEL
Take it out of the garage and read it again before they’re all gone. It’ll help you with your father and your mother too.
DUGGIN
But it’s such a little book.
MICHAEL
You have a mother and father to look after. It’s just a little problem.”