The Jumper

Feeble and forlorn the once mighty marquis on his steed now fidgets in a creaky rocking chair. A veranda over a severe drop-off into a massive canyon. He has trouble moving due to the flock of medals pinned to his worn out government issue, camouflage bathrobe, that he wears everyday. He still carries the rank of four-star general. He has a large, large archduke Ferdinand mustache — one that would make Pancho Villa jealous, and is wearing a shiny, spiked helmet fashioned from a Prussian staff bedpan with a cavalry chinstrap reminiscent of the Light Brigade tightly latched.

     He also has a black cape, like those of forro musicians, hanging off the rocker. The War Department says it was once the battle flag of his old regiment.

     Next to him is a burned out tree like the ones that once dotted the meadows of Flanders and the woodlands of Tarawa. Adjacent is a rusty cannon and a pyramid of cannonballs. The wind is blowing hard like a death chant during burial duty. There is a red-stained sun and a dark moon hanging above.

ACT I

General: I long for the day…of the cavalry charge, sabers held high, cutting our way through the flesh of men and horses, our mustaches waxed our black mounts — no quit in them, their nostrils flared, their hooves like razorblades in the dust. Bullets whiz by from the trenches, lead squeezed off by the expendable.

(Enter Maude, pushing a baby carriage)

Maude: Oh I didn’t see you sitting there so close to the edge. Doesn’t this wind make you crazy?

General: The wind is not the culprit, wench. After all the years and all the glory looking death in the teeth I can only sit here in this chair, unable to move under the weight of all these medals, unable even to even rock back and forth after charging across continents. My wooden chair. My wooden prison. My only friend is the wind’s cold chant.

Maude: I know the feeling. I can’t move much either in a metaphoric sense. My life is without highs and lows, just the same every day. Mundane, fruitless, quietly desperate and alone, terribly alone.

General: If you are so fruitless tell me who is in the stroller?

Maude: Oh him. It’s my son Lemmings, named after his absent father, a man I never knew but have soon forgotten.

(She wheels the carriage over to an angle where the general can look inside).

General: But. Madame, the carriage is empty.

Maude: What! How do you know my name? What has happened to my boy?

General: Could have been Shiloh, could have been the Somme. You yourself sent him off. Tell me. Are you alone in the world?

Maude: I already told you that I was alone, terribly alone.

General: Solitude in birth and again in death. It’s all that we know. Where we came from and where we go has not been addressed by the enlightened and the level-headed.

Maude: My life is shit. I never have enough to eat. My lovers have all been killed in the wars to end all of the other wars. If I had any direction in my life I would still not have the shoes for it.

General: Then what will you do?

Maude: I shall maintain. All of us on earth must maintain.

General: And why must we all maintain?

Maude: For future generations if for nothing else.

General: (Laughing) For future generations? Ha! They don’t care about you, about how you are today. They would not know to blink if you died and blew away.

Maude: I am lost. My soul is lost! (lamenting)

General: A lot more than your soul has been lost. If I could move under all this weight I’d jump right now and find all of the answers that have eluded me. I used to love being a general…the nice warm bed in the rear, the pretty maps, the firefights far away brought close to home in my binoculars, the power…All nice and orderly. No blood. All nice and clean. But it’s all gone. All I have left are these medals.

Maude: And your bathrobe. Don’t forget your bathrobe and pajamas. Without them you’d have to carry your medals around in a basket and nobody would ever see them.

General: The planet is exploding. People eat rats.The wars rage and there are still soldiers left standing. You’d think someone would run short of bullets.

(He tries to scoot his rocking chair closer to the cliff).

Maude: Life is defined not by the feast but by the famine.

General: It’s worse. Your life will never mean a thing, even to you. Walking around with an empty baby carriage will bring no peace. The only way to peace is just over the top, or in this case the cliff, Maude.

(He gazes over the cliff scornfully. She begins to cry.)

Maude: My life will not improve? I always thought my life would improve. I seek the light of heaven but only find the shadows of hell.

General: There is no devil below. I have seen him on the battlefield.

Maude: Darkness?

General: Who told you there was light?

Maude: God

General: God who?

Maude: You’re a sick old man with medals on his bathrobe. I’m leaving. Sit in your wooden chair alone.

(Maude wheels her carriage around, throws back her head

as if to rid herself of the general and exits).

ACT II

General: Now there, my friends, is a prime recruit for the jump. She’ll be back. Weak and brittle like the little boy soldiers at Argonne. They never knew what hit them. All those pretty uniforms soaked in blood and black trench mud. I understand them and salute them for their courage in the face of the German guns. Flesh against hot metal fired into the sky.

(He begins to sing).

General (singing): Oh look on the Assyrian armies, the Romans and the hordes of Tamerlane. Survivors of the battle marching backward, then forward to ordain. Boom!

Angel: Who is that singing?

General: Who is that not singing?

Angel: My wings, my wings are broken and I will soon fall. I have come to view, to examine the abyss.

General: (scooting frantically closer to the edge of the cliff but smiling as if nothing is out of character): You have come to the right place my angel friend. Perhaps you can no longer fly with the birds or the bombers, but you can still descend gracefully.What’s it like being an angel? Is it all it’s cracked up to be?

Angel; I’m not just an angel, I’m a fucking archangel you wrinkled, rocking decoration of death. Can’t you see my brilliance, my aura?

General: Can’t say that I do…A navigational streak of light in a sea of wind and darkness. Righteousness has gone for a walk. Your wings are all saggy. Have you ever been in the army?

Angel: I said I was an archangel. What do you think archangels do for a living, sell bathrobes? I was the point man in the pre-ancient showdown with Lucifer and his boys. We kicked their asses but they never were defeated. They never really went away.

General: No one ever really goes away. No one really ever stays either. No soldier eagerly vacates his line to charge the enemy in the morning.

Angel: Could you move away from the cliff. I’d like to make a clean jump and the last thing I need to remember is the face of a madman in a rocking chair.

General: An archangel jumping to his death? Interesting.

Angel: Move or I’ll take you with me.

General: Please do.

Angel: Stop! You just don’t realize what I’ve been through, what I have seen since Beelzebub started running his mouth and pissed off the Big Three. Did we cast out the wrong angels?

General: All the more reason to jump.

Angel: An angel without wings is like a morning without light, a champion without victory, a dog without a tail.

General: You’re right. You’re hopeless. Why not just jump? Things are not going to get better. What is your name, angel friend?

Angel: Estrogen, sometimes.

General: The spacemen are arriving on the docks any day now. All the more reason to hurl oneself from the heights!

Angel: I have no future and I am tormented by my past. The present gives me no peace. No one cares. There are no answers. I have no options.

General: On the contrary you do. It’s just a few steps and down.

Angel: There’s no soul left in you is there? You sit there in your rocker with your medals, waiting for some god or the other to apologize.

General: I have no need for apologies, only recognition. I am a soldier. I have no need of a soul, just a good saddle. I was cavalry you know.

Angel: You are raving mad but you will be gone soon. I must find my way away from here. The cliff answers nothing and I don’t like the sound of splat. I have no quarrel with mortal man or gods or even Lucifer anymore.

(As he leaves the general furiously tries to scoot

his rocking chair closer to the cliff without success).

Act III

In the fading afternoon light he general sat there unable to move toward or away from the edge. The wind flutters the ribbons on his uniform. Several severed soldiers stop to watch him. Some are laughing. Some are crying. Some just stare.

Dead soldier #1 with no legs: Looking down the hole governor? Go ahead, look from closer. Maybe some of your relatives are down there? You didn’t go over the top with them. You never heard the whistle? The trench police would shoot you if you didn’t have that general’s costume. You never set foot in No Man’s Land did you? You were safe enough, back at some chalet pouring over maps and pouring brandy while the machine guns chattered miles away

Dead soldier #2 with no arms: Time to go over the top our Lordship. King and country and all of that. Now don’t dally. If you want to be a war hero you must charge now. Mustache first sir Lead with it. Last one to go’s a rotten egg. When you were a little boy did you boss the other children? Issuing orders from the hip? Did you see their blood on your (military tunic of some sort here) The ribbons sewed on by the mothers of the dead, rotting in splendid meadows, buried with a wink.

Dead soldier # 3 with no head: Oh and don’t alarm yourself with the attack. You will be out there in your spurs and feathers leading it. Don’t concern yourself. We have saturated their lines with12 hours of artillery. A cockroach couldn’t have survived that onslaught You will lead your men as a cake walk into their trenches and dugouts.

All soldiers, as if directed, burst into song: Who made us come here and do these evil things.

Dead Soldier #1 Who decides who attacks and who stays in the trench? Does the God that you have created listen to the enemy’s prayers too? The Wilderness, Bunker Hill, The Somme Gallipoli/Pelekanon, The Bulge. All from the safety and warmth of the parlor. Field glasses and bad information on the enemy.

Soldier #2 : Good work  there General If all of the dead had father even one child where would we the population be today?

One of the soldiers hands the general a tiny cocktail umbrella

 Dead soldier #3 “Here Commander, this will help break your fall”

General: “But it’s nothing but a cocktail dressing, a fancy little umbrella of no worth. It just doesn’t go with gin and bitters! Orderly? Orderly?

Dead soldier #3: What did you want…a parachute? One parachute for my friend the General!

Dead soldier #2 : Hey, Sport! The edge looks like one of your nicer trenches, but how does one enter. I see no stairway. It’s like a pretty maze, all laid out beautifully. A home for the men who would soon do battle against the bloody Hun

General: Why you’re all dead! You’re all corpses walking around.

All: And no thanks to you!

Mother of a missing soldier: “Look down there general, all the way to the blood. Hurry before it’s too late. Yes, your way down there hole has been filling up over the centuries.

ACT IV

General: Freud jumped. Marx jumped. Caesar jumped. Joan of Arc in flames! Robespierre watched as his head fell downward into a pretty whicker basket. A breakfast of figs and a dinner of loaves and fishes. Where is the real prophet? Wait…who’s there?

Young Soldier in baggy uniform: It’s only me, your Excellency. Jimmy from Iowa. Do you like my uniform? It’s just like the one my grandfather wore when he got hit in Korea. I never knew him. I think I’ll grow into it over the next few wars.

General: I was in Korea but I didn’t die there.

Soldier: I will be a hero. I know it. Just give me the chance. All of my family were heroes. I know all the patriotic songs and battle slogans by heart.

General: For the glory of it all. For the glory of the jump. Are you hear to leap?

Soldier: If ordered, sir.

General: We jumped out of airplanes flying higher than this little cliff. (He manages to scoot closer to cliff this time). You can’t even see the bottom. What’s the big deal? Let’s jump together, tandem, for the glory of the nation! He tosses one of his medals over the side.

Soldier: I didn’t hear it hit.

General: Nor will I hear you.

Soldier: I’m not here to jump. I have my whole life to jump. Sure, things could be better but I don’t think jumping will fix anything.

General: Don’t be so sure. Put the cork back in the bottle and get a running start. It will be over in no time.

Soldier: Throw another medal you bitter fool. I’ve got to go before I’m late for the next war. Adieu.

(He warmly greets the Arc Builder on the way off stage)

Arc Builder: Greetings General. I am here to build an arc and I’ll be needing your rocker. Do you want some help jumping?

General: An arc builder? Why? There is no flood up here. Salute the Centurion! Throw your grenade.

(He tosses another medal off the cliff)

Arc builder: The flood is down there. Here, let me help you scoot…

General: Wait a minute. Why are you here? Who are you? Are you a spy?

Arc builder: I am the arc builder. Don’t you recognize my arc builder’s hat? I have come to help you jump.

General: Discarded puppets with broken strings.

Arc builder: What? What’s that you say? All the puppets have broken their strings?

General: I was cavalry. I was looking through my field glasses. All I saw was smoke. The whole world wakes up hungry. Everyone is a next meal in the jungle.

(He starts to scoot toward the cliff again and the arc builder breaks into a wide grin)

Arc builder: Let me help you, general. Let go of the chair. We’ll just pour you out like molasses from the jar. Let go of the chair…But first let me wash my hands.

(He washes methodically, sharing his smile with the audience, then throws the wash cloth over the cliff).

Arc builder: Are you ready for your solo flight? I’ll bet they didn’t teach you this dance move in the cavalry.

General: Why don’t you jump if it’s such salvation?

Arc builder: Oh, I have already jumped. So have all the others. You are the last one to leap. Go on…just a little further. There is no devil below only restful darkness. No black, no white. No good, no bad.

(The arc builder begins hammering planks of wood together).

Arc builder: I’ll wait. You’ll jump before long.

The general then winced and moved closer to his edge deciding, finally, to do it after all.

General: One, two, three…

(Enter nurse from the nearby rest home)

Nurse: Oh there you are general, talking to the clouds again. You shouldn’t sit so close to the pond. I know you like the ducks but you could fall in, besides it’s past time for your medication.

– Kevin Haley