2 June 2015

PROMPT:  I couldn't stop...

Lynne Kaufman, playwright


Carl, 56, sits in a wooden chair.  He looks tired and draw.  His shirt is bloody.
Officer Felicia Brown, 28, paces the room.
CARL
They’re always angry.  They yell and scream.  We had one who spit on the carpet in her room.  She said over and over, “You just don’t understand!”

Silence.

CARL
And I didn’t.
OFFICER BROWN
What’s that got to do with this?
CARL
(driven)
She ran away.
OFFICER BROWN
Who ran away?
CARL
Katrina.  Katrina ran away.  We couldn’t take it.  A few months before we’d had a young woman, Apache...
OFFICER BROWN
...Apache?  Like the in... Native American Apache.
CARL
Her mother drank, used drugs.  I don’t know.  She pimped Apache out when she was ten for drug money.
OFFICER BROWN
Is she in jail!?
CARL
Apache?
OFFICER BROWN
Her mother.
CARL
No... Apache ran away from our home six times.  Six times in a month!  When Katrina ran away, we... we just couldn’t...
OFFICER BROWN
Couldn’t what?
CARL
Take her back.  We went to see her in juvee... twice.  We talked to her.  Maybe if she asked... But she put on a tough girl act.
OFFICER BROWN
We don’t put kids in juvenile detention for running away.
CARL
When they picked her up she had a weapon.
OFFICER BROWN
So they put her in juvee.
CARL
Yup.

Silence.

CARL
But the last one...
OFFICER BROWN
The last... foster kid?
CARL
Beautiful, smart.  And crazy as a bed bug.

Silence.

CARL
One of the girls brought in bed bugs.
OFFICER BROWN
Your kidding.
CARL
I wish I was.  Thousands of dollars and we still can’t get rid of them.
OFFICER BROWN
What about this last girl?
CARL
Amarilla.  Her grandfather started sexually abusing her when she was five... or six.  Then her uncle.  Then the members of the drug gang her father ran with.  Her father waited ‘til she was eleven.
OFFICER BROWN
Where was her mother?
CARL
I don’t know.  Using?  Scared?  I don’t know.
OFFICER BROWN
They would have had to kill me.

Silence.

CARL
Me too.
OFFICER BROWN
No wonder she was crazy.
CARL
We gave her too much freedom.  She was sweet and smart... and... and...
OFFICER BROWN
Crazy as a bed bug.
CARL
Yup.  She got into drugs and...
OFFICER BROWN
What’s any of that got to do with last night?
CARL
When that old man fondled that young woman... in public.
OFFICER BROWN
Betty’s nineteen.  She’s a prostitute.  Been on the street for a least a year.
CARL
I know.

Silence.

CARL
I don’t know what happened.  I knocked him down.  I started hitting him.  I couldn’t stop...
OFFICER BROWN
You could o’ killed him.
CARL
I would have... if the young woman hadn’t... hadn’t...
OFFICER BROWN
She smacked you on the back of the head with a bottle.  What were you doing in that part of the town anyway?
CARL
I’m a playwright.  I walking back to my car from a play reading at a small theatre down the block.
OFFICER BROWN
Art ain’t worth this.

End of play.