Five Television Plays (David Mamet) by David Mamet Read Free Book Online

law?
    B ILLY: Yes, Sir, I did.
    P RICE: ’One have any reason hereabouts to do him harm? ( Pause. )
    B ILLY: I . . . no, sir. No one I can think of. Why do you ask?
    P RICE: . . . fellow asked me a question. Stuck in my mind. What do you think about the Arson, Main Street?
    B ILLY ( thinks ): No, you mean “Who"? I . . . the book says, Arson, many times, the crime of a disturbed adolescent.
    (P RICE laughs. )
    P RICE: You've been doing your homework.
    B ILLY ( shrugs ) : . . . other motives, of course, including revenge, and, of course, personal gain, either through collection of insurance, or elimination of a competing commercial concern.
    P RICE: Son, how old are you?
    B ILLY: Nineteen years, sir . . .
    P RICE: You want to think seriously about joining on this force, instead of going in the Air Police, you come by, we'll talk.
    B ILLY: I, well, Sir, you know.
    P RICE: It's okay, just a thought. We all need allies.
    ( The car stops at a rural farmhouse. Camera follows the two out of the car. )
    P RICE: You can come along, you want. What we got here, a complaint. Mr. Newman, it would seem, ‘s being accused tearing down the “No Trespassing—No Hunting” signs, his neighbor's . . . Mr. Kiernan's place. What's that mean “accused"?
    B ILLY: Means he was doing it.
    P RICE: Why?
    B ILLY: Um, didn't like, folks come up, the summer folks, change the way folks live.
    P RICE: Uh-huh.
    B ILLY: His folks been hunting on that land a long time, now man comes and posts it. ( Pause. )
    P RICE: That's the way a hunter would think.
    B ILLY: Yessir.
    P RICE: Uh huh. Your dad showed me, that's some trophy buck you took last year. Some shooting.
    ( Camera follows them to the porch of the house. )
    B ILLY: A lucky shot.
    P RICE: You going out this year?
    B ILLY : Already been. Didn't get nothing.
    P RICE: Already been. You telling me? Season don't start until next week.
    B ILLY: Went out in the bow season.
    P RICE: You went out with a bow this year?
    B ILLY: Yes. I, I, you know, I thought it was more sporting.
    P RICE: Well it is that . . . ( Knocks on the door. ) Get anything?
    (A M AN answers the door. A lumberjack-looking individual around forty. )
    M AN: Yep?
    P RICE: Name's John Price. I'm the new Chief of Police.
    M AN: What do you want?
    P RICE: Came out to get acquainted.
    M AN: The summer people up the road called you in. They don't like “this” and don't like “that.” I'm tearing down their signs, that's it, isn't it?
    P RICE: . . . that's it, but I wouldn't worry about it.
    M AN: . . . seems to me quite a waste of my tax money, send a man out, let alone the Chief of Police, fellow got himself a little piece of paper torn down off a tree.
    P RICE: Couldn't agree more. ( Pause. )
    M AN: I can't say that I get you.
    P RICE: Come over to say, that I couldn't agree more. Fellow lives here, what they live here, two, three months a year?
    M AN: If that.
    P RICE: A man might think, now, this is off the record here . . .
    M AN: . . . I'm with you.
    P RICE: . . . business do they have, tell someone like you, family's lived here, what?
    M AN: Family's been on this land for two hundred years.
    P RICE: . . . keep off a piece of land your daddy prolly hunted on . . .
    M AN: . . . granddaddy, too.
    P RICE: . . . land that they surely wouldn't know someone was on, as they don't get back there, what?
    M AN: Once a year, once a year if that . . .
    P RICE: They'd never know, someone was going back there . . .
    M AN: . . . well, that is the Lord's Truth . . .
    P RICE: . . . unless someone was tearing down the signs. ( Pause. )
    M AN: What did you say your name was . . . ?
    (B ILLY has wandered back to the car and is holding the handset. )
    B ILLY: Mr. Price . . . ?
    P RICE ( to M AN): Excuse me . . . (P RICE goes over to the car, talks on the radio. ) Chief Price, go.
    D ISPATCHER ( voice over on the radio ): We have a three-car accident, the Interstate four and one half miles north of the Junction. Multiple fatalities. Medical and State