Soul of a Whore and Purvis Read Online Free PDF Page A

his, is all.
    BILL JENKS : “Oliver Wendell Homes Cassandra.” Wow.
    I think your family may be known to me.
    You wouldn’t have a brother?
    JOHN :                                               I’d have two.
    BILL JENKS : Would one be Mark?
    JOHN :                                           We call him Cass.
    BILL JENKS : I had some dealings with a Mark Cassandra
    From California. Actually, I shot him.
    Actually, more than once. I shot him twice.
    Not twice on one occasion—once
    On each of two quite separate occasions.
    Once by mistake—the second time, on purpose.
    Popped him like a Coney Island clown.
    JOHN : I know all about it. He’s my brother.
    BILL JENKS : Mark Cassandra.
    JOHN :                                   Yes, sir. Mark Cassandra.
    BILL JENKS : I don’t think we’re going to be friends.
    A SECOND BUS DRIVER enters.
    DRIVER 2 : Folks, I got as many seats as you got butts
    To fill ’em up, but what I lack is time
    To mess around and all, so git along,
    And all aboard, and off we go, and so on.
    JOHN : Ma’am, can you point me where to put this cross?
    DRIVER 2 : I don’t believe I will. That’s not allowed.
    The glory train don’t carry no religious
    Signifying statues of any type,
    No banners, emblems, images, or icons,
    No crosses, crescents, Hebrew hexagrams,
    No Guadalupey Ladies, no Buddhistic
    Eight-armed elephants from Hindustan;
    None but the uncreated, changeless, true,
    Eternal, kind of gray and kind of blue
    Dog in flight. I guess you could say pewter.
    Pewter is the color of the greyhound.
    Houston! Austin! San Antonio!
    JOHN : You’re going to Houston , is it, ma’am?
    BILL JENKS :                                                     Far—out.
    JOHN : But—what about the bus to Dallas?
    DRIVER 2 :                                                 Houston,
    Houston, Texas! San Antonio!
    JOHN : But we just had a gal in here announced
    That she was the Houston bus.
    DRIVER 2 :                                           Nope. She was Dallas.
    A Dallas driver will generally lie.
    That’s why I stay the heck away from Dallas.
    Heck, they killed the president in Dallas.
    Houston’s the place you need to be.
    BILL JENKS : But then, of course, you could be lying, too.
    DRIVER 2 : That’s absolutely the case. You’re catching on.
    Yes. I could be a lying Dallas driver…
    Aboard for Houston! If thou dost believe!
    [ Exits; fading O.S. ]
    â€¦Ten nine eight seven six five four three two…
    Sound of bus leaving.
    JOHN : This is total bullshit. Nothing less.
    BILL JENKS : If they can mess with you, they mess with
    you.
    That’s a fact of nature here in Texas—
    I’m speaking as a Mississippian—
    But, also: Don’t you ask for disrespect
    By traveling your way in prison whites?
    I speak now as a Mississippian
    With nothing but the highest, deepest, fullest
    Regard for your West Coast Cassandra clan,
    Excluding, naturally, that full-on, rank,
    Hellborn, Hellbound slut-soul, your brother Mark,
    Who spawned his own self fucking his own mother.
    JOHN : That’s some rowdy talk! You better hope
    The prison preaching holds, and I stay Christian!
    BILL JENKS : I’d never’ve done my time without that kid
    Making himself such goshdarn fun to shoot.
    JOHN : He dropped the charges.
    BILL JENKS :                               That was good of him—
    JOHN : He’d never send a guy to jail. He’s just
    A crook himself. But, now, revenge—
    Revenge is