“I Knew. He Knew.” (drama) 2 Minutes

Photo Courtesy RUSS BRADY

(HABART adjusts the volume to an’ old school’ box sized radio.  It’s a brown radio with a gray speaker and two black knobs.  One for volume and the other for changing frequency)

 (the radio sits on top of his thighs and he taps it lightly, giving it a light rhythmic beat which expresses how he’s feeling…glum)

(he speaks outloud, partly to his friend and partly to himself)

HABART:

…I stole this radio.  

(long pause.)

I stole this radio when I was a boy, on this very day.  Don’t believe me? Betya, betya don’t believe that it was this very day.  He,hu.  It was, it was.  Talking ’bout gettin’ a serious whippin’ from my old man. (he laughs uneasily)  Mmmm, did he break my face that day.  Broke my jaw almost clear off…Wheeeew wee…

(long pause.)

I knew he was leavin’mama.  Essk.  Yesk.  Could tell.  Too much going on, didn’t feel right, didn’t look right.  In the kitchen that time, saw my Gran Mamma lookin’ all old and gray…wipin’ tears from her eyes with her hanky.   Made sense, without makin’ any damn sense. 

So, I stole my father’s radio.  I hid it, buried it in the ground about a mile up the road.  Put it in some old bowling bag I found, zippered her up and dug a hole for her.  Got back and my Poppa knew it was me.  Booooy did he have the look of the devil in his eyes.  I ain’t never seen a pair of eyes like that!  Pure raging black!  Murderous, crazy lookin’ pit bull of a man.  Sweatin’ pink…angry, violent man.

He knew I was the one who took his beloved radio.  He saw the dirt on my knees, he just didn’t know where.  (beat)  It was the most important thing to him, that radio.  He loved that radio, he used to polish it, keep all the dust off it, he was obsessed with it.  Never saw ‘em take care of anything like he took care of that radio.  Never saw him love Mama the way he was affectionate, delicate, playful…loving to this box of wood.  Yeah, it was something…a box.

He beat me so bad…my daddy took me out to the dirt roads and made me dig up every spot that looked like it just been dug up.  We didn’t stop until the wee hours of the next morning.  I wouldn’t tell him where, no matter how hard he struck me.  He knocked me out two or three times throughout the night.  Don’t remember exactly but I know I was in and out.  Not easy diggin’ holes with a busted jaw but eh…I finally woke up to hearing his car screech off past me, sun beating down on me hard.  All my open wounds burning up under the sun’s rays.  Could barely move about.  He never found where I buried it and I was so glad.  So happy.

See, I knew that this radio was my fathers—well, I guess at the time it was what mattered most to him and I took it from him cause it was what mattered most to me.  

I knew.  He knew.

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