MRS. MAY: Uh…

MARIGOLD: The explorer.

MRS. MAY: Uh. Powell. John, uh…

Pause.

MARIGOLD: Well…Cass came back through Dallas in the fall. He told me he drove a raft with eight passengers, three workers, and all their gear in it. Food, camping equipment, all of that. The second day they were floating along and he heard a strange sound growing and growing down the way. “Hey, Cookie, is that a train I hear downriver there?” he asked the cook. “What do you mean?” says the cook. “I mean it kind of rumbles and rumbles, do you hear that great big sound? Do they have a train track down this deep in a canyon?” “Wait a minute,” the cook says. “Do you really don’t know what that sound is? How many times have you run this river?” Cass says, “Hell, I never drove one of these things before in my life. I’m just picking it up as I go.” “Get this raft over to the side,” the cook says. And they spend the night by the river, and the cook tells him everything he can think of about shooting the rapids in a giant raft with a dozen people on board. “Next day we got up and put her in and started along. The rumble got bigger and bigger. Inside of thirty minutes it was just nonstop thunder filling the whole Grand Canyon, till we come around a curve, and the whole river looks like one big white monster avalanche of snow down over a field of boulders. I steered her into that mess and inside of five minutes I wrecked that thing so bad I don’t believe they’ll ever find the little rubber bits of it, if there’s any left,” he says. “But—the people loved it! Didn’t nobody get hurt very bad, and we stopped the next raft that came by in a few hours and radioed for a helicopter and we all got choppered out. It was the best raft trip those people ever had!” The company didn’t let him near the tiller again, you can bet. He spent the rest of the summer working as a helper.

Pause. MRS. MAY shrugs.

MARIGOLD: Isn’t there a Lake Powell in Colorado or someplace like that?

MRS. MAY: Yes. In Colorado.

Pause.

MRS. MAY turns and leaves, shutting the door behind her. As it closes, the two of them stare at one another through the narrowing gap—

BLACKOUT

We hear the door close in the dark.

2. Head Rolling and Rolling

A hotel coffee shop. A man in a suit, mid-forties, alone at a table. A woman walks in, business suit, mid-thirties. Looks around. Lights up when she sees the man.

WOMAN: Are you—(Pause.) You look just like—Bill Jenks?

MAN: Wild Bill—“The World’s Only Snake with Legs.” The Siberian Shaman.

WOMAN: Bill!

She joins him at the table. Pause.

Do you recognize me at all?

MAN: I don’t think so.

WOMAN (to invisible waiter): Can I have a coffee? (To MAN:) I want to get really nervous. I brewed up six courtesy packs upstairs, that’s all they had. I need to be creative…I don’t know why I just plunked down. Is it okay? I never really knew you over in—just by reputation. I didn’t think you had a sense of humor. I mean, “The world’s only snake with legs.” I didn’t think you’d actually heard—It’s well meant—respectfully—