He lowers the receiver and hangs his head. Pause.

DAD: God, it’s incomprehensible. (Pause.) That there are voices out there with whole entire lives behind them, and…beautiful and strange…and—

CASS: Dad. Dad. Dad. Look at me. Dad?

DAD: Uh, yes.

CASS: Dad.

DAD: Yes, Cass.

CASS: A week at the most.

DAD: A week?

CASS: Can I flop here? Just a week at the outside. Can I stay?

DAD: Yes. Uh. Cass. Yes…love to have you.

GRANDMA begins to sing.

DAD sits quite still, listening. CASS stares outside.

GRANDMA (singing):

When they hung my handsome Daniel

He looked so high surprised

Gold fell from his pockets

And a crow fell from the skies

When they hung my handsome Daniel

He looked so high surprised

Although he’d watched the scaffold

Since the twelfth day of July

Although the judge passed sentence

My handsome Dan must die

Yet when the trapdoor opened

He looked so flat surprised

You should have seen his eyes

My Daniel was so handsome

You should have seen his eyes

Pause.

DAD: Well, the dog lived through another day.

Pause.

BLACKOUT

Act I

SCENE 3

Lights low in the living room. Hide-a-bed folded out. CASS alone: shaved and clean, a blanket wrapped around his midriff, hair slicked back and still wet from the shower: puttering around, looking for cigarettes, fiddling with the remote…

TV: lonely lonely nights…lonely lonely nights…lonely lonely nights—

…the prehistoric evidence. They sift among the minute—

…here in the dark—

…the past—

…the limitless future—

There’s nothing funny on. So quit pushing buttons.

CASS hits the mute. Shouts upstairs:

CASS: Daddy! Can I have a cigarette or not. (Pause.) Dad?

No answer. CASS sighs, gets back in bed.

Light tapping on the front door.

CASS: Uh…(More tapping.) Who’s there?

BRO’S VOICE: Shhhhhh!

CASS: Who is it? Identify!

BRO’S VOICE: Shush, will you? Is she gone to bed?

CASS: Who is that? Bro?

CASS wraps himself in his blanket, goes to the front door and cracks it.

BRO: She asleep?

CASS: I guess.

BRO tiptoes inside.

BRO: I been standing out there the better part of an hour waiting for that maniacal old fossil’s light to go out…How, Tarzan.

CASS: You got a cigarette?

BRO: Not for every pitiful sumbitch wants one.

This is LUKE CASSANDRA, called BRO: Bigger and beefier than CASS, four years senior. He embraces his younger brother. Sits in the recliner while CASS resumes the hide-a-bed.

They look each other over.

CASS: How goes it?

BRO: Oh, downhill to the river. (Pause.) Whatcha watchin’?

CASS: I don’t know. The usual nonsense.

Pause. They regard the television. CASS tries a couple channels, no sound.

CASS: Where you been?

BRO: Redding, mostly.

CASS: Doing what?

BRO: Logging, mostly.

CASS: Ha!

BRO: Living with a retarded woman.

CASS: Uh…Now, you say, uh—

BRO: You say ha, I’m lying—okay, I ain’t logging. I know what a log is, but I don’t have the tiniest idea what you do with the goddamn things, I mean, what log-ging i-n-gee would be. I just say it. Really the last almost five years I been living with a retarded woman.