Everybody looks up, following the sound of his ascent, until all is quiet again.

BRO approaches MARCY. MARIGOLD and GRANDMA step back involuntarily. He kneels before her. She’s crying without a sound.

Pause.

He speaks to her very softly.

BRO: Hi…

MARCY: Hi…

BRO: What are you doing?

MARCY: Nothing…Just thinking…

BRO: About what?

MARCY: About my birthday.

Pause.

BRO: Yeah?

MARCY: There was a rainbow on my birthday.

GRANDMA weeps. Bawls. Wails…

BRO: Now what?

GRANDMA: You’ll never know more of Jesus Christ than that right there!

Pause.

BRO: Yeah…Yeah…Her nose is broke, Sis. There. I rest my case.

Pause.

MARIGOLD: I don’t know what to say about that. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s random torture. From here to Pluto and beyond. I don’t know…Where have you been? What happened to you when you were there?

BRO: Well, Sis, I don’t think I’ve got time to tell you about it. Not right now…But when I do, get out your tape recorder…Because it’s quite a story, and then some…

Lights fade to black downstairs as lights come up dim on the upper bedroom. CASS lies side by side with DAD, the two of them watching TV together, bathed in its steel-blue light.

BRO’S VOICE: The story of a bail-jumping fugitive crossing the Trinity Alps on foot by cover of darkness with the bounty-hunter vigilantes on his trail, holing up in caves during the day, stealing pies off windowsills to feed his withering famished skeleton—and stumbling down the east side of the mountains and onto the farmstead of a helpless child-woman, a goddamn retard, and I wind up taking unfair advantage of her in every possible way for a half of a decade. Oh yeah, be there for that one…

Pinpoint spots pick up three figures downstairs: GRANDMA in the kitchen; MARIGOLD at the counter; MARCY sitting up straight, glittering and eerie.

Upstairs, DAD and CASS watch the tube: as if the story we hear were televised.

BRO’S VOICE: I’m just one of these ghosts tumbling through town. Old placers and Spaniard padres and destroyers of the noble redwoods. Okies and Arkies and wetbacks and hippies and hobos. We just blow along through your town like dandelion chaff. Sumbitches got no use for us…Ghosts of the pioneers.

BLACKOUT

About the Author

DENIS JOHNSON is playwright in residence for the Campo Santo theater company at San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts. He is the author of several books of fiction and verse, as well as a collection of articles. His plays have been produced in San Francisco and New York. Hellhound on My Trail received a 2000 San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Outstanding Achievement Award for Original Script.

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ALSO BY DENIS JOHNSON

Seek

The Name of the World

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Jesus’ Son

Fiskadoro

The Stars at Noon

Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

Angels

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations
Millennium General Assembly

Copyright

Hellhound on My Trail was previously published in McSweeney’s.