Howard's Boy
Joseph McConnell
Copyright 2018 08 08
A short play in 1 act
Howard's Boy
character list
HOWARD, 40s, white, supervisor of some sort of work team. Possibly the first in his family to rise above laborer. Blunt and colloquial in speech.
KURT, a peer of Howard's. Just an audience for the story Howard is telling.
Howard's Boy
SCENE 1
(Interior: A break room or
"coffee room" at Howard's place of work. Cheap folding table and
chairs. Low, repeated, vaguely industrial noises off. As we open, Howard is
speaking to Kurt.)
HOWARD
Boy came to the house yesterday. Just walked in. Asked if he
could come and stay for a while. The people he'd been living with booted him
out.
KURT
Oh, yeah?
HOWARD
Yeah. I didn't really want to hear it, you know. Didn't want
to be easy on him. But my wife talked to him. Sat down with him and tried to, I
don't know, find something we could do. To help. Or see if she could talk to
the parish or something. Get him a place to live by himself. She was going to
talk to Alice, down at the grocery, see if he could box things or stack things,
make a little money. But he didn't seem to hear any of it. Just kept shaking
his head, saying he'd tried that.
KURT
That's a shame.
HOWARD
It's hard to ... to think of things. To know what to do for
somebody. I don't know what he's been doing. Where he's been. Who's his friends
or, hell, enemies for that matter. Has he been in jail? Has he been, you know,
taking something? His clothes were a mess, too.
KURT
Sad. That we, I mean, all of us, let that sort of thing
happen to a boy, but still ...
HOWARD
I know. But it finally just got to be ... just obvious. Just
nothing we could say would really, I guess, reach him. At the end of it, I gave
him a twenty dollar bill. I let him have that. And we said, both of us, that he
couldn't stay with us, anyway. There was just nothing we could do if he
wouldn't try.
KURT
So he took that?
HOWARD
He did, finally. Just left. Took the money.
KURT
Wasn't that kind of cold, though? On your part?
HOWARD
I didn't like it. I didn't sleep very well last night. Or my
wife, either, I suppose. But what other things we could have done, I don't
know.
KURT
But ... I mean, just tossing him out. You know, family and
all. He is your son, after all.
HOWARD
What? He's not my son. We don't have any children. I never
saw this kid before. He just came to the door.
CURTAIN
Excellent
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