Free Buried Child by Sam Shepard Page A

up. I don't even care anymore. I was just coming along for the ride. I thought it'd be a nice gesture. Besides, I was curious. He made all of you sound familiar to me. Every one of you. For every name, I had an image. Every time he'd tell me a name, I'd see the person. In fact, each of you was so clear in my mind that I actually believed it was you. I really believed that when I walked through that door that the people who lived here would turn out to be the same people in my imagination. Real people. People with faces. But I don't recognize any of you. Not one. Not even the slightest resemblance.
    DEWIS: Well, you can hardly blame others for not fulfilling your hallucination.
    SHELLY: It was no hallucination! It was more like a prophecy. You believe in prophecy, don't you, Father?
    HALIE: Father, there's no point in talking to her any further. We're just going to have to call the police.
    BRADLEY: No! Don't get the police in here. We don't want the police in here. This is our home.
    SHELLY: That's right. Bradley's right. Don't you usually settle your affairs in private? Don't you usually take them out in the dark? Out in the back?
    BRADLEY: You stay out of our lives! You have no business interfering!
    SHELLY: I don't have any business, period. I got nothing to lose. I'm a free agent.
(She moves around, staring at each of them.)
    BRADLEY: You don't know what we've been through. You don't know anything about us!
    SHELLY: I know you've got a secret. You've all got a secret. It's so secret, in fact, you're all convinced it never happened. (HALIE
moves to
DEWIS.)
    HALIE: Oh, my God, Father! Who is this person?
    DODGE:
(Laughing to himself.)
She thinks she's going to get it out of us. She thinks she's going to uncover the truth of the matter. Like a detective or something.
    BRADLEY: I'm not telling her anything! Nothing's wrong here! Nothing's ever been wrong! Everything's the way it's supposed to be! Nothing ever happened that's bad. Everything is all right here! We're all good people! We've always been good people. Right from the very start.
    DODGE: She thinks she's gonna suddenly bring everything out into the open after all these years.
    DEWIS:
(To
SHELLY.) Can't you see that these people want to be left in peace? Don't you have any mercy? They haven't done anything to you.
    DODGE: She wants to get to the bottom of it.
(To
SHELLY.) That's it, isn't it? You'd like to get right down to bedrock? Look the beast right dead in the eye. You want me to tell ya? You want me to tell ya what happened? I'll tell ya. I might as well. I wouldn't mind hearing it hit the air after all these years of silence.
    BRADLEY: No! Don't listen to him. He doesn't remember anything!
    DODGE: I remember the whole thing from start to finish. I remember the day he was born.
(Pause.)
    HALIE: Dodge, if you tell this thing—if you tell this, you'll be dead to me. You'll be just as good as dead.
    DODGE: That won't be such a big change, Halie. See this girl, this little girl here, she wants to know. She wants to know something more. And I got this feeling that it doesn't make a bit a difference. I'd sooner tell it to a stranger than anybody else. I'd sooner tell it to the four winds.
    BRADLEY:
(To
DODGE.) We made a pact! We made a pact between us! You can't break that now!
    DODGE: I don't remember any pact.
(Silence.)
See, we were a well-established family once. Well-established. All the boys were grown. The farm was producing enough milk to fill Lake Michigan twice over. Me and Halie here were pointed toward what looked like the middle part of our life. Everything was settled with us. All we had to do wasride it out. Then Halie got pregnant again. Out the middle a nowhere, she got pregnant. We weren't planning on havin’ any more boys. We had enough boys already. In fact, we hadn't been sleepin’ in the same bed for about six years.
    HALIE:
(Moving toward the stairs.)
I'm not listening to this! I don't have to listen to this!
    DODGE:
(Stops
HALIE.) Where