at Length
Old Times There
Amen, I tell you, unless you turn back and become as children, you most certainly may not enter into the Kingdom of the heavens.
—Matthew 18:3
CHARACTERS
Jim Limber, a mixed-race man who appears to be in his early 60s
Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederate States of America—he remains offstage for the duration of the play
The stage is bare and starkly lit, and the background is an almost metallic, early twilight blue. Jim Limber emerges stage right. He is wearing brown shoes, faded brown slacks, with suspenders, and a white button-up shirt, open at the collar, under which is a white t-shirt. Jim walks to the center of the stage, then turns to face the audience.
Jim Limber: We sleep. I bet you didn’t know folks sleep
In Heaven, but we do. I’m sleeping now.
Folks sleep in Hell too. Bet you didn’t know.
Enough to keep them fresh. Enough to keep
Them feeling something. Soon as one goes numb—a
Sinner goes numb—the Devil loses his
Moral authority. They sleep, but it’s
Always a restless sleep. It’s always someone,
Some demon, chasing them, or it’s some demon,
Except the demon has the face of their
Worst enemy or their best friend, and when
The demon catches them, that demon stares
Them right in the eye and it don’t say a thing.
In Heaven, we watch their dreams, and I have seen them
Beg for words from their worst enemies
More desperately than I have ever seen
Them beg for words from their best friends.
(He hears a voice offstage left, and turns his head to listen.)
Jefferson Davis: Please help
me, Varina! Save me! Wife! Speak to me!
Please speak to me. If you won’t speak to me,
then turn your face away, at least, or change
your expression, at least—please, Varina.
Look through me like you used to do, so that
I feel myself encompassed by your look,
along with the whole world behind me, as
if you would hold the world behind me to
keep me before you. I don’t see that look
in your face. Save me from the look I see.
JL (He turns again to face the audience. As he speaks, he glances toward the voice, then back to the audience.): He’s dreaming—Mr. Davis. Jefferson
Davis, my daddy, or he was. I said
He was, after the Yankees took me, when
Anyone up north asked. And I was proud
To say so, even though I knew he wouldn’t
Have said I was his son. He’s dreaming, and
I see his dream.
JD: Varina, look behind
you. Won’t you listen, at least, if you won’t
speak? Look—it’s Jim, our little Jim. He’s changed
some. He’s big now. But I know him. Jim! Jim!
JL (visibly shaken, glancing toward the voice again, then back to the audience):
We… uh… In Heaven, our dreams are like our dreams were
On Earth, except they’re never bad. On Earth,
I dreamed once I was president of the north,
Stuck in the war forever, and I knew somehow,
To end the war I had to let myself
Get shot in the head.
JD: Jim! You hear me Jim.
It’s been such a long time. I’m somewhere, now,
and Mrs. Davis won’t respond to me.
Though earlier she seemed to have something
important to tell me, and chased me here,
now she stands before me like a nigger
before a plow. Surely you can get her
talking—you were her special favorite.
Do you remember how she petted you?
JL: (He turns to face the voice.) I… Can you see me, Mr. Davis?
JD: Of
course I see you, boy, though I see also
some void between us. I’ve long been somewhere
without even a void to contemplate.
I find myself immobile in hard space
each day, and am freed each night only to
discover a fear of Mrs. Davis,
and run from her until she interrupts
my running, and then stands as you see now
silently before me, wearing a look
in which I do not recognize myself.
JL: I’ve watched you in the observatory. I even—
Once I was watching you run and you turned
Your head—I thought to check if Mrs. Davis
Was still chasing you—but you didn’t turn
All the way, but just enough to see
Me. And I thought you saw me, but I saw your
Eyes and there wasn’t nothing in them. I
Thought if you saw me, I would see me.
JD: I
thought I was alone. Though I hear moaning
every day, I do not see its source, and
I have come to believe I am its source.
Mrs. Davis is here at night, but she
doesn’t speak. And I have never seen you.
Where are we?
JL: Dead. I’m dead, and so are you.
You know you’re dead, right? Don’t you know you’re dead?
You’ve been dead long enough to know. I know
They… Where you are, they… It sure don’t feel good
To say it, Mr. Davis—used to feel
Good to imagine it, before I saw
You there, but… Mr. Davis, you’re in Hell.
And sometimes they don’t like to tell folks so—
They like to let them think they’re still alive.
But most folks figure it out after ten
Years or so, maybe fifteen for some. You’ve
Been dead a hundred-twenty years—I’ve been
Watching you run ninety of those years.
But never like this, in my own dream. (He reaches toward the voice.) And there’s
Supposed to be a barrier, a veil,
Between us you can’t see through. How…
JD: Stop. Stop! (Jim puts his arm down.)
I don’t… I do not understand what you’re
saying to me, nor why you would be so
insulting, and cruel, as to say it.
I know I cannot be where you say I
am because Varina is here with me.
JL: That thing? That ain’t her. She’s in that place, too, but
Not with you. That’s a demon there, with you. It
Wears a mask. Mrs. Davis… I don’t like
To think about her. She runs till she wakes.
She sees you and she runs. I had to stop
Watching her. She don’t rest.
JD: No. This is a
prision, and it is treachery. I led
my people according to the laws of
the nation, and according to the laws
of God. Of God! You can’t imprison me
for doing what the law required me to
do. I served the cause of freedom.
JL: Mr.
Davis, who do you think I am?
JD: I see
Jim, so you are a demon.
JL: I’m just Jim.
JD: How can you be Jim? Where is your demon?
JL: I’m free, in Heaven. I’ve been here ninety years.
After the war, you didn’t look for me,
Did you? I grew up up north. Wasn’t free,
Though—not till I saw you. When I got here
I looked for you. I looked and then I asked.
But none of the Angels would say. But then
I found the observatory, saw your dreams.
You pleading with that demon in that mask—
I don’t know why, but I felt scared. But I
Saw you. That demon has you like you had
Me—pleading with a mask I put on you—
The year I lived with you. And all my life
I only wanted one more chance to plead
With you—with the mask. But I don’t want that now.
JD: You always were a loyal boy. You fought
like a tiger when the Yankees took you.
JL: I was an old man when I died. I wasn’t
Old like you got to be, but I was ready.
I might’ve died differently, if I could’ve
Chosen how—but I was old enough not
To care to choose. I died an old man, woke
Up an old man in Heaven. And the first thing
I did, I looked for you, I asked the an-
gels where you were.
JD: Be loyal now. Help me.
JL: White folks get old—a rich man, like you were,
Gets old, he finds a seat in a booth waiting
For him, and all he has to do is sit him-
self down and it’s his show playing down there
On a stage other white folks laid across
The backs of all us Negroes. I’m old soon
As I can’t hold the stage up—I’m old soon
As I get crushed. I died, and then I was
Old.
JD: Enough, Jim! Look—she turns away from
me.
JL: But I wasn’t never once a child,
Except the year I lived with you and Mrs.
Davis—I always was a man or ’bout
To be, before and since. So, when I got
To Heaven, I looked for you and Mrs. Davis—
JD: I think she will leave me, Jim. Please help me.
JL: I thought, What’s Heaven if I ain’t a child?
JD: Please. Help me! I’m in prison. A spy has
taken me, and I am bound so tightly
sometimes I feel I am submerged in stone.
But I find freedom in my dreams. Help me
find some comfort, too. Jim? For old times’ sake?
Jim takes a step toward the voice, pauses, thinking, for a few seconds, then continues off the stage.
Shane McCrae‘s most recent books are The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) and In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which won the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Prize for Poetry, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award, and was nominated for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. He has received a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a fellowship from the NEA. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.