: (
turning to
WELCH
) Don’t you underestimate my husband, mister! Frank can be a very ill-tempered man if he wants to. It doesn’t take much to set him off.
WELCH
: I’m sure you’re right about that.
EMMA
: You better be gone when he gets back here. I’m telling you, he’s got a very short fuse. Last year we had some deer hunters break through our bottom pasture, and you should have seen Frank. He went absolutely berserk. Chased them off with a twelve-gauge.
(WELCH just smiles and chuckles at her. EMMA runs out onto porch and rings the school bell again. She calls out to FRANK.)
(outside) Frank!! Frank!!! Get up here, would you!!
(EMMA runs off porch, yelling for FRANK, and exits. Pause. WELCH, alone, talks down the staircase to an unseen HAYNES.)
WELCH
: Well, well, well—Mr. “Haynes,” is that it? Mr. Haynes? Very inventive. Deceptively simple. Almost poetic. “Haynes”—rhymes with “pains,” or is it “shames”? Possibly. Could even be “blames.” The choices are endless. Well, not exactly endless. Everything has its limits, I suppose. Everything runs into a brick wall sooner or later. Even the most heroic ideas.
(WELCH crosses to kitchen counter, sets his attaché case down on it, and pops the case open.)
Sooner or later it would come down to just a finite number of possibilities, wouldn’t it, Haynes? Brains, maims, flames, chains. Which is it? What’s it going to be?
(HAYNES appears at top of stairs, head slumped down, shoulders slouched. WELCH smiles at him, then pulls out the long string of tiny American flags from his case along with a large chrome staple gun. He climbs up on kitchen counter with the string of flags and stapler, continuing to talk to HAYNES. He starts stapling the string of flags to the cupboards above the sink.)
There he is! There he finally is. Looking just a wee bit sheepish and downtrodden. We’ve been hunting all over for you, buddy-boy. You’ve caused us a great deal of anxiety. Not to mention the exorbitant and unnecessary expense.
HAYNES
: How did you track me down?
(Everything is now being punctuated by the shots from the staple gun.)
WELCH
: You left a very luminous trail, Mr. Haynes. Technology’s a marvelous thing, though. Night vision. Infra-ray. It’s extraordinary how blind the naked eye is. No wonder people have so much trouble accepting the truth these days.
HAYNES
: I’m not going back, you know.
WELCH
: Let’s not start off on the wrong foot, buddy-boy.
HAYNES
: I’m not going back!
WELCH
: (
chuckles
) I’m afraid you’re going to have to now. You’re contaminated. You’re a carrier. What’re we going to do about that? We can’t have you free-ranging all over the American countryside like some kind of headless chicken, can we? You’ve already endangered the lives of your friends here, not to mention the Midwest at large. Now, that was pretty selfish of you, wasn’t it? Poisoning the Heartland?
HAYNES
: You can’t take me back there.
WELCH
: Oh, come on now, “Haynes”—you were getting along so well. You can’t just walk out in the middle of a project like that. You don’t want to be known as a quitter, do you? Besides, we have a brand-new mission for you. Something of extreme international urgency. I’m sure you’re going to want to be a part of it.
HAYNES
: I’m not going back there! The whole state’s going to explode. Colorado is going to be blown off the map.
WELCH
: Why do you people have this incredible propensity for wild exaggeration? There’s some minor leakage—we’ve acknowledged that. That’s why you were hired in the first place, if you recall.
HAYNES
: Minor leakage!
WELCH
: That’s all it was. The concrete wasn’t thick enough.
HAYNES
: The ground caught fire for thirty days! Not trees, not brush, but the raw earth!
WELCH
: Fires have a way of burning themselves out, buddy-boy It’s nature’s Band-Aid. Been going on for centuries. Chronicled. Spontaneous combustion. The Romans had it.
HAYNES