Lord of this World

Lord of this World

ACT ONE

            A naked, sweating young man lay on top of the old sagging bed.  The sheets were tangled and damp.  Damp from the sweating body sprawled face up in the nest of sheets and damp from the wheezing swamp cooler.  The forced breeze of the cooler stirred the small hairs on the young man’s body, valiantly trying to evaporate the perspiration beading on his torso but failing miserably.  And it wasn’t even that humid outside.  An empty bottle with a Jim Beam label lay on the floor beside the bed next to two pages of a “Dear John” letter written on lavender colored stationery.  If held up to your nose the faint smell of a musty perfume, the kind that the young man liked so well, was there.  But just barely.  It couldn’t overcome the sour smelling alcoholic sweat now pooling in the young man’s navel.

            He had been named Lord Alexander Brannon.  He had tried to get people to use his second name or even the short version of it…Alex.  No such luck. Ever since 5^th grade when the substitute teacher had made such a big deal about his name; the woman laughed nervously each time she called on him; once calling him Fauntleroy. Lord could tell where her mind was.  When he was in junior high, a big kid that had moved in over the summer asked him if he thought he was a hot shit special.  Lord had taken a swing at him and missed.  The big kid thumped him.  So he was Lord, jokes and teasing included. Now his name might be MUD, considering the condition he was in.

            The first indication of life in the young man was the crinkling of his nose as a blue green fly would land and walk around on it.  Finally, he regained enough conciousness to swat at it. The movement of the young man’s arm drew a groan from him and he grimaced as a blinding pain struck him behind his eyes. The effort it had taken to swat at the fly had triggered the pain in his dead and dying brain cells. Murder by a quart of Kentucky’s ‘Finest’.  The fly flew away to the dirty window in an attempt to escape but it was trapped in the hot, stinky atmosphere.  The fly buzzed against the screen in a frenzied dance that was loud enough to wake the dead. His nerveless right arm and hand trapped beneath his body, slowly but surely withdrew. It flopped aimlessly to his forehead.  Another groan escaped his lips.  He opened his eyes.  The bright light from the window struck him like a sledgehammer.  He gasped, the sound echoing in his throbbing head.  His eyelids slammed shut.  He covered his eyes with his left hand as it, at least, seemed to obey his will.  “What have I done to myself?” he thought, 

After a night of being crushed beneath him, the stinging needle sensation of blood rushing back into his right arm wrung a curse from him, “What an idiot!”  He twisted and put his feet on the floor and carefully sat up.  His torso swayed as the world began to wobble crazily around him.  The young man spread his arms to his sides trying to stop the spinning.  “Gentleman James, what have you done to me?” he spoke to the empty bottle on the floor.  He struggled to keep the sour contents of his stomach down where it belonged.  He almost succeeded until his dizzy gaze settled on the lavender letter next to the whiskey bottle.  Barely, he grabbed the small wastebasket that he kept next to the bed and retched long and hard. There was nothing but sour bile in him at first and then nothing.  The dry waves of nausea tore at him.  The impact of the letter and the strength of his sickness forced tears from his eyes. Even as dry as he was from the alcohol, the tears flooded from his eyes.  “Why had she dumped him?” he whined.  

Shaking and still nauseous, the naked young man wearily rose and made his way to the bathroom of his little tin trailer house wiping his eyes as he went.  He blanked out the scene in front of him for a second, thinking of the letter again.  “Why!  Why now?” He questioned in his head.  Coming to, he found himself standing before the porcelin throne.  He emptied his bladder of the poisons of last night’s excess.  Finished, he stepped into the tiny bathtub and adjusted the water to the hottest he could stand and then diverted the flow of water to the showerhead.  He gasped as the hot water sprayed him hard and stinging.  Ducking his head under the stream of water his stomach rebelled again and he retched and gagged, nearly falling from the force of his sickness.  He straightened up hoping to quell the nausea.  A vision of the lavender letter swam in front of his eyes and fresh tears started again.  “Lord, what have you done?” he agonized.  The pain of the rejection letter and the sickness from the whiskey made him feel sorry for himself.

Finally, getting hold of his emotions he picked up the bar of soap and began to wash the sour whiskey sweat away.  He let his mind wander back over the events of the last few months.  He had received a letter from his little brother which had begun humorously.  In the closing paragraph his smiles had faded.  Cluelessly, his pre-teen brother had casually written,  “I saw Kevin and Bree holding hands at the carnival last week. I thought she was YOUR girlfriend.”  He had thought so too.

So he had called her, Brianna, his almost fiance’, or so he had assumed.  She said that it must have been a mistake, she hadn’t been out at all. He had believed her. They had been a pair since the 8^th grade. For the first four months after high school she had waited for him while he went to Alaska working the salmon boats. He had joined her at State College that winter when he returned.  At the end of Spring semester, and after the fishing money ran out, he unsuccessfully tried to find work at home that would pay enough to go back to school in the fall. He packed Bree and her stuff back home to her folks and headed south to Arizona hoping to work in the copper mines.  They had planned that Bree would come to Arizona to be with him as soon as he had enough money for both of them to live.

            Lord had lucked out in a weird way; they had hired him as a laborer in the smelter.  The weirdness of it all turned out that it was just as dangerous as the mine and just as much hard work.  At least you could see the sky most times during your shift. He had been lucky to find a small tin trailer to rent cheap. It was parked down in the river bottoms among the mesquite and Palo Verde trees. It had 1 bedroom, a small bathroom, kitchenette and a couch.  More importantly it had a swamp cooler.  It sorta worked to keep the heat down.  He had called Bree to pack and he would come to get her on the next long weekend that came along.  But… she had just gotten a job at the bank that was run by their old school buddy’s Dad.  Coincidentally, the buddy was Kevin, the same guy that his brother had ratted out in the letter.  And she told him that she didn’t want to move to Arizona now. They talked. And talked, Lord cajoled, sweet talked, but she didn’t budge.  So they had finally decided that they would work until enough money was saved to go back to State College.

        Now all of that was down the tubes. The letter that lay on the floor was proof of that.  He howled loudly as the details of Bree’s letter came flooding back into his mind.  The anguished sound trailed off into a pitiful moan as the effort of screaming had pushed his alcohol-poisoned brain to its very limit.  The words were etched on the back of his eyeballs, “Dear Lord, I loved talking on the phone the other day.  I hope you are doing OK.  I need to be up front and let you know that I think we need to see other people. We have spent so much time together and we are so young that maybe, we should.  See other people, I mean. We have been exclusive since…OMG, I guess forever.  Kevin says…blahblahblah, and so on.”  There it was, KEVIN. “Kevin’s gonna die” he thought, “When I get home!”