Happy Birthday, Wanda June by Kurt Vonnegut (read out loud books .txt) 📕

[10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

(pistol shot)

You got me, pal.

Silence. A baby cries. Silence. The lights come up.

LOOSELEAF

Go to the funeral?

HAROLD

Of course! Not only go to it but go to it in full uniform! Rent a uniform!

LOOSELEAF

That's against the law, isn't it? I can't wear a uniform anymore.

HAROLD

Wear your uniform and every decoration, and let them despise you, if they dare.

LOOSELEAF

Alice would be absolutely tear-ass.

HAROLD

When I was a naive young recruit in Spain, I used to wonder why soldiers bayoneted oil paintings, shot the noses off of statues and defecated into grand pianos. I now understand: It was to teach civilians the deepest sort of respect for men in uniform-uncontrollable fear. (raises his glass) To our women.

LOOSELEAF

I didn't know we had any women left.

HAROLD

The world is teeming with women-ours to enjoy. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (101 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

LOOSELEAF

Every time I start thinking like that I get the clap.

Lion doorbell roars.

HAROLD

(going to the door) This could be my next wife. He admits HERB SHUTTLE, who carries a bouquet of roses.

SHUTTLE

(puzzled by HAROLD) Hello.

HAROLD

How are you, honeybunch?

SHUTTLE

Is Penelope in?

HAROLD

The posies are for her?

SHUTTLE

I wanted to apologize.

HAROLD

You've come to the right man.

SHUTTLE

I forgot my vacuum cleaner.

HAROLD

I forget mine for years on end.

SHUTTLE

(suddenly realizing who HAROLD is)

Oh my God-(pause; points) And you are Looseleaf Harper.

LOOSELEAF

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

Hi.

SHUTTLE faints.

HAROLD

(crowing)

It's what I've dreamed of all my life, Looseleaf! To have a grown man realize who I was--and faint!

(to audience)

End of Act Two.

Blackout.

ACT THREE

SCENE ONE

MILDRED enters drunkenly up aisle, sits precariously on apron of stage and speaks to audience.

MILDRED

Two days later. The afternoon of the day of Looseleaf Harper's mother-in-law's funeral. You got it? Two days later.

(pause)

You know what happened in Heaven today? There was a tornado. I'm not kidding you--there was a Goddamn tornado. Tore up fifty-six houses, a dance pavilion and a Ferris wheel. Drove a shuffleboard stick clear through a telephone pole. Nobody got killed. Nobody ever gets killed. They just bounce around a lot. Then they get up-and start playing shuffleboard. (pause)

I never saw a tornado when I was alive, and I grew up in Oklahoma. There's this big, black, funnelshaped cloud. Sounds like a railroad train without the whistle. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (103 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

I had to come to Heaven to see a thing like that. A lot of people got photographs.

(pause)

After the tornado was over, a man had some film left and he wanted to take pictures of me--to use up the roll. I don't like people who go around taking pictures of everything. Nothing's real to some people unless they've got photographs. (pause)

Two days later--right?

She exits clumsily, the way she came. Silence. Lights come up on the living room, which has become a pigpen. LOOSELEAF, HAROLD, SHUTTLE and PAUL sit around a dinner of nearly raw beefsteak set on the coffee table. LOOSELEAF wears an illfitting uniform, which he has rented.

LOOSELEAF

I told you the uniform wouldn't help.

HAROLD

It helped more than you know. Down deep, people were deeply affected.

LOOSELEAF

You keep on saying "deep" and

"deeply." I wish something good would happen on the surface sometime.

SHUTTLE

I can't get over how you guys are my friends. Harold Ryan and Looseleaf Harper are my friends.

HAROLD

Our pleasure.

SHUTTLE

Eight years you guys were together-through thick and thin. file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/K...gut%20-%20Happy%20Birthday%20Wanda-June.htm (104 of 143) [10/16/2004 4:36:53 PM]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

HAROLD

For seven and a half of those years we were heavily drugged--or we would have been home long before now, believe me. We were saved from starvation by the Lupi-Loopo Indians, who fed us a strange blue soup.

SHUTTLE

Blue soup.

HAROLD

It sapped our will--made us peaceful and unenterprising. It was a form of chemical castration. We became two more sleepy Indians.

LOOSELEAF

(to PAUL)

So, kid--how they hanging? Or don't you say that to a little kid?

HAROLD

He's a man.

(to PAUL)

Tell him you're a man.

PAUL

I'm a man.

HAROLD

We've got to do something to make this boy's voice change. I wonder if we couldn't get bull balls somewhere, and fry 'em up. (to PAUL)

Still miss your mother?

PAUL

(weakly)

No.

HAROLD

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

You're free to go to her, if you want. If you'd rather be a woman and run with the women, just say the word.

SHUTTLE

Are we really going to find out where the elephants go to die?

HAROLD

I'd rather go to Viet Nam.

SHUTTLE

Would somebody please pass me the catsup?

HAROLD

What you say is, "Pass the fucking catsup."

SHUTTLE

Pass the fucking catsup.

LOOSELEAF gives it to him. SHUTTLE dumps catsup on his steak.

SHUTTLE

I keep thinking about Africa--and the elephants.

LOOSELEAF

I don't think I'll go.

HAROLD

Of course you'll go! You're going to fly the helicopter.

LOOSELEAF

I dunno.

HAROLD

You're so low! Look at that beautiful red meat. You haven't touched it.

LOOSELEAF

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

Sorry. At least you've got a place to come back to. I don't have a place to come back to anymore.

HAROLD

All the more reason to go to Africa.

LOOSELEAF

I dunno. You know.

(pause)

I used to really love that Alice. Do you know that?

HAROLD

You know her for what she is now-garbage.

LOOSELEAF

I dunno.

HAROLD

She was always a rotten wife! She was against everything manly you ever wanted to do.

(to SHUTTLE)

He was the most daring test pilot in the country at one time, and his wife made him quit. She made him become a life insurance salesman instead.

SHUTTLE

I'd think any woman worth her salt would be proud to be married to a test pilot. I know I would.

LOOSELEAF

She tried to like it. She was a very nervous woman.

SHUTTLE

I could