New American Stories

HIDE-&-GO-SEEK

(for 2 or more players)

Little children tend to disappear. Especially if there are large trees, tall grass or white canvases nearby. One child is born It. He covers his eyes with his palms & counts to 100. When he uncovers his eyes he sings:

A bushel of wheat, a bushel of rye;

If you’re not ready,

Close your eyes.

The weakest children will close their eyes & return home where they will never be allowed to open their eyes again. The It child seeks out everything that has been hidden. He digs in the earth, he combs through the clouds, he strips the bark from the trees & he skins all the animals. When he finds another child he shouts, “1-2-3-4 for ______________,” naming the one he has found.

He covers his eyes with his palms again & counts to 100. When he wakes up the other children have grown up & are driving their cars into the lakes, surrounded by millions of fireflies.

DROP THE HANDKERCHIEF

(for 7 or more players)

Children must be taught not to play favorites. One child is born It. The It-child carries a clean white handkerchief with him wherever he goes. When he comes upon a circle of children he runs around the circle & drops the handkerchief behind one of the children. That child must run in the opposite direction around the circle of children. The children hold hands & refuse to allow either the It-child or the chosen child to stop running. These two continue running for the rest of their lives.

There is one child who is born inside the circle, which is called the mush pot. This child also has a clean white handkerchief & must take turns looking into the eyes of each of the children while showing each the handkerchief. The handkerchief was left for the mush-pot-child by his father, whom he has never met. His father drives a bright blue car & can be seen working at the candle factory five nights a week.

CROSSING THE BROOK

(for 2 or more players)

If you draw two lines on the asphalt, about two feet apart, then a brook will spring up between the lines. Children will then run in groups & try to jump the brook. They will scream as they are running. They will scream as they are jumping. If they land in the brook they must run home & change their stockings.

The successful jumpers are guided into a white bus & driven to wider & wider brooks. The last child to make a jump is the winner. Those that fall into the brooks must run home to change their stockings. But they are so far from home & the driver of the white bus will not speak to them. There is a light in the forest. Is that a distant fire or the buttery windows of a warm farmhouse? It is difficult to tell from here, where the sleet has just begun to fall.

ANIMAL CHASE

(for 5 or more players)

Two bases are marked off, at either end of America. Each child takes the name of an Animal. One child is It. He stands in the center of America & writes newspaper columns about the decline of America. He starts a radio show & becomes tremendously influential. He begins to see himself as no longer It but the voice of the people. When he goes to sleep at night his mother tucks him in & whispers, “Sweet dreams, voice of the people.” When his father drops him off at school he calls out, “Have a great day, voice of the people.”

The Animals lurk in the darkness of the forest & the shadows of the demolished factories. When stray children pass the shadows they pounce on them. Licking the blood from their claws & beaks they whisper to themselves, “I am Animal. I am Animal.”

When the first game ends all children trade names & a new child becomes It.

BALL CHASE

(for 4 or more players)

For this game, a row of red caps may be set against a wall or a fence; a series of holes may be dug in the ground; a number of circles may be drawn; a line of hoops may be used; a line of fighter pilots may lead from the sacristy to the altar; a stack of books may catch fire in the basement; a circle of priests may cough up wet flags; a group of boys may hide in the coat closet; a set of cars may crash together in the middle of the intersection; a troupe of dancers may be sent in to rescue them; a flock of birds may dive-bomb the stained glass window; a pocketful of change may spill over the intersection; a child may drop her Popsicle in the middle of the sun-hot street.

There may be a red ball; there may be a bird you cannot see with an extraordinarily loud song; there may be a gown, blouse or shirt hanging from the iron gate; each child may be happy, morose or distracted; there may be many children circling a dry well; there may be one child at the top of a dead elm tree; there may be songs, lit candles in the elbows of the branches, or a pile of gasoline-soaked rags in the corner of the garage; there may be lines of sugar down the playground dirt; there may be piles of toy trucks in a freshly dug pit; there may be sunlight, so much sunlight every child must squint, must hold her hands up to the sun to block the light out, must step forward without being able to see.

MAKING JAM

(for 1 or more players)

Making jam is for the quietest boy in the class. One day he wears a white sack over his head & ties it tight at his throat. The students in his class all begin to notice him & smile.

The next day he paints his entire body the color of the walls. The students gather their plastic chairs around him & patiently watch.

The next day he removes his arms & legs & replaces them with abstract nouns. He hides his arms & legs in a mop closet where no one will find them. At this point he is no longer shy. The other students call him new names that they make up as they go along. The county government awards him an award that comes with a large silver medal.

The medal is so large that he must remove his torso & replace it with the medal. When the students look at him they are blinded by the shine of the medal. When birds fly by him they get confused.

After he is elected governor the boy remembers his arms & legs, but when he opens the mop closet door he sees that each arm & leg has grown into a full person. They all look similar to him, but none of them look exactly like him.

JIGGLE THE HANDLE

(for 2 players)

One child is the hunter & one child is the knife. One child is the ocean & one child is the sliver of metal stuck in the pad of the thumb. One child screams with pleasure & one child holds a heat-flaccid candle. One child bears the pain & one child stares at the spinning rims on a shiny Toyota.

Why wash your hair? Why brush your teeth? Why do anything at all?

Bedtime approaches & bedtime passes & the elm tree retains its moonlit silhouette. The taste of candy is sweeter than a dream about Styrofoam. A black velvet bag could contain anything, but you should never stick your hand inside it.

IT LOOKS LIKE WAR

(for 16 or more players)

One child is taller than the other children. One child is the smallest. The child with the darkest skin does not sit beside the child with the shiniest shoes. The child with the longest hair does not like the child with the longest name. The children gather in a circle & sing:

Weak man, poor man, blind man, wife

There are no wounds when there is no knife

Strong man, rich man, priest or king

Every city looks sacred when it is burning.

The light refracting through broken bifocals can start a fire in the scattered newspapers. The soldiers outside the gates drain blood from their horses & drink it with black pepper.

EVERYTHING COSTS $20

(for 6 or more players)

Everything costs $20. Everything breaks the moment after you buy it. Everything stacks in the corners. The blinds curl from your fingerprints. The rubber is hard. Six grapes beside the kitchen sink wrinkle. What amphitheater. What color of skin. The money rings & rings. The gunshots can be heard from blocks away.

Paper planes fall from the roof of the factory as the schoolchildren scamper this way & that. Microphones grow from the tips of the drought-dead trees. Each child picks a paper plane from a puddle.

Everything was broken before you bought it. Everything is listed on the window. Speak into the microphones so that the children can hear you. Give your ticket to the teacher to exit the classroom. The clock is fast. No, the clock is broken. The lights begin flashing. The children run from the alarms.

At home the children eat their suppers with the TV on. When their mothers ask, How was school, they say, OK.

BROKEN KATE

(for 6 or more players)

The only way to break a Kate is to attach a lockbox to its wrists & send it out to search for the lost sheep. The sheep wander all across America & they hide behind stumps & metal mailboxes. The sheep wander so far away from one another that they forget they are sheep & they begin to look at large stones & think the stones are televisions. They begin to look around for the remote, but instead only find the remote that dims the dining room lights. The only way to protect the sheep is to hold them in your arms as you would a fragile cuckoo clock.

There are so many ways to drown. There are so many bridges. One child backs another into a corner & stares. The teacher walks over with the lockboxes. Her shoes squeak on the linoleum. The fluorescent flutter of sweat & the scent of dry-erase boards. Teacher’s earrings jingle. Teacher’s shoes squeak. Oh, Kate, oh, Kate. I am so sorry.

TAIL END CHARLIE

(for 4 or more players)

The night before they go in behind enemy lines the children write their names on their chests with permanent markers. They write their names on their shoes with greasepaint. They carve hearts into the plaster beside their beds & cram them full of initials.

The children fall asleep repeating their names to themselves. They discover new names inside their names. The new names are the names their ghosts will have. They knot little nooses of dental floss around the names & tie them to their pinkies.

The machine gun bursts splashes in the sand, as if flaying it with whips. The sky is so blue that someone will have to give it a name like Tom or Beginning. One of the children finds that his gun is made of ice. Another child finds that his gun is made of dried dirt. A third child finds that he is the gun & he cannot stop killing. In Pittsburgh the children are burning the federal buildings tonight.

POP GOES THE WEASEL

(for 4 children & an audience of voters)

One child must come from a family that sleeps in the caves. One child must come from a family that sleeps underground. One child finds a hollow tree & fills it with the stuffed animals he steals from the supermarket trash bins. One child bites into a doughnut & breaks his front teeth on a piece of sea glass. The children decide which child is It & the It child must run for president.

The It child walks into crowds of thousands, shaking hands with all the men & kissing the cheeks of all the women & rubbing perfumed oils on the foreheads of the babies. He must appear on TV & pretend like there is no camera in the room. He says words & then some of the members of the audience of voters repeat the words. Other members of the audience of voters go home & rewire their radios.

When the It child is assassinated backstage after a speech the other children write books about the It child. They appear on radio talk shows & discuss the mystery of the It child. They drop a bucketful of pennies into the dryer & listen to them clatter.