Mojo by Jez Butterworth

Author:Jez Butterworth [Butterworth, Jez]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848423633
Publisher: Nick Hern Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Scene Two

Downstairs at the Atlantic. Hanging upside down in the middle of the room, gagged, is a young man, wearing silver trousers and a pink shirt. This is SILVER JOHNNY.

Perched on a bar stool opposite is BABY, wearing the silver jacket and drinking beer. There are empty beer cans on the bar. The cutlass is across his knees.

BABY.… I was about nine, bit younger, and my dad tells me we’re driving to the country for the day.

He’s got this half-share in this caff at the time, and it was doing really badly. There was a war on. So he was always really busy working day and night, so like, this was totally out of the blue.

So I got in his van with him, and we drive off and I notice that in the front of the cab there’s this bag of sharp knives. And a saw and a big meat cleaver.

And I thought ‘This is it. He’s going to kill me. He’s going to take me off and kill me once and for all.’ And I sat there in silence all the way to Wales and I knew that day I was about to die.

So we drive till it goes dark, and Dad pulls the van into this field. And he switches off the lights. And we sit there in silence. And there’s all these cows in the field, watching us. And suddenly Dad slams his foot down and we ram this fucking great cow clean over the top of the van. And it tears off the bonnet and makes a great dent in the top, but it was dead all right. See we’d gone all the way to Wales to rustle us a cow. For the caff.

Now a dead cow weighs half a ton. So you’ve got to cut it up there and then. And I was so relieved I had tears in my eyes. And we hacked that cow to pieces, sawing, chopping, ripping, with all the other cows standing around in the dark, watching.

Then when we’d finished, we got back in the cab and drove back to town. Covered in blood.

Pause.

Do you know why I’m called Baby?

Pause.

Take out the papers and the trash,

Or you don’t get no spending cash;

If you don’t la la la la la,

You ain’t gonna rock ’n’ roll no more

Yakety yak, don’t talk back.

Pause. He drinks. Pause. He laughs.

Yakety yak don’t talk back.

He laughs, he gets up and walks around.

Yakety yak don’t talk back.

BABY laughs. He moves the chair to right in front of SILVER JOHNNY and sits down.

So, like… (Pause.) So like when you met Little Richard, what were you gonna say? (Pause.) ‘Evening Richard… I…’ (Pause.) ‘Evening Little. Can I call you Little?’ ‘Sure, if I can call you Silver.’ (Pause.) Seriously, you must have had some pretty nifty plans. What did you have planned? Were you going to go to Niagara Falls. Just you, Sam and the majestic spray.

Pause. BABY clicks his fingers along to a tune in his head. He stops.

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