The Chair

__________________________

written for the 2023 Kennedy Center Playwrights Retreat

by Sean Michael McCord

 LIGHTS UP ON

Two bare spaces, stage left and right, separated

by time and space. On stage left is a wall with a
wide glass window that looks out onto that part
of the stage. Visible is a dramatically large
switch or lever in the up position.

Characters enter more or less simultaneously,

one from stage right, two or more from stage
left, all ferrying wooden parts and tools. The
characters on stage left have no names; they are
in uniforms, so we will simply call them THE
GUARDS. The man on stage right needs a
name, so we will call him PATRICK. He’s
probably in his 60s.

Patrick, like his unseen (to him) cohorts on

stage left, is busy assembling what will become
a sturdy wooden chair. He is good at this work
and enjoys it. In time, he speaks to the audience.

PATRICK
I musta been six or seven the first time I built a chair. Well, “built” might be charitable.
My grandpa, Dad’s dad, used to disappear into his shed outside for hours at a time. We
grandkids weren’t supposed to go in there, but curiosity gets the best of me at times and
one day I snuck a peak through the door. I was drawn in by all the sounds, hand tools and
filing and sawing and Grandpa occasionally cussin’ up a storm under his breath.

Patrick holds up one of his tools.

These are a lot of the same tools. Turns out, I was the only one in the family who showed
an aptitude for wood work. Hey, do you know what they call someone who builds
furniture? Someone who makes shoes is a cobbler; someone who shoes horses is a farrier.
Can you guess what you call someone who makes furniture? A “furniture maker”.

You might have said “carpenter”. My grandpa always insisted that Jesus was a carpenter;
we were furniture makers.

Patrick continues to build as he speaks, while

the Guards also silently go about their job, both
assembling their respective chairs.
 2.

PATRICK (CONT'D)

Anyway, Grandpa sensed somehow that I was watching. I didn’t want to get a lickin’ for
“violating his sanctuary”, but like I said, me and curiosity. Grandpa called me over and
showed what he was doing. He used to manage a hardware store, the old kind where you
could find any kind of nail or fastener or handy tool for some obscure job. His shed had
that same smell -- sawdust and oil and Mennen aftershave.

That day he was working with pine, which is a delicate wood but has a nice scent. He was
a man of few words, my grandfather; unlike me, I suppose. He handed me some sand
paper and showed me how to sand slowly but firmly, into the grain, so as not to tear it up.
Well, being seven years old, I was a bit vigorous, and within minutes, my fingers were
bleeding. Grandpa swapped out the sand paper for a sanding block and gave me a pair of
his old gloves. Then my job became sanding away the blood stains I had left on the pine.
I’ve put a lot of blood into this wood over the years.

As Patrick has been building and gabbing, the

Guards continue to assemble their chair.

I prefer working in oak now. It’s a tougher wood, but sturdy. If I do it right, there’s not a
lick of metal in the chair, just wood on wood. Of course, it took me a long time to get to
that point. I had a lot of chairs fall apart on me before then. For purposes of this
demonstration, I’m making a simple block chair. You might not want it at your fine
dining table, but it’ll hold up.

So, just what is it I am demonstrating? Well, like I said, Grandpa was a man of few
words, but he’d loosen up his jaw a bit while working and he shared a bit of his
philosophy with me. You see, when Man left The Garden and starting building homes and
towns and cities, the first thing they needed was furniture. A place to sit. A place to set
food on. A place to lie down at night.

Furniture has been there from the beginning and furniture makers were the first skilled
workers. Anybody could till a field — that’s what my grandpa said, and he grew up on a
farm — but it takes a craftsman to build a chair that won’t fall apart the first time a fat
man sits in it.

If you follow the trajectory of furniture building, well, you’re following the trajectory of
mankind. From living in huts to houses to estates and castles, the furniture gets more
ornate and maybe even a bit more functional, think drawers in tables or beer holders in
chairs, but the basics are the same. The foundation. You need to build something that will
hold a man, even a fat one, and a place to set your food or tools or, these days, I guess
your laptop computer. Why they call it a laptop when it spends all day on your desk is for
somebody else to answer.
 3.

PATRICK (CONT'D)

My wife says I talk about this too much, but it interests me and I’d like other people to
hear my point. She amy be right, though; we go to a neighborhood barbecue and when we
tire out of chatting about the weather and football, I start explaining how the history of
furniture is the history of our people. I suppose she wants me to be more like my grandpa
and not talk so much, even though she never met him. He was just a little older than I am
now when he dropped dead one day.

“Dropped dead”. That sounds funny, right, maybe a little callous, but that’s what
happened. He was in his shed, doing what he loved, finishing up a beautiful oaken table
and just keeled over. I snuck in the day of the funeral and sanded his blood into the wood.

It’s a peculiar thing, death. The Good Book tells us where we’re going once we leave this
plain, but it is curiously silent about the actual dying part. All those heavenly choirs and
golden staircases, that’s in movies. If we imagine it at all, we imagine being in our own
bed and surrounded by loved ones. Nobody I know has died that way. My mother died of
cancer, in the hospital and pumped full of drugs to ease her the pain. Did she ascend a
golden staircase? My brother Bill, he died in a car accident. Just before that truck jumped
the median, did he hear a heavenly choir? If I know Bill, he probably had a country music
station on the radio, so maybe the last thing he heard was Garth Brooks.

Bill at least died instantly. The truck driver held on for a few minutes but passed away in
the ambulance instead of dying like a dog on the highway. Saved me the trouble of
tracking him down and taking care of that myself.

The Guards have finished assembling their chair

and now start affixing leather straps to the arms
and legs.

Did that shock you, what I just said? That’s in the Good Book, too. Oh sure, “vengeance
is mine, sayeth the Lord”, but it also sayeth “an eye for an eye”. That’s a commandment.

I killed a man once.

That got your attention, didn’t it. Now you’re sitting up and really listening. “Wait,
wasn’t he just talking about carpentry?” See, you weren’t listening. I was talking about
civilization.

Okay, I didn’t really kill a man, not with my bare hands anyway. I sent a man to his death.
Three time loser, larceny, drug deal gone bad. But he brought a gun. You don’t bring a
gun unless you’re planning to use it. His lawyer said he just had it for protection, but you
wouldn’t need that kind of protection if no one is breaking the law.
 4.
PATRICK (CONT'D)

Some of the colored ladies, they argued that the defendant had grown up poor and
without a father, that he didn’t have any good role models. Well, I’m sorry, but if you’re
old enough to be out on the street dealing drugs with a gun, you’re old enough to know
better.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not without sympathy. I knew where they were coming from,
but at the end of the day, we all agreed. I had never served like this before so I was kind
of interested in the whole process. You know, the lawyers interviewed everyone there
before the trial even began, so they could figure out who should be on the jury. A lot of
people were eliminated. To be frank, I wasn’t crazy about giving up my own time, but I
respect the law and I answered all the questions honestly. I noticed that anyone who even
hinted that they weren’t comfortable with capital punishment was excused. That meant
everyone in the room, even the colored ladies, we all supported the death penalty. That
part never even came up. There was no discussion of whether he should die, just whether
he deserved to die.

As Patrick puts the finishing touches on his

chair, the Guards are attaching electrodes to
theirs.

A few years later, I ran into the defense attorney. I was meeting some friends at a bar in
the city and got there a little early. I recognized the guy right away. I had spent a lot of
hours watching him at his table, or walking back in forth in front of the jury, defending
his client. I think he might even have been wearing the same suit.

Of course, he wouldn’t recognize me, so after a couple of drinks, I went over and
introduced myself. He gaped at me for a long moment, then took my outstretched hand.
He seemed kind of shook up, so I spoke first. I told him about what I had noticed, how
everyone on the jury supported the death penalty, and even though I believed in what we
did, it got me to wondering. I knew good, decent people who disagreed with all that,
some of them in my own church. Could they never serve on a capital jury?

He nodded, maybe even chuckled a little to himself, which struck me as odd. I’ve
defended several capital cases in this state, he told me, and anyone who isn’t ready to
send someone to their death is excused. Have you ever won a case, I asked. I have, he
said, but it all comes down to questions of evidence and intent. He’s never been able to
bring up if we should even consider whether the state has a right to execute prisoners. I’m
a law and order kind of guy, I told him, but that doesn’t seem entirely fair to me.

You hit the nail on the head, my friend, he answered, which naturally got me to talking
about wood working.
 5.
PATRICK (CONT'D)
He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head and said, you really don’t know.
Don’t know what, I asked. The defendant, his client, the man we sentenced to death. They
put him in the chair that morning.

The chair on stage left has been fully assembled:

straps, cables, and a hood. During the text
above, a sobbing prisoner has been led in and is
methodically strapped in to the chair.

For one of the few times in my life, I had nothing to say. We both just worked on our
drinks and tried not to look at each other. Someone turned up the volume on the TV and
we got the latest scores. We shook hands again before he left, but it was mighty
sorrowful.

A sponge is put on top of the prisoner’s shaved

head and he is fitted with a metal hood.

My friends showed up and after a few more drinks, I told them about my conversation
with the lawyer. They just teased me, of course, told me I was getting woke. Sammy
Robertson, he’s kind of crude and a nasty drunk, he imitated being shot through with
electricity, flopping his body around with his tongue hanging out. I suppose I laughed
along with everybody else.

Patrick stands behind the chair he has

assembled, oblivious to the scene happening to
his left as the condemned is read his last rites.

I still believe that a society needs to be strong, with rules and consequences, and if you
kill someone, you’ve given up your own right to live ... like that truck driver and my
brother. The state is just carrying out what’s righteous and proper. But if I ever get called
to a jury like that again and I answered honestly when they asked if I could send a man to
his death?

The left side of the stage has been cleared out,

save the prisoner strapped to the chair, the water
from the sponge under the hood mingling with
his sobs, and a single guard with his hand on the
wall switch.

Patrick lowers his eyes and shakes his head. The

guard plunges the switch down and, just as the
prisoner begins to arch his body in pain...

LIGHTS OUT