Buttons (one-act)

Buttons     first draft 1997 first performance 1999

Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I’m startled. I think, “Who is that old man?” I’m growing old way too fast.

There are people who sell you pills they say will keep you young. Other people sell you fancy exercise machines. The pitcher on the table there holds regular, ordinary tap water—some people tell us to drink eight glasses a day to stay healthy. Have you ever imagine just taking a sip from some clear sweet spring water with magical properties? (drink) A fountain of youth? I have and I did. You could say Dr. Joan Fennel made me drink it, but she didn’t make me—I loved her, I’d do anything for her.

I bet you’ve heard rumors of a village in eastern Russia where the peasants seem to live extraordinarily long lives. Actually there are four other locations known for this phenomenon—(point to countries on globe) one in Africa, one in China, Argentina and Peru. Each location is a remote village similar to neighboring villages except (Remember grade school teachers warning us, “There’s always an exception.”?) except these peasants live longer—native people who have no access to modern medicine, who are no different from other people in these countries, except they live longer. Scientists of various disciplines have visited these simple folk and have found nothing unusual, nothing unusual in their diet, nothing unusual in their habits. What they did find is that these villagers have few written records, no official birth certificates, so claims of longevity have been written off as fibs, exaggerations.

Sounds like a reasonable explanation doesn’t it?

Joan Fennel did not think so.  

Why, she asked, are only these five villages prone to exaggeration? These peasants did not take out a full-page ad announcing their claim to fame. The information got out by word of mouth. Perhaps a traveler passing through hears an old peasant speak of an event that the traveler knows happened more than a century ago. The traveler of course does not believe the old peasant is over a hundred years old, but repeats this colorful story while regaling audiences of dangerous adventures in strange lands, and so the story is repeated and repeated and repeated. (drink)

Now, I have a riddle for you. You come to a fork in the road in the land of two tribes. One tribe tells the truth, the other tells lies. A member of each tribe stands at the fork in the road, but you don’t know by looking who tells the truth and who lies. You are permitted to ask only one question of one native to learn which road leads to town and a hot shower. What question do you ask? There is one logical question, the right question reveals your way home.

See, Joan was critical of the scientists who assumed the Russian peasants were liars. In the search for the fountain of youth, it’s the scientists who are lost, who are trying to find the right path. Joan said those scientists did not ask the right question.

We often talked about this when we were in high school. Joan dreamed of finding the fountain of youth. Joan believed that long life and wisdom were inseparable. I, on the other hand, believed if we could all live, say, two hundred years, we would be pretty much as we are today—some two hundred year old saints and some two hundred year old tyrants and bigots. The argument would go round and round since we were just talking hypothetically.

After college, Joan was awarded the Unified Field Theorist Award and a research grant from the Albert Einstein Fellowship. Joan took a year sabbatical and traveled to that village in eastern Russia. No longer hypothetical, she collected soil and water samples, tissue samples from people, animals, and plants. I didn’t get to go with her, but I now know that Joan, my best friend, she asked the right question. I—Joaquin Alguer—I am living proof. My story is the biggest story in this century, maybe for all time.

Who remembers my opening words? Is your memory going? Are you getting old? Remember, I said, “Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I think ‘Who is that old man?’” Did you guess then what I’m going to tell you tonight? Did you have a sudden intuition? Who among you has wished they could live forever? How about a hundred years? How about two hundred? Three hundred? Who here wants a drink from the fountain of youth? I know I do. (drink)

I was a major in the United States Army—dishonorably discharged. I killed an innocent person. I had to kill someone. Don’t worry, I don’t kill people on a regular basis. In all my years in the military, I never had to kill anyone, except—except once. The FBI could charge me, try me, and put me in jail for the rest of my life, but they won’t.  

If you ask the FBI about me, they will say “Oh, yes, Joaquin Alguer. People have complained about him. He goes from town to town telling some story about the fountain of youth.” I know this because I’ve called and complained about myself just to see what they say about me. They imply I’m one taco shy of a combination plate. They say I’m a quack peddling snake oil, pulling your leg, pushing your button.

I collect buttons. See that big glass jar? It has buttons in it. I don’t know how many. A lot. There’s a slot in the lid, like a coin bank. The buttons come from the shirts and jackets and dresses and coats of people, like yourself who come to hear me speak. See the scissors there next to the jar? That’s so you don’t have to cut the button threads with your teeth. I see that some of you are wondering why you would cut a button from a your clothing to give to me. That’s a good question. At the end of my story, many of you will want to give me a button. Some of you will.

Joan was the first woman scientist to be honored by the Albert Einstein Fellowship. She was good copy for science journals. When she returned from Russia, several articles were written about her research. I’ve kept every article written about Joan.

I want to read a portion of one published at that time:

A hypothetical X marks the fountain of youth:

Imaginative legend or immaculate logic?

Medieval folklore claimed that a magical spring restored youth to anyone who bathed in or drank from its waters. Some people believed this spring was the Water of Life found in the Garden of Eden. Others believed this spring could be found in the Far East.

When Juan Ponce de Leon anchored his ship among islands in the Caribbean, he thought he had found the Far East. Island natives spoke of a fountain of youth on what is now Bimini Island. So the intrepid explorer set out to find Bimini. He landed at Palm Beach and thought Florida was Bimini, but he did not find the fountain, only flowers. He headed south and thought the Yucatan was Bimini, but he did not find the fountain there either. Dr. Joan Fennel says that Ponce de Leon did not ask the right question.

Joan didn’t mind the light tone and humor in the articles about her research. She needed the publicity to catch the attention of whoever would finance the lab portion of her research. NASA picked up the ball and established the De Leon Project.

I was surprised when I visited Joan at the NASA research facility. Her lab was small. The room was crowded with refrigerators storing the samples collected in Russia. Joan was the only person there. I had expected a busy lab with many assistants (pretend to look in a microscope) all looking for truth under microscopes.

Just like she would do when we were students in school when I’d ask her to explain a math problem to me, Joan had me sit down. She explained that NASA spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on cryogenics, trying to find a way to slow down the aging process so humans can survive interplanetary space flights. She said NASA didn’t believe she would find the fountain of youth, but they could risk a few hundred thousand dollars on her gamble. If Joan was right, they could sell those cryogenic freezers to Ben and Jerry for their ice cream.

At NASA, a computer program analyzed the samples that Joan had collected. Joan found what she called a trace element that existed in that Russian village in higher concentrations than in Hood River or over in Omaha, or anywhere else except, except maybe those other four villages where peasants also live long lives.

Joan concocted a clear odorless and tasteless potion and tested it on lab rats. She could lead a rat to the fountain of youth and she could make that rat drink, but the rat still died after the usual process of aging.  

Joan asked the right question. She found why those peasants live long lives, but she had no proof, and in the early 1980s when Congress cut NASA’s budget, NASA scrapped the De Leon Project. She boxed up all the samples, folded all the track-fed computer printouts, and shipped everything to a small house in our hometown that her father had given her.

Did I tell you that I’ve known Joan since we were just kids? We lived in the same town, on the same street. I watched her family move into the vacant house on our block I remember this first time I saw Joan. She was dressed in a purple hooded-sweatshirt; wisps of her light blonde hair stuck out from the hood and shone like flames in the sunlight. Most remarkable, a small white mouse was peeking out from her collar. She fed the mouse little pills of bread dough which she made by rolling a piece of Wonder Bread. She told me the pills were magic so the mouse would live forever and would always be her pet. She called the mouse, Mako.

She told me, “That’s a kind of shark.”

“I know that,” I said, but I really didn’t. She was smart even then.

We became friends and played together. I think I fell in love with Joan the day she fell out of the buckeye tree. She must have fallen three meters, landed on her face, and broke her nose. The cartilage didn’t heal well and her nose favored one cheek more and more as she grew up, so when she looked at you her nose offered a quarter profile like a Picasso portrait.

She’s a pretty woman, beautiful I think, but some photographs are not very flattering. I remember, a science journalist wanted to write a follow up report on the De Leon Project, but this was when Joan was frustrated with those rats, and she refused the interview. The journalist waited outside the research facility for Joan to leave, and took a picture just as she slipped on the wet sidewalk. Her hair is flying wildly about her head; her arms appear to be reaching for the photographer’s neck; her wide eyes and skewed nose add a sense of demented danger. The reporter never got an interview, but printed a short biography of Joan and ran that photo with a caption that said something like: ‘Mad Joan of NASA’s De Leon Project.  Would you want to live forever with this woman?’

The journalist was making a joke, but I wanted to live forever with her. Joan didn’t have time for our relationship, still, I remained in love with her. I miss her every day. (remember the lake)

After leaving NASA, Joan received a grant to test if safe chemicals become dangerous when mixed with other chemicals in our landfills, or in our rivers, or in our air.

You may have seen Joan on television during this time. There was a lawsuit against MD Corporation.  MD sold a diet pill that they advertised as a safe to take at anytime, and pregnant women were taking these pills. Many of these women had children born with some sort of brain defects. Joan’s research found an ingredient in the diet pill that combined in the blood stream with a common air pollutant. The two chemicals made a serum similar to snake venom that attacks the central nervous system, too little to harm the adult, more than enough to hurt the unborn. MD argued that more research was needed. I remember how angry Joan was. She said that MD treated these injured children as assumable risks—just the cost of doing business; she said that no child is an assumable risk.

About a year later, Joan visited me. I opened the door and she breezed by saying, “The villagers never claimed their animals lived long.”

You see, on her own time, Joan had continued working on the De Leon Project. And she was convinced her potion only worked on humans, acting as some sort of genetic trigger. Then, then she offered me the chance to live forever, or at least a very long time. She had already taken the potion herself, so when she handed me a dose, I drank it. (drink) I hoped eventually we would be the lovers I had imagined we should be—young with time on our side, proof of her theory.

But Joan said that we were not a broad enough sample. She wanted my help with her experiment. See, my job with the Army at that time was to produce MREs—“Meals Ready to Eat”—and Joan wanted me to inject her tasteless, odorless potion into the Army rations. And I did it, because I loved her. I arranged to have this particular batch of MREs shipped to the South Pole for the twenty-eight people at the research station there. This was a perfect test for her potion. She had the roster of the staff there that winter and could track them through out their long lives.

One morning in 1991, during my routine annual physical, the base physician shook his head and said I appeared to be remarkably healthy for a sixty year old.  Sixty! I was forty-one years old! I said that I had noticed new wrinkles around my eyes and mouth, but that I felt strong and healthy. He said my skin was losing its elasticity, one of the early signs of aging. He was excited; my symptoms did not match other rare aging phenomena that usually strike when a person is young. He scheduled me for more tests the next week.

As soon as I left the office, I phoned Joan and learned she had not been in the office for two months. That night I phoned her parents, but they had also not heard from Joan. I asked her father, if he had checked that small house where Joan stays when she visits. Later he called to say that she had been there, but he didn’t know when; all the boxes of research material from the De Leon Project were missing. A note on the kitchen table said she was doing research and didn’t know when she’d be back. At the bottom of the note was my name, the words ‘red rock,’ and the number, 27. I had no idea what that meant.

The next week I went back to the doctor for those extra tests. I told the doctor about the clear liquid that I had taken. He didn’t think anything I drank years ago could have had this effect. Then a man walked in the office, flashed a badge, and said he was with the FBI. He wanted to talk to Joan. I told him I didn’t where she was.

Now I figured Joan was in trouble, and so was I. There were 28 people at the South Pole in 1985 who would also be quickly growing old. How long would it take the FBI to put Joan and me and MREs together? I became obsessed with Joan’s note. I’d lie awake at night thinking, red rock, rock red, two r’s, r-squared, pi-r-squared. I was trying to think like a scientist. I’d think, 27 is 3 x 9 which is 3-cubed, which means—nothing to me.

Then one night I remembered how, in school, Joan helped me memorize the fifty states. Montana is the 27th state in an alphabetical list. I got out of bed and found Red Rock, Montana, in my road atlas. Joan was telling me I could find her in Red Rock, and she didn’t want me to tell anyone, why else use our code? By evening I was driving to Montana.

Red Rock is at the end of the paved road at the end of a mountain valley in the northwest corner of that big state, just a short collection of wooden buildings under tall pines. I stopped at the Nugget Bar. It was about mid-morning, and half a dozen people were holding down tables with their elbows. I showed the bartender a photo of Joan from Christmas, 1988, the last time we spent the holidays with her parents. The bartender looked harder at me than at the photo. So I explained that she had left me a note to come to Red Rock but didn’t leave an address.

“Well, not a very recent picture,” he said, “but by the nose, I’d say that’s the woman bought the old Willits cabin.”

Then, leaving the bar to someone he trusted, the bartender drove his green pickup along a dirt road and I followed in my car. At the edge of a mountain meadow, we stopped in front of small cabin.

I knocked on the door and I heard Joan call out, “Who is it?” I was so relieved to hear her voice. She opened the door, gave me a hug, and pulled me inside. (pause for them to catch up)

In the front room, chairs and card tables were stacked with papers, a lot of that wide track-fed computer paper. Joan offered me lunch and some tea, and led me through the paper maze to the kitchen at the back of the cabin.

She was still beautiful, but I noticed deep wrinkles around her eyes, and her light blonde hair was now mostly white. I was happy to be there with her, but I wanted to know why we were quickly growing old instead of quietly staying young. So I told her about my physical exam and the FBI agent. She listened, holding my hand; then she asked if I told anyone where I was going. She was relieved when I said I hadn’t.  

Well, we talked that whole afternoon, and I learned why we were quickly growing old. A NASA technician wrote the computer program for Joan’s lab analysis, and it had worked flawlessly. But after studying the program language, Joan found a mistake—a minus sign in the wrong place, and because of this one programming glitch, all the ratios were upside down. The trace element Joan thought was in high concentration at the Russian village actually was scarce.

I am proof that Joan discovered a catalyst which speeds up aging, hastens old age, and so my death, her death, the 28 people from the South Pole’s death, and—and your death. We all drink from this fountain of age—all of us, except the peasants in those five villages where this trace element is rare. You see, what we believe is the natural process of aging is not at all natural—what we think is old age is just the symptoms of this naturally occurring, accumulative poison.

I was stunned. Imagine, Joan had found the secret of long life, and it is killing us, fast.

As the shadows grew long and the light outside dimmed, so did our conversation. Eventually we were just sitting in the dark house with moon and starlight shining through the curtains. I was staring at the glow of the pilot light in the old gas stove, when bright headlights flooded the front room.  

“Don’t say a thing,” Joan whispered.

I recalled then how she had stopped talking earlier in the afternoon to listen to a car drive by the cabin, but this time a car had stopped and Joan was clearly frightened, but something more, something about her was wildly intense.

As she stood I saw her pull a box from her pants pocket, a small black box with a thin flexible antenna that waved around. I heard the metallic click of a toggle switch. A knock at the door startled me.

Joan answered, “Yes?” She didn’t move to the door.

A male voice asked, “Dr. Joan Fennel?”

Joan now walked away from the door, holding the black box in one hand and waving me to retreat with her other hand as she asked, “Who is it?”

“Dr. Fennel, we are from the FBI. We would like to ask you some questions.”

“Okay, just a minute. You have identification?  I’ll need to see your identification?” As she spoke she grabbed a purse from the kitchen counter, opened the kitchen’s back door, and pushed me through it, whispering “Run, run!”

I ran. I ran straight away from the cabin towards the woods. I looked back and saw Joan running behind me with one hand up in the air still holding that box, and behind Joan, I saw the inside of the cabin erupt in flames. Glass windows exploded, and the ball of fire behind me lit up the forest, helping me to pick a path. I could hear Joan running behind me, her feet, her breathing.

You’re probably wondering where we running to—that’s the first thing I asked Joan after I caught my breath.

“Washington, DC,” she said.

I said I thought that was a long way to run.

Joan was seeking the guidance and cover of a high-ranking political friend. I was surprised, she usually regarded politicians as proof of artificial intelligence, but this politician had been a scientist, and she wanted his help.

How we managed to elude the FBI is a story for another time, except—(There’s always an exception isn’t there?)—I have to tell you that we drove to Washington, and we traveled as lovers. Joan finally had time for our relationship, at least in a hunted, hurried sort of way. We got each other wedding bands—didn’t have an official ceremony, but we stood at the shore of a mountain lake at sunset, and we vowed to stay together for the rest of our lives. This was the best of times. We even stopped at a carnival in one Midwest town—we ate hot-dogs, cotton candy, and rode the Ferris wheel.

And this was the worst of times. I discovered a large sutured scar here below her sternum. A hard lump of something was just below the skin there. Joan, this woman I loved, was wired to explode—not like a terrorist, I don’t mean she intended to destroy some federal building. She had implanted a small device in her own body that would rip open her heart, her lungs, belly. She refused to tell me why she was wired, just as she refused to tell me why she burned the cabin, until we were having a picnic lunch at the Reflection Pool in front of the Washington Monument.

We wore hats, and we were dressed in clothing we had bought at a thrift in Nebraska. We looked like any retired couple visiting the Nation’s capitol.  Joan even had me take up smoking as part of our disguise, but while eating ham and cheese sandwiches she asked me to dump the cigarettes I hadn’t yet smoked. She pulled a black box from her purse and, bending the small aerial, put this inside the empty cigarette pack. She closed the top and handed it to me.

“I’m scared,” she said. “I’m afraid the FBI will realize this old woman is me, and I won’t have a chance to use the transmitter.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked

“If the FBI takes me,” she said, “I won’t be able to stay silent. They have drugs to make a person talk, particularly someone who wants to tell the world.”

“You should tell the world! Joan, you’ve found the secret of long life. You are going to be famous, and rich! Just think of all the good things you can do with that money!”

She shook her head. “I can’t tell anyone, ever.”

All her life, this had been Joan’s dream. Explorers, alchemists, scientists have sought the fountain of youth. You and I have tried various ways to stay young. Today the wealthy can have their head or their whole body frozen in hopes of one day being brought back to life. Joan knew the secret to long life—as sure as I’m dying fast.

But that afternoon, Joan said that she had to bury it, walk away, and say nothing.  She asked me to name one social problem that would be helped if people lived longer.

“There are too many people already,” she said.  “We have crowded so many people on Earth,” (spins globe) “we are desperate, our politics are disastrous, our technologies are dangerous, and our children’s future is at risk.”

I objected, I argued, and finally I used her own words against her, “Joan, you yourself said that long life and wisdom are inseparable.”

She stared at the ducks. “If we gain long life but lose what makes life worth living,” she said, “where is the wisdom in that?” Then she leaned her head on my shoulder and pointed at the sky, and she asked the same question that she had asked once a day since the cabin burned, “Joaquin, do you see another Earth up there somewhere to replace this one we spoil?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” she said and then, then she recited a Mother Goose rhyme, which you will recognize, except Joan added two lines. (without emphasis) “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn’t know what to do. She gave them some broth without any bread. She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed. That old woman in the shoe doesn’t have a clue. We live on the Earth and we know what to do.”

For a while we just sat there watching the ducks swim on the water. I remember chucking at a rather fat duck paddling frantically across the water trying to take off.

That’s when Joan nuzzled up to my ear and said, “I wish we could just fly away.” Before I could respond, she added, “Maybe if we wore enough blue, we could disappear into the sky.”

I told her I would follow her anywhere.

Where I followed her—was to the Capitol Building. We walked arm in arm. Joan adopted a shuffling and bent posture to mimic an old woman with stiff joints. She was scared of being recognized by the FBI. (mimic walk)

As we entered what Joan liked to call the ‘great-hall-of-greed,’ I caused the metal detector to ring. I emptied my pockets into a tray, coins, keys, cigarette lighter, and that cigarette pack. I went through the detector clean and was handed the tray on the other side—just as Joan had hoped.

My heart jumped when a voice behind me said, “Wait!” A young guard crossed his arms. “You can’t smoke while inside the Capitol.”  

I said, “I didn’t intend to.”

We entered a meeting hall. Joan had relied on her friend and he had come through; the hall was crowded with politicians and reporters. As her friend approached, Joan gave me a hug and a kiss and told me she loved me. At the podium, she began to tell us how she felt being the person to discover the fountain of youth. She told us about the pet mouse she fed magic pills so it would live forever. You could feel the anticipation; that crowd wanted to hear Joan tell them the secret of long life.

Suddenly the doors to the meeting hall burst open, and FBI agents rushed in with guns drawn. At the podium, Joan’s friend demanded the agents leave; people applauded, but the FBI began confiscating the cameras of anyone trying to capture this Kodak moment.

How can I tell you the anxiety I felt? This was what Joan feared. It was happening, happening fast. Two agents stood at each side of Joan. I reached for the black box. (pull from pocket)

‘Oh Joan,’ I thought, ‘when am I going to see you again?’

Over the heads of the crowd I saw a third agent begin to handcuff her. I remember the anger in her face, and the fear.

“Now!”

There was no doubt she was speaking to me, only to me. I thought, ‘has it come to this? How can I?’ Seconds ticked by. I thought, ‘maybe I won’t have to!’ Yet, even as hope grew, I flicked the toggle switch.

The agents began walking Joan to a side door, she resisted. I saw Joan close her eyes and raise her head again.

“Joaquin!”

This plea was the voice of her soul. Joan’s body suddenly went limp. Agents eased her to the floor; and when I couldn’t see her anymore, I pushed the button. I heard a wet pop like a champagne cork, people screaming, and Joan, Joan falling in little pieces.

I looked down, seeking solitude, and saw a small mother of pearl button on the carpet. It was from the thrift store dress Joan wore that day. (point) It’s there, at the bottom of that jar.

All of us in that meeting room were detained and debriefed by government agents. Joan’s deposition was considered Top Secret, a national security threat. They talked to everyone, saving me until last. They took the black box and listened to my story. They even hypnotized me then and there to see if I learned something during the last days I spent with Joan, but I couldn’t tell them anything more than I‘ve told you. Then they let me go—which surprised me. I had just killed someone and they were letting me go.

Well, it wasn’t long before I understood why they let me go. To convict me of murder they would have to produce evidence, and call as witnesses those people in the meeting hall that day who heard Joan speak. No, by simply ignoring me, I become a traveling sideshow, a snake-oil peddler speaking to small crowds in small towns like yours, where people cut a button from their clothes as a token of esteem, not for me, for Joan. She asked the right question, and she found the right answer.

If she had been allowed to speak at the Capital that afternoon, Joan would have explained why she had to bury the secret of long life. She would have said there are too many people. She would have asked the politicians to name one social problem made better by adding more people. No child deserves a world where long life is a social problem. Joan so believed in her responsibility to our human family that she was willing to die, and she was able to convince me so that I was willing to push the button. And I am here, in the last years of my life, to push your button.

That day by the Reflection Pool, Joan had her science, her facts, and her logic, but that nursery rhyme, that is the argument I remember.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.

She gave them some broth without any bread.

She whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

That old woman in the shoe doesn’t have a clue.

We live on the Earth, and we know what to do.

End