Read The Man Who Had All the Luck for Free Online

start doing things. You’re movin’ like a daisy cutter, Dave, you know how to do. Take me over.
    DAVID: But I don’t know half what Pop knows about baseball . . . about training or . . .
    AMOS: I don’t care, you didn’t know anything about cars either, and look what you made here.
    DAVID: What’d I make? I got nothin’. I still don’t know anything about cars.
    AMOS: But you do. Everybody knows you know . . .
    DAVID: Everybody’s crazy. Don’t envy me, Ame. If every car I ever fixed came rolling in here tomorrow morning and the guys said I did it wrong I wouldn’t be surprised. I started on Shory’s Ford and I got another one and another, and before I knew what was happening they called me a mechanic. But I ain’t a trained man. You are. You got something . . . [ Takes his arm, with deepest feeling. ] and you’re going to be great. Because you deserve it. You know something perfect. Don’t look to me, I could be out on that street tomorrow morning, and then I wouldn’t look so smart. . . . Don’t laugh at Pop. You’re his whole life, Ame. You hear me? You stay with him.
    AMOS: Gee, Dave . . . you always make me feel so good. [ Suddenly like PAT , ecstatic. ] When I’m in the Leagues I’m gonna buy you . . . a . . . a whole goddam garage!
    Enter HESTER from the right. She is a full-grown girl, a heartily developed girl. She can run fast, swim hard, and lift heavy things—not stylishly—with the most economical and direct way to run, swim and lift. She has a loud, throaty laugh. Her femininity dwells in one fact—she loves DAVID with all her might, always has, and she doesn’t feel she’s doing anything when he’s not around. The pallor of tragedy is nowhere near her. She enters breathless, not from running but from expectation.
    HESTER: David, he’s home. [ Goes to DAVID and cups his face in her hands. ] He just came back! You ready? [ Looks around DAVID ’s shoulder at AMOS.] Hullo, Ame, how’s the arm?
    AMOS: Good as ever.
    HESTER: You do that long division I gave you?
    AMOS: Well, I been working at it.
    HESTER: There’s nothing better’n arithmetic to sharpen you up. You’ll see, when you get on the diamond again, you’ll be quicker on base play. We better go, David.
    AMOS [ awkwardly ]: Well . . . good luck to ya. [ He goes to the store door. ]
    DAVID: Thanks, Ame. AMOS waves, goes through the door and closes it behind him.
    HESTER: What’re you looking so pruney about? Don’t you want to go?
    DAVID: I’m scared, Hess. I don’t mind tellin’ you. I’m scared.
    HESTER: Of a beatin’?
    DAVID: You know I was never scared of a beatin’.
    HESTER: We always knew we’d have to tell him, didn’t we?
    DAVID: Yeh, but I always thought that by the time we had to, I’d be somebody. You know . . .
    HESTER: But you are somebody . . .
    DAVID: But just think of it from his side. He’s a big farmer, a hundred and ten of the best acres in the county. Supposing he asks me—I only got three hundred and ninety-four dollars, counting today . . .
    HESTER: But we always said, when you had three fifty we’d ask him.
    DAVID: God, if I was a lawyer, or a doctor, or even a bookkeeper . . .
    HESTER: A mechanic’s good as a bookkeeper!
    DAVID: Yeh . . . but I don’t know if I am a mechanic. [ Takes her hand. ] Hess, listen, in a year maybe I could build up some kind of a real business, something he could look at and see.
    HESTER: A year! Davey, don’t . . . don’t you . . . ?
    DAVID: I mean . . . let’s get married now, without asking him.
    HESTER: I told you, I can’t . . .
    DAVID: If we went away . . . far, far away . . .
    HESTER: Wherever we went, I’d always be afraid he’d knock on the door. You don’t know what he can do when he’s mad. He roared my mother to her grave. . . . We have to face him with it, Davey. It seems