Death of a Salesman_ Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem - Miller, Arthur [19]
BIFF: Did you knock them dead, Pop?
WILLY: Knocked ’em cold in Providence, slaughtered ’em in Boston.
HAPPY [on his back, pedaling again]: I’m losing weight, you notice, Pop?
[LINDA enters, as of old, a ribbon in her hair, carrying a basket of washing.]
LINDA [with youthful energy]: Hello, dear!
WILLY: Sweetheart!
LINDA: How’d the Chevvy run?
WILLY: Chevrolet, Linda, is the greatest car ever built. [To the boys] Since when do you let your mother carry wash up the stairs?
BIFF: Grab hold there, boy!
HAPPY: Where to, Mom?
LINDA: Hang them up on the line. And you better go down to your friends, Biff. The cellar is full of boys. They don’t know what to do with themselves.
BIFF: Ah, when Pop comes home they can wait!
WILLY [laughs appreciatively]: You better go down and tell them what to do, Biff.
BIFF: I think I’ll have them sweep out the furnace room.
WILLY: Good work, Biff.
BIFF [goes through wall-line of kitchen to doorway at back and calls down]: Fellas! Everybody sweep out the furnace room! I’ll be right down!
VOICES: All right! Okay, Biff.
BIFF: George and Sam and Frank, come out back! We’re hangin’ up the wash! Come on, Hap, on the double! [He and HAPPY carry out the basket.]
LINDA: The way they obey him!
WILLY: Well, that’s training, the training. I’m tellin’ you, I was sellin’ thousands and thousands, but I had to come home.
LINDA: Oh, the whole block’ll be at that game. Did you sell anything?
WILLY: I did five hundred gross in Providence and seven hundred gross in Boston.
LINDA: No! Wait a minute, I’ve got a pencil. [She pulls pencil and paper out of her apron pocket.] That makes your commission . . . Two hundred—my God! Two hundred and twelve dollars!
WILLY: Well, I didn’t figure it yet, but . . .
LINDA: How much did you do?
WILLY: Well, I—I did—about a hundred and eighty gross in Providence. Well, no—it came to—roughly two hundred gross on the whole trip.
LINDA [without hesitation]: Two hundred gross. That’s . . . [She figures.]
WILLY: The trouble was that three of the stores were half closed for inventory in Boston. Otherwise I woulda broke records.
LINDA: Well, it makes seventy dollars and some pennies. That’s very good.
WILLY: What do we owe?
LINDA: Well, on the first there’s sixteen dollars on the refrigerator—
WILLY: Why sixteen?
LINDA: Well, the fan belt broke, so it was a dollar eighty.
WILLY: But it’s brand new.
LINDA: Well, the man said that’s the way it is. Till they work themselves in, y’know.
[They move through the wall-line into the kitchen.]
WILLY: I hope we didn’t get stuck on that machine.
LINDA: They got the biggest ads of any of them!
WILLY: I know, it’s a fine machine. What else?
LINDA: Well, there’s nine-sixty for the washing machine. And for the vacuum cleaner there’s three and a half due on the fifteenth. Then the roof, you got twenty-one dollars remaining.
WILLY: It don’t leak, does it?
LINDA: No, they did a wonderful job. Then you owe Frank for the carburetor.
WILLY: I’m not going to pay that man! That goddam Chevrolet, they ought to prohibit the manufacture of that car!
LINDA: Well, you owe him three and a half. And odds and ends, comes to around a hundred and twenty dollars by the fifteenth.
WILLY: A hundred and twenty dollars! My God, if business don’t pick up I don’t know what I’m gonna do!
LINDA: Well, next week you’ll do better.
WILLY: Oh, I’ll knock ’em dead next week. I’ll go to Hartford. I’m very well liked in Hartford. You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don’t seem to take to me.
[They move onto the forestage.]
LINDA: Oh, don’t be foolish.
WILLY: I know it when I walk in. They seem to laugh at me.
LINDA: Why? Why would they