ANNOUNCER:

Quiet please. Quiet please.

MUSIC:

THEME IN, DOWN AND UNDER

ANNOUNCER:

This recreation of Quiet Please is brought to you by the Icebox Radio Theater, from a script written by the great Wyllis Cooper. Tonight's story is called, 'Tanglefoot'.

MUSIC:

THEME BACK UP

BUCK:

Back in the old days when G.I. didn't mean 'general issue' it just meant 'galvanized iron', I used to be a plumber. No cracks about leaving tools in the shop when you go out on a job. Because if a plumber took along all the tools he's liable to need on a job he don't know nothing about till he gets there, he'd need one of those moving vans to tote 'em. Just the same, what you can do with a 14' Stillson wrench and a mitt full of oakum, you'd be surprised at.

This place where I worked -- well, you ever smelled a plumbing shop? I'll tell you what you smell. Oakum, first thing. Like creosote. Lynseed oil, that's in the red ledger used on the joints and stuff. The smell of hot led where the kid's melting down little pigs you can put in your bag. Galvanized iron...yeah, sure you can smell galvanized iron. Go past the bins where they keep the 'L's' and the 'T's' and the street-L's and the couplers and the unions, all sizes. And 4-way-tee sizes. You can smell galvanized iron all right.

Then there's the smell of rats that live back behind the bins. And gasoline burning in the blow torches and the furnaces. And the thing I remember best of all - the smell of the flypaper. My heavens, there seemed to be flypaper everyplace. I don't know. Maybe in the old days there was more of it or more flies or something. Seemed like every place you went you ran into fly paper. Remember that smell? Like varnish with sugar in it? Like taffy that's got spoiled? Kind of a fascinating smell in a sickly way. Think about it and you kinda think, 'No wonder the flies smelled it and went for it.'

Smell? Sure flies can smell. They got smellers that would make a bloodhound jealous if he knowed it. Flies got lots of things. They got a jillian eyes, six fancy legs, wings. And a trunk like an elephant, only littler. Proboscis, they call it. Talk? No, flies can't talk. Boy howdy if they could. I know a lot about flies. I'll tell you about it.

MUSIC:

MYSTERY UNDERSCORE, IN, DOWN AND CONTINUED UNDER

BUCK:

I can see it today. There was people living upstairs above the plumbing shop where I worked. That was the summer of 1915 I guess, or...quite a while ago. They had a back porch hung over the back of the shop, made kind of a shed where we used to thread pipe, melt up scrap lead, stuff like that. And Rickets the horse, he used to be tied up in the alley with the wagon. When you was working back there it was quiet, and shady and hot. All you could hear was Rickets stamping his feet and swishing his tail at the flies. Maybe the 'oooooo' of the gasoline furnace. Whoever you was working with moving kind of slow and lazy in the heat. Ahh...boy, was it hot.

SOUND:

PIPE CLANGING, MOVEMENT, CONTINUED UNDER

BUCK:

I and Herbie, we was threading three-and-a-quarter inch, black iron pipe.

HERBIE:

You going to the boat excursion tonight, Buck?

BUCK:

What boat excursion?

HERBIE:

Crawfey Club. Percy singing night.

BUCK:

I thought it was tomorrow.

HERBIE:

Nope. Tonight.

SOUND:

SOME MORE PIPE SOUNDS

BUCK:

Yeah, that's good enough. Get another length of pipe.

SOUND:

NICE, LONG STRETCH OF SOUND OF PIPES

HERBIE:

Hot, ain't it?

BUCK:

Ninety-one, the thermometer says.

HERBIE:

In the shade.

SOUND:

PIPE ON WOODBLOCK SOUNDS

BUCK:

Hot for old Rickets out there in the sun.

HERBIE:

His head's in the shade. What's he hollering about?

BUCK:

Flies, I guess.

HERBIE:

Should have put the fly netting on him.

SOUND:

A FEW HAMMERS ON PIPE

BUCK:

Yeah.

HERBIE:

Look out. Don't step in the flypaper.

BUCK:

Flypaper all over the place. That Bert Kincaid is nuts about flypaper. Dog gone stuff. Get it all over the place.

HERBIE:

Watch where you're throwing it.

BUCK:

You take care of the pipe. I'll take care of the flypaper. You think with all the stuff around there wouldn't be so many flies.

HERBIE:

Flies are smart.

(BEAT)

 

BUCK:

What do you mean, smart?

HERBIE:

Smart enough for fly paper.

BUCK:

Flypaper's always full of them.

HERBIE:

Thems the dumb flies. Smart ones smell it and fly away. Land on people, horses take a bite. They live longer.

SOUND:

PIPE DROPS TO THE GROUND.

BUCK:

I wonder how long flies live.

HERBIE:

I don't know.

BUCK:

Too long.

HERBIE:

Any more length of pipe you need threaded?

BUCK:

Uh, here.

SOUND:

PIPE ON PIPE SOUND

BUCK:

I wonder what flies think about.

HERBIE:

Eatin.

BUCK:

That's what I'm thinking about. What time is it?

HERBIE:

Why don't you look at that fancy new wristwatch of yours?

BUCK:

Busted.

HERBIE:

Pretty near new.

(BEAT)

 

BUCK:

Gonna...go home to eat?

HERBIE:

You wanna go with me?

BUCK:

Now I wasn't hintin'.

HERBIE:

(CHUCKLES) The heck you wasn't.

BUCK:

Well, um --

HERBIE:

No flies on you, bud. Ma left some ice cream she made for me.

BUCK:

Your mom home?

HERBIE:

Nah, she went up to Peoria this morning. Department store there had a big sale or something.

BUCK:

I could stop at Rueben's and get some boiled ham or something. We could make sandwiches.

HERBIE:

Nah. We got something.

BUCK:

Well I should throw in something, I'm eathin' off you --

HERBIE:

Nahhh

SOUND:

DISTANT MILL WHISTLE SOUNDS

BUCK:

Well, twelve o'clock.

HERBIE:

Let's go.

SOUND:

SOME PIPE DROPPED. THE WHISTLE CROSS FADES WITH...

MUSIC:

EERIE THEME IN, THEN DOWN AND UNDER

BUCK:

Did you ever hear of anything starting so simple and easy and not meaning nothing? Did all that mean anything? Huh. Well, you'll get it in a minute. You'll get a lot of stuff you don't expect. It all started that way. We were threading pipe and kicking flypaper around and stuff. We went up for the ice cream at Herbie's house. Sitting in the kitchen where it was kinda cool. And gosh, I hated to go back to work.

HERBIE:

(SIGHS) I hate to go back too, bud. (YAWNS THROUGH FOLLOWING) I'd like to lay down and take a nap or something.

BUCK:

Bert Kincaid would can ya.

HERBIE:

Yeah. I wish I was a fly.

BUCK:

Yeah. Go bite Bert Kincaid.

HERBIE:

Ah, Bert's all right. Only thing that's wrong with him is he's a boss. Flies don't have bosses.

BUCK:

Huh.

HERBIE:

Want some more ice cream?

BUCK:

Leave some for you mom.

HERBIE:

She don't like ice cream. Sure you don't want some more?

BUCK:

Nah, I'm full (BURPS). Thanks.

HERBIE:

Well, we can set a couple minutes more. It's only twenty-to-one?

BUCK:

Yeah.

(PAUSE)

 

HERBIE:

I'm thinking about flies.

BUCK:

You're crazy about flies today.

HERBIE:

I just got to thinking about them.

BUCK:

Say, what became of your dad?

HERBIE:

I'd like to be a fly out in the back yard. It's hot. Go down under the coal shed, keep cool.

BUCK:

You could handle one yourself.

HERBIE:

I wish I had a pet fly (CHUCKLES)

BUCK:

You're crazy.

HERBIE:

If I had a pet fly, I'd fashion a rope on him, lead him around.

BUCK:

A mighty itzy-bitzy rope you'd have to have.

HERBIE:

Nah. This would be a great big fly.

MUSIC:

OMINOUS CUE IN, THEN DOWN AND UNDER

HERBIE:

Big as a dog.

BUCK:

What kind of a dog?

HERBIE:

Oh, like that old Collie, Masterson had.

BUCK:

Fly that big bit you, you'd be ruined.

HERBIE:

I was looking at a fly under a magnifying glass the other day.

BUCK:

I seen one once.

HERBIE:

About the meanest looking face I ever seen.

BUCK:

Great big eyes.

HERBIE:

A jillion eyes. Look at cha' from all over. Always washing their faces like a cat.

BUCK:

They carry germs.

HERBIE:

Oh, sure. Germs.
(BEAT)
Gee.

BUCK:

Big fly sure be something.

HERBIE:

Sure make a swell pet, though.

BUCK:

If you could tame him.

HERBIE:

Oh, I'd tame him all right.

BUCK:

Herbie the Fly Tamer!

HERBIE:

He'd be as big and strong as a bull. Have to put a big chain on him.

BUCK:

He'd fly away with you.

HERBIE:

Maybe I could train him to take me places, fly me around.

BUCK:

Herbie, you're sure thinking of an educated fly.

HERBIE:

Flies are smart.

BUCK:

Flypaper catches em in good old tanglefoot, boy.

HERBIE:

You'd have to have a big piece of ole' tanglefoot to catch this old boy. Ain't got that much tanglefoot in the world.

BUCK:

Ain't got no fly like that, neither.

SOUND:

NOON WHISTLE IN THE DISTANCE

HERBIE:

Oh boy, a fly that big.

BUCK:

Didn't you hear the whistle? Come on, quarter to one.

HERBIE:

Yeah. I wonder what you'd feed a fly that big.

BUCK:

Have to feed him people, I guess. Come on, let's go.

MUSIC:

THEME UP, THEN BACK DOWN AND UNDER.

BUCK:

I remember it was pretty-near three, maybe four months later. We were just beginning to get the first days of Fall. People were starting to burn dry leaves along the curbstone. Herbie and I were fixing a hot water heater for Fred and Edith Gibbins the telegraph operator, live out there where Washington runs into Court Street? Kinda cool out there, I remember.

SOUND:

BANGING ON PIPES, CONTINUED UNDER

BUCK:

Mrs Gibbins, she was jawing at us because she said we were so slow. She wanted that hot water heater fixed right this minute. She wanted to take a bath before the chicken pie supper at the Christian Church. She had to put the icing yet on two devils food cakes and could we please hurry up? She was all in a tizzy.

Well, finally Henry came with the reducer T we'd been waiting for. And Mrs Gibbins went out the kitchen to look at the cakes and 'don't go batting things around and making my cakes fall, she said. I said 'Yes, ma'am' for about the forty-teenth time, and she shut the door.

SOUND:

DOOR SLAM

BUCK:

And I lay down that ballpeen hammer, and I said...
Whoo.

HERBIE:

Me too.

BUCK:

Why can't women leave ya alone?

HERBIE:

Get the union after her, she thinks she knows so much about plumbing.

BUCK:

Well, at least it's cool. What? Ahhh

HERBIE:

What's the matter?

BUCK:

I got my elbow in the flypaper. My heavens, what's she still got flypaper around for?

HERBIE:

Here, let me do it.

SOUND:

RIP SOUND

BUCK:

Ooop! You gotta take off the skin too,?! Here, squirt me some gasoline. I got guck all over me.

SOUND:

SLOSHING CAN, HANDS RUBBING TOGETHER.

BUCK:

Haven't been any flies around for three weeks. Gimme so more gasoline.

SOUND:

SLOSHING CAN

(PAUSE)

 

HERBIE:

I know where there's a fly.

MUSIC:

EERIE MUSIC, CONTINUED UNDER

BUCK:

What?

HERBIE:

I know where there's a fly.

BUCK:

Well why don't you swat him?

HERBIE:

Well, two reasons. First, I kinda like this fly.

BUCK:

Like him?

HERBIE:

Raised him from a pup.

BUCK:

Herbie! Raised a fly from a pup?

HERBIE:

Second thing is, if you wanna swat this fly, you'd better have a baseball bat.

BUCK:

What!?

HERBIE:

This here fly is eight inches long.

BUCK:

Huh?

HERBIE:

Hand me the red lead.

SOUND:

METAL CONTAINER SCRAPE

BUCK:

How big?

HERBIE:

Maybe nine.

SOUND:

TAPS ON WOOD

HERBIE:

Where you going?

BUCK:

(SLIGHTLY OFF) Mrs Gibbins!

HERBIE:

What are you calling her for?

BUCK:

(SLIGHTLY OFF) Mrs Gibbins call up the asylum. Herbie Butterworth is seeing flies, nine inches long.

MUSIC:

THEME UP, THEN RESOLVES DOWN INTO A TRANSITION

BUCK:

I joked, sure I joked. Mrs Gibbins give us hell for making noise but what did I care. I got a good laugh, fly nine inches long. A good laugh...THAT day. A'course things changed later on when Herbie and me couldn't find his ole dog Teddy.

HERBIE:

(COMING ON) Out here under the coal shed.
(BEAT)
Here, Teddy! Come on, Teddy. Come on out there, Teddy! Come on, Teddy boy!
(MUMBLES)
Darn it, Teddy, come on.
(CALLING)
Come on, Teddy! Here boy! Good dog!
(STERN)
Ted! Come on, now! Come on out of there! Ted! Come on!

Gosh darn dog.

BUCK:

He's asleep, maybe?

HERBIE:

What with me hollering that way?

BUCK:

Well, maybe he's not there. Maybe's he's out looking around --

HERBIE:

He is too, I can see him. He's laying down in there. Here! Teddy!

BUCK:

Reach in and pull him out.

HERBIE:

Darn dog!

(PAUSE)

 

HERBIE:

Buck.

BUCK:

Huh?

MUSIC:

EERIE TRANSITION UNDER

HERBIE:

He's dead.

MUSIC:

TRANSITION UP, THEN DOWN AND CONTINUED UNDER.

BUCK:

You ever seen anybody...any thing, I mean, that a fly killed? Oh, I don't mean being killed by putting germs on them or anything like that. I mean...murdered by a fly.

HERBIE:

(SLIGHTLY OFF) This here fly is eight inches long. Maybe nine.

BUCK:

This here fly killed Teddy that was Herbie Butterworth's dog that was a hound dog that weighed 42 pounds on John Aper's scales the day before.

This here fly, he just up and killed poor old Teddy. But...maybe Teddy was scared to death by the fly first. Because nobody in the whole great, big, wide world ever seen a fly that was eight-inches long. Nobody but first Herbie and then Teddy. And...afterwards, me.

MUSIC:

QUIET STAB, THEN DOWN AND OUT.

HERBIE:

I ain't found him yet.

BUCK:

Maybe he got froze to death.

HERBIE:

Kinda scares me, Buck. How 'bout you?

BUCK:

He comes after me, I'll bat him on the head.

HERBIE:

He'll come flying up to you. Come flying up, you won't even see his wings. You know how flies wings is, you can see through 'em.

BUCK:

Maybe he's froze to death. Flies can't stand cold weather. They die.

HERBIE:

They don't always die. Some times they go into -- what is it, a coma? When they get warm, they come-too again. And then they're hungry.

BUCK:

Well...I think he's dead. Because we ain't heard of anybody croaking, like with a mystery. Not since Teddy...
(BEAT)
I can still see that dog.

HERBIE:

I'm trying not to think about Teddy.

BUCK:

Maybe you ought to leave around some flypaper, big hunks of flypaper.

HERBIE:

I got flypaper all around the coal bin where he was.

BUCK:

Heavy enough?

HERBIE:

It don't have to be so heavy. If he lands on a hunk of tanglefoot, it will get all stuck to the hair --

BUCK:

Hair?

HERBIE:

Hair on his legs. Flies got hair on their legs.

BUCK:

Real hair?

HERBIE:

More like bristles, like spikes, kinda. If he gets flypaper stuck in his legs, his wings, he ain't going to go skidding around much.

BUCK:

Maybe he's dead.

HERBIE:

Sure hope not.

BUCK:

Hope NOT?!

HERBIE:

Well I...I kinda liked him. Until he ate on Teddy like that.

BUCK:

I'd be just as satisfied if I never get to see him. Must be quite a sight, though. Like looking at a fly through a magnifying glass.

HERBIE:

Sure glad he only got to be eight, nine inches long.

BUCK:

(SHUDDERS)

HERBIE:

Hate to lose him. I could put him in a circus or a side show or something. Make a jillion dollars . Take him up to Chicago. People would come from miles and miles around.

BUCK:

Or you could put him in a museum like that one in -- what was it, New York?

HERBIE:

He was quite a thing. He used to eat mice. I went and caught mice and let him have 'em. You ought to see what he did to a dead mouse.

BUCK:

No thank you kindly. I seen what he did to Teddy.
(BEAT)
How'd you get him so big, Herbie?

HERBIE:

Uh. Secret, Buck.

BUCK:

That so?

HERBIE:

I bet if he laid an egg, the pup would be bigger than he was.

BUCK:

Fly egg.

HERBIE:

Bigger than a hens egg it would be. Bigger than a turkey egg.

(BEAT)

 

BUCK:

Maybe he's dead.

HERBIE:

Yeah.

BUCK:

He comes after me, I'm gonna shoot him with my old twelve-gauge.

HERBIE:

You coulnd't hit a balloon with a bull fiddle.

BUCK:

I'd hit him all right.

SOUND:

LADIES FOOTSTEPS APPROACH

BUCK:

Oh, hello Louise.

HERBIE:

How do you do?

SOUND:

THE FOOTSTEPS FADE

HERBIE:

Hey, who's that, Buck?

BUCK:

I don't know. Just moved to town from someplace in Ohio, Iowa someplace.

HERBIE:

Louise.

BUCK:

Louise McGinty, McKinnley, McKinny -- something like that.

HERBIE:

How do you know her?

BUCK:

Met her at Empire Hall, that dance the other night.

HERBIE:

What dance? Social Athletic Club?

BUCK:

Uh huh.

(BEAT)

 

HERBIE:

Well...good night.
(SLIGHTLY OFF)
See you at the shop in the morning.

BUCK:

So long. Hey, getting cold, ain't it?

HERBIE:

(DISTANT) Gonna snow. Feels like snow.

BUCK:

More busted water pipes.

HERBIE:

(DISTANT) Yeah. Well, so long, Buck.

(BEAT)

 

HERBIE:

(COMING ON) Say uh that Louise whats-her-name, that's something, ain't it?

BUCK:

Well yeah, if you like that there type.

HERBIE:

I like it.

BUCK:

Say uh, Herbie?

HERBIE:

What?

BUCK:

Listen, uh...that great big fly of yours.

HERBIE:

Yeah?

BUCK:

On the level, now. Is there a great, big fly?

HERBIE:

Huh?

BUCK:

Couldn't you just be...I just thought about it all of the sudden. I never seen this here fly.

HERBIE:

You mean you think I'm just foolin?

BUCK:

I was just wondering.

HERBIE:

That I was just making it up?

(BEAT)

 

BUCK:

Was you?

HERBIE:

No. I wasn't making it up.

(PAUSE)

 

BUCK:

I just wondered.

HERBIE:

Listen, Buck, I never made that up. I wished I did. I wish I never started making flies grow big. I ought to have stopped when I got one this big.

BUCK:

I don't know whether to believe you or not.

HERBIE:

Listen, Buck when I think of what that there fly...
(BEAT)
You remember when we first started way back there last summer when we first talked about it, you said, what would you feed a great big fly?

BUCK:

Yeah?

HERBIE:

You remember what you said?

BUCK:

What?

HERBIE:

You said people.
(BEAT)
People, you said. That's what you'd feed 'em.

BUCK:

Oh. Well, yeah but --

HERBIE:

Listen, Buck, he already ate a dog that we know about. What if he...if he ain't dead by now in all this cold, he must be...

(BEAT)

 

BUCK:

Must be what?

MUSIC:

TRANSITION BEGINS LOW, CONTINUED UNDER

HERBIE:

Hungry.

MUSIC:

THEME UP, THEN BACK DOWN AND UNDER

BUCK:

Third of December, 1915. Yeah, seven-six-five-four-three, the third of December, the night Herbie and me talked like I told ya. I remember because on the seventh, the Boy Scouts had a movie at the Capital Theater, used to be the Standard Theater? And there was a kid with a bugle, blowing it out front. That was the seventh.

That was the night Burt Kincaid phoned me up from the shop and Noah Watson came over from kinda next door and told me Burt was calling me. I head over. Burt says me and Herbie Butterworth go right over to these McKinnley's or McKinny's or whichever it was. He goes, their furnace, there's something wrong with it and they was freezing. And I should go right on away and Herbie was gonna meet me there. He was already on his way over with Rickets and the wagon and the tools.

So I said, All right, and I put on my overshoes and my army sweater, and I go over there. See, the place is only two doors over from where Herbie lived, there by the Garfield School, and that's why he was there already, see? I didn't even bother to knock on the door. I just went along to the cellar door with my Coleman lantern and I go on down. Herbie was there already, settin' on the cellar steps so I just about fell over him...and not looking very happy.

MUSIC:

FADE OUT

Hey, I said, I throught they'd be freezing to death in this here in a house with a busted furnace only it's not cold it's warm in here I said.

HERBIE:

I fixed it.

BUCK:

Huh?

HERBIE:

I fixed the furnace. This valve was corroded and I put a new one on. I fired it up. It's all right.

BUCK:

Well, what's you settin' on the cellar stairs for, it's all fixed.
(BEAT)
What are you settin' around here for?

HERBIE:

Well, I uh --

BUCK:

What are you looking so crabby about? Anybody ought to be crabby it's me! I walked halfway across town and I...what's you so crabby about?

HERBIE:

She's down here.

BUCK:

Who?

HERBIE:

Louise. You know, the McKinnley gal or whatever her name is.

BUCK:

Where?
(GLIB)
Oh, so that's why I ain't welcome. Two's company, three's a --

HERBIE:

(WHISPER) Shut up!

BUCK:

Gonna make some time, huh?

HERBIE:

Shut up! She'll hear yah.

BUCK:

Where is she?

HERBIE:

She went back there in the brazier closet.

BUCK:

What for?
(DIRTY JOKE)
She gonna bring you a jar of apple butter?

HERBIE:

The old man makes elderberry wine.

BUCK:

(CHUCKLES)

HERBIE:

He got some bottles back there he brought from Ohio or Iowa or whatever it is. Three years old.

BUCK:

I sure like elderberry wine.

HERBIE:

I know it.

BUCK:

Well, I'll tell you, Herbie, I'm a good guy. I'm your friend, Herbie. Seeing as you have everything fixed up, I'll go.

HERBIE:

You don't have ta.

BUCK:

I never stood in a guys way, Herbie. I'll go out into the cold and the snow --

HERBIE:

Ain't no snow.

BUCK:

I'll go right home and I'll leave this set of C-Allens and the tines and I'll leave the coast clear for you --

HERBIE:

You don't have to do that, Buck.

BUCK:

Just as soon as I have one drink of elderberry wine.

HERBIE:

Huh. Knew there was a catch in it.

BUCK:

Ha! No, I'll go right away. Honest, Herbie.
(BEAT)
Hey, you been telling her about...giant flies and things?

HERBIE:

Cut it out.

BUCK:

That thing's dead.

HERBIE:

I guess so.

BUCK:

If it ever was alive.
(PAUSE)
You got the makings?

HERBIE:

I got some taylor mades. Knee bows?

BUCK:

Much obliged. Ain't you smokin?

HERBIE:

Na.

(PAUSE)

 

BUCK:

What's she doing, making that wine?

HERBIE:

Old man probably hid it for hisself.

BUCK:

He'll give her a good smacken if he finds she swipped it. Probably give you a good smakin', too.

HERBIE:

Huh?

BUCK:

Why don't you yell at her?

HERBIE:

Folks will hear upstairs.

(BEAT)

 

BUCK:

Louise!

HERBIE:

(HARSH WHISPER) Shut up!

BUCK:

(CHUCKLES) Hey, Louise!

HERBIE:

Shut up, Buck!

BUCK:

Come on, let's go help her.

HERBIE:

Nix!

BUCK:

Louise, you want some help!

HERBIE:

The people will hear ya!

BUCK:

In here? Hey Louise? I thought maybe you needed some - - Louise?
(BEAT, THEN SHOCKED)
Louise...

MUSIC:

MYSTERY THEME IN AND UNDER

HERBIE:

Buck, what's that?

BUCK:

Herbie --

HERBIE:

What's the matter, Buck? Buck what's the -- Louise!!

MUSIC:

BIG STAB, THEN BACK DOWN INTO THEME, CONTINUED UNDER.

BUCK:

I could recognize her by her clothes. By her clothes, that's all. You ever saw a person that...that a fly...No, you never did. Herbie and I did. A big fly, I seen it. Not eight, nine inches long now, down in the hot, stuffy cellar. A fat and kinda loppy it was, like after you had a big dinner? He was back there by them furnace pipes, I could see them eyes, a jillion eyes, and that trunk like an elephant. When Herbie seen it, he fainted dead away.

SOUND:

DEEP BUZZING IN QUITE, THEN COMING ON, CONTINUED UNDER

BUCK:

It kinda buzzed, and wiggled its eyes at me and rubbed its face with its claws like a cat washing its face after dinner. And I tried to holler but all I could hear was this buzzing, that's all.

And then, it kind of stumbled up out of the pipes, and it jumped and it flew, right past my face!

SOUND:

BUZZING CLOSE THEN RECEDING.

BUCK:

And it flew kinda sideways kind a. Out of the corner of my eye I seen it fly right out into the furnace room. The furnace door was open and the fire!

SOUND:

FLAME RISE UP. METAL DOOR CLOSE.

MUSIC:

STING.

BUCK:

You don't want to hear anymore, huh? There's only a little bit more so...I mean, you've come this far with me. Well, they put us both -- Herbie and me -- in jail. They said we murdered Louise, but nobody could murder anybody like that. And there wasn't any other evidence. The fly was dead, disappeared and there wasn't anything to go on. So they had to let us go. That's pretty-near the whole story. Ain't it, Herbie?

HERBIE:

The egg.

BUCK:

Oh, sure. I pretty-near forgot about that egg. Bigger than a hen's egg. Bigger still than a turkey egg, back there in the cellar behind the pipes.

HERBIE:

I didn't see it. Buck seen it.

BUCK:

But I never told anybody about it. Did I, Herbie? Nobody but you?

HERBIE:

When they let us out of jail, we come back looking for it but it was gone. There was a kind of a scrunching sound and we looked back there and sure enough, larve.

BUCK:

They call it in the books.

HERBIE:

You know. And we took it away with us, and sure enough, this one grew bigger'n it's father or its mother or whatever it was.

BUCK:

And everyone since then has got a little bigger ...and a little hungrier. Ain't that so, Herbie?

HERBIE:

Yup. Hungry all the time. Never let him out to hunt.

BUCK:

Wait...

SOUND:

SOMETHING LARGE SHUFFLING AROUND, DISTANT

BUCK:

Look at him, ain't he a dinger! (LAUGHS) First real, live pet fly you ever seen.

HERBIE:

Here, Louise.
(A FEW UNSETTLED GIGGLES UNDER THE FOLLOWING.)

BUCK:

We called him Louise. Look at them eyes. Jillions of 'em! Look! He unrolled his trunk. Ain't that cute? Nice clean face. See those sharp bristles on his face. Biggest fly in the world. Bigger'n a collie.

HERBIE:

Bigger than a Shetland Pony, I'll bet.

BUCK:

And hungrier, too.

HERBIE:

Come on, Louise. Wake up!

SOUND:

THE BUZZING SOUND, CONTINUED UNDER

HERBIE:

He's awake, Buck.

BUCK:

Uh huh. Okay, Herbie?

HERBIE:

Okay.

BUCK:

Go on in.
(BEAT)
No, you I'm talking too.

HERBIE:

Do as he says. Go on in!

BUCK:

Go on in. Louise is hungry.

SOUND:

A LARGE METAL DOOR IS CLOSED, LOCKED

BUCK:

What's the matter? Can't move your feet? Sure. You stuck in something? (CHUCKLES) Used to call that stuff flypaper. We got a different name for it, now. No use trying to get lose. You're stuck for good. And Louise is hungry. Only hurt a minute, that's all. Careful now, Louise honey. Don't get your feet stuck in the man paper.

MUSIC:

THEME

CREDITS