Three people in this town keep trying to pass their deaths off onto other people. Two women in white nurses' outfits. One man man in a blue tuxedo. I know who they are even though I've only seen them from a distance. Always at night. Always huddled in a frantic group at street corners pushing an old wicker chair back and forth between them. Arguing in whispers. Trying to hide their faces. Sneaking around the neighborhood in tennis shoes. I know who they are but I'll never reveal their names.

This wicker chair is the center of their argument. All their terror emanates from this wicker chair. It suddenly apperared one morning in their front yard. They all agreed it was an omen. A sure sign of their imminent death. Now they belive that by leaving the chair in some one else's front yard their death can be averted. But each morning the chair is back in their own front yard.

Tonight they leave the chair in my front yard. I watch them do it. I don't try to stop them. They seem so terrified of getting caught I couldn't stand to catch them. I watch them drop it and run. I hear them running blocks at top speed, as though afraid the chair might chase them. I watch the chair. It doesn't move. I go down in the cold wind and throw it out into the road but the wind blows it back in my yard. I carry the chair out into the middle of the road and drop it. I run for the house.

I watch the chair from my window. It just sits there in the road. Car lights hit it but it doesn't move. I fall alseep at the window, watching it. In the morning it's back in my yard.

Written by Sam Shepard ©1982

Published by City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133