Honor the Living

John and Mary begin a new chapter of their young, married life after John finally returns home from fighting in World War II. Mary is thrilled that John has returned physically unharmed, but John cannot seem to shake his deep psychological wounds from the horrors of war. Fast-forward ten years, and John and Mary's life continues to look wonderful on the surface – a new apartment, a healthy child, a glamorous lifestyle – but John's involvement with an underground mob soon costs the couple all three of these luxuries. Finally, several years later, Mary visits John in his prison cell on death row, a broken woman, as John reads an Armistice Day speech and laughs bitterly at the notion that his country has done anything to "honor the living " as well as the dead.

A part of the collection The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays.