The story you are about to read is not entirely fiction. The names are invented. The numbers are real. There are 134 million households in America. This could be any one of them. It could be yours.
Today.

Have a Nice Day!

The Volunteer

ACT I

“The Statement”

A Thursday morning. Early. The coffee is fresh but Phil is not.

(Lights up on the kitchen. PHIL sits at the table. The quarterly retirement statement is in front of him, still sealed. He has been looking at it for some time. He is holding a butter knife, which he has apparently been using to open it but has not yet committed to the act. DORIS enters from the hallway in her robe. She sees the envelope. She sees the butter knife. She sits down.)

DORIS: How long have you been sitting there?

PHIL: Since five.

DORIS: It’s six-thirty.

PHIL: I know what time it is.

(Beat.)

DORIS: Open it.

PHIL: I’m thinking about it.

DORIS: You’ve been thinking about it for ninety minutes with a butter knife.

(Phil looks at the butter knife. He looks at the envelope. He slides the knife under the flap and opens it. He unfolds the statement. He reads. His face does not change. That is how Doris knows it is bad.)

DORIS: How much?

PHIL: Down nineteen percent.

(Silence.)

DORIS: Since when?

PHIL: Since February. Since the war started.

(Doris reaches for the pencil behind her ear. She stops. She puts her hand back on the table.)

PHIL: Forty-three years, Doris. Forty-three years of putting money into that account. Every paycheck. Navy pay, which was nothing. Then the consulting years. Then the teaching. Every year. And it’s down nineteen percent in four months.

DORIS: What’s the number?

(Phil turns the statement so she can see it. She reads. A long silence. The kind of silence that has a number in it.)

DORIS: That’s sixty-one thousand dollars.

PHIL: Sixty-one thousand, four hundred and twelve.

DORIS: Phil.

PHIL: Yeah.

DORIS: That’s almost exactly what the first statement said we owe for the three wars. The one Elmer brought. Fifty-five to seventy-five thousand per household.

PHIL: I noticed that.

(Doris picks up the statement. She reads the allocation breakdown. She reads carefully, the way she reads everything — line by line, looking for what the numbers confess when no one is asking.)

DORIS: Phil.

PHIL: What?

DORIS: The domestic index is down twenty-six percent. International is down thirty-one. Bonds are down eight. But there’s one sector that’s up.

PHIL: Which one?

(Doris sets the statement down. She looks at Phil.)

DORIS: Defense. Up twenty-two percent.

(Beat.)

PHIL: Defense.

DORIS: Raytheon. Lockheed Martin. Northrop Grumman. General Dynamics. The fund holds all of them. It’s the only sector in the account that made money.

PHIL: The companies making the Tomahawk missiles.

DORIS: Three and a half million dollars each.

PHIL: And the JDAMs.

DORIS: Under a hundred thousand each. Karen said they were cost-conscious.

(Phil picks up the statement. He looks at it the way he used to look at intelligence reports on the ship — reading not for what it says but for what it means.)

PHIL: So the war destroyed sixty-one thousand dollars of our savings. And the only reason it didn’t destroy more is that the same companies running the war are propping up what’s left.

DORIS: That’s what the numbers say.

(Phil puts the statement on the table. It joins the pile. He picks up his coffee. It’s cold. He puts it back down.)

PHIL: We should call Mitchell.

DORIS: I was going to suggest that.

PHIL: He’ll tell us what to do.

DORIS: I’m afraid he will.

(Blackout.)

*   *   *

ACT II

“The Advisor”

Thirty minutes later.

(Same kitchen. The retirement statement is now open on the table, next to Karen’s charts and Tyler’s face-down pamphlet. Phil’s phone is in the center of the table, on speaker. It is ringing. The phone sits among the documents like the newest artifact in the collection. DORIS has her pencil out. A fresh napkin is in front of her.)

MITCHELL: Phil! Good morning. How are you and Doris?

PHIL: We’re on speaker, Mitchell. Both of us.

MITCHELL: Perfect. I had a feeling you’d call. You got the quarterly statement.

PHIL: We got the quarterly statement.

MITCHELL: I know. I know. Listen, before you say anything, I want you to know that what you’re seeing is not unusual given the current environment. The geopolitical disruption has created significant headwinds across most asset classes.

DORIS: The war.

MITCHELL: Yes. The — yes. The Iran situation has been the primary driver.

PHIL: Nineteen percent, Mitchell.

MITCHELL: I know. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it. That’s a real drawdown. But I want to put it in perspective. The broad market is down more than that. The S&P is off twenty-three percent since February. Your portfolio actually outperformed the benchmark.

DORIS: We lost sixty-one thousand dollars and we outperformed.

MITCHELL: Relatively speaking, yes.

(Doris writes something on the napkin. She underlines it.)

PHIL: Mitchell, what do we do?

MITCHELL: Okay. So. The good news is you’re not in a position where you need to panic. You’re retired, but your Social Security and Navy pension cover your baseline expenses. The portfolio is supplemental. So we have time.

PHIL: Time for what?

MITCHELL: To reposition. Here’s what I’m recommending to all my clients in your situation. First, reduce international exposure. The global supply chain disruption from the Strait closure is going to persist. Second, trim the domestic broad-market positions that are most exposed to consumer discretionary and transportation — those sectors are getting hammered by energy prices. And third —

(He pauses. The kind of pause that has a recommendation behind it.)

MITCHELL: — increase your allocation to the sectors that are performing well in this environment.

(Beat.)

DORIS: Which sectors would those be, Mitchell?

MITCHELL: Defense and aerospace. Energy. Cybersecurity. Those are the sectors benefiting from current conditions.

PHIL: Benefiting from the war.

(A small silence on the line.)

MITCHELL: That’s — yes. That’s an accurate way to characterize it. Look, I know how that sounds. But my job is to protect your retirement, and the math right now is very clear. The defense sector is up twenty-two percent while everything else is down. Raytheon’s revenue grew forty-one percent last quarter. Lockheed’s backlog is at a hundred and sixty billion. These companies have guaranteed government contracts through 2030 at minimum.

DORIS: Guaranteed by whom?

MITCHELL: By the Department of Defense.

DORIS: By us. The taxpayers.

(Another silence on the line. Mitchell clears his throat.)

MITCHELL: Mrs. Dalton, I understand the optics. I do. But if the war is going to cost you money — and it already has, on the energy side and the grocery side and the market side — the responsible financial strategy is to recover some of that on the other side of the ledger.

PHIL: The other side of the ledger.

MITCHELL: Yes.

PHIL: Mitchell, our grandson enlisted ten weeks ago. Danny. He’s in basic training right now. Infantry. Eleven-Bravo.

(A long silence. When Mitchell speaks again, his voice is different. Quieter.)

MITCHELL: I didn’t know that, Phil. I’m sorry.

PHIL: He scanned a QR code on the back of a government pamphlet that was sitting on this table. Right here. Next to the salt shaker. Eight weeks later he was at Fort Moore.

(Silence.)

MITCHELL: Phil, I — that doesn’t change the financial reality. I wish it did. But the money in your account doesn’t know who Danny is. The market doesn’t know. The only thing that knows is the math.

DORIS: The math.

MITCHELL: The math.

(Doris picks up the pencil. She writes on the napkin. She writes slowly, and Phil watches her write, and Mitchell waits on the line, and the kitchen is very quiet except for the pencil and the hum of the refrigerator.)

DORIS: Mitchell.

MITCHELL: Yes?

DORIS: I want to say this out loud so I know I understand it.

MITCHELL: Of course.

DORIS: The war costs us at the gas pump. Six-fifty a gallon. The war costs us at the grocery store. Eggs at six dollars. The war tripled Phil’s prescription. The war took nineteen percent of our retirement. And now you’re telling us that the way to get the retirement back — the only way — is to buy stock in the companies that make the weapons.

MITCHELL: That’s a simplification, but —

DORIS: The companies whose revenue depends on the war continuing.

(Beat.)

MITCHELL: Mrs. Dalton, I’m not asking you to be comfortable with it. I’m asking you to be solvent.

PHIL: Mitchell.

MITCHELL: Yeah.

PHIL: Danny is carrying a rifle made by one of those companies. If we buy their stock, and the stock goes up, it goes up because the war goes on. If the war goes on, Danny stays in it.

(A long, long silence on the line. The refrigerator hums. The phone sits on the table among the prospectus and the letters and the charts and the legal pads and Danny’s notification letter.)

MITCHELL: Phil, I’ve been doing this for twenty-three years. I’ve never had a client describe it that way. And I don’t have an answer for it. But I can tell you that if you don’t reposition, and the war continues — which every projection says it will — you’ll lose another fifteen to twenty percent by year-end. At your age, you don’t recover from that.

(Silence.)

MITCHELL: I’m going to send you the rebalancing recommendation by email. You don’t have to decide today. Take the weekend. Talk it over. But Phil — Doris — I want to be honest with you. Every client I’ve spoken to this month is facing the same choice. Every single one.

PHIL: How many have said yes?

(Silence.)

MITCHELL: All of them.

(The line goes quiet. Then Mitchell’s voice, one more time.)

MITCHELL: I’m sorry about Danny. I mean that. Call me when you’re ready.

(The call ends. The phone screen goes dark. Phil and Doris sit at the kitchen table. The phone is still in the center, surrounded by documents. The speakerphone is off but the silence it left is louder than the conversation.)

DORIS: He wasn’t wrong.

PHIL: No. He wasn’t.

DORIS: That’s the worst part.

(Blackout.)

*   *   *

ACT III

“The Loop”

A few minutes later.

(Lights up. Same kitchen. Phil is at the table. Doris is standing at the counter with her back to him. She is looking out the window at nothing in particular. The retirement statement is on the table, open, next to Danny’s notification letter. The two documents are side by side. Phil has not arranged them this way on purpose. That is where they landed.)

(A long silence.)

DORIS: Phil.

PHIL: Yeah.

DORIS: Five visitors. Five documents. Five ways the war arrived at this table. And now the sixth one came from our own mailbox. We didn’t even need a doorbell.

PHIL: The system doesn’t need to visit anymore. It just runs.

(Doris comes to the table. She sits. She opens the third legal pad — the one with Danny’s name on the first line. She picks up the pencil. She writes below the name. She writes carefully, in her bookkeeper’s hand, the way she writes everything that matters.)

(She writes: Retirement loss: $61,412.)

(A name and a number on the same page. She stares at it.)

DORIS: The first legal pad was the cost of the old wars. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Seven to ten trillion. That’s the debt we inherited.

PHIL: The second was the cost of this one. Gas. Groceries. The prescription. The daily bill.

DORIS: And the third one.

(She holds up the legal pad.)

DORIS: The third one has a name and a number. Danny and sixty-one thousand dollars. On the same page.

(Phil picks up the retirement statement. He holds it in one hand. He picks up the notification letter — Danny’s enlistment — with the other.)

PHIL: Mitchell said buy defense stocks. That’s the rational move. The responsible move. And it is. He’s right.

(Beat.)

PHIL: But here’s what Mitchell can’t put on a chart. If we buy those stocks, we are betting that the war continues. We are betting on the thing that took our savings and took our grandson. And if the bet pays off — if the account goes up — it means the war went on. It means Danny stayed in.

DORIS: And if we don’t buy them?

PHIL: We lose the retirement.

DORIS: So the choice is bet on the war or lose everything.

PHIL: That’s not a choice, Doris. That’s a trap.

(Doris looks at the table. The whole record. Every document, every letter, every chart, every napkin. The prospectus that started it. The letters that opened it. Karen’s escalation charts. Tyler’s pamphlet with its QR code. Janet’s objectives that changed with the weather. Beverly’s support card. Danny’s enlistment letter. The legal pads. And now the retirement statement. The table has not run out of room because Phil and Doris keep rearranging things to make space. They should not have to keep making space.)

DORIS: Phil.

PHIL: Yeah.

DORIS: We fund the war with our taxes. The war moves the market. The market takes our savings. And to get the savings back, we invest in the companies making the war. Which means we fund it twice.

(Phil nods slowly.)

PHIL: That’s not a market. That’s a loop.

(He turns the retirement statement over. On the back, like the prospectus in Episode One, there is fine print. He reads it.)

PHIL: “Investment returns are subject to market risk, including the possible loss of principal. Past performance is not indicative of future results.”

DORIS: They put that on everything.

PHIL: They should put it on the war.

(Long silence. Phil sets both documents down — the retirement statement and Danny’s letter — side by side on the table. He looks at them. He turns to the audience. Directly. For the first time in the play. He holds up the retirement statement.)

PHIL: This is the money.

(He holds up Danny’s letter.)

PHIL: This is the name.

(He sets them both down. He does not explain. He does not connect it. He lets the audience hold both.)

(Doris turns to the audience. She does not pick up the legal pad this time. She does not hold up a document. She just looks at them.)

DORIS: If you have a retirement account, you’re already in the loop. You didn’t sign up for it. You can’t opt out of it. And every quarter, you’ll get a statement that tells you the war is the best investment you’ve got.

(Phil says nothing. He does not deliver the ritual line. Doris waits. Then she says it alone. Quietly. Almost to herself.)

DORIS: Have a nice day.

(Blackout.)

 *   *   *

END OF PLAY

*   *   *

“The Dividend” is the sixth in a series of ten short dramatic works titled “Have a Ni Day!” accompanying the Civic Sage War Series by Charles Cranston Jett. The companion article, “Feeding the Military Industrial Complex,” examines the circular economy of war — how defense spending creates the market conditions that make further defense investment the only rational financial choice. Previous episodes: “The Prospectus” (Episode One), “Have a Nice Day” (Episode Two), “The Adjustment” (Episode Three), “The Objective” (Episode Four), “The Volunteer” (Episode Five).

Charles C. Jett  |  criticalskillsblog.com  |  civicsage.com