Yesterday I submitted the second packet of homework for my thesis, which included the second quarter of the play I'm writing about some of the outlaws in The Stand. I haven't been posting those pieces here because at this stage it's mostly what some writers call a "vomit draft," where you just throw every idea you have out on the page with the intent to clean it up later. I don't think I'll show you that until I get a chance to go over it with a chainsaw, as I expect it to be substantially different.
But it got me thinking about my Stand-related theater. Another full-length play I could write could be about PC Carson Hill, the protagonist of
The Triumph of Law which will get a reading on public access TV this April. I had a few scratching of a new scene for it, and though it is still only a fragment, very much out of context, it follows up on the issue brought up in The Triumph of Law. It also features Emma Holloway, another PC from the game, making her debut in my Stand-related theater. This spoils a major secret in the game, so read only if you don't care or can't be spoiled.
Fragment: "Ain't Pity"
EMMA: I don’t want no pity of yours.
CARSON: Ain’t pity.
EMMA: Bollocks.
CARSON: Swear it. It’s just… the right thing to do.
EMMA: Yeah? The fancy white fella showing good care on the li’l negro gal?
CARSON: For Christ’s sake, no! I’m just doing what I owed you.
EMMA: Owed me? What do you mean, you owed me?
CARSON: I… I did wrong by you once. Real wrong. I didn’t know I was doing it, but I did.
EMMA: What are you talking about?
CARSON: It was a long time ago.
EMMA: How’s that ever so? I ain’t never laid eyes on you before this town.
CARSON: No, but… I helped somebody do something real bad once. Somebody who was real bad to you.
EMMA: Who?
CARSON: I didn’t know, I swear it!
EMMA: Who was it?
CARSON: I can’t—!
EMMA: For Jesus’ sake, Carson Hill!
(CARSON turns on a gas lamp, then slides a letter across the table to her. She glances at it, then glares.)
EMMA: You know I can’t read a word.
CARSON: I know. It’s only… the name signed here. You must have seen it before. Do you know it?
EMMA: I know the shape of it… that’s… that’s Richard Corbett’s name. You done something for Richard Corbett?
CARSON: Yes.
EMMA: All kind of white folks happy to take that beast’s money. Why you any different?
CARSON: Emma… you told me what happened to your brother. To Jeremiah.
EMMA: They brought him back after he went running and set the dogs on him.
CARSON: That’s it, Emma. When Jeremiah ran, he’d made it all the way to New York when they caught him. A free state. But that man Corbett wouldn’t give him up. He wanted New York to send his property back. So he went to the court, made his petition. Nobody thought they’d give him what he was after. Except he hired himself a young crackerjack lawyer, who argued so well they gave Corbett him and all the other boys back. So he could send them back home to die.
EMMA: How you know about all that?
CARSON: I was that lawyer, Emma. That dumb hotshot that hadn’t a care for nothing but making his career. I sent your brother back to his death.
(EMMA stares at him, frozen.)
