This piece is about Bonnie Reston Harper, the mother of PC Zachariah Harper who has just passed away at the start of game. The other character was difficult for me to decide on, given the point in the timeline and the subject matter of the discussion. I wanted to use someone already established in the universe, but nobody seemed to work, so I made a new character. I think it works, but I may change her to someone else if I think of any already existing character.
I am working on implying things in my dramatic writing without making them explicit. I wrote this as if taking it for granted that the reader knew what these two women were talking about. I hope it reads even without that definite prior knowledge.
(Enter two middle-aged women, fair-skinned BONNIE HARPER and black-skinned IDA BOW, who sit at two simple chairs with a table between them. There is a cloth-draped rectangle upstage. BONNIE is frail and wan from illness. She lights a small lamp on the table.)
BONNIE: Ida, you shouldn’t have come back all this way. What if somebody catches you?
IDA: Had to, Bonnie. I heard you was real sick, and you’s all alone in the world now. After everything you done for me, I couldn’t let… anything happen to you, not without seeing you one more time.
BONNIE: Aw, honey, God bless you.
IDA: Is it so?
BONNIE: It’s so.
IDA: How bad is it?
BONNIE: Real bad. Bad as can be.
IDA: Aw, sweetheart. You sure?
BONNIE: Had Doc Harris check me out. He said it were certain.
IDA: The drunken war doc? Not sure I’d bet the farm on what he says.
BONNIE: Wouldn’t matter if he was the surgeon general, I can feel it. There’s a… rattling, like, in my chest. Getting a little worse every day. Won’t be long now, I expect.
IDA: Honey, I am so sorry.
BONNIE: It ain’t the worst thing there could be. It’s just… all this. After I’m gone… who’s going to keep things going? Who’s going take care of everyone who comes through?
IDA: You learned from your papa, didn’t you? Couldn’t you pass it on to your own children?
BONNIE: Believe me, Ida, I been thinking about it. But it’s not so simple. Can’t be my girl Julia, she’s married to a carriage-maker all the way in Alabama. Doubt I could even reach her in time.
IDA: In time?
BONNIE: Before it’s too late.
IDA: Oh. Well…what about that boy of yours? Zach… Zachary?
BONNIE: Zachariah.
IDA: What’s become of him? He… he went off into the frontier, didn’t he?
BONNIE: He’s a good boy. Done well for himself, made a bit of money by finding the right spot at the right time. Sends most of it home to me, the dear, and I see a letter from him once a month.
IDA: A real good boy. So what’s the trouble?
BONNIE: Lots of trouble, love. First off… he don’t know. Him nor Julia know.
IDA: They don’t? Twenty years you been helping runaways through, and you never said nothing about it?
BONNIE: When they was growing up, we hid it from them. Maybe it were foolish, but we thought that way we might not bring anything down on our children’s heads if ever we was caught. I… I have an awful lot of explaining to do.
IDA: I see. But you ain’t afraid he won’t understand, are you?
BONNIE: Not that, Ida, never that. Sure, the Indians are the darkest folk he’s ever seen, but we raised him better than that. Still… it’s a lot to ask of a young man.
IDA: Sure it’s a hard thing to do alone. I remember when your Lucas passed.
BONNIE: That was rough and no mistake.
IDA: But a decent boy like your Zach would want help you. Wouldn’t he?
BONNIE: It’s ain’t that, Ida. It’s only… it’s ain’t what Zachariah wants. Being bound to some patch of ground for any reason. He used to listen to his granddad’s stories of living on the frontier, and… his eyes would go wide as dinner plates. He went off to live those stories for himself the minute he was old enough to go. He writes about how he has an adventure every day and sleeps under the stars every night. He ain’t never been happier in his life. Asking him to take it over would be asking him to give all that up. Every time I start writing him… I hate myself for trying to drag him back here.
IDA: The boy would want to see his sick mother before she goes.
BONNIE: But he wouldn’t want me to chain him here.
IDA: Ain’t just anyone who’d risk it all just to do right by some other people.
BONNIE: Oh, Ida. Did I ever tell you why I got to doing this?
IDA: No, honey, don’t think you ever did.
BONNIE: It were my ma and pa, you know.
IDA: Wish I could have met them. Walter Reston must have been quite a man. Ran his own town, and still worked to help folks what didn’t have anyone else.
BONNIE: More than that, dear. I never showed you their picture.
(She goes to the cloth-draped rectangle upstage.)
BONNIE: My father and mother… Walter and Daisy Reston.
(She unveils a huge portrait of a distinguished-looking couple, a white man and a black woman.)
IDA: That’s your ma and pa? But you look…
(BONNIE touches the image of her mother reverently.)
BONNIE: She had a white papa herself. Reckon I take after that part of her.
IDA: Was they married?
BONNIE: In secret. She belonged to a tobacco baron in Virginia. I was lucky. When I was born, because of how I looked they sent me to go live with my auntie. So I wouldn’t have to live that life. That’s why Papa went out west. To earn the money to buy her free, and bring us out here with him.
IDA: She never made it, did she?
BONNIE: Daddy worked his whole life so he could get her out. Get her somewhere where nobody could stop them living as man and wife. But she died a slave. He wasn’t going to wait for anybody to buy their out ever again.
IDA: Oh, honey… I never knew. And you done so much for us... when you could’ve lived your life forgetting all about it.
BONNIE: What’s that they say? One drop is enough. If they ever found us out, I would have been in the same place as you were. As my mother was. I couldn’t do nothing else.
IDA: The children… do they know?
BONNIE: No. They never had to think about it. And now my boy’s free. Freer now than any of us. But… I can’t let this thing die. Ida… what do I do?
IDA: Bonnie… your pa gave all his rambling up to help folks what needed it. That’s the mark of a good man. And I ain’t never met your boy, but… I think any man raised by you is going to be just as good. You write that letter, Bonnie. I’ll see that it goes out.
(BONNIE considers, then nods. She takes out a pen and paper and begins to write. IDA holds on to her hand.)
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