31 Plays in 31 Days: #16 - "Confronting It"

And we're back to The Stand as subject matter! This one is about frontier dwellers Zachariah Harper and Clarissa Dunn as they make their decision to go back to the town of Reston together, to confront their respective responsibilities. I don't believe there's anything spoilery about this one, so it's fair game to all.

Day #16 - "Confronting It"

(ZACHARIAH HARPER, a young man dressed in buckskins, sits beside a campfire reading a letter, a distressed expression on his face.)

(Enter CLARISSA DUNN, a teenaged girl similarly dressed, with her big rifle Matilda strapped to her back. She is nervous and distraught.)

CLARISSA: Zachariah? Is that you?

ZACHARIAH: Clarissa? Hey, Little Sister. I ain’t seen you in months.

CLARISSA: I been looking all over for you. Mind if I set here with you a while?

ZACHARIAH: Course not. Any time.

CLARISSA: Thank you kindly.

(She sits, taking the gun from off her back and cradling it like a baby.)

ZACHARIAH: You all right there? You look like you seen a ghost.

CLARISSA: No ghost, but… things… things been rough. But-but what about you, you got a mug as long as a horse.

ZACHARIAH: Yeah. Stepped into the trading post this morning. There was a letter waiting for me.

CLARISSA: Oh, no. Was it bad news?

ZACHARIAH: From my mother. She’s… she’s real sick, Clarissa. She thinks she might not have much longer.

CLARISSA: Aw, Zach. I’m so sorry.

ZACHARIAH: She wants me to come back home. Before it’s too late.

CLARISSA: Well, sure.

ZACHARIAH: I never wanted to go back.

CLARISSA: Zach! Your ma might be dying! You got to go see her one more time!

ZACHARIAH: That ain’t it! If it were just that, wild horses couldn’t keep me from going back. She’s my mother, for Christ’s sake.

CLARISSA: Then what’s the hold up?

ZACHARIAH: She… she wants me to come back for good.

CLARISSA: For good? Why’s that?

ZACHARIAH: If she’s not going to be around much longer, she says… she says I got to take over her work in town.

CLARISSA: Her work? What work does she do?

ZACHARIAH: I’m not sure, exactly. All my life, she and my pa and my grandfather, they sat behind that big desk, doing what they called “town business.” I never rightly knew.

CLARISSA: But she wants to pass it over to you.

ZACHARIAH: It’s my family’s job, taking care of that place. I told you about my Grandpap, right?

CLARISSA: Sure did. About how he was a real roaming frontiersman before he settled in the territory and founded his own town.

ZACHARIAH: Right. I heard how he talked about those early days. Adventures, travels. Could hear the love in his voice. And I knew right away that was the life I wanted. Not… not the other part. The part with the desk and the same old patch of ground forever and ever.

CLARISSA: Going back would mean leaving everything you love.

ZACHARIAH: Just like Grandpap. And my ma’s worked her whole life to take care of it.

CLARISSA: Means a lot to them, don’t it?

ZACHARIAH: I can’t just… throw that all away.

CLARISSA: I see. Maybe… maybe you don’t got to give up your life. Maybe you can find a way to set things in order… find the right person to take of things. Do right by all you.

ZACHARIAH: It’s supposed to be my responsibility.

CLARISSA: Might be the right person is the person what wants to do it. Not somebody what got to be dragged back by wild horses.

ZACHARIAH: I just don’t know.

CLARISSA: Well… only one way to find out.

ZACHARIAH: Yeah. Got to do the right thing. I got to go back.

CLARISSA: The right thing, huh?

ZACHARIAH: It’s all a man can do.

CLARISSA: What if… you thought you was, but you don’t know anymore?

ZACHARIAH: Sis? What’s eating you?

CLARISSA: I done the wrong thing, Zach.

ZACHARIAH: What wrong thing?

CLARISSA: Zachariah… I killed a man.

ZACHARIAH: You did? What man?

CLARISSA: That’s it, Zach, I-I don’t know.

ZACHARIAH: Then why’d you kill him?

CLARISSA: I thought— I thought it was him!

ZACHARIAH: Him?

CLARISSA: The one I been looking for!

ZACHARIAH: You mean, the varmint what killed your father?

CLARISSA: Yes!

ZACHARIAH: Well— what happened? Weren’t it him?

CLARISSA: You got to understand— he had everything I remembered! I told you, the black hat, the Spanish silver coin hanging off the chain of a watch! How many fellows got Spanish silver hanging off the chain of a watch!?

ZACHARIAH: I don’t know, Sis.

CLARISSA: But… he didn’t have no mole. I shot him, and then I turned him over, but there weren’t no mole.

ZACHARIAH: You’re sure?

CLARISSA: I remember that mole, clear as day! So it couldn’t have been him, Zach. He couldn’t have been. I killed an innocent man.

ZACHARIAH: Gentle Jesus.

CLARISSA: I didn’t mean to. I never meant to kill no innocent man!

ZACHARIAH: I know, Sis!

CLARISSA: I ain’t no murderer!

ZACHARIAH: I know!

(He hugs her tightly.)

CLARISSA: What do I do? How can I… how can I fix this?

ZACHARIAH: Ain’t no fixing now, hon.

(CLARISSA sobs a little.)

ZACHARIAH: All that’s left is owning up to it.

CLARISSA: Owning up. Yeah. I’ve got to own up. Or else… what makes me any better than the outlaw what shot my father? I just…/ don’t know how.

ZACHARIAH: Come with me.

CLARISSA: What do you mean?

ZACHARIAH: Come with me back to Reston. There’s folks there what knows things about what’s gone on around here. Might be they can help you.

CLARISSA: How?

ZACHARIAH: I don’t know. But both of us got to try something. With what we got ahead of us… don’t want to face that alone.

CLARISSA: All right. I guess… there ain’t no running for either of us. Might as well go on together.

(They clasp hands, and begin packing up their camp.)

31 Plays in 31 Days: #7 - "Pierced Silver Piece"

Another short piece based on The Stand. This one is slightly awkward, as it attempts to depict an instance of backstory from the game that probably doesn't especially lend itself to theatrical portrayal. It needs a good deal of cleaning up, but I was pushing to finish, and it plays a little abruptly. But I think if I could manage to whip it into shape it might fit nicely into a theoretical larger piece, featuring a certain character I have been lately inclined to write about.

Again, this is EXTREMELY SPOILERY for the game, so do not read if you have not played and someday intend to. But for those who have, this piece features the PC Clarissa Dunn, played so far by Tory, Jenn, and Sam LeVangie, in a rather significant moment in her short life.

Day #7 - "Pierced Silver Piece"

(CLARISSA DUNN , a young girl in buckskin clothes, sits at a small campground eating jerky. An enormous rifle lays at her side.)

(Enter DAMON BARRETT, a middle-aged man in frontier garb and a black hat with a pack on his back. He stops short when he sees CLARISSA, surprised.)

DAMON: Howdy there.

(She snatches up her gun.)

CLARISSA: You stay back now.

DAMON: Why, you’re just a slip of a thing.

CLARISSA: Matilda here makes it so that don’t matter so much.

DAMON: Matilda, huh? That’s a big gun for a little girl.

CLARISSA: And I know how to use it! So don’t try anything funny, you hear?

DAMON: Fear me not, I seen what pretty little things can learn to do with those. Mind if I rest awhile, if I promise to behave myself?

CLARISSA: If you want.

(She lays the rifle across her lap. DAMON sits down a little ways off from her, laying his pack aside.)

DAMON: Don’t see too many girl children out here on their lonesome. Where’s your ma and pa?

CLARISSA: Ain’t got ‘em no more.

DAMON: Well. Nothing for that. Reckon you must take care of your own self, or else you’d not have made it out here.

CLARISSA: That’s for damn sure. I know most of the trappers around these parts, but I ain’t never seen you before. You from hereabouts?

DAMON: Used to be sometimes, not anymore. I just… go out every now and then. Roam around, see what I see.

CLARISSA: Yeah? What for, if you got settled someplace now?

DAMON: Looking for… for something, I suppose. Not even sure I know for what any more. Probably something I can’t find.

CLARISSA: Well, I know exactly what I’m after. Justice for my old papa.

DAMON: Yeah? What happened?

CLARISSA: Some varmint shot him. And I mean to see him pay for it.

(She hefts the gun.)

DAMON: Aw, hell. That’s a heavy load for a young thing to bear.

CLARISSA: Ain’t nobody else going to do it.

DAMON: Would your mama want you dragging that gun around the woods just to get vengeance?

CLARISSA: Sure as she didn’t. But she left after my papa died.

DAMON: Christ. That’s rough, sweetheart.

CLARISSA: Can’t say as I blame her. She was all alone in the world after that. The woods was no place for her. And I ain’t your sweetheart.

DAMON: No, that’s plain. Well. I wish you good fortune on your way. Hope you find it before it’s too late.

CLARISSA: Too late for what?

DAMON: For everything else. Can be right hard to have a different life when you spend so much time another way. Things slip away before you know it.

(He leans back thoughtfully. He takes hold of a length of chain hanging off his vest with a silver coin on the end of it and begins idly twirling it. CLARISSA notices it and starts.)

CLARISSA: What’s that!?

DAMON: What’s what?

CLARISSA: That there! On your watch chain!

(He holds it out to look at it.)

DAMON: This? Nothing, just an old Spanish coin.

CLARISSA: I remember that thing, that thing on the watch chain dangling off his belt… it was you. It was you who done it!

DAMON: Me? Done what?

CLARISSA: And your black hat! I remember that black hat too!

(She hefts the gun and clambers to her feet.)

DAMON: What are you doing?

CLARISSA: I ain’t going to forget in a million years! It was you that day! He was a trader up in the territories named Marlon Dunn, and you killed him!

(He knocks the barrel aside just as she pulls the trigger.)

DAMON: A trader from around here? I killed no such man!

CLARISSA: He was my father and you killed him!

(With effort she swings that massive gun back toward him. He begins backing up hurriedly.)

DAMON: Swear on my mother’s grave!

CLARISSA: And for that, I’m going to kill you!

(She fires again and hits him in the leg in an explosion of blood and bone fragments. He falls to the ground, howling in pain.)

CLARISSA: I know what I saw! He had a black hat, a black mole on the back of his neck, and a pierced piece of silver on a watch chain!

DAMON: Jesus Christ!

CLARISSA: I was six years old! He was working at a trading post, and you gunned him down before me and my mother’s eyes!

DAMON: A trading post…? Wait! Wait! What was that name? What was your father’s name?

CLARISSA: Marlon Dunn.

DAMON: Marlon Dunn— oh, Jesus. Oh, gentle Jesus.

(He collapses in on himself.)

CLARISSA: Now shut up! I been waiting years to say my piece. His name was Marlon Dunn. He was my father and you killed him. And for that, I’m going to kill you.

DAMON: I see. Well, little lady, I do not blame you one bit.

(She hefts her huge gun and levels it at him.)

DAMON: Flora, my girl, you and Jesus forgive me.

(CLARISSA fires. DAMON collapses in a heap, dead. She lets the heavy gun drop, gasping for breath, almost sobbing. After a moment, she goes to the body and yanks off the silver piece on the watch chain. Then she kicks him over so that he lays face down and kneels beside him.)

CLARISSA: Where is it… where’s your damn mole…?

(She pulls down his collar and pushes away his hat so she can look at the back of his neck.)

CLARISSA: There… there ain’t one. No. No. Can’t be.

(She searches intently for a minute, then backs away quickly.)

CLARISSA: Black hat, silver piece. It has to be him, it has to be. But… he ain’t got no mole. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.

(She snatches up Matilda and clings to it as if for comfort. She dithers there a moment, back and forth.)

CLARISSA: If you ain’t him… what did I just do?

(She scrambles to pack her campsite back up, holds her gun to her chest, and scurries off like a hunted animal.)