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.)
