“THE
CRIME OF THE CENTURY”
[or,
“Red Rashamon”]
©
Clara M. NiiSka (and Wub-e-ke-niew)
SAM
S. WENDELL, JR. - Manager, A-1 Daily Labor
MARY - Young
Woman
EVE - Mary's
Grandmother
'LIL - Mary's
Mother
JOE - Mary's
Boyfriend
DAVE - Anthropology
Graduate Student
TRISH
- Dave's
Girlfriend
Medical
Student Specializing in Forensic Pathology
-----
REX
- Old
Dilapidated Drunk
Former
Prizefighter
CARTER
- Former
Construction Worker
A
Bit of a Dandy
WILLY
STEELE - Casual Laborer and Rough Carpenter
Ex-Pug
TILLIE
- Former
Beauty Queen and Call-Girl,
Now
Street-Wise Bag Lady
Dolly's
Bar is a slum bar on Chicago and 18th in South Minneapolis. The
clientele is an ethnically diverse group of down-and-out people. It
is about twelve midnight, between January third and fourth. The bar
is crowded with older people who are drinking up the last of their
social security checks. The jukebox blares country-and-western songs
from the 1940's and 1950's. After briefly panning across the bar,
the camera moves slowly toward Rex Havick, Carter and Tillie, who are
sitting in a booth across from the bar. All three are visibly
intoxicated. Rex, who has a black eye, leans toward Carter.
REX
(Speaks with a fairly heavy
reservation accent, blurred with alcohol.)
Whaddaya mean? I'm a
piss-piter! Don't mess with no piss-piter!
Rex
brandishes his fist at Carter, and Carter staggers up onto his feet. He
leans with drunken menace over the table at Rex, who half-rises.
Tillie, who is slumped over a beer bottle between Rex and the aisle,
comes back to awareness with a visible jolt.
TILLIE
(With slurred speech, and
baby-talk emulating Marilyn Monroe.)
Gotta go to de (wily smile)
little girls' room.
(She walks with exaggerated
steadiness toward the back of the bar.)
Rex
lurches toward the aisle, and staggers toward Carter. He makes an
ineffectual swipe at Carter, and knocks a half-full bottle of beer
onto the floor, where it breaks.
CARTER
(Quietly.)
Behave yourself, Rex.
REX
(Wavering in an unsteady
fighter's stance, one fist still cocked toward Carter. He shouts.)
Behave! You behave, you
god-damned bleached-out lumberjack bastard!
The
camera moves back. The bouncer, moving quietly and expertly through
the crowd, can be seen in the background of the shot, as Rex and
Carter's movements escalate toward a fight. Their words are drowned
out by the jukebox screeching out Hank Williams Sr.'s "Jambalaya
(On The Bayou)." The bouncer approaches Rex and Carter.
BOUNCER
(With authority.)
Time to go home, guys.
(He puts one hand on Carter's
shoulder, and urges both men toward the door.)
Settle your differences
outside.
REX
(Belligerently to Bouncer.)
I'm going.
The
camera is looking south, along Chicago Avenue. The street-lights
shine dimly on dirty snowbanks, and in the distance a snowplow
rumbles down the street. Carter and Rex stagger out of the door of
Dolly's, and walk with an unsteady gait, heading south along the
sidewalk. The wind howls around the corners of the buildings, and
Carter turns up the collar of his ragged denim jacket against the
cold. As the two men walk along, they gradually move toward each
other, and at the end of the block, they embrace.
CARTER
Aw, hell, Rex, let's go to the
church. I've got a bottle stashed.
Carter
reaches into the snowbank behind the bus bench, and pulls out a
bottle of Wild Irish Rose. He uncaps it, unsteadily fills the cap
with wine, and pours it out onto the snow. He takes a swig, and
hands the bottle to Rex, who drinks and hands the bottle back. Carter
puts the bottle in the pocket inside his jacket. The two men
continue staggering southward, highlighted by occasional pools of
light under streetlights. The noises of the city are heard in the
background: sirens, the rumble of trucks on the freeway, the roar of
a red-eye jet flying low as it takes off from the airport. Rex
shakes his fist at the deafening noise of the jet as it flies over.
As
they cross Franklin Avenue at Chicago, gunshots ring out in the
distance. The street is icy from vehicle exhaust having melting the
snow, and from tires spinning, and Rex slips and falls in the street,
almost pulling Carter down with him. Rex swears, and Carter helps
him back to his feet. The two men stagger onward, and in mid-block,
Carter pulls out a pack of unfiltered cigarettes. Cupping his bare
hands in the wind, Carter manages to light a cigarette on the third
match, and lights a second cigarette from the first.
CARTER
Smoke, Rex?
Rex
nods slightly, and takes a lit cigarette. The two men stand with
their backs to the wind, smoking. A police cruiser drives slowly
along Chicago Avenue, and when the policemen spot Carter and Rex,
they turn on their red lights, and pull to the curb alongside them. The
radio in the cruiser crackles and the voice of the dispatcher can
be heard indistinctly.
POLICEMAN
Damn! Another domestic.
SECOND
POLICEMAN
You said it. That's the same
goddam Okies that called last night.
The
policemen turn on the siren, and drive with red lights flashing, but
no more quickly then before. At Twenty-first Avenue, the cruiser
turns right. The siren can be heard slowly moving through the night.
Rex and Carter resume walking with the exaggerated sobriety of
drunkenness. At Twenty-first, Carter glances in the direction the
police cruiser has gone, then reaches into his jacket and pulls out
his bottle. He takes a drink, and hands the bottle to Rex, who takes
a long swig before handing the bottle back to Carter. Carter takes
the bottle back a little bit quickly, takes another nip, then recaps
the bottle and replaces it in his inside jacket pocket.
A
boom-box car, with five young men in it, turns north onto Chicago
Avenue from Twenty-Second. The bass sound is so loud that the car
can be heard approaching from three blocks away. The driver glances
briefly at Carter and Rex, and drives past without slowing down, the
sound of the cranked-up car stereo slowly fading in the distance. A
city bus with five passengers drives south past Carter and Rex. Rex
coughs in the cloud of diesel exhaust which the bus emits as the bus
driver accelerates in passing the two drunks.
The
wind picks up, blowing fine-grained snow off of surrounding rooftops,
and sending pages of an abandoned newspaper scudding around the feet
of Carter and Rex. An empty McDonald's foam hamburger container
follows the newspaper in the wind. Carter re-adjusts the upturned
collar of his denim jacket. The two men continue to stagger
southward, the camera following at a discrete distance.
As
the intersection at Twenty-Third and Chicago comes into view, three
people can be seen standing dejectedly on the southeast corner,
huddled in the wind. Each is carrying a bulging shopping bag, and
clutched in their other arm, two carry blankets and a sleeping bag. The
right coat-sleeve of the third hangs empty, flopping in the wind. As
Carter and Rex near the northeast corner, Carter peers intently
at the three people.
CARTER
That looks like that young gal
from the Slave Market.
REX
Hunh. That one, Mary, you
mean?
CARTER
Unnh.
The
two men cross the street, and approach cautiously.
CARTER
Hey, Mary?
Mary
is perhaps sixteen years old, and quite visibly pregnant. She is
wearing jeans, battered running shoes, and a worn dress coat which
does not quite close over her belly. Her right arm is in a sling
under her coat. In other circumstances, she could be a stunningly
beautiful young woman, but her face is blotched red with cold,
smudged with dirt and streaked with tears. She has a bulging black
vinyl purse over her left shoulder, and is carrying an apparently
heavy shopping bag in her gloveless left land. Her fingers are white
with cold. A sudden gust of wind whips her dark hair, loose beneath
a shabby dark blue man's stocking cap, and a strand sticks to her
cheek where it is still damp from tears.
Standing
with Mary are her mother, 'Lil, and her grandmother Eve. 'Lil is,
like Mary, dressed in jeans and old running shoes. She wears a
slightly grimy man's fake-leather jacket. Her head is bare, her hair
streaked with grey. She, too, holds a stuffed shopping bag, and in
her right arm carries a load of bedding.
Eve
is indeterminately old, her face seamed with wrinkles. The strands
of hair wisping out from her scarf are white, and her eyes are ringed
with the blue of cataracts. She is wearing a thin cotton print
skirt, petticoats, bobby-socks, and orthopedic shoes which are
run-over at the heels. Her gloves are ragged, and her legs are bare
and white with cold. She carries a blanket and a shopping bag which
has begun to tear by one handle.
Mary
turns, startled, and looks at Carter like a doe caught in the
headlights of a car.
CARTER
(Gently.)
Hey, Mary, it's just me,
Carter, and dis'ere's my good buddy Rex. You seen us at the Slave
Market, lotsa times.
Mary's
eyes widen, and she looks at Carter and Rex with apparent terror, as
though she will run at any moment, headlong into the winter night.
CARTER
Lady, Lady. We ain't goin' t'
hurt yous.
(Turning to 'Lil.)
I seen you sittin' at the Slave
Market, too.
(Confidentially.)
I got a granddaughter about
Mary's age.
(Pauses.)
It's cold, just standing here.
'Lil
looks at Carter cautiously, and Mary relaxes very slightly. Carter
makes a slight motion toward his inside jacket pocket where his wine
bottle is, but then reaches into his breast pocket and brings out his
cigarette pack. Fumbling with cold fingers, he opens the crumpled
pack, revealing one cigarette. Cupping his hands in the wind, he
lights it, and offers the cigarette to Eve. She looks at Carter with
a surprisingly piercing glance, nods slightly, and then accepts the
cigarette, takes a couple of puffs, and hands it to 'Lil.
The
five people stand, in two slightly separated clusters, huddled
against the wind, and pass Carter's cigarette almost formally,
smoking it down to a butt held gingerly between thumb and forefinger. A
sudden gust of wind shrieks down the street, as Carter flicks the
spent cigarette onto the sidewalk. He readjusts his jacket collar,
and buries his hands in his jacket pocket.
CARTER
(Deliberately.)
Me an' my buddy Rex here, we're
heading to dat church over dere
(motions with his lips toward
Twenty-fourth and Chicago)
to get outta dis wind. If yous
ain't in a rush to get somewheres, whyn't'cha come along?
The
three women exchange glances. The wind intensifies, driving snow
nearly horizontally across the pools of street-light, whipping Eve's
skirt around her legs, and blowing a plastic pop bottle with a small
amount of liquid frozen in the bottom, rattling down the street. 'Lil
seems to consider for a few moments, shrugs in seeming
resignation, and then nods slightly. The five head south on Chicago
Avenue, bent into the wind.
There
is an Episcopal church with elaborate masonry on the northeast corner
of Twenty-fourth and Chicago, which has been boarded up. Carter
leads the group along a path in the snow to the back of the building,
and pulls back the plywood covering the back door. The door opens
easily, and the five enter.
Dimly
lit by city light filtering through the chinks in the plywood, Carter
walks across the vestibule, and opens the door to the sanctuary of
the Church. There is a manhole cover near where the altar once
stood, and a small fire blazes on that makeshift hearth. Tillie
squats by the fire, wearing a moth-eaten raccoon flapper coat,
tending a coffeepot at the fire. A battered aluminum kettle sits at
one side of the fire, and from it the aroma of mulligan wafts through
the room. The firelight recedes into the smoky heights of the
elaborate architecture of the turn-of-the-century sanctuary, and in
its faint glow, fifteen or twenty people wrapped in blankets can be
seen in the back, sleeping on the few remaining pews and on the
floor.
Dave
and his girlfriend Trish sit near Tillie at one side of the fire. Dave
is an aquiline-nosed young man whose lanky height seems
incongruously folded as he sits on the floor. He is wearing jeans
and winter boots, a down ski jacket with a graduate-student patina,
and a handknit stocking cap. He is writing in a small spiral-bound
notebook with a ballpoint pen, and a cup of Tillie's tea is cooling
beside a student back-pack near him on the floor. Trish is a
serious-looking, slender woman whose long straight blonde hair hangs
tidily over her plaid wool jacket. She wears thick but stylish
glasses, and a retro-funky rabbit-fur cap. She is sitting on a
blanket which protects her designer jeans from the dirty floor, and
holds the microphone of a tape recorder toward Tillie, who is
apparently in the middle of telling a long, involved story. Tillie
looks up as the group enters the sanctuary.
TILLIE
Hey Carter, Hey Rex!
CARTER
Hey, niiji'kwe.
TILLIE
(Seeming to notice Rex's black
eye for the first time.)
Rex,
who give you dat black eye?
REX
(Laughing.)
You should know dey don't give
dese away for free. I had to fight like hell for dis.
ZOOM
in on a close-up of Rex, who playfully holds up his fists in a
fighting stance. Rex is dark and short, and beneath his pugilist's
battered nose he grins with mock wickedness. His front teeth are
missing. Barely visible in the firelight, are home-done tattoos on
the first joints of each hand, so that the viewer of his fists can
read "F · U · C · K" one hand, and "Y · O
· U"
on the other, along with a "smiley face" on his right index
finger.
Tillie
snorts at Rex's humor, then looks carefully but unobtrusively at the
three women, who are still standing cautiously by the door to the
sanctuary. She glances questioningly at Carter. Carter indicates
Mary with his eyes.
CARTER
Tillie.
(He makes a gesture of
introduction, and then indicates the group standing with him.)
Dis'ere's
Mary, an' her mum, an' gramma.
TILLIE
There's some hot tea over here
for yous, an' plenty a' floor.
Tillie
motions the women over to the fire. She takes three pieces of fairly
clean cardboard from under the cardboard she is sitting on, and puts
them down on the floor, as though she is setting out chairs for
guests, and produces three matching salmon-colored melmac cups from a
bag behind her on the floor. She pours tea and empties two paper
restaurant-packets of sugar into each cup of tea. 'Lil ventures
cautiously over to the fire, and eases herself down onto the
cardboard. She cradles the cup of tea in both hands, curling her
body over it as though to draw warmth. In a few moments, she sips
carefully, and a faint smile flits across her eyes.
Mary
and Eve hesitate by the door for a few moments longer, and then
slowly walk over to the fire near 'Lil. Eve sets her blankets and
shopping bag on the floor next to where 'Lil has left hers, but Mary
leaves her black vinyl purse on her shoulder as she sits. They
accept the proffered tea, and Mary cradles the warm teacup first
against one cheek and then the other.
Carter
squats, slightly unsteadily, by the fire on the other side of Tillie,
and Rex plops onto the floor next to him. Carter looks significantly
at Tillie, and opens his jacket just enough to reveal the bottle
inside. Tillie moves her head about a quarter of an inch in a nearly
imperceptible nod, and motions with her eyes to a secluded area
behind the altar.
TILLIE
(To Carter, nearly inaudibly.)
Baanimaa. [Later.]
(To Dave, laughing.)
Hey, Perfesser!
Dave,
who has been writing rapidly in his notebook, looks at Tillie with a
start.
TILLIE
Where's those AIM-wiches you're
always carrying around? Yous got company.
Trish
digs into Dave's backpack, and pulls out a half-dozen baloney and
cheese sandwiches, each neatly wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag. She
hands the sandwiches to Tillie.
TILLIE
(With careful enunciation and
an enigmatic smile.)
Mii-gwech, min-di-moo-yenh. [Thank
you, old woman.]
(She looks at Trish intently
with one eye for a moment.)
We can divide these up. You
may need the rest later.
TRISH
(With faint embarrassment.)
Oh, Tillie! Dave and I aren't
hungry now, anyway.
TILLIE
(Laughing.)
Hey, you ghoul! What did you
put in those sandwiches, anyway?
TRISH
(Seriously.)
Mayonnaise, baloney, American
cheese, ...
(She looks at Tillie and sees
her wry smile.)
Hey, Tillie, I'd be glad to
share a sandwich with you.
Tillie
takes a five-inch stiletto from a sheath under her jeans, and cuts
three sandwiches in half, wipes the knife on the leg of her jeans,
and replaces it in its sheath. She distributes half-sandwiches to
Dave, Trish, Rex and Carter, and full sandwiches to Mary, Eve and
'Lil. She puts the sixth sandwich, cut in half, at the edge of the
manhole cover. She looks at 'Lil.
TILLIE
(Very softly, to 'Lil.)
When did yous eat, last?
'LIL
(Almost inaudibly, to Tillie.)
We had peanut butter sandwiches
at the Branch, uh, ... uh ...
TILLIE
(Very quietly and gently.)
Your daughter might not know to
eat slowly at first.
Rex
eats his sandwich quickly, and, somewhat revived, starts drumming on
an empty can he finds near him on the floor. Mary, 'Lil and Eve eat
slowly, chewing each bite carefully. Dave eats absently, holding the
sandwich in his left hand, balancing his notebook on his knee and
writing while he eats. Trish looks at her half-sandwich, then at
Mary. She places the half-sandwich with the other half-sandwiches at
the edge of the manhole cover.
REX
(Drumming
with his hands on the empty can.)
Hey-yah, hey-yah,
hey-um-ge-wah, hey-um-ge-wah, hey-yah, hey-yah ...
CARTER
That old Shoshone music sounds
like a funeral.
REX
(Quits drumming.)
Then Trish should like it, eh,
Trish?
Trish
laughs nervously. Tillie adds a few sticks that look like they are
from broken-up pews to the fire, and then, with a "dare you to
say anything" glance at Dave, leafs through two hymnals with her
thumb to put airspace between the pages, then adds them to the fire.
TILLIE
(To Dave.)
They say that smoke sends
prayers to the Great Spirit. I wonder if this will be the first time
God has heard these songs, hunh, Dave?
DAVE
Probably not.
(Wincing involuntarily.)
I think you've been burning
those hymnals for awhile.
TILLIE
Him, Him, Him, and Hymn. God
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and my prayer-songs up in smoke!
(Laughing.) I like that, Dave.
(Speaking as though to the
fire.)
That Dave, he's a pretty good
guy. He asks some crazy god-damn questions, but that Dave, he's a
chi-mook a person can trust. More than some of my own relatives, I
trust that Dave.
(Turns to Dave.)
I can tell you anything, and
you'll keep it secret if I ask you to, eh, Dave?
DAVE
(Very seriously.)
My professional code of ethics
as an anthropologist requires that I maintain absolute
confidentiality.
TILLIE
Could'ja translate that into
plain English, perfesser.
DAVE
Anything that any of you ask me
to keep secret, I will. I promise. When I write anything to put in
a book, I promise I will never use your name, if you don't want me
to.
TILLIE
Kind of like a priest, eh,
perfesser?
DAVE
(Cautiously.)
I've heard some confessions,
yes.
TILLIE
What about your lady-friend,
here?
CARTER
(Laughing.)
She only talks to dead people,
isn't that right, Miss Ghoul?
TRISH
I know when to keep my mouth
shut, if that's what you mean.
Tillie
glances around at the sleeping figures in the background, then takes
an antique silver cigarette-case from a pocket hidden somewhere in
her layers of clothing. She opens it, takes out what appears to be a
marijuana 'joint', and returns the cigarette-case to the recesses of
her clothing. With an enigmatic look at Dave, she lights the joint
with a stick from the fire, and inhales deeply. She holds the smoke
in her lungs for at least a minute, and then exhales, sighing with
pleasure.
TILLIE
My religion, perfesser, and
some good stuff, too.
Tillie
takes another drag from the joint, and hands it to Dave. He accepts
the joint, brings it near to his lips as a token, but does not
inhale, and hands it to Trish. Trish holds the joint with the butt
end briefly upwards, and then passes it to Carter, who inhales
deeply. The joint continues around the fire, with Eve and Mary
passing the joint onwards with a token touch to their lips. After
the joint has been consumed in its second circuit of the fire, the
group sits quietly for a few minutes. The only sounds are the heavy
snoring of one of the people in the back of the sanctuary, the quiet
hissing of the fire, and the cacophony of the city muffled by the
heavy masonry of the old church. Sirens are heard, faintly, in the
distance, and, a few moments later, gunfire. A rat scurries across
the floor in the background. Mary drains her teacup, and reaches
shyly for another piece of sandwich.
TILLIE
Help yourselves, ladies.
Tillie
reaches into her bag, and brings out two plastic cereal bowls and two
battered teaspoons. Using a piece of cardboard as a potholder, she
lifts the mulligan pot and scrapes mulligan into the bowls.
TILLIE
I just got two bowls, only.
Mary
hands Tillie her empty teacup, and Tillie empties the last of the
mulligan into the teacup. The steam from the mulligan lingers in the
chill air of the sanctuary. Tillie hands a bowl to Mary, and one to
'Lil, then hands the cup to Eve.
TILLIE
(Turning toward Mary.)
You need to eat for two, my
girl. Us old ladies don't eat that much.
Rex
starts to slump into sleep, wakes with a start, and starts to slump
again. He wakes again, gets up, takes a stack of newspaper from a
pile in the background, and goes, walking unsteadily, toward the back
of the sanctuary to make himself a bed of newspapers, and go to
sleep. Eve finishes her mulligan, and sets the cup down. Without
bothering to wash it out, Carter fills the cup with tea and drinks it
with gusto. Dave continues to write.
CARTER
Hey, perfesser, be sure you get
it wrote down right! Do you want a good story? ... What if I told
you about the men I've killed? Would you be-tray me?
DAVE
No, I gave you my word. That's
important to me.
CARTER
(Leaning intently toward
Dave.)
That's a good thing, perfesser.
Because there was a murder today.
Mary,
who has begun to relax in the flickering warmth of the fire, jumps
slightly. Tillie, who has been watching Mary out of the corner of
her eyes, nods her head slightly.
TILLIE
That no-good sunnuvabitch S.
Wendell, Jr., bought his one-way ticket to Hell today. And, there
isn't nobody on the streets who wouldn't say he didn't have it
coming.
DAVE
(His face moving into
professional detachment.)
Really?
The
door to the sanctuary opens with a gust of subzero air, and Willy
Steele staggers in.
TILLIE
Debaakwan ishkwaandem, eh,
niiji. [Close the door, friend.]
Willy
lurches around, and slams the door, then reels toward the fire. One
of the men sleeping in the back of the sanctuary turns and mutters,
then starts snoring. Willy plops down on the floor near Carter. His
face is abraded, and there is a trickle of blood above his eyebrow,
frozen to the side of his face. He reaches into his pocket and pulls
out a pint bottle of cheap vodka, and takes a big swig. He offers
the bottle to Carter, who takes a drink, and hands it to Tillie. She
takes a nip, and hands it back to Willy.
WILLY
(Motioning at Dave.)
Who's that?
CARTER
That's the Priest, hearing
confessions.
WILLY
Well, that's a damn' good
thing, priest, because I've got a helluva confession.
(Laughs drunkenly.)
Ho-wah! I am going to confess
tonight.
TILLIE
(Extracting a cookie from her
bag, and handing it to Willy.)
First, you gotta eat a
communion wafer.
WILLY
(Taking a big bite from the
cookie, and chewing it vigorously.)
If you'll hear a confession
from a pug-nacious 'Shinob who bites and chews the body of Christ,
priest, then bless me and I will confess! Lord, oh Lord! I will
confess. Father, I must confess!
DAVE
(Slightly confused.)
Uh ...
CARTER
Ah, ah, aaah-men! The Lord is
letting us sleep in His house tonight, so let your soul be pure!
Willy
finishes eating the cookie, and washes it down with another swig of
vodka. The bottle makes another round, and Willy examines it
critically, then takes another drink before returning the bottle to
his pocket.
WILLY
Yes, Father. I have drunk the
blood of Christ, and I have eaten the body of Christ.
(Brushing the crumbs from his
hands.)
And that's the sweetest
god-damn body of Christ I ever et. A-a-a-men!
(To Dave.)
You White men called us Indians
cannibals, but you make us into cannibals with your religion!
A-a-a-men! I am the god-damnest holy blessed cannibal that ever
fought in the streets of Minneapolis. And I do have a confession,
Father! Bless me, Father, for I must confess!
Dave,
looking slightly worried, is writing furiously in his notebook.
WILLY
Write it down, Father, for the
Book of God! Yes, Father, I have sinned, and Sam Wendell Jr. is
dead. Praise the Lord! I have killed a man, and I will confess. Before
the light of dawn broke yesterday, I was sitting in the Slave
Market, father, and I will confess!
CUT
to closeup of Dave, writing as quickly as he can in his notebook, and
then DOLLY AND ZOOM BACK so that Trish is visible putting
another cassette into the tape recorder. The image then fades into
the interior of the A-1 Daily Labor waiting room, lit with bleak
fluorescent lights. The cinematographic style of Willy's story
includes just a hint of country-western music video, for example,
including an occasional blurred pan, non-horizontal frame, and
slightly out-of-focus frames at beginning of takes.
The
A-1 Daily Labor waiting room is filled with down-and-out men, of all
ethnicities, sitting in folding chairs. Scattered through the crowd
are a numbr of women, including 'Lil, and Mary, whose right arm is in
a sling under her coat, which is half-open in the smoky warmth of the
waiting room. There is a 30-gallon coffee urn on the counter that
runs across the front of the room, with a stack of styrofoam cups
beside it. The clock on the wall above the counter reads 6:00. The
calendar next to the clock, the kind with a large tear-off number for
each day, reads Friday, January 3, 1997.
Some
of the clientele drink coffee, some read the newspaper. One man is
studiously scrutinizing the Minneapolis Star Tribune--but he
is holding it upside-down. Many simply sit, with apparently tireless
vacancy in their eyes, and wait to be called for work. Through the
grimy window, emblazoned with the words "A 1 Daily Labor. Honest
Work. Daily Pay," there is the fine-grained snow of cold
January weather sifting down outside through the pre-dawn light
augmented by occasional street lights. The men who enter the room
from outside usually have faces red from the cold; those who are
bearded have icicles in their moustaches.
Behind
the counter, Sam Wendell, a middle-aged man of indeterminate
ethnicity--he could be Greek or Lebanese, or perhaps a mixed-blood
Indian--stands. He is a corpulent man, dressed in a slightly
greasy-looking cheap greenish suit. His belly, in a greying white
shirt, hangs over the flashy buckle of his belt. Sam combs strands
of greying hair over the expanse of baldness on his head, and wears a
loud paisley patterned tie, askew over the expanse of his belly.
Sam
consults a stack of papers on the counter, and calls out names and
job descriptions.
SAM
(Shouting to be heard over the
murmur of the crowd.)
Five tough guys to the
southside meat-packing plant--and one of you needs a car.
Four
macho-looking young men swagger up to the counter. The leader
glances out into the crowd.
MACHO
YOUNG MAN
C'mon Joey.
A
wiry young man of about eighteen walks nonchalantly to the counter. Sam
talks to them briefly, inaudible over the crowd. The group
saunters out the side door, and the roar of a car with a minimal
muffler is heard going down the street.
SAM
One rough carpenter!
A
derelict middle-aged man, who has been tippling from a bottle in his
back pocket, stands up belligerently.
DERELICT
(Begins taking off his
jacket.)
Just how goddam rough does he
have to be!
SEVERAL
MEN IN CROWD
(Calling quietly.)
Sit down, Clem.
A
burly man, aged about thirty, ambles up to the counter, talks with
Sam, and leaves. Some of the men in the crowd walk up to the
counter, help themselves to coffee, and sit back down.
SAM
Are you guys who worked at the
pickle factory last Friday, here today?
Two
young men, one with shoulder-length hair held back with a red
bandanna, look at each other, shrug as though to say, "well,
it's work," and walk up to the counter. A third hesitates a
moment, and then joins them.
DISSOLVE
onto a half-empty room. The clock on the wall reads 7:05, and the
grey pre-dawn light outside has gotten slightly brighter. The men
still waiting in the room are older; many of them seem to be
derelicts, and some look as though they have not changed clothes for
at least several days. One middle-aged man's clothes are stiff and
stained with road salt. Also still sitting in the crowd are Joe,
Mary and 'Lil, and two tough-looking middle-aged women with bleached
hair and the heavy make-up preferred by some streetwalkers. One of
the women takes a pint bottle out of her purse, and discretely takes
a nip.
SAM
Two maids!
Mary
and 'Lil exchange glances, and start to get up.
SAM
(Glaring at Mary and 'Lil
until they sit down.)
You two ladies over there in
the corner.
The
two middle-age women get up, the drinker walking slightly unsteadily
toward the counter. She is wearing tight black stretch pants, and
teeters on four-inch red high heels. They are given their work
orders by Sam, and leave. They can be seen through the window,
walking toward the bus stop on the corner of Franklin Avenue.
SAM
Can anybody who's still here,
weld?
Joe,
dressed in grease-blackened jeans, well-worn work boots, and a red
plaid lumberjack jacket, starts walking confidently toward the
counter. Sam looks significantly toward an older man, whose hands
are shaking slightly, slouched into a chair in the corner.
SAM
Hey, Mac, you're a welder,
ain't'cha?
Joe,
looking resigned, sits back down and Mac heaves his ample body into a
standing position and ambles toward the counter.
SAM
Willy Steele! [Will ‘e
steal?]
VOICE
FROM THE CROWD
Ask him!
Laughter
ripples briefly through the scattered crowd. The man sitting next to
Willy nudges him, but Willy shrugs his shoulders and leans back in
his chair. DISSOLVE onto a nearly-empty room. The clock
above the counter reads 8:00. Mary and 'Lil are still sitting, as is
Joe. There are three derelicts in the back of the room with Willy,
covertly passing a bottle when Sam looks down at the paperwork on the
counter. The stack of coffeecups by the coffee urn is nearly gone,
and newspapers lie abandoned on two of the chairs.
SAM
OK, folks, that's all the work
there's gonna be today. This ain't no lounge, so clear out!
The
three derelicts stir in their chairs, and start to stand up. Willy
saunters to the counter to get a cup of coffee. Mary looks at her
mother with a sort of desperation, and starts toward the counter.
'LIL
It can't be helped, Mary.
JOE
Come on, Mary, we'll find
something somewhere else.
Mary
tosses her head angrily, and walks away from 'Lil and Joe. She
straightens her shoulders, and goes with determination up toward the
counter. She addresses Sam assertively.
MARY
Sam, what you're doing to us
isn't fair and it isn't right. My mom and Joe are hard workers, and
you know it!
SAM
Come on into the back office,
Mary, and we'll talk about it.
Mary
walks defiantly, tall and proud, around the counter and toward the
back office. The camera SHIFTS ANGLE to a profile as she
walks across the space between the counter and the door to the
hallway where the back offices are, showing her with her chin held
high, and very obviously pregnant. Sam has gone into the office
ahead of her, and leans back in his chair at his cluttered desk. His
feet are up on the desk, and his hands are behind his head.
Sam's
desk is cluttered with papers. There are three empty coffee-cups
randomly distributed among the papers, and the wastebasket is piled
high with empty fast-food containers. A pizza box leans against the
wastebasket on the floor. There are three filing cabinets along the
back wall of the office; the third drawer from the top of the
right-hand one is open, revealing dog-eared filing folders in untidy
disarray. There is a old-fashioned leather office couch along the
left-hand wall of the office; a stack of filing folders sits at the
far end of the couch. In the corner between the couch and the filing
cabinets, there is an antique office safe. The door of the safe is
ajar, and stacks of money are visible inside the safe.
On
the right-hand wall of the office, behind the desk, there is a
window. The window-blinds are slightly open, revealing the grey
light of a cold and cloudy January morning.
SAM
Shut the door, Mary.
Mary
closes the door. Willy, who has strolled to the front counter, looks
around briefly, then follows Mary and Sam to the hallway where the
back offices are. He walks to the now-closed door labelled,
Samuel
S. Wendell, Jr.
Manager
and
glances around the hallway. No one else is visible from Sam's
vantage point in the hallway. Willy, moving as though there is pain
in his joints, grunts down to a squatting position and looks through
the keyhole.
SAM
So, you think you're too good
for us here, don't you, Mary?
Mary
stands at a respectful distance away from the front of the desk. Her
lips tremble slightly for a moment, and then her face sets with
determination. She straightens her coat over her distended belly,
and adjusts the strap on her black vinyl purse. She suppresses a
sigh.
MARY
You know I don't think that,
sir.
(She looks Sam straight in the
eyes.)
I like to work, and I work
hard. And you know that Joe and 'Lil are hard workers. Every place
you've sent us out to work, they've told us we're good workers. More
than once, the manager has told us that they would hire us as
permanent employees, if your contract did not forbid that. You've
sent us out on some dirty jobs, sir, ones that other people wouldn't
take, and we've done the work and done it well. We've never
complained about hard work. I want to work. I'm talking about
fairness, ...
A
jet plane roars overhead, drowning out the rest of Mary's words. A
half-full coffee cup, which has been sitting close to the edge of the
left-hand filing cabinet, vibrates off of the filing cabinet and
falls, hitting the edge of the safe and breaking. The window
rattles.
SAM
Mary, Mary. You're such a
pretty young girl, but you don't know a damn' thing about how the
real world works.
(He pauses, appearing to
consider.)
Why did you come in here? Do
you want to make a deal?
MARY
We have to work, sir. Our rent
was due on the first, and you haven't sent any of us on a job since I
got hurt.
Sam
swings his feet off the desk, and stands up. He starts walking
around the desk toward Mary. He stops about one and a half feet away
from her, towering over her.
SAM
Kid, you're stupid! I can't be
baby-sitting clumsy kids who are too stupid to stay away from
machines. You act like you think you're the Queen of England. But,
no! You're just a stupid, clumsy, ignorant kid. I've got a business
to run.
(He glances at Mary's obvious
pregnancy.)
I'm not running a kindergarten
for whores. And I don't hire tattle-tales cry-babies who
intentionally hurt themselves and then go running to OSHA, trying to
cause trouble for me and my clients.
MARY
(Standing firmly in front of
Sam, biting her lip slightly to keep her temper, but speaking with
heat in her voice.)
Sir, you know that isn't true! You
sent me on that job, and I was supposed to be working on
that machine. I didn't go crying to anybody, the Union Rep took me
to the hospital. The nurse in the emergency room asked about that
machine, and the Union Rep talked to her. All they told me at the
plant was how to run the machine. I didn't know about the guards
that were supposed to be on the machine, until the Union Rep told the
nurse. I never tried to cause trouble, and I was back for work the
next day. I am not a tattle-tale crybaby!
(Defiantly.)
And I am not a whore!
SAM
(In an oily voice.)
So, the knocked-up sex-kitten
has claws! You want to work, do you?
MARY
We've been here at five-thirty
in the morning, ready to work, sir, every morning for the past three
weeks. And you haven't sent us on a job, any of us, for three weeks. We
come here because we want to work. That's what your business
does, isn't it, sir, sending people out to work? We're hard workers,
and you know it! You aren't being fair to us, sir, making us sign a
six-month contract to work for nobody but you, and then not letting
us work.
SAM
(Sarcastically.)
So, now you think you know how
to run my business, huh, kid?
(Pauses, and takes a step
closer to Mary.)
Do you want to make a deal,
sweetheart? Just how bad do you want to work?
Mary
steps back slightly as Sam edges toward her. She looks at Sam with
puzzlement, and then with a dawning realization of shock and fear. Sam
puts his arm around Mary's shoulder, and she cringes slightly,
but stands, rigidly, where she is.
SAM
It's up to you, Mary. I can
put all three of you to work: good jobs, good money. I can call your
landlord and have him extend your rent.
(He draws Mary closer to him,
and tilts her chin up toward his face with his index finger.)
Or, I can freeze you out. It's
up to you. I don't know why I bother with a stinking little cunt
like you, but I can do you a favor. ...
Willy
bursts through the door, and strides into the room, quickly moving to
where he has a clear view of Sam. Willy is holding a .22 caliber
pistol, and points it, cocked, at Sam.
WILLY
Get away from that girl,
Swindle. You abused my granddaughter, and you abused my niece. You
make decent men crawl for your rotten slave-jobs. You've been a
parasite too long, taking half our pay. Get away from that girl and
sit down, you stinking dog.
Willy
motions with the pistol, and Sam backs toward the desk chair and sits
down.
WILLY
So this is how you run a
business, eh, Swindle?
SAM
(Pleading.)
I've gotten good jobs for a lot
of guys, Willy. You know that. I put you to work, whenever you want
to work. ...
A
jet airplane roars overhead, drowning out the rest of Sam's words.
While the noise of the plane permeates the office, Willy points the
pistol at Sam. Three puffs of smoke rise from the pistol, and Sam
slumps in the chair, blood running from what appear to be two
bullet-holes very close to each other, in the middle of his forehead.
The pistol shots cannot be heard above the roar of the jet. As the
sound of the airplane abates, Willy turns to Mary, who is still
standing where Sam left her, stunned, frozen with shock.
WILLY
(Gently.)
Go on, Mary, you should leave.
Don't worry about Swindle, I'll take care of everything.
Mary
looks numb, uncomprehending. Willy walks over to her, and puts his
hand gently on her shoulder, urging her toward the door.
WILLY
Go, Mary, get out of here. You
and Joe can make a good life for yous and that little one.
(He gestures with his eyes
toward her belly.)
You're a decent girl, and you
haven't done anything wrong.
MARY
But ...
WILLY
Swindle was a sleaze, Mary. A
crook. A black-mailing coward. You don't owe him anything, Mary. Go on,
I'll take care of things here.
Mary
turns slightly toward the door, and then looks back at Willy, her
eyes wide with fear.
WILLY
Listen, Mary! What Swindle
tried to do to you, he's done too many times before. He was a
worthless dog, my girl. That low-life bas ... crook, he abused my
granddaughter and my niece. He made decent men crawl for those dirty
slave-labor jobs he sent them out on--and then he kept half their
wages for himself.
(With emphasis, gesturing
around the room.)
Forget this filth, Mary, get
away from here and put it behind you. Go on, girl. Don't worry,
just get going.
MARY
But, ... what about you?
WILLY
I'll take care of everything. I've
been around, and you don't have anything to worry about. I know
the streets, I know the system, and I know the Man. My name is
William Steele, and when I tell you that everything's going to be OK,
it will be. You get out of here--now!
Willy
gives Mary a firm push toward the door of Sam's office. She balks
for a moment, and then flees, running down the hallway and through a
door marked "EXIT" at the far end. As the door swings
open, the dirty snow of the alley is visible, littered with trash,
beer cans and broken bottles. Mary turns toward the front of the
building, running.
Willy,
sighing, closes the door to the office. He wipes the fingerprints
off the pistol with a grimy red bandanna handkerchief, lays the
pistol on the desk, then seems to think better of it, and pockets it.
He looks for a long moment at the money-filled safe, shrugs his
shoulders, removes a twenty-dollar bill, and then, using his
handkerchief to protect the metal surfaces from fingerprints, closes
the safe and spins the lock.
Willy
takes out a pack of cigarettes, lights one, and pauses before Sam's
corpse for a moment, smoking thoughtfully, before turning away. He
sets the lock on the office door, wiping the doorknob free of
fingerprints, and leaves, closing the office door behind him. He
pockets his handkerchief as he strolls down the empty hallway. He
walks into the men's bathroom, closes the door, and after a minute
and the sound of a toilet flushing, re-emerges. He then returns to
the waiting-room of the A-1 Daily Labor office, where one of the
derelicts appears to be napping on the folding chair in the back of
the room.
Willy
shakes the man by the shoulder.
WILLY
C'mon, Louie. Let's go get a
bottle.
ZOOM BACK as Willy and
Louie
leave the A-1 building. They can
be seen through the grimy window, bent into the wind-driven snow as
they walk, shoulders nearly touching, down the street. The camera
lingers for a moment on a wide-angle shot of the empty room, and then
DISSOLVE back to the scene in the church. Willy is slumped,
quiescent, still near the fire, and Dave is still writing furiously,
his notebook nearly half-filled. Trish has set the microphone to the
tape recorder down--there is a pile of tapes to one side, but she has
apparently used her last blank tape.
The
pile of ashes on the manhole cover is larger, and there are three new
books, two hymnals and a Bible, on the fire, along with a fresh
supply of broken pew-wood. The sandwiches halves at the edge of the
manhole cover are gone. Mary, 'Lil and Eve are sitting wrapped in
their blankets, but even with the small fire, the church is so cold
that people's breaths are visible when backlit by the fire.
Tillie
takes out a pack of cigarettes, lights one with a stick from the
fire, and offers it to Willy. He accepts, smokes about a third of
the cigarette in silence, and then makes a gesture offering the butt
to Dave. Dave hesitates, then accepts the cigarette, takes a token
puff but does not inhale, and hands it to Tillie. Willy takes his
pint bottle out of his pocket, examines the quarter-inch left in the
bottom, shrugs, then drains the bottle and tosses it on the floor
behind him. He stands up, somewhat unsteadily.
WILLY
Well, Father perfesser
confessor, there you have it, the 'Whole Truth and Nothing But the
Truth.' And, this old man's got to get his beauty sleep.
(He swells his chest in mock
pomposity.)
I have spoken.
(He salutes Dave, and gives
him an enigmatic, drunken smile.)
How!
Willy
walks, slowly and staggering slightly, toward the back of the
sanctuary. Although the camera remains focussed on the people at the
fire, he can be heard sitting heavily on the floor, then rustling
through newspapers as he arranges his bedding. In a few moments, he
can be heard snoring. Sirens, sounding as though they are going down
Chicago Avenue right outside, cut through the night, and then stop
abruptly about three blocks away--apparently an ambulance heading to
the hospital.
CARTER
That's quite a guy, Willy
Steele. Even when he's telling the truth, you don't know whether
he's lying or not--and I've known him all my life.
DAVE
Hmmm.
Dave
has the slightly glassy-eyed look of a graduate student who has been
living on too little sleep and too much coffee for several weeks. Trish
looks extremely tired, but is valiantly trying to be alert.
Tillie
glances at Carter, then carefully arranges a supply of wood and
hymnals within reach of Dave. With a faint wry smile playing on her
lips, she adds three Bibles and a 1963 Merck Manual to the pile of
books intended for fire-fodder.
TILLIE
I've got a long day ahead of me
tomorrow, folks. There's firewood there--be careful not to burn the
place down. Help yourselves to the tea.
(Gesturing to the teapot and
to a small pile of sugar-packets she has placed beside it.)
Tillie
get up, and removes blankets from a bag leaning against the pulpit. She
heads toward a secluded area behind the altar. Carter, murmuring
something inaudible to Dave, follows Tillie. The microphone centers
on murmurs of conversation and subdued laughter between Carter and
Tillie, a clink of glass as two bottles touch each other in the
darkness, and then returns to the hiss of the fire.
MARY
(Shyly.)
Perfesser?
DAVE
Just
call me Dave.
MARY
What
are you perfesser of?
DAVE
I'm
a graduate student in
anthropology. I'm working on my Ph.D. thesis. I'm writing about
homeless people.
MARY
Oh.
(Pauses.)
Perfesser Dave, is
it true that
you must never reveal others' secrets?
Dave
glances at Mary, who speaks with urgent sincerity. He considers for
a moment, and then places his right hand on the stack of hymnals,
Bibles, and the Merck Manual that Tillie has left by the fire.
DAVE
(Seriously.)
I swear it. If you ask me
never to reveal your name, I promise that I will keep it secret.
Mary
sits in silence for several minutes. A series of expressions cross
her grimy, tear-streaked, exhausted face, as she appears to be
wrestling with a difficult question. The silence within the heavy
walls of the old church is punctuated by the sounds of sleep from the
back of the sanctuary, an occasional siren in the distance, a heavy
vehicle rumbling by outside on Chicago Avenue, and the sound of
gunshots and then breaking glass several blocks away. The fire
hisses and crackles.
Trish
removes a thermos from Dave's backpack, and a package of expensive
cookies. She digs deeper into the backpack, and finds four paper
coffee-cups. All continue to sit in silence as Trish fills the cups
with steaming coffee and hands coffee to the three women, then fills
a paper cup for herself and the plastic thermos-cup for Dave. She
then hands each woman two cookies, and places the rest of the package
at the edge of the manhole cover within easy reach.
Mary
nibbles with restrained hunger at one of the cookies, and sips at the
coffee, savoring the warmth. She starts to speak, and then stops. She
finishes a cookie, and sips some more coffee. She looks,
searchingly at 'Lil and at Eve, seeking reassurance in their faces
and postures. Finally, she speaks, at first hesitantly, and then in
clear, determined voice.
MARY
(Speaking
slowly, firmly, and
at the beginning, formally.)
I don't know why that old
gentleman, Mr. Steele, is protecting me, but I must set the record
straight.
(Turning to Dave,
who is
writing rapidly.)
We came to Minneapolis last
August, because we heard that the doctors at the University of
Minnesota could help my father, and, we found a place on Oakland
Avenue, just off of Franklin Avenue, so we could be close to the
Hospital.
(Pausing
significantly, then
speaking with matter-of-factness overlaying pain.)
My father died on September
sixth, four weeks after we got here. His first appointment with the
doctors was three days after he died.
(Pause.)
We--my fiancé Joe, my
mom, and I--started working for the Daily Labor right away. Joe is a
journeyman welder, and we thought that he could find a Union job
quickly. But, it seems that once someone starts working in the
day-labor ... racket, it might be difficult to get a full-time job.
We worked pretty
steady for
four months, all three of us. We paid for the funeral, and made a
down payment on my father's headstone. Then, I got hurt. That was
on December 12th. I was making frames for radio-controlled toy cars
at Apache.
DISSOLVE
to a metal fabricating factory. The cinematographic style of Mary's
story: an average camera position about four inches lower, more tight
shots, more scenes with romantically artistic framing and lighting. The
camera moves slightly more slowly, lingering for a beat on
beautiful compositions or dramatic juxtapositions. A few of the
reminiscence sequences begin with a shot of Mary surrounded by a
misty blur, which gradually clears into a clear shot of the
background.
The
factory building is an old brick one, built before the turn of the
century, with big grimy windows. Rows of machines, apparently nearly
as old as the building, clank and clatter noisily, tended by people
in grease-stained coveralls. Mary is feeding parts to be stamped
into a machine: a job which requires split-second timing, since the
press crashes down onto the part she inserts, moments after she
positions it in the machine. At the right side of the machine, two
unguarded belts revolve rapidly in opposite directions.
There
is an air of exhaustion about Mary, as though she has been working a
long time. It is night outside, and the light from the overhead
lights is dim in the grimy air of the factory. There is a large cart
of unstamped parts on the left of her machine, about half-empty, and
a cart of stamped parts on the right, about half-full. The camera
focuses for more than a minute on Mary, who is feeding a part into
the machine about every four seconds, moving rapidly and without any
wasted motion. Then, when she tries to remove a stamped part from
the machine, the unguarded belts catch the right sleeve of her
coveralls, trapping her right arm inside the press. She reaches for
the "off" switch to the machine with her left hand, and
manages to trip it only as the machine has begun its downstroke. The
press crashes down on Mary's right arm, stopping with a shudder after
it is within an inch of the part-plate. The press-plate then slowly
rises; the machine hiccoughs, then stops.
Mary,
in shock, tries to disentangle her sleeve from the belts, using her
left hand. After several seconds, she manages to do so, then, a beat
later, collapses in a heap on the floor. Much of her right forearm
is a bloody pulp. The camera draws back to include the workers to
the right and left of her continuing to work at the same frenetic
pace as before.
It
is at least a minute before the Union Steward, a burly middle-aged
man, comes running toward Mary's machine. He squats by Mary to
examine her carefully as she lays in a spreading pool of blood, then
lifts her gently to a half-sitting position and, after glancing
around for something to use as a tourniquet, stops the flow of
spurting blood by compressing his calloused and stained hand around
her forearm, above the wound.
UNION
STEWARD
(In
a powerful roar that cuts
through the cacophony of the factory.)
Jerry! Call the god-damned
ambulance. Right NOW!
CUT
to an insert of the Union Steward watching Mary with concern, inside
an ambulance at it jostles and bounces through traffic, sirens
blaring, toward an emergency room. CUT again to the Union
Steward towering over a young doctor. Mary sits slightly to one
side, the right sleeve of her coverall cut off, revealing her arm in
a cast, supported by a sling. The blood saturating her coverall has
dried, and there are flecks of dried blood on her face and in her
hair. Mary looks pale and wan, although alert.
UNION
STEWARD
You
took the Hippocratic Oath,
didn't you?
(Without waiting for
an
answer.)
You know damn' well how bad
this girl was hurt. She lost a lot of blood. You have a
moral obligation to keep her for observation tonight. I don't care
that she doesn't have any insurance--bill the god-damned Apache
Company, or if they won't pay, bill that god-damned slave-master at
A-1 Daily Labor, S'Wendell's his name, and (more softly) it fits him,
too.
(Hesitates, and when
the
doctor does not agree, continues.)
For Chrissake, Doc, bill OSHA
if you have to. This girl's been hurt bad, and she needs more
medical help than she's getting, and somebody's gotta be
responsible. It ain't her fault she got hurt--them god-damn machines
at Apache are death-traps. Some of them antiques should'a been
junked out at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. They don't have
no guards, they don't have no safety shut-offs. (Speaks
parenthetically.) I don't know what that mother--- of an OSHA
inspector does, probably collects a kickback. Them machines 'r
accidents waiting to happen.
(Almost pleadingly.)
It ain't morally right, Doc, to
turn this girl out. She's been working fourteen, fifteen hours at
that machine for two weeks now, she's worn down, and she's been hurt
bad.
(Starts
to take a step toward
the doctor, as though to shake some sense into him, and then stops
short, and stands, with his hands at his sides.)
DOCTOR
(Writes
at length in Mary's
medical chart, his lips compressed tightly. Looks at the Union
Steward, and shakes his head 'no' in a short, sharp motion. Speaks
tersely.)
We've done all we can for her.
Make an appointment for a checkup next week with the receptionist at
the desk.
(Sighs, then looks
directly
into the eyes of the Union Steward, and speaks with a tinge of
regret, though with a clear message of dismissal.)
I've done everything that I can
do.
(Turning toward
Mary.)
It's going to take time to
heal, but you should get most of the use of your arm back. Be sure
to take those antibiotics with milk, and come back next week.
MARY
(Wills
herself into a standing
position, wavers slightly, and then walks, paling and with forced
steadiness, to shake the doctor's hand. She offers him her undamaged
left hand.)
Thank you, Doctor.
The
Union Steward and Joe, who apparently has just arrived, stand
protectively by Mary just inside the door of the doctor's office, as
they prepare to leave.
DISSOLVE
into Joe, Mary, and 'Lil walking through the predawn morning, east on
Franklin Avenue toward the A-1 Daily Labor Office. Joe is walking,
solicitously, next to Mary, whose face is set in a staunch denial of
exactly how much her apparently nonchalant gait is costing her.
It
is snowing, the light, slightly sticky snow that falls when the
temperature is about twenty degrees. Early-morning traffic rumbles
by the three people as they walk. They pass a homeless person
begging from the shelter of a doorway, so bundled in rags as to make
his/her gender indeterminate. 'Lil digs into a pocket, and hands the
beggar about a dollar in change--in the same way as one might hand a
sibling a ten-dollar bill, in matter-of-fact recognition of the
value, but without condescension.
Mary,
'Lil and Joe stand just outside the doorway of A-1 Daily Labor
Office, stamping the snow from their feet and brushing an
accumulation of snow off of their jackets and hats, and then enter.
Mary and 'Lil seat themselves toward the rear, right-hand side of the
room, and Joe goes up to the counter at the front to register their
names for work that day. He talks briefly with Sam Wendell (most of
the conversation is obscured by other people, milling about the front
of the room), then goes to get three cups of coffee, and carries the
coffee to where Mary and 'Lil are sitting. As he approaches the
women, he masks an expression of worried concern.
The
room is already about a third filled. According to the clock on the
wall, it is 5:30 in the morning; the calendar reads December 16. The
room fills quickly, and the murmur of conversation becomes louder. The
man sitting in the chair two to the left of Joe finishes reading
the "Help Wanted" section of the paper.
JOE
You
done with that, buddy?
MAN
Help
yourself.
(Hands him the folded
section.)
Joe
reads the want ads slowly, his lips forming around the words. In a
small, somewhat worn spiral-bound notebook he removes from his inside
jacket pocket, he writes down job descriptions, addresses and phone
numbers, with the laborious blocky printing of many who are
semi-literate. Mary watches quietly, sipping at her coffee.
CUT
to a close-up of Mary; there are small beads of perspiration on her
lip, and the coffee-cup shakes slightly in her left hand.
CUT
back to a fuller shot of the room. People drift in, and at about
5:45, Sam Wendell starts calling out names, and people walk to the
front of the room to get their job assignment, then leave.
DISSOLVE
through a series of shots of the morning passing: 6:00, 6:30, 7:00,
7:30, 8:00, 9:00, 10:00 in the morning. As time passes, the room
gradually empties, until only Joe, 'Lil and Mary, and a handful of
derelicts, remain sitting there. Coffee cups and newspapers lie
abandoned here and there in the room, and the morning has dawned to
increasingly heavy snowfall. At 10:30, Sam comes out of the back
office, and surveys the sparse handful of people waiting.
SAM
Alright,
folks, that's all the
work there's gonna be today. This ain't no charity lounge, so clear
out!
Joe's
mouth tightens briefly, and he makes a slight motion as though to
walk to the front of the room, but then apparently thinks better of
it. He shrugs nearly imperceptibly, and, as the three walk toward
the door, touches Mary tenderly on the shoulder.
When
the three have gone outside and walked past the window of the A-1
Daily Labor Office, Joe hauls his notebook out of his pocket, and
flourishes it with attempted confidence.
JOE
I've
got myself some good
prospects here. Three places, they've got advertised that they're
looking for welders.
MARY
Father
John, I've heard he lets
people use the phone in the Branch to call for job interviews.
(Her voice fades
into the
traffic noise along Franklin Avenue as they walk into the distance.)
Mom and me, we'll go home and
get a good meal cooked for you and Grandma tonight ...
The
camera lingers on the three as they walk westward, into the distance
on Franklin Avenue. Mary walks as though she is masking her pain;
Joe walks with a front of confidence obscuring a nagging fear. 'Lil
walks with her head held high, with a stubborn pride in the face of
adversity. The three figures become small in the distance, and are
eventually obscured by the falling snow.
DISSOLVE
through three weeks of 'Lil, Mary and Joe being among the scattered
handful of people remaining in the waiting room of A-1 Labor at
mid-morning. As the days pass, their faces become thinner, and the
optimism in their walk more forced. The dissolve sequence stops on
Thursday, January 2, 1997. Joe leaves the waiting room at 7:30 in
the morning, showing Mary his painstakingly inscribed job listings
for the day, holding the notebook low between their chairs and
whispering to her briefly. After he leaves, Mary and 'Lil confer
with each other in inaudible whispers, and continue to sit, waiting
for a job.
At
about 10:00, Mary and 'Lil leave. It is sunny and bitterly cold
outside, the low rays of the morning sun backlighting the exhaust
from cars and busses, the trickles condensing moisture in the warm
air escaping from buildings, and their exhaled breath. The thin
winter sunlight sparkles on the buildup of hoarfrost around windows
and doors of the buildings as they walk past. Mary and 'Lil walk the
eight blocks westward on Franklin Avenue to the Branch II. They
enter the Branch with faces red from the cold. The gust of frigid
air which accompanies them into the front room condenses moisture in
the warmer interior air on contact, and surrounds them momentarily
with a cloud of fog. Mary clenches her teeth to keep them from
chattering, and she shivers involuntarily; her mother notices and a
worried look briefly crosses her face.
The
Branch is crowded with street people escaping the cold. There are
two games of cribbage going, and a cluster of people around a table
where a peanut-butter pail and day-old bread are placed, for people
to help themselves. Mary and 'Lil stand at the fringes of the crowd
around the table, surrounded by the conversation at the Branch. By
the time they get to the table, there are two pieces of bread left.
'Lil hands them to Mary, and walks away quickly, before Mary can
protest.
'LIL
I'll
go get some coffee for us.
Mary
picks up a plastic knife, and looks in the peanut butter pail. It is
empty, scraped clean. She wipes the smudges of peanut butter still
adhering to the knife on the bread, then carefully wraps the bread in
a paper towel she extracts from her pocket. Swallowing the saliva
that involuntarily comes to her mouth, she places the bread in her
pocket, and goes to find her mother in the crowd.
The
coffee urn is empty, and has been unplugged. Mary tips it
experimentally, then pockets the single restaurant-packet of sugar
remaining. She walks toward her mother, who is standing near the
door.
MARY
Maybe
we should go check on Grandma.
'LIL
Uh-huh.
CUT
to the apartment on Oakland Avenue, a shabby furnished one-bedroom. Eve
is sitting, wrapped in a blanket, in an overstuffed chair of
early 1950's vintage. She looks very old and very small. The
upholstery on both arms of the chair has worn through, and the
cavities from missing padding are patched with two bright pieces of
cloth. A roll-away bed is folded up against the wall, neatly covered
with a somewhat threadbare blanket. There is also a straight-backed
chair, a worn and sagging couch, and a battered formica end table,
which was repainted a flat purple about ten years ago, in the room. The
room was painted the indeterminate color sometimes known as
“landlord green,” at some time in the distant past. There is a
cheap, scuffed plastic clock-radio with a crack in the clockface, and
a photograph, apparently of Mary, 'Lil, Eve and Mary's father, taken
when Mary was about ten years old. There is a stained, pink
patterned carpet which has worn through to the floor in places. When
the two younger women enter, Eve is listening to a talk show on the
radio, which erratically fades in and out with a crackling of a dirty
'pot' on the volume control.
Mary
walks, unsuccessfully trying to hide her fatigue, to sit down on the
couch. Her mother goes offscreen, into the kitchen. Sounds of
running water, of a match being struck, of dishes rattling, are
heard. When 'Lil leaves the room, Mary quietly slips the pieces of
bread and the packet of sugar she has taken from the Branch out of
her pocket, and tries to hand them to Eve.
EVE
(Holding
up her hand in
protest.)
You have to eat for your child,
too, Heart.
MARY
(Very
quietly.)
I've eaten enough already,
Gram. Take it--I won't take it back.
(Pause.)
Please, Gram--you have to eat,
too.
Eve
somberly takes the bread, and starts to set it on the corner of the
end-table, but at a pleading look from Mary, slips it in her purse. She
sets the sugar on the table. The two women sit in silence,
listening to the erratic radio. 'Lil comes into the room, carrying
three steaming cups and a teaspoon, and hands a cup to each woman. Eve
takes the packet of sugar, pours a third of the packet onto her
cup--which contains hot water, and hands the packet to her daughter,
who adds a few grains of sugar to her hot water. She then firmly
hands the packet to Mary, who has set her cup of hot water on the arm
of the couch. Mary empties the packet of sugar into her hot water. The
women pass the teaspoon to stir their water, and then sip the
steaming liquid in silence. The radio, after having been silent for
awhile, crackles back to life, loudly.
RADIO
...
increasing cloudiness
tonight, with a wind-chill of sixty below. Snow flurries tomorrow,
with a high of twenty below zero. On Saturday, ...
Eve
reaches over to the radio, and turns the volume down.
EVE
(Sadly.)
The landlord came by this
morning.
Silence,
lengthening significantly past normal conversational pauses. The low
murmur of the radio mingles with the muffled noise of traffic on
Franklin Avenue, and the occasional distant yowl of a siren.
EVE
He
said we have to have the
rent paid by tomorrow noon. I asked him, 'doesn't the lease say we
have until the tenth?' He said that the company policy is that rent
has to be paid by noon on the first. He said that he'd make an
exception for us, but that tomorrow was as late as he could go.
Silence.
MARY
Maybe
Joe will find something
today. There were four new job listings today in the newspaper. He
showed them to me.
'LIL
He's
been looking for a long
time. He's sure to find something soon.
Silence. The women sip at their hot
water. DISSOLVE into the waiting
room of A-1 Daily Labor. The calendar on the wall reads Friday,
January 3, 1997. It is 5:45 in the morning. Sam Wendell is standing
behind the counter at the front of the room, wearing his
greasy-looking cheap greenish suit and a greying white shirt. His
loud paisley tie is wider, by about a quarter of an inch, than it was
in Willy Steele's story. His suit pants fit badly, hanging low
underneath his belly. He is wearing a garish diamond pinkie ring on
his left hand. He consults a stack of papers on the counter,
checking people off as they come in, calling out names. He shouts
over the noise of the crowd.
SAM
Joe
B., they want you an yer
crew back today.
JOE
B.
(Shouting.)
Yep, we're on our way.
Joe
B. and three other men walk, without any more wasted movement than a
slight swagger by the youngest of them, to the counter to pick up
their job papers, then exit by the side door. People come into the
waiting room, cluster around the coffee urn. They rustle newspapers
and scrape metal folding chairs against the gritty floor, getting
comfortable.
SAM
(Shouting.)
... Frankie Mattson ... K.O.
... Bubsy ... Max S. ... Betty and Sue ...
Men
and a few women shout in response to Sam's calls, walking to the
front of the room to get job papers, leaving for a day of work. They
exchange greetings and banter across the crowded, noisy room.
SAM
(Shouting,
in a slightly
hoarse voice.)
Hernandez, you got your car?
HERNANDEZ
(Shouts
an assent.)
SAM
They
want you an' yer crew in
South St. Paul.
Hernandez
and three other young men walk up to the counter. Hernandez glances
out into the crowd.
HERNANDEZ
Ya
comin', Joey?
A
slender young men, about eighteen years old, joins Hernandez and the
others. After consulting briefly with Sam, they walk out the side
door. Their car rumbles down the street.
SAM
I
need a rough carpenter!
An
older man, ravaged by time and alcohol, stands up.
OLD
MAN
(Taking
his jacket off and
flexing his muscles.)
Just how god-damned rough does
he have to be?
MAN
IN CROWD
(Quietly.)
Siddown, Clem.
Clem
stands for a moment more, arms held in a caricatured emulation of a
boxer's victory stance. He then seems to deflate, almost crumpling
into his chair. A well-muscled man with a red beard walks up to the
counter, talks to Sam, gets his working papers and leaves.
Sam
pauses and consults his papers, and some of the men in the crowd get
up and stretch, go up to the front of the room to get coffee for
themselves and their buddies, or change chairs to sit close to others
they have spotted in the crowd.
Mary
shifts in her chair, then plants her feet more firmly on the floor. She
arches her back and stretches her shoulders, in the way that a
person with low back pain tries, inconspicuously, to ease the pain. She
scoots back in the chair slightly, so that she is sitting with
her back straighter, pressed against the back of the chair. She
gazes gently at Joe, and then at her mother. She sighs, and shifts
in her chair again.
The
movement of the crowd in the waiting room speeds up a beat, holds,
and then accelerates gradually. The camera angle tilts slightly
off-kilter, rights itself, and then the image becomes slightly
blurred in the corners. The colors in the image become slightly
washed-out, and then muted with sepia. Sam's voice, now
unintelligibly indistinct, takes on a barking quality, and then is
blurred with a quacking timbre.
The
movement of the crowd in the room changes again. Men, women and
children, dressed in rags, bone-weary and worn out, move across the
front of the room as though they are being auctioned off. Their
cheeks are hollow from hunger, and their hair is brittle, lusterless
and has the straw-like quality of protein deficiency. Sam's voice
takes on the cadence and intonation of an auctioneer, unintelligibly
chanting as used-up workers move across the front of the room. The
scene continues for a few beats, and then Sam's voice emerges from
the crowd.
SAM
Lot
263, SOLD to the gentleman
from Getty Pickle Factory!
DISSOLVE
into a series of shots of Mary working, chronologically ordered
vignettes of her daily-labor work from August through December.
Occasional glimpses through windows reveal the passing seasons. As
the series progresses, Mary becomes more visibly pregnant. Sam's
voice, with the cadence of an auctioneer, continues, unintelligibly,
in the background.
· Mary, with her mother 'Lil cleaning up a gross
assortment of broken
glass and other garbage in an expensive motel room after a drunken
party.
· In the recycling plant, as mountains of trash move by
on a conveyer
belt, pulling aluminum and other recyclables from the stream of
refuse as it moves by.
· In a cannery, stacking cases of canned corn, which dissapear
into
infinity in the background.
· In a warehouse after a fire, working with Joe and her mother,
moving
scorched 55-gallon barrels of chemicals into a truck for disposal. The
three wear handkerchiefs over their faces, which are caked with
soot.
· In the stockyards, moving unprocessed hides from one place to
another. As they lift the heavy hides, slime streams downward from
them.
· In the stockyards, shovelling manure into bags marked
"fertilizer." The
light from the fixtures in the windowless room barely filters
through the dust of the dried manure. The workers wear handkerchiefs
over their faces, and are caked from head to toe with manure-dust.
· In a box factory, removing empty, folded-up olive-drab
ammunition
boxes from a machine and placing them on a big industrial cart. In
the background is another industrial cart, filled with perhaps a
quarter of a million boxes.
· In a cavernous institutional kitchen, scraping and scrubbing
layers
of built-up grease.
· In a poultry-processing plant, making a single cut on turkey
carcasses, then turning each carcass, as it quickly passes by. The
camera lingers on this scene long enough so that the inexorable pace
of turkey-processing is felt.
· In a fraternity, cleaning up piles of empty bottles, vomit and
other
residue from a debauched party.
· In a hospital laundry, sorting mountains of bloody surgical
linens.
Mary is wearing a cloth mask and latex gloves. As she shakes out a
stained surgical drape, a scalpel falls to the floor, and she tosses
it into a five-gallon plastic pail half-filled with scalpels,
syringes and needles.
· In a clothing factory, making the same seam, over and over
again, on
piles of clothing. 'Lil is visible in the background, also operating
an industrial sewing machine.
· Cleaning the vast expanses of an empty and very dusty
warehouse.
· Pulling down damaged sheetrock in an office building after a
fire.
· Sorting potatoes in a potato-house.
· Trimming the mold off of cheeses in a cheese factory.
· Scrubbing the huge vats used to process pickles at Getty
Pickle.
· With 'Lil and Joe, and a crew of other dust-covered people,
moving
50-pound bags of agricultural chemicals in a warehouse.
· Opening and emptying cans of paint at a hazardous-waste
processing
facility.
· Unpacking shipping containers of Christmas decorations and
stacking
them on warehouse shelves.
· At the recycling plant again, watching conveyor belts laden
with
glass move by, reaching into the stream to remove glass of the wrong
color and other inappropriate items.
· At the metal-fabricating factory. The machine inexorably moves
to
crush Mary's arm, and, at its point of lowest descent, the frame
freezes, holds for a beat ... a beat and a half ... and dissolves
into a solarized image, then almost into whiteness.
CUT
to Mary sitting in the A-1 Daily Labor waiting room, her injured arm
in its sling resting against her pregnant belly. The clock on the
wall reads 7:06; the calendar is still January 3, 1997. The gray
pre-dawn light of a cold winter day filters through the window at the
back of the room. The howl of the wind can be heard for a moment
above the murmur people in the half-empty room. A derelict man in
the corner has a fit of coughing, then wheezes as he tries to regain
is breath.
SAM
Two maids for the
Convention
Center!
Mary
and 'Lil glance at each other, a glimmer of hope in Mary's eyes. They
start to get up, but Sam glares at them, then looks at two
slightly inebriated middle-aged women, dressed like aging
streetwalkers, in the left rear of the room.
SAM
I'm lookin' at you,
Doris, an'
yer partner there.
The
two women get up, one wearing a slightly moth-eaten rabbit-fur jacket
and tight black stretch pants. She teeters unsteadily for a moment
on red four-and-a-half inch platform shoes, and then regains her
balance. Her partner tucks a pint bottle of cheap vodka deep into
her purse, and both walk to the counter to get their working papers.
Two older men, sitting in the row in front of Mary, pass a bottle,
sit for a moment longer, and then get up and leave through the front
door.
SAM
They need a welder at
Dick's
plumbing!
Joe,
looking dapper in a red plaid lumberjack jacket, grease-blackened
jeans, and work boots, starts walking toward the counter. Sam shakes
his head with disgust.
SAM
Hey, Mac, I'm talking to
you.
Sam
glances at Mac, a heavyset older man whose morning shakes have not
yet steadied. Mac heaves himself up, and ambles toward the counter. Joe
sits back down, heavily.
The
camera focuses on the clock.
DISSOLVE
to 8:02 in the morning. The room is nearly empty. Sam puts down his
papers with a decisive gesture, and leans on the counter with both
hands. He looks directly at Mary, 'Lil and Joe.
SAM
That's it, folks. Ain't
no more work today.
Mary
looks toward Sam in a defiant challenge. Her mother reaches toward
her, but Mary shakes her head slightly, and walks toward the front of
the room, shoulders straight, her head held high. Standing tall and
determined, she faces Sam across the counter.
MARY
Sam, what are you trying
to do
to us? We're hard workers, steady ... decent people, and you know
it!
SAM
(Pursing his lips in
suppressed anger, speaking curtly.)
We can talk about it in the
back office.
Sam
strides off into the back hall, and by the time Mary reaches his
office, he is seated at his desk, drinking a cup of coffee. He
shuffles through the clutter of papers on his desk, finds a pack of
cigarettes, and lights one almost negligently. He inhales deeply,
and then exhales sharply, blowing smoke in Mary's face. He glances
at Mary, who is standing with determination on the other side of the
desk, with a look of disgusted disdain, as if he had found a fly
drowning in his coffee.
Sam
takes another drag off of his cigarette, and taps the ashes
negligently into the wastepaper basket, which is piled high with
fast-food containers. He drains his coffee-cup, then glowers at
Mary, who holds her ground and returns his gaze coolly. Sam gestures
at an old-fashioned leather office couch along the wall. There is an
untidy stack of dog-eared filing folders at one end, and another
stack on the floor.
SAM
Close the door, Mary,
and sit
down.
Mary
closes the door, then sits, primly, in the middle of the leather
couch. Sam extracts an ashtray from under the papers on his desk,
and taps his cigarette impatiently on the ashtray.
SAM
(With exaggerated
patience, as
though talking to a truculent child.)
So, what did you want to talk
to me about, Mary?
MARY
(Taking a deep breath to
calm
herself, and speaking with a clear, controlled steadiness.)
Joe, 'Lil and I are hard
workers, steady workers. We've done every job you sent us out
on--we've done the job well and we've never complained. Several
times, our supervisors have told us they would like to hire us as
permanent employees. (Sighs.) But, you've got us in an exclusive
contract.
(Pauses, looking Sam in the
eye.)
You made us sign that contract,
so we can't work for anyone else. I know you've got jobs you're not
filling, Sam, but it's been three weeks since you sent any of
us--Joe, 'Lil or me--out to work.
(Shifts her posture,
straightening up in assertiveness.)
What's the problem, Mr.
Wendell? We're decent, honest people, and ...
A
jet plane roars overhead, drowning out the rest of Mary's words. A
nearly-empty coffee-cup, which had been sitting close to the edge of
the left-most of three filing cabinets across the back wall, vibrates
off of the edge of the filing cabinet and falls, hitting the edge of
an office safe by the couch, and breaking. A few drops of stale
coffee splatter across the file folders on the floor. The window
behind the desk rattles.
SAM
... There ain't no
problem,
kid. I just ain't had any jobs,
(Looking straight at Mary, and
rolling the word around in his mouth with an oily sarcasm.)
suitable to send you
folks out on.
Sam
pauses, looking at Mary smugly. Mary looks back at him with surprise
and a hint of confusion.
SAM
Mary, you're a cute kid,
but
you ain't no airhead. Why did you want to talk to me?
(Glances at Mary sharply, then
lights another cigarette.)
I'm a busy man, kid. I got a
bidness to run. Do you got a proposal to make to me, or what?
MARY
We need to work, and you
know
we're hard workers. You've got jobs. Put us to work. That's what
your 'bidness' is about, isn't it, temporary contract labor?
SAM
(Sighing impatiently.)
Try it one more time, kid, and
then quit wasting my time. Either you got a deal for me, or you
don't. Start talking sense, or get out.
MARY
(With a hint of
desperation.)
We have to work, sir. Our rent
was due on the first, and you haven't sent any of us on a job since I
got hurt.
Sam
shakes his finger scoldingly at Mary, tut-tuts at her, and then stubs
out his cigarette. He makes a motion as though to reach for the
telephone.
SAM
(With apparent
incredulity.)
You want I should call your
landlord? Maybe I should plead with him, 'Hey, Max, that knocked-up
Mary's crying in my office about her rent.' Is that what you're
asking me to do?
(Shakes his head as though to
clear it, and then looks piercingly at Mary.)
I don't like trouble-makers,
kid. If that's all this back-office consultation is about,
wasting my time crying about your rent...
(He picks up the telephone and
starts dialing, watching Mary critically.)
Maybe I should call your
landlord and tell him to evict you this afternoon ... seeing as how
you folks aren't working and can't pay your rent. Should I tell him,
'Max, confidentially, you might as well get rid of those deadbeats,
and get some decent tenants in there.'
(Glances at his wristwatch,
which has a heavy gold band nestled in the hair of his forearm.)
That Max keeps a regular
schedule, gets to his office about eight. The phone's ringing, Mary.
MARY
(In a strangled voice,
an
almost involuntary cry.)
Wait ...
SAM
(Hangs up the phone,
slowly.)
OK, let's hear it, kid. And it
had better be good, 'cause I don't have no time to waste,
baby-sitting clumsy kids who ain't got enough sense to stay away from
man-size machines.
(He stares, with a hint of
lechery, at Mary's obvious pregnancy.)
This ain't no kindergarten for
whores, neither. And there ain't no jobs here, no jobs at-all, for
tattle-tales who go crying to OSHA, trying to cause trouble for me
an' my bidness partners.
Mary
stands, and strides angrily across the office. She stands in front
of Sam's desk, her eyes flashing with anger. She bites her lip and
takes a deep breath to control her temper, but speaks with heat in
her voice.
MARY
Sam Wendell, you may own
this-here business, an' you may have us locked into an iron-clad
contract. But, that don't give you no license to insult me with
lies. You know--as sure as I'm standing here you should know--that
what you're saying is just not true.
You sent me on that job, and I
was supposed to be working on that machine. And, if your
'bidness partner' doesn't know that the guards have been taken off
those machines ... that the safety switches don't work right--he
should know it!
(Speaks with restrained fury.)
Don't you dare call me a
tattle-tale cry-baby, Sam Wendell. I'm a grown woman, I've got my
honor, and I hold up my side of a contract, Mister
Wendell!. The doctor at the emergency room asked how I got hurt, and
the Union Steward told him the truth. If your business is so shady
that you can't handle a little bit of truth every now and then, maybe
you should take a good look in the mirror, Sam Wendell.
(Stands, in magnificent rage,
in front of Sam's desk, and speaks coldly, precisely, defiantly.)
I am not a whore. Don't you
ever say that about any decent woman!
Sam
leans back in his desk chair, apparently unmoved by Mary's outburst. He
sighs with worldly tolerance, and casually shakes another
cigarette out, tamps it on the desk, and lights it with seeming
nonchalance. He waits, smoking calmly, not speaking until a faint
shadow of uncertainty flits across Mary's face.
SAM
(In an oily voice.)
So, the kitten has claws ...
(Pause.)
You want to work, do you?
MARY
(Patiently.)
We've been here at five-thirty
every morning for the past three weeks, ready to work. And, you
haven't sent us on one single job, not even one of us, for the past
three weeks. We come here because we want to work. That's what your
business is, isn't it? Sending people out to work?
We're hard workers, and you
know it. I'm sure that nobody's ever complained to you about our
work--we do a good job. I'm sure of that!
I don't know what you're
trying to do to us, Mister Wendell, but it's just not fair to
us--making us sign a six-month contract to work for nobody but
you--and then not letting us go to work.
SAM
(Sarcastically.)
So, now you think you know how
to run my business, huh, kid?
(Stands up, in apparent anger,
and leans over the desk toward Mary. His words are low, even, and
knife-edged.)
It's time you grew up and found
out what the real world is about, Mary. It ain't a fair place, and
never has been. We don't live in no Disneyland, cotton-candy
fairy-tale, and I damn' well don't have no time for snot-nosed kids
who come into my office and try to insult me.
(Spits his words out, from
between clenched teeth.)
Quit jacking around, and make
up your mind, bitch.
(Pauses, and then takes a step
closer to Mary. He speaks with oily condescension, underlaid with
anger.)
Do you want to make a deal,
sweetheart? Just how bad do you want to work?
Mary
steps back slightly as Sam edges toward her. She looks at Sam with
puzzlement, and then with a dawning realization of shock and fear. Sam
reaches out to put his arm around Mary's shoulder, and she takes
another step backwards. Sam towers over Mary, leering into her face.
Mary unobtrusively and slowly reaches into her black vinyl handbag,
which is slung over her left shoulder, with her good hand.
SAM
It's up to you, Mary. I
can
put all three of you to work: good clean jobs, good pay. I can call
your landlord and have him extend your rent. I can even get your
boyfriend a steady welding job, with lots of overtime.
(He reaches out, and tilts
Mary's chin up toward him with his index finger.)
Or, I can freeze you out. I
will call Max and have him evict you this afternoon. You're
nothing, Mary, nothing--just a dirty little knocked-up whore with a
pretty face. I can put the word out, and none of you will ever
work in this town again. Is that what you want?
(Sam puts his right hand on
Mary's shoulder, and starts pushing her back toward the couch. With
his left hand, he unbuckles his flashy belt buckle, and starts
fumbling with his pants.)
It's up to you, bitch. I don't
know why I bother with a stinking little cunt like you, but I can do
you a favor ...
As
Sam starts pushing her, Mary extracts a .22 caliber pistol from her
vinyl handbag, and unobtrusively cocks it. She steps back quickly,
so that she stands out of Sam's reach, pointing the pistol with
determination at his chest.
MARY
Get away from me, Sam.
(She motions slightly with the
pistol, as Sam backs away from her.)
Sit back at that desk, and put
both your hands on the top of the desk, where I can see them.
Sam
complies, looking at Mary with disbelief.
SAM
Hey, sweetheart. You
don't
know what you're doing with that gun, do you?
(He searches Mary's face, and
then talks almost involuntarily.)
You'd better put that gun away,
kid. ... Hurry up, before you get hurt. ... If you give me that gun
now, I'll forget you ever pulled it on me.
Mary
continues to stand in front of the desk, pointing the pistol steadily
at Sam's chest.
SAM
(Half-pleading,
half-threatening.)
Listen to me, Mary! Put that
gun away--now! If you don't behave yourself, you're really going to
have some trouble on your hands. Do you want me to call Max ...
A
jet airplane roars overhead, drowning out the rest of Sam's words. Sam
seems to make a quick decision, and starts to stand up. While
the noise of the plane fills the office, rattling the windows, Mary
fires the pistol, once, at Sam. A puff of smoke comes out of the
gun, and her hand recoils, but the sound of the shot cannot be heard
above the roar of the jet. Sam slumps back into the chair behind the
desk.
As
the sound begins to abate, Mary looks at Sam with shock. She
hesitates a moment, then almost automatically replaces the pistol in
her purse. She glances around the office, nearly in panic, and then
runs to the door and looks out into the empty hallway. Quickly, she
closes the office door behind her, and runs down the hallway, and
through a door marked "EXIT" at the far end. As the door
swings open, the dirty snow of the alley is visible, littered with
trash, empty beer cans, and broken bottles. As the door closes, Mary
can be seen turning toward the front of the building, running.
The
camera lingers for a moment on the empty hallway.
FADE
back into the scene in the church. Dave is writing with intense
determination in his notebook, which is three-quarters filled. Trish
is struggling to keep awake.
The
pile of books for fire-fodder has been diminished by three hymnals
from the bottom of the stack, and the supply of pew-wood is nearly
half gone. The fire burns low, and Dave stops his writing to scrape
the embers together with a pew-stick. He looks critically at the
pile of books. He rubs his hands, which are red with cold, together
in a nearly futile attempt to warm them, and then, with a look of
pain, rifles the pages of the Merck Manual and another hymnal, and
carefully adds them to the fire, along with a handful of pew-sticks.
Dave
pours a cup of coffee from the thermos, and looks around him. Eve is
sitting, slumped, wrapped in a worn blanket. The fire flickers into
brightness as it catches on the pew-sticks, and illuminates Eve's
face: her eyes are closed, her wrinkled cheeks are sunken with
hunger, and her skin has the thin parchment-like quality of the
fragile elderly.
DAVE
Trish, can I use the
blanket
you're sitting on?
TRISH
Sure.
Trish
gives him the blanket, moving with the stiffness of one who has been
sitting for too long in one position, and then sits on the piece of
cardboard that Dave hands her. Dave stands to shake the blanket out,
then tenderly wraps the old woman with it, covering her head and
tucking the blanket securely under her face. Eve opens her eyes with
surprising alertness.
EVE
Thank you, my boy.
DAVE
Uh-hunh.
Eve
closes her eyes again, and sits nearly motionless. It is not clear
whether she is asleep or awake.
Dave
walks into the blackness beyond the fire. The sound of wood paneling
being torn from the walls can be heard, followed by the snap of wood
being broken over his knee. Dave returns to the fire with an armful
of cherry-wood paneling pieces, decades of polishing by the faithful
rendering them still lustrous in the firelight. He sets the wood
down by the pew-sticks, and carefully adds four pieces to the fire.
Trish looks drowsily at Dave, then curls into a fetal position on the
cardboard, and, using the back-pack as a pillow, quickly falls
asleep.
Dave
sits back down, jack-knifing his long legs like a heron settling on
the nest. He picks up his coffee-cup, looks at, and sets it down
again.
DAVE
Does anyone want some
more
coffee? ... 'Lil? ... Mary?
Mary
shakes her head, but 'Lil hands him a paper coffee-cup. Dave fills
it, and stirs a packet of sugar into it before handing it back. He
looks at the package of cookies--there is one left. He offers it to
'Lil, who declines, and then to Mary, who takes a bite carefully and
thoughtfully, then breaks the cookie in half and hands half to her
mother. The two eat in silence, savoring the cookie with restrained
hunger. Dave writes in his notebook, pauses, talking unintelligibly
to himself for a moment, and then continues writing.
CUT
to a close-up of Mary, whose smudged face is ashen with fatigue and
cold, then pulls back slowly. The fire crackles as the flames
establish themselves on the paneling. There is a long moment of
silence, broken only by the hum of the city beyond the walls of the
church, and the rustle of paper as Dave turns a page in his notebook.
MARY
(With slight
hesitation.)
Well, Perfesser Dave, that is
all I have to say for now. I take responsibility for what I've done.
DAVE
Hmmm.
'Lil
puts her arm around Mary, and draws the girl close to her,
wordlessly. As Mary relaxes, 'Lil cradles her against her bosom. In
a few moments, Mary slumps into exhausted sleep, and 'Lil eases
Mary's head and shoulders gently into her lap. 'Lil sips her coffee
with her left hand, and gently embraces the daughter sleeping on her
lap with her right arm.
'LIL
(Speaking softly, as
though
musing to herself, although with her eyes she speaks directly to
Dave.)
There it is!--
... You play beside a death-bed
like a child,
Yet measure to yourself a
prophet's place
To teach the living. ... You
generalise ...
So sympathetic to the personal
pang,
Close on each separate
knife-stroke, yielding up
A whole life at each wound,
incapable
of deepening, widening a large
lap of life
To hold the world-full woe. The
human race
To you means, such a child, or
such a man,
You saw one morning waiting in
the cold,
Beside that gate, perhaps. You
gather up
A few such cases, and, when
strong, sometimes
Will write of factories and of
slaves, as if
Your father were a negro, and
your son
A spinner in the mills. All's
yours and you, —
All, colored with your blood,
or otherwise
Just nothing to you. Why, I
call you hard
To general suffering. Here's
the world half blind
With intellectual light, half
brutalised
With civilisation, ...i
Dave
looks at 'Lil with surprise. 'Lil smiles gently, but ironically.
'LIL
(continues.)
... –does one of you
Stand still from dancing, stop
from stringing pearls,
And pine and die, because of
the great sum
Of
universal anguish? ...
You cannot count,
That you should weep for this
account, not you!
You weep for what you know. A
red-haired child
Sick in a fever, if you touch
him once,
Though but so little as with a
finger-tip,
Will set you weeping, but a
million sick . . .
You could as soon weep for the
rule of three,
Or compound fractions. Therefore,
this same world
Uncomprehended by you, must
remain
Uninfluenced by you. ...ii
(Long pause. 'Lil watches
Dave out of the corners of her eyes, notes his surprise, and
continues in an explanatory tone.)
That's part of a poem, Aurora
Leigh, that Elizabeth Barrett Browning published in 1856.
(Pause.)
That was more than a hundred
and forty years ago. Do you 'generalise, so sympathetic to the
personal pang,' Dave?
(Musingly, softly, almost to
herself.)
'I call you hard, to general
suffering...' Or, do I speak, a sliver of a small story ... 'waiting
in the cold,' for translation across class borders ... smuggled
half-heard, into academe?
(Speaks toward the fire.)
Who was here (gesturing to
indicate her present space) in 1856?
'Lil
falls silent, and finishes her coffee. Mary moans in her sleep, and
'Lil caresses her, tenderly. In the background, a man is racked with
coughs, and the newspapers beneath which he is sleeping rustle as he
convulses in his coughing fit. Another man calls out something
unintelligible in his sleep. Dave starts to speak, but 'Lil cuts him
off.
'LIL
(With an enigmatic but
piercing glance at Dave; speaks with a very heavy rural Black
southern accent.)
Wha' tya fi'n ta do wid
all dem-dere note, suh?
Dave
looks confused and somewhat nonplussed, and hesitates, not speaking.
'LIL
Seriously, Dave, why are
sitting here in this cold wreck of a building with your girlfriend? Why
are you spending your nights with us dregs of society, writing in
your notebook?
DAVE
I'm a graduate student
in
anthropology, and I'm working on my Ph.D. thesis. I'm doing my
fieldwork with homeless people in Minneapolis.
'LIL
(Laughing.)
Well, I suppose we qualify ...
we've been homeless since noon, yesterday.
(Pause.)
I won't tempt fortune by saying
we've hit rock bottom, but we've had some tough times, lately. ...
DAVE
(Resumes writing with an
expression of relief, his face gradually resuming his
anthropologist's listener-expression.)
Mmmm.
(Pause.)
It sounds like that Sam Wendell
wasn't an easy guy to work for.
'LIL
(Somewhat sharply.)
One might say that A-1 Daily
Labor has been exploiting people, helping us work ourselves deeper
into poverty.
DAVE
Even before Willy
Steele, and
then your daughter Mary, told me their stories tonight, I'd heard
some things about Sam Wendell from other folks.
'LIL
Hmmm.
(Pause.)
What do you think about those
stories?
DAVE
(Slowly, pausing to
choose his
words.)
I'd say that narratives are
always partial--that truth can be many-sided.
'LIL
And?
DAVE
When I was a first-year
grad
student, one of my professors had us watch the movie, Rashomon.
(Pause.)
I think of my old Prof when I
hear stories told differently, from different points of view.
(Pause, waits for 'Lil to
speak, but she holds her silence.)
He might feel as if I'd learned
something, if he were to hear me tell you that there is no single
"authentic voice," and no unimpeachable authority.
'LIL
(Laughing.)
So here you sit, chilly even in
your expensive down coat and your long-johns, writing through the
night as your fingers grow numb with cold. Like a priest at the
gates of Kyoto, eh? ... but your sacrament is words.
(Chuckles softly, perhaps with
a trace of wickedness.)
Was that a confession you heard
from Willy Steele, in this ruined citadel at Heaven's gate, Father
Dave?
Dave
hems and haws with some embarrassment, but says nothing.
'LIL
(Speaks in a
conciliatory
tone, with a barely perceptible trace of irony.)
Listen, then, and I'll tell you
another 'partial truth.'
(Rests her hand on Mary's
shoulder with fierce protectiveness.)
My daughter Mary has carried a
too-heavy load for many months. She is a strong girl, she who loves
so fiercely.
(Looks at Dave in piercing
assessment.)
I believe you when you say you
will not betray her, but she needlessly takes blame that is not hers. I
will tell you my story, and yet again set your record straight.
CUT
to Dave, fatigued but writing valiantly, then cuts back to 'Lil, her
face enigmatic in the firelight. The cinematographic style of 'Lil's
story: shot with slightly longer focal-lengths, slightly tighter
croppings—on the average, revealing less of the background. The
camera angle is, on the average, slightly higher than with Mary's
story. The camera lingers on 'Lil as she speaks, with fewer cutaway
shots and changes of camera angle.
'LIL
Our story begins a long,
long
time ago, uncounted generations before my father's father was born,
but that part of it is not mine to tell.
(A siren screams through the
not-so-distant night.)
It's getting late. I will
begin, not at the beginning, but at the nexus of your narrative.
Mary's arm was crushed on the
evening of December twelfth. She had been working double-shifts at
Apache, stamping toy-parts like the heroine of an early twentieth
century Fordist time-and-motion study. Sam Wendell probably
collected overtime pay for her ... but even though he just paid her
the minimum wage, she said she was happy to be able to work the extra
hours. She said, 'Momma, I want to be able to give Dad a headstone
for Christmas,' and so I didn't try to stop her from working all
those hours.
I don't know why the folks at
Apache took the belt-guards off their machines. Maybe they fell off,
and those stamping machines were too old for them to get stock
replacement parts. ... Anyway, her arm was crushed.
Day-laborers are hired out as
contract laborers, so she wasn't covered by Worker's Comp ... There
aren't any benefits like medical insurance at A-1, and in the fine
print at the bottom of our contracts, there's a waiver releasing both
A-1 and the companies they sell our labor to, from any responsibility
for us.
The Union Steward who took
Mary to the emergency room, he badgered the doctors into giving Mary
proper treatment for her arm. 'If you don't treat this young woman,
and treat her right,' he said, 'then your Hippocratic Oath is a
hollow farce.' He told the doctors, 'This woman has her life ahead
of her. Give her the best you've got, or the only oath that will be
left in your profession is the one you'll hear as I damn you as
hypocrites.' I don't know what would have happened to Mary without
that Union Steward--maybe they would have amputated her arm.
I'm grateful that he stood up
for Mary. Her arm's healing, and she'll be able to use it again. But,
the hospital billed Apache for the emergency medical care,
Apache sent the bill to A-1, and Sam Wendell blacklisted us. 'We
don't hire finks and snitches,' he told Joe, that Monday when we came
to work. We didn't want to tell Mary, she was hurting badly enough
already, and at first we thought that Mary was the only one he wasn't
going to send out.
When Sam Wendell said, 'I'll
blacklist you,' he meant it. I don't know how he did it, but he had
his tentacles all over town. Joe pounded the pavement for three
weeks, looking for welding jobs. He's a good welder, and several
times, he left an interview certain that he had landed a job. Then,
he'd call back, and every time, someone would tell him, 'I'm sorry,
but there was an unexpected downsizing, and we're filling that
position from inside,' or, 'We're sorry, but we've already hired
someone else.'
By yesterday, we were in a
tough position. The landlord was threatening to evict us if we
didn't have the rent paid, 'before noon tomorrow,' he told my mom on
Thursday. When he said, 'evict,' I thought he meant 'initiate legal
eviction proceedings' in court—I had no inkling that he'd force my
mother out onto the street when it was twenty degrees below zero. We'd
paid a full month's rent on December first. I was shocked when
we came back to the apartment, and found Eve sitting there on the
sidewalk along Oakland Avenue, shivering next to a small pile of our
belongings. And, that landlord had the chutzpa to say to my mother,
'I'm doing you a favor, old lady, letting you make a second trip into
the apartment.' He told her, 'Don't ever say I wasn't decent to an
old lady, what with me letting you come back into an apartment you're
legally evicted from.'
On Friday morning, Sam was
toying with us like a cat with a mouse. We'd been sitting, waiting,
for an hour and a half, watching almost everybody around us get
called for jobs. A person can read Mary's face like an open book,
and I'm pretty sure Sam knew she was hungry as she sat there, with
the room at the slave market emptying around her. A little after
seven, he looked right at Mary as he called out, 'I'm looking for two
maids to work all weekend at the Convention Center.' Mary started to
get up, and I got caught up in her hopeful enthusiasm. Sam waited
until we'd stood up, and then he stuck the knife in, and he twisted
it. He called up two worn-out streetwalkers who just barely sober
enough to walk ...
DISSOLVE
to the waiting room at A-1 Daily Labor. The clock on the wall reads
7:10, and the calendar indicates that it's Friday, January 3, 1997.
Mary and 'Lil are standing, with Mary looking elated that she will
finally go back to work. Sam smirks, and then looks at two drunken
women, wearing heavy make-up and suggestive clothing.
SAM
I'm looking at you,
Doris. How'd
you and your partner there like to go to work at the Convention
Center this weekend?
The
two women get up unsteadily, and Doris tucks a nearly-empty pint
bottle of vodka into her purse before they half-stagger to the
counter. Mary and 'Lil sit back down, Mary with a slightly
humiliated expression on her face.
The
action at A-1 continues, with 'Lil's narration as a voice-over. Doris
and her companion get their working papers from Sam at the
counter, and go out the door. Two older men, who look as though they
have slept in their clothes for a week, are sitting in the row of
chairs in front of 'Lil and Mary. They pass a bottle, drinking
heartily, sit for a moment longer, then get up and leave through the
front door.
Sam
glances at his papers, and then shouts out. Joe, who looks neatly
dressed despite the grease on his jeans, stands up eagerly and starts
walking toward the counter. Sam waits until Joe has nearly
approached the counter, and then shakes his head in disgust. He
looks at Mac, a heavyset older man, whose clothes are wrinkled and in
disarray, and whose hands tremble. Mac heaves himself to his feet,
and walks unsteadily toward the counter. Joe, looking humiliated,
heads back to his seat.
'LIL
(Voice-over for the
scene at
A-1 Daily Labor)
Sam, when he wants to let you
know who's boss, he doesn't take any partial measures. Apart from
the three of us, there were just a few old drunks left in the waiting
room. He waited until Mary and I sat back down, and then he went
after Joe's pride. He shouted out, 'I just got a call for a
top-notch welder at Dick's plumbing.' Then, he just stood there
without saying anything, until Joe got up and started walking toward
the counter. Sam looked Joe right in the eye, and shook his head
like Joe was a fool to think he could weld. Joe's a hard worker and
a first-rate, journeyman, welder.
Then, as if we hadn't already
gotten his message that we were blacklisted, Sam calls out, 'Hey,
Mac, you're the ace welder I'm looking for.' Mac may have been one
of the best welders in his day, but he lost his steady hand to the
bottle, years ago. I don't know what kind of spite's motivating Sam
to pick on Joe.
DISSOLVE
to A-1 at 8:00 in the morning. The room is nearly empty. The camera
surveys the room, and 'Lil's voice-over narration continues. There
is a litter of coffee-cups and discarded newspapers, scattered over
the chairs and strewn across the dirty floor. Sam looks out across
the room, making eye contact with 'Lil. He then puts his papers down
with a decisive gesture, and leans on the counter with both hands. He
stares, almost a glower, at Mary, 'Lil and Joe, and then addresses
the empty room at large.
Mary
turns toward Sam and locks eyes with him. 'Lil reaches toward Mary,
and talks to her, but Mary shakes her head defiantly. Joe touches
Mary on the shoulder, and says something to her, but Mary ignores
him. She walks, with head erect and shoulders straight, toward the
front counter. Standing bravely, she faces Sam across the counter,
and says something to him. Sam gives a curt response, and strides
angrily off, through the door to the back hallway. Mary hesitates a
moment, and then follows him.
'Lil
stands, watching as Mary disappears through the door to the back, and
then, a few seconds later, follows her. The camera lingers on the
empty space behind the counter, and the door beyond, for a few beats.
'LIL
(Voice-over
narration)
Sam kept us dangling until
eight o'clock in the morning. By that time, even most of the drunks
who come into the Daily Labor office just to socialize, warm up, or
maybe get a cup of coffee, had left. I suppose if we'd had half as
much sense as some of those chronic inebriates, we'd have left,
too--but we were really hurting. Sam knew how badly we needed to
work, I think, and played us hook, line and sinker.
A few minutes after eight, he
set down his work orders, and looked straight at us. Then, he
shouted to the whole room, as if we weren't even there. 'Alright,
folks, that's it for today,' Sam said. Then he looked at Mary in the
eyes, and called out, 'There's no work for anybody in here, so clear
out. This ain't no cocktail lounge.' My Mary's got a lot of pride,
maybe too much pride. She's also got a temper--she's slow to anger,
but if somebody crosses her, she won't forget about it. When Sam
looked at Mary like that, and then called out to the whole room,
'There's no work for anybody that's in here now,' I think Mary took
what he said as her personal responsibility. Her patience snapped.
I tried to talk to Mary, to
tell her that there was nothing she could do, and that it wasn't her
fault. 'Just let it go,' I said to her, 'it can't be helped.' But,
she started off toward where Sam was standing like she didn't even
hear me. Joe tried to stop her, too. 'It's going to be alright,
Mary,' he told her. 'We're better off working someplace else,
anyway,' Joe said. But, Mary just kept going, right up to the front
of the room to have it out with Sam. She hadn't eaten in two days--I
just know she gave what little she got to eat yesterday to her
grandmother. She's always been strong-willed, and since she's been
pregnant, she's had a steel core. Mary's usually a soft-spoken young
woman, and I think Sam underestimated her.
I couldn't hear what Mary said
to Sam across the room, but Sam answered her in an angry, loud voice.
'I'll see you in the back office,' he told her, then turned on his
heel and stalked back there. Mary hesitated just a moment, and I was
hoping that she'd decide to let it go, and just walk away. But, Sam
had been pushing her hard, goading her. This morning, she told me,
'I've had about all I can take from that Sam Wendell.' Mary followed
Sam into the back office.
I waited about fifteen
seconds, and then I thought that Mary might need my help, so I went
into the back office, too. The door to Sam's office was closed, but
the janitor's closet next to it was unlocked. The walls in those old
buildings are thin, and I thought, 'I can listen through the wall,
and if Mary needs help, I'll be there for her.' I hid in the
janitor's closet.
CUT
to 'Lil, inside the janitor's closet, standing amid a clutter of
mops, brooms, pails and office flotsam. There is a bare light bulb
over a large cast-iron janitor's sink to the right rear of the scene,
backlighting 'Lil. She has the bottom of a paint-spattered drinking
glass pressed against the wall, and she is listening intently, with
her ear to the top of the glass. Her facial expressions and posture
are in dynamic reaction to what she is hearing. The voices from the
next room are clearly audible, although slightly muffled.
The
dialogue from Sam's office is interwoven with 'Lil's voice-over.
MARY'S
VOICE
... My mom, Joe and I
are hard
workers, reliable and steady. We've done our best on every single
job you've sent us out on. Our supervisors have liked us, and more
than once we've been told that if it wasn't for how you've got your
contract written up, we'd have a permanent job.
We've never complained about
the work, but the way you've been treating us just isn't fair, Mr.
Wendell. It isn't right to make us sign a six-month exclusive
contract, and then have us sit, doing nothing, while you've got jobs
you're not filling. It's been three weeks, since you've sent any one
of us out on a job.
(Her voice slightly sharper.)
What's the problem, Mr.
Wendell? Why ...
A
jet plane roars overhead, drowning out the rest of Mary's words.
SAM'S
VOICE
(With cloying
smoothness.)
I don't know why you think
there's any kind of problem, Mary. The temp-labor market fluctuates,
and sometimes there's jobs, and sometimes there ain't. For the past
couple a' weeks, there just ain't been all that many jobs ... at any
rate none that was the right ones to send you folks out on. I got a
lot of people depending on me for jobs, and I can't be sending the
same few people to work every day. Share and share alike, that's
what I call fair.
(Pauses.)
'LIL
(Voice-over.)
That Sam, he was a slick
operator. I listened to him telling Mary that there wasn't any
problem, that it was just a matter of market fluctuations. Putting
people off their guard--Sam was an expert at that. I listened to him
pouring on the snake-oil, and I was just waiting for him to start
making his moves. It didn't take him long. 'You're such a pretty
young girl,' he told Mary, and he was flattering her just to knock
her down. 'But,' he told her, 'you don't know a damn' thing about
how the real world works.' Then, he started moving in on her. 'I'm
a busy man, kid,' he told Mary. 'I've got a business to run, and
you're wasting my time.' Then, he said it, with insinuation dripping
from his voice. 'Why did you come in here, Mary? Do you have a
proposal to make, or not? If you've come to deal, let's deal.
Otherwise, get out.'
I stood in that closet, and
just listening tore my heart out. But, I said to myself, 'Mary's a
grown-up woman, now, and there are more than enough sleazy operators
like Sam in the world. It's better,' I told myself, 'to let her
stand up for herself now, with me close by to help her if she needs
it, than to come running in like an interfering momma, and wound her
pride.' So I listened and waited.
MARY'S
VOICE
... We need to work, and
you
know we're hard workers. We have to work, sir. We've got bills to
pay, and you haven't sent any of us out on a job since I got hurt.
SAM'S
VOICE
What do you want me to
do, call
your landlord and plead with him? Should I tell him that you're in
my office, wasting my time, crying about your rent?
(Pause.)
You'd better watch what you
say, Mary. I can call up the landlord and tell him that you and your
family are no-good deadbeats, that you're not working and aren't
going to pay your rent, and that he might as well evict you today. Max
is an old buddy of mine, Mary. Is that what you want me to do?
(Pause.)
It's up to you, Mary. I'm
willing to make the right kind of deal.
MARY'S
VOICE
I'm asking for honest
work, to
make a decent living. That's all I want, sir.
'LIL
(Voice-over.)
I could hear Sam's saccharine
voice, as he cussed my daughter out for getting hurt. He called her
a 'cry-baby tattle-tale,' blaming Mary for the trouble that
OSHA's started giving him for unsafe labor conditions. That's
something that I, even after all the years that I've lived, I find
unbelievable. How can anyone in their right mind force people into
oppressive situations, and then blame the very people that they're
hurting, for being hurt?
(With a voice shaking with
indignation.)
And then, he called my daughter
a whore! I almost ran into his office then and there, but I said to
myself, 'Wait, she can handle it.'
(With pride.)
And, Mary did handle him. She
stood right up to Sam Wendell, and told him to 'take a good look in
the mirror.' She talked to him face-to-face, straight across, and
believed in her own value as a woman. She said to him, 'I am not a
whore,' and 'don't you ever say that about any decent woman.' She
brought Sam right back to the issue, and told him, 'We've been
sitting here at five-thirty every morning because we want to work.
That's what your business is, isn't it--sending people to work?'
But then, Sam really started
putting the squeeze on Mary. ...
SAM'S
VOICE
It's up to you, Mary. I
can
put all three of you to work. You'll get good work, clean jobs, good
pay. I can call your landlord and have him wait for your rent. I'll
even get your boyfriend a steady welding job, Union pay, with lots
of overtime.
Or, I can freeze you out. If
you don't have anything to offer me, I will call Max and have him
evict you this afternoon. It's up to you, Mary. I can put the word
out, and none of you will ever work in this town again. Is that what
you want?
'LIL
(Voice-over.)
I could feel Sam, trying to put
his filthy hands on my daughter, and I could hear her screaming, in
her mind. I couldn't wait any longer. I told myself, I'll just walk
into Sam's office acting like I have business there, and that way
I'll save Mary's pride as well as her honor.
'Lil
goes to the door of the janitor's closet, and opens the door slowly,
just a crack. She stands, frozen, for about a minute, waiting,
tensely. A jet airplane roars overhead, the sound rising into a
bone-jarring crescendo that endures for a seeming eternity (but is
actually about twenty seconds), then the noise gradually abates. As
the sound recedes, 'Lil presses her ear to the sliver of an opening,
and apparently hears nothing.
'LIL
(Continues voice-over.)
But, when I opened the door, I
could hear voices in the hall. A drunken old man was arguing with a
secretary. 'I've got business with S'Wendell,' he told her. The
secretary told him that he could wait in the waiting room. 'I've
been waiting in that god-damn waiting room for three days,' the old
man said. 'I'm just as good as the next person, and I'll wait right
here.'
I wish now, that I would have
had the courage to just walk out into the hallway, and say something
like, 'oops, wrong room,' then walk into Sam's office. But, that's
twenty-twenty hindsight. I waited, listening, and then another jet
airplane flew over. They were taking off over South Minneapolis,
that morning, and they were flying low.
(Pauses, as the roar of the
jet obscures all other sound.)
After the jet had passed, there
was nothing but silence in the hallway.
'Lil
exits the janitor closet, running. CUT to a view of the
hallway outside of Sam's office. The "EXIT" door at the
end of the hallway clicks shut, just as 'Lil runs, urgently, to Sam's
doorway. She thrusts open the door, and storms in, without
hesitation, apparently heedless of any possible danger to herself.
CUT
to an interior shot of Sam's office. Sam is sitting, slouched over,
on the chair behind his desk. His belt-buckle is unfastened, and his
pants are half-unzipped. His gravy-stained, loud paisley tie is
askew. His hair is mussed, and his eyes are closed. 'Lil looks at
Sam critically, and then closes his office door. She returns to
stand, with a mixture of fury and frantic concern, at the side of
Sam's desk, confronting Sam.
'LIL
Sam Wendell, what
did you do
to my daughter?
(Urgently.)
Where is she? ... Wake up, you
bastard, and tell me the truth. What did you do to my daughter?
Sam
mumbles something incoherent, but neither opens his eyes nor responds
to 'Lil. She steps backward half a pace, and carefully extracts a
.22 caliber pistol from her inside jacket pocket. She pulls back the
hammer, cocking it, and aims it unwaveringly at Sam's chest.
'LIL
(Speaking with intense
force.)
Sam, wake up. Right now!
Sam
mumbles incoherently again. 'Lil, without her aim at Sam's chest
faltering, kicks Sam sharply in the shin. There is enough power in
her kick to move the chair backward, and it hits the wall with a
thud. Sam's eyes flutter open, and he looks at 'Lil with vague, hazy
comprehension.
'LIL
Sam Wendell, you've done
enough
damage to enough people to send you to hell six times over. If you
don't tell me what you did to my daughter, right now, I'm
going to kill you, and I'll give you a complimentary one-way ticket
to hell at your funeral. I'll dance at your funeral. I will dance
on your grave. Where is she?
Sam
laughs in an unfocussed sort of way, and then he jolts to awareness. He
stares at 'Lil, and his eyes move from the pistol to the woman
standing over him.
'LIL
Sam, do you know who I
am?
SAM
Yeah, you're 'Lil.
(Laughs
nervously.) That sexy little Mary's old-bitch mother.
'LIL
(With barely restrained
fury.)
I am going to kill you, Sam, if
you don't tell me what you did to my daughter. Do you understand
that?
SAM
Yeah. I'll tell you.
(Laughs
again.) But you ain't going to like it.
'LIL
Talk, Sam.
SAM
(Laughing scornfully.)
Make me. If you kill me,
you'll never know what happened to your daughter.
Holding
the pistol steadily in one hand, 'Lil gives Sam a lightening-fast
roundhouse with the other hand. Blood spatters from his nose, and
his glass eye pops out and rolls across the desk.
'LIL
Start talking, Sam. Where
is Mary?
SAM
(Chuckles sardonically,
as
blood runs down his face, and stains his shirt.)
She's gone, 'Lil. That hot
little knocked-up whore is gone, flew the coop, A-W-O-L. She went
bye-bye.
(With an affected British
accent.)
Tah-tah.
(Moves his hand to his
half-zipped pants, and chuckles again.)
That's one sizzling little baby
you've got there, Momma.
(Pauses.)
Too bad ... ain't never gonna
see her again. She's gone, Momma. She's gone.
(Singing.)
Gone, gone, gone.
'LIL
(With barely contained
fury.)
One last chance, Sam. I'm
serious about killing you, and then I'll spit on your grave. I'll
spit on it twice. Where is Mary?
SAM
(Laughing.)
Go ahead, kill me. That won't
bring Mary back. She's gone, and that's all you'll learn from me.
'LIL
You have ten seconds,
Sam. Talk!
Ten. ... Nine. ... Eight. ... Seven. ... Six. ... Five. ...
Four. ... Three. ... Two. ... One. ... Are you going to talk, Sam
Wendell?
(Looks at Sam. 'Lil berserk
with anger, beseeching, imploring, as though the through intensity of
her eyes alone, she could undo the events she fears has happened, and
resurrect her daughter unscathed. She speaks with a slightly
over-enunciated emphasis, so that each word hangs in the air,
palpably shimmering with her rage.)
Sam, I've called you a sleazy,
greedy, abusive, sadistic, parasitic mother-fucker to your back, and
I'll call you that to your face. You feed on the blood of the
poorest of the poor, drawing us into your web and draining us dry,
grinding our worn-out husks into the muck beneath your feet--and you
enjoy it. You send us, who have no political or economic power, who
are already worn-down from malnutrition and exhaustion, to do the
dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in town, and then you deny us
medical treatment if we get hurt. You blame us for the consequences
of your own oppression.
Sam, you send children and
debilitated old men to do jobs that any humane society would have
abolished the day after Charles Dickens published his first book.
Sweatshops. Hazardous chemicals. Toxic waste. You treat us as
social outcasts, maggots crawling through the offal beneath the seamy
underside of society. In your flush-toilet mind, you deny the
inseparable connection between this filth where you are rooted, and
the sparkling towers you call civilization.
You collect half our pay above
the table, "legally" according to laws written by some
porked-out politicians who never worked a day in their lives. You
extort half of the pittance that's left, as kickbacks, payola and
"fees." You make us crawl for your crumbs, declaring a
personal vendetta against anyone who has an iota self-respect. You
have blacklisted us, to keep us bound and gagged by your coercive
"exclusive contract."
You--whose wife sleeps in a
separate bedroom, and who vomits at the thought of intimacy with
you--you have the blind arrogance to try to force sexual favors from
almost every woman who works at A-1. Look in a mirror, Sam S.
Wendell, Junior, and maybe you're just smart enough to figure out why
the only women who accept your "sweetheart deals" and your
"favors" are burned-out hookers who are blind drunk at the
time. You sold your balls at pubescence, for thirty pieces of
silver-plated shit. You are a shabby imitation of the shadow of an
empty illusion of masculinity, and you don't have a clue what it
means to be a man.
You have overworked me, my
daughter, and my son-in-law. You exploited us, and then you tried to
starve us. I don't hold that against you personally, Sam—because
that is the nature of the cultural context that surrounds you. You
are a fool who has given up his spirit, to be a cog in a dehumanizing
machine. You have lost yourself, in pursuit of empty symbols.
But, if you touched a hair of
my daughter's head, Sam Wendell, for that I hold you personally
responsible.
(Pauses, gathering the force
of her rage for her final, crucial assault. She puts her face close
to his, and speaks as if the force of her words could wring the
answer from the recesses of his heart. She speaks urgently, and with
the raw power of womanhood known principally to mothers whose
children are endangered.)
Where is Mary, Sam? What have
you done to Mary?
SAM
(With detachment.)
Fuck you. I'm not going to
tell you what I did to your daughter. She's gone. Go ahead, kill
me, bitch.
Sam
starts laughing. 'Lil looks at him, and then at her pistol. Another
jet begins its climb over south Minneapolis, roaring to a crescendo
as it flies low overhead. Sam points his finger at 'Lil, and laughs
mockingly. 'Lil stares at him in disbelief. Sam mouths the words,
'Kill me.' 'Lil fires, point blank, into his heart, twice. The
sound of the gunshots is inaudible in the roar of the jet, but the
recoil of the pistol, twice, is clearly visible, as are two puffs of
smoke. Sam jerks with the impact of the bullets, and slumps over. 'Lil
spits in his face, then pockets the pistol and storms out of the
office. The hallway outside is empty. 'Lil, still buoyed by her
rage, walks to the door at the end of the hallway, the one marked
"EXIT," and leaves.
CUT
to the alleyway on the east side of A-1 Daily Labor. 'Lil is
disappearing at the south end of the alley, and turns west, along
Franklin Avenue. The scene continues with a montage series of 'Lil,
walking through the bitter cold and blowing snow, scouring the
streets of south Minneapolis for her daughter, querying passers-by
and street people, rousing drunks in doorways, buttonholing gang
toughs with impassioned urgency. As the montage progresses, the area
of wan brightness in the sky, from the winter sun behind the clouds,
moves from east to west. Occasionally, as is apparent from
body-language, she is given a clue, a snippet of news. As the series
progresses, she moves with a clearer sense of purpose and direction.
Finally, she is running, her frostbitten hand over her mouth in a
futile attempt to warm the frigid air. The moisture in her breath,
exhaled in the smooth heavy respiration of a person who is accustomed
to physical exertion, crystallizes on contact with the subzero air,
emphasized by interwoven backlit shots.
'Lil
turns the corner at Oakland and Franklin like a marathon runner
tapping his/her last reserves of energy for the final home stretch. Eve
is sitting on the snowbank next to the sidewalk, obviously very
cold, with a small pile of possessions at her feet. Mary is
standing, protectively, on the windward side of Eve. The pallid grey
light of overcast late afternoon illuminates them. There is a gritty
accumulation of subzero snow on their possessions, on Eve's coat and
scarf, and on Mary's dark blue stocking cap. 'Lil sprints down the
icy sidewalk, and embraces them.
The
soundtrack of the montage is a medley of winter city-sounds,
including the omnipresent sirens in mid-distance and twice, gunshots,
with voices audible but unintelligible. Throughout the morning, jets
continue to take off over south Minneapolis, occasionally visible,
flying low in the background and reverberating on the soundtrack.
As
'Lil turns corner at Oakland and Franklin, she is heard in a
voice-over.
'LIL
(Voice-over.)
I searched for my daughter
until I found her.
DISSOLVE
to the interior of the church. 'Lil and Dave are sitting by the
fire, their positions little changed, although circles of fatigue are
darkening under Dave's eyes. Mary is still sleeping in 'Lil's lap. Eve
remains wrapped in Trish's blanket, and it is still unclear
whether she is awake with her eyes closed, or asleep while sitting.
More
than half of the cherry-wood paneling brought by Dave to the fire has
been burned--as have several more books from the stack of hymnals and
Bibles. Dave is writing in a new notebook, about a third used, his
filled old one leaning against his backpack, by Trish's head. He
writes rapidly, but it seems as though his hand has cramped, and
moves across the page with pain. There is a package of rollings on
the floor by 'Lil's feet, and as Dave continues to write, she
expertly rolls a cigarette with one hand, and lights it with a stick
from the fire. She makes a small, token, gesture offering to share
it with Dave, who glances at her, shakes his head slightly and keeps
writing. 'Lil smokes the cigarette in silence, contemplatively, down
to a quarter-inch nubbin which she holds between her thumb and index
finger. For a barely perceptible moment, she holds the spent
cigarette butt out, perhaps in offering, and then tosses it into the
center of the fire.
'LIL
(Speaking
to the fire.)
The world . . . look round . .
.
The world, we're come to late,
is swollen hard
With perished generations and
their sins:
The civiliser's spade grinds
horribly
On dead men's bones, and cannot
turn up soil
That's otherwise than fetid. All
success
Proves partial failure; all
advance implies
What's left behind; all
triumph, something crushed
At the chariot-wheels; all
government, some wrong:
And rich men make the poor, who
curse the rich,
Who agonise together, rich and
poor,
Under and over, in the social
spasm
And crisis of the ages. Here's
an age,
That makes its own vocation!
here, we have stepped
Across the bounds of time!
here's nought to see ...
(Pauses.)
... Who,
Being
... human, can stand calmly by
And view these things, and
never tease his soul
For some great cure? No physic
for this grief,
In all the earth and heavens
too?iii
Dave
looks up at 'Lil, with patience worn thin by cold, fatigue, and
perhaps an unsettling suspicion that 'Lil is playing with him.
DAVE
(With a trace of
irritation.)
I'm doing the best I can ...
and my work is not without deeper social significance.
'LIL
(In an apologetic tone.)
I know.
They
sit in silence broken only by the background noises of the city, the
hissing of the fire, the coughing and snoring of the people sleeping
in the recesses of the sanctuary, and the scratching of pen across
paper, while Dave completes a page, turns the notebook over, and
writes another third of a page. He stops writing, and sets the
notebook on the floor, leaning it against his knees. He shakes his
thermos experimentally, uncaps it, and proffers it to 'Lil. She
holds out her paper cup, and he starts to fill it. When her cup is
half full, she stops him with a motion of her hand. He pours the
rest of the coffee into his thermos-cup, not quite filling it
halfway. The camera dollies back very slowly, as they sip their
coffee, lukewarm but still steaming in the cold of the church.
When
the frame of the image includes the door of the sanctuary, the camera
stops moving back, and holds: a beat, two beats ...
The
door of the sanctuary opens, and Joe walks in, peering desperately
into the recesses of the room as his eyes adjust to the darkness. He
looks carefully at the figures by the fire, and a glimmer of hope
crosses his face. He closes the door behind him, and walks toward
the fire, hesitantly, as though afraid that the familiar-seeming
figures may turn out to be only a mirage.
'Lil
turns toward him.
'LIL
Joe!
Joy
suffuses Joe's face. He crosses the remaining distance to the fire
quickly, and squats by 'Lil. He examines Mary, still sleeping in
'Lil's lap, with deep concern. The tops of the shoulders of Joe's
jacket and his cap are caked with snow, there are crystals of snow
embedded in his eyebrows, and there are patches of near-frostbite on
his cheeks.
'LIL
She's just sleeping,
Joe. She's
alright. We're all OK.
Joe
glances at Dave and the sleeping Trish, and then looks back at 'Lil,
questioning her with his eyes.
'LIL
(Gesturing in
introduction.)
This is Dave--he's a student at
the University, but he's a real decent guy. And, his girlfriend
Trish.
(Another introductory
gesture.)
Dave, this is Joe, my
son-in-law, and the father of my soon-to-be grandchild.
(Very seriously.)
I'm sorry you had to look for
us, Joe. We had to get Mom out of the weather.
Joe
nods in acceptance of that reality.
DAVE
(With courtesy.)
Please have a seat, Joe. No,
wait, I'll get you a piece of cardboard.
Dave
carefully leans his notebook on the one resting against his
back-pack. He unfolds his lanky frame, stiff from having sat so
long. He disappears off-camera, and returns in a few moments with a
piece of fairly clean cardboard, as well as another armful of broken
pieces of pew-wood. He hands the cardboard to Joe, who sits down,
and adds the pew-wood to the pile intended for the fire. Dave then
de-articulates his long legs, creaking back down into a sitting
position.
He
picks up his thermos and half-shakes it briefly, almost as though he
has hopes that it can re-generate coffee. He then takes a clean
handkerchief out of his pocket, and wipes the rim of his coffee-cup,
which still contains almost half a cup of coffee. He offers the cup
to Joe. Joe's momentary hesitation in accepting the cup seems to
come only from courtesy, from trying not to seem too eager.
JOE
Thanks ... Dave.
Joe
sips the coffee, savoring it. 'Lil rolls two more cigarettes, and
hands one to Joe, who lights it from the fire. 'Lil lights her own
cigarette, and the two smoke in silence. Dave picks up his notebook
again, and makes a slight motion as though preparing to speak, but
then decides to wait. In a moment, he adds several sticks of wood to
the fire, and, with only a split second's hesitation, a fleeting look
of pain across his face and a slight resigned shrug of his shoulders,
he adds two Bibles to the fire, ruffling their pages in emulation of
Tillie. Joe, with a nod of acknowledgement to Dave, sets his
coffee-cup down and holds his hands to the fire, turning them as they
warm. Steam rises from the sleeves of his jacket.
After
his hands have thawed, Joe picks up the coffee-up again, and drinks
it slowly and appreciatively. Joe glances, lingeringly, at Mary, as
if to reassure himself that she is truly there, that she has not been
hurt. Gradually, his posture relaxes.
'LIL
Dave and Trish are here
because
Dave's writing a book about homeless people. He says that he hopes,
by writing people's stories down, by putting them into a book for
educated people to read ... by publishing a book, that he can shame
the rich into acting more responsibly.
Joe's
nascent expression of scornful disbelief softens when he glances into
Dave's serious, sincere, exhausted face.
JOE
Well ... I guess we're
homeless.
(Pauses.)
We were working, daily labor,
and got blacklisted after my wife here got hurt on the job. We
couldn't get work ... we were three days late with the rent. We
were evicted yesterday.
'LIL
I
was telling Dave here, about S'Wendell.
Joe
looks at 'Lil in sharp surprise.
'LIL
He promises to not ever
reveal
our names. ... I think he means it.
(She surveys Dave's gangling
folded-up height with an amused smile.)
Anyway, if he ever betrayed
anybody, he'd be easy enough to find--even in a big crowd.
JOE
Mmmm.
(To 'Lil.)
How's your smokes?
'Lil
hands the package of rolling tobacco to Joe. He rolls a cigarette. 'Lil
looks at him, tenderly.
'LIL
Spin up some extra, if
you
want. It's cold outside, too cold to roll.
Joe
rolls three cigarettes, crimps the ends, and puts them in an empty
cigarette-pack he had in his jacket pocket. He then hefts the
package of rolling tobacco, assessing it.
'LIL
Go ahead. You could roll
me
one, too.
Joe
rolls two more cigarettes, adding one to the cigarette-pack and
replacing the pack in his pocket. He hands the rolling tobacco and
the second cigarette to 'Lil. She sets the tobacco package on the
cardboard beside her, and, selecting a stick from the fire, lights
her cigarette and then hands the stick to Joe. They smoke in silence
for a few moments. 'Lil glances at Dave, who is sitting, fatigued
and seeming almost shy, looking into the fire. His notebook is open
on his lap.
'LIL
Write, Dave, if that's
what you
want to do.
DAVE
(Almost inaudibly.)
Thanks, 'Lil.
Dave
resumes writing. 'Lil and Joe smoke in silence for a few moments
more.
JOE
(Beginning tentatively,
with a
sigh.)
I don't believe that S'Wendell
would really send Mac out on that welding job. Mac used to have the
touch--I've watched how he handles a rod. But, he shakes so much he
can't run an even bead.
(Pauses.)
Dick's sends quite a few job
orders to S'Wendell. I can't believe he'd risk that, even to spite
me.
(Pauses. Takes another drag
from his cigarette.)
Probably, there wasn't any
welding job at all.
Turns
to Dave.
Cinematographic
style of Joe's story: slightly wider-angle shots, on the average. The
camera height is an inch or so above eye height, on many shots. On a
few shots, the camera very slowly, almost imperceptibly, dollies
a few arcs around the circumference of a circle in which the subject
is the center. On inter-cuts, when the subject in the frame is not
Joe, the inter-cut is one frame shorter than might be expected. The
lighting is slightly more contrasty, and some shots have significant
edge-light highlights.
During
the first part of Joe's narrative, while he is in the church, there
are two illustrative vignettes, with Joe speaking in a voice-over.
These vignettes are one or two frames shorter than the rhythm of the
story would normally require. The vignettes may either dissolve from
Joe speaking, and dissolve back to Joe, or (it would be worth trying)
are shown as a process-shot background to Joe speaking, with slightly
muted color-saturation. It should be noted that these changes, as
with all of the cinematographic style changes throughout the movie,
are subtle, almost subliminal. They very slightly transform the feel
of the movie within each character's story, rather than being changes
in style which are noticeable to the average viewer.
In
Joe's story, as in the other stories, there are subtle changes in the
appearance of some of the main characters. Sam Wendell, when shown
in Joe's story, is a shade or two lighter in skin-tone than he has
been previously. Father John, the Indian priest at the Branch, who
appeared in the background of at least one of the Branch shots in
Mary's story, is also a shade or two lighter. Dave moves just a
trifle more awkwardly, his nose is about 1/32 of an inch longer, and
his notebooks are 1/8 inch thicker.
JOE
(In an explanatory
tone.)
Mary, my wife here, her arm was
crushed by an obsolete metal-stamping machine at Apache. That was
last December twelfth.
(Pauses a moment; from his
expression he is nearly reliving the event.)
They were running double
shifts. It was toward the end of the second shift. I didn't want
her to be working that many hours, especially not on those machines
they have at Apache, but she said that she wanted to pay off her
father's headstone. 'For Christmas,' Mary told me. That was
important to her.
(Pauses. A flicker of
remembered pain crosses his face.)
If ... when ... I get a
full-time job, my union dues are coming out of my first check. If
the Union Steward at Apache, John Kircher, is any example, Local 386
really takes care of their people. Even though Mary was working as a
day-labor temp, they watched out for her. John stood up for her when
the manager, Frankie Steen, tried to speed up her machine. The night
before she was hurt, Mary told me that John was trying to find guards
for those belts. (Sighs.)
After she got hurt, it was
John Kircher who bullied the doctor into fixing her arm properly—they
had to replace a part of her bone, it was crushed so bad. If John
hadn't been there, I don't know what would have happened. Maybe they
would have cut off her arm. John even had the decency to send one of
the guys to the apartment to get me, so I could be with my wife at
the hospital.
S'Wendell didn't have any
insurance, and the hospital sent Mary home, just a couple of hours
after they operated. John brought us back to the apartment in his
car--and the next day, he brought over a casserole from his wife.
(Pause.)
The doctor must have filed an
accident report with OSHA. Or, maybe the hospital did, trying to
collect on their bills. ... However it happened, S'Wendell told me
that OSHA had called him, that next Monday morning. 'I don't have
jobs for whiners who go crying to OSHA,' S'Wendell said. I told him
that was fine with me, that he could cancel our contracts with him
any time. He collects good money for the work that he sends people
out on, but he only pays the minimum wage. He keeps more than half
our pay, and then he takes what he calls 'placement fees' out of
what's left of our pay.
I've heard some of the other
guys at A-1 call S'Wendell sadistic. He laughed when I told him he
could cancel our contracts. 'You've got six-month exclusives,' he
told me. 'I don't hire finks,' he said, 'and,' he added, 'as
far as you're concerned, I'm the only game in town.' He laughed
again, right in my face. (I could feel the heat of his stinking
breath.) 'Mary's my woman, beholden to me, until March
ninth--and don't you forget it.' That's what S'Wendell told me.
'Lil and I were concerned
about Mary's working, anyway. She's a strong woman, Mary is, but she
had been hurt pretty bad. I told 'Lil that we were getting stuck in
the day-labor routine, and that if we planned on staying in
Minneapolis, it was time I started looking for a full-time job. 'I'll
sit with you and Mary at the slave market in the mornings,' I
said to 'Lil, 'and I can look through the paper for welding jobs. I'll
get a steady Union job in no time, and then you and Mary won't
have to worry about working.' That is what I thought would happen,
and that's what I told 'Lil.
I must have applied for sixty
or seventy jobs. I'm a good welder, and I've never had any trouble
getting a job, before this. There were eighteen interviews that I
had, where I left the plant certain that I'd be hired.
(DISSOLVE
to Vignette #1)
JOE
(continues, as
voice-over)
Every time, when I called back,
the people at personnel had some kind of excuse. 'I'm sorry, but we
were unexpectedly downsized, and we're filling that position from
inside the plant,' they would tell me, or, 'We've already hired
someone else who's more qualified.' Last Tuesday, I talked to Father
John at the Branch about it. He told me that S'Wendell had a pretty
sleazy reputation, that he 'wouldn't be surprised' if S'Wendell was
blacklisting me. But, he didn't have any advice about what I could
do about it. 'S'Wendell's pretty well entrenched,' Father John told
me.
Vignette
#1: Joe with his notebook of welding-job numbers, talking on the
telephone at the front desk of the Branch. In the background are a
number of the street people and (temporarily sober) alcoholics who
are the principle clientele of the Branch. Father John comes up to
Joe as he sits, slumped in discouragement after completing his
telephone call, in a plastic chair near the desk. Father John puts
his hand on Joe's shoulder to comfort him, and then the two walk into
Father John's office and talk. Father John is sincere, kind, but
from Joe's point of view, slightly restrained in his help.
DISSOLVE
back to church scene.
JOE
(continues)
When Mary's dad was dying, we
had a lot of expenses. We spent the rest of our savings on his
funeral. It's hard to get ahead, working daily-labor, and even with
three people working, we were just barely coming out even. After he
took out his 'placement fees' and kickbacks, S'Wendell was paying us
about half the minimum wage. The alternator on my car went out in
mid-November. Before I could save enough money to get the parts to
fix it, there was a 'snow emergency,' and the City towed it away. In
addition to towing, they charge 'storage fees,' every day. I never
did catch up enough to get my car back, and so we had to walk or take
the bus. The grocery stores in the neighborhood charge almost twice
as much, for the same food, and without a car, we had to shop there,
we had to pay their ghetto prices.
(Pause, looks at Dave.)
You can write that down, Dave,
that poverty is like a whirlpool, sucking people deeper and deeper
into it. The rich, they see the poor as a reflection of their own
desires. As human beings, we are invisible. (Reflectively.) Sometimes,
I think that even their women are invisible, to the
rich--that they can see them only as reflected images.
(Pauses. Takes his cigarette
pack out of his jacket pocket, looks at them evaluatively, then
half-shrugs, and lights one of the smokes he just rolled, using a
stick from the fire.)
After S'Wendell blacklisted
us--I'll say it, because that's what I'm certain he did—the little
bit of money we had, went quickly. We hocked the television, and my
watch, and finally, 'Lil even hocked her wedding ring. 'For Mary,
and for our baby,' she said. 'I'll always have my memories, and my
girl needs to eat, now.' When we had sold or hocked everything we
could, I forgot my pride, and went to the food shelf at the Branch. We
stretched the food they gave us to last four days. The food shelf
at the Branch is limited, and each family can only get food there a
few times in a year.
We ate the last of our food on
Wednesday morning. On Thursday, Mary got two pieces of bread at the
Branch, but she gave them to her grandmother. She didn't tell me
that--she knows I worry about her and the baby. But, I have watched
Mary trying to take care of both her grandmother and our baby. I
predict that Eve kept those two slices of bread, and will try to give
them to Mary in the morning.
When S'Wendell started teasing
us with false promises of jobs on Friday morning, I could feel Mary's
anger rising. She is a beautiful woman, the kindest and gentlest
person anybody could ever hope to know, but if you push her too
far--watch out! On Friday morning, Mary was like a wounded tigress.
(DISSOLVE
to Vignette #2)
JOE
(continues, as
voice-over to
Vignette #2)
S'Wendell dangled a three-day
maid's job in front of Mary and 'Lil. He looked straight at them
when he called out the job, and then he humiliated them: he waited
until after they'd gotten up for that job, and then he turned them
down and said he was looking at Doris and Louise. S'Wendell doesn't
miss much, and must have seen those two old women tipping a bottle of
vodka all morning. They could barely walk, and Doris looked like
she'd been working the streets all night.
Vignette
#2: The waiting room at A-1 Daily Labor. The clock on the wall reads
7:04; the calendar reads January 3, 1997. The room is more than half
empty. Sam is standing at the counter, looking at his job order
papers. He looks directly at Mary and 'Lil, and a lip-reader could
tell that he said, 'I've got a job for two maids, here.' His body
language is inviting Mary and 'Lil to come up to the counter and take
the job. Mary looks at her mother and an expression of relief and
joy fills her face. The women take a step toward the aisle, and then
Sam looks out at the crowd again, focussing on Doris and Louise: two
middle-aged women, both with elaborate, heavily lacquered but mussed,
bleached-blonde hairdos. Doris is wearing a rabbit-skin jacket, very
tight black stretch pants, and four-inch red platform heels. Doris
and Louise are wearing very heavy make-up, with thick black eye-liner
and slightly smudged mascara. Both are visibly intoxicated.
DISSOLVE
back to church scene.
JOE
(Continues.)
S'Wendell waited, and then, to
make sure we got the point, he played the same routine on me. After
I got my hopes up, he called Mac for a welding job. I mentioned it
earlier. That's when Mary started getting really vexed. S'Wendell
might have been baiting Mary, to get her in the back office alone
with him--I've heard that he's propositioned quite a few of the woman
who've worked at A-1. I don't know why else he would have done what
he did, trying to disparage all three of us. He waited for almost
half an hour after he called out the last job, and then he said,
'There ain't no work for nobody that's still here.' He looked
straight at Mary when he said that, and that's when Mary's temper
broke.
She walked right up to the
front of the room, to have it out with S'Wendell. I tried to stop
her, and so did her mother, but I don't think Mary even heard us. I
saw her heading toward S'Wendell's office, and then 'Lil followed
her. I figured that they might need help, but I didn't want to
interfere with Mary's pride. I'd seen a window in the rear wall of
S'Wendell's office, so I went around through the alley, and watched
through that window. At first, I held a whiskey bottle I'd found in
the alley, to break the window if I needed to. Then, when a jet took
off, low, I tried the window, and it slid easily. So, I watched and
listened, ready to give Mary any help that she might need. I didn't
see 'Lil--I figured she was waiting at S'Wendell's door, waiting to
help Mary if she needed it, too.
DISSOLVE
to back alley, behind A-1 Daily Labor. The alley has been plowed,
but not recently, and the pavement is coated with ice in the two ruts
left by the garbage trucks. Minneapolis municipal garbage containers
and commercial dumpsters line the alley. Around the dumpsters there
is a litter of trash and bottles, some of it on top of the snow, and
some half-protruding from the snow. There is also a flotsam of
broken furniture, half-collapsed cardboard boxes, wrecked and rusty
grocery carts, several bent bicycle parts, and other urban refuse in
the alley. Warm, moist air from several of the buildings along the
alley forms clouds of fog, writhing in the wind. It is snowing, the
small, almost gritty crystals of subzero-weather snow. There is a
dusting of snow on top of almost everything, and occasionally a gust
of wind whirls through the alley, howling around the corners of
buildings, blowing the snow through the air and pieces of paper
scudding through the alley.
The
light is gray, with edge definition given by the greenish
mercury-vapor glare of a security light off-camera. The camera
slowly dollies down the alley. A derelict comes into view from
behind a dumpster, carrying a plastic garbage bag. He rummages
through the trash, salvaging aluminum cans. While he is still a
distance from the camera, he finds a half-eaten hamburger, still
ensconced in its fast-food wrapper. He opens the wrapper, examines
the hamburger, and then eats it with obvious enjoyment. A jet flies
directly overhead from the southeast, taking off from the airport and
still below the cloud cover. The sound is all-permeating, and the
derelict stops eating for a moment to shake his fist at the plane as
it passes overhead. He then eats the last bite of his hamburger, and
tosses the paper wrapper into the wind. The derelict stops to
examine every liquor bottle that he passes. One, he picks up and
opens, and drinks the quarter-inch of liquid in the bottom. The lid
on one side of the dumpster near the derelict, is held half-open by a
heaping load of plastic garbage-bags and other trash. The chipped
plaster arm of a store mannequin is visible, the hand sticking out
between two trash bags. The derelict spots it, climbs up on a
snowbank and tentatively grabs the hand, which has bright-red nail
polish in a shade stylish in 1962. He shakes the hand with apparent
amusement.
DERELICT
Nice to meet you, ma'am.
Are
you nice and warm down there?
The
arm freely moves, as though it is detached. The derelict pulls it
out of the trash, and then jumps down from the snow bank. He
brandishes the arm with relish, and speaks, dramatically, to nobody
in particular, although in the general direction of the camera.
DERELICT
Now, try and tell me I'm
not
armed!
The
derelict then disappears off-camera.
As
the camera moves past another dumpster, Joe comes into view. He is
standing at the edge of the window to Sam's office, watching through
the blinds and listening intently. There is no storm window, and
both Sam and Mary's voices can be heard, distinctly from Joe's point
of view.
SAM'S
VOICE
... Do you have a proposal
to make to me, or not?
Joe's
muscles tense, and he steps back from the window slightly, as though
he is thinking about leaping through the window right then.
MARY'S
VOICE
We need to work, and you
know
we're hard workers. We've done quality work on every job you've sent
us out on. We haven't complained, and you haven't gotten any
complaints about us. But now, you're trying to freeze us out. You
haven't set even one of us out on a job for the past three weeks.
You've got jobs, Mr. Wendell, I know you do. Why don't you put us to
work?
Joe
relaxes slightly, and glances around. He sees a cigarette pack
half-obscured by a discarded, broken chair, about ten feet from him. He
looks at the window for a moment, and moves quickly to pick up the
cigarette pack and return to his post by the window. With most of
his attention focussed intently on the interaction between Mary and
Sam in the office, Joe experimentally flips open the lid of the
cigarette box. It is more than half full. He takes out a cigarette
and examines it. It is unstained, like new. He hesitates a moment,
and then shrugs slightly, in apparent resignation to his present
reality. He takes a slightly battered book of matches out of his
jacket pocket, and, shielding the flame from the wind, lights the
cigarette, apparently smoking with great pleasure.
Mary's
voice, which has continued unintelligibly in the background, briefly
drowned out by the howl of the wind and the rumbling of a truck
passing on Franklin Avenue, and then continues, clearly, as Joe moves
closer to the window again.
MARY'S
VOICE
... just as sure as I'm
standing here talking to you, you know that what you're saying
just isn't true! You sent me out on that job at Apache, and it's
your business to know what kind of places you're sending people into.
Those metal-presses had been speeded up, and somebody took the
guards off of them, just so they'd save a few seconds of down-time
when it they lubricated the bearings. The shut-off switches didn't
work the way they were supposed to, and if you and your 'business
partner' at Apache didn't know that you should have.
You have no right to call me a
tattle-tale cry-baby, Sam Wendell. I'm a grown woman, I've got my
honor, and I uphold my side of a contract.
The
wind shrieks through the alley, obscuring Mary's words for a few
moments. Joe, who has smoked his cigarette nearly to the filter,
shivers involuntarily in the blast of cold air, smokes a final drag,
and throws the butt away. He presses his body to the wall, his ear
close to the window.
MARY'S
VOICE
If your business is so
shady
that it can't handle the light from a little bit of truth, Mister
Wendell, then maybe you should go take a good look in the mirror.
(Pause, then speaks the great
emphasis and precision of barely controlled anger.)
I am not a whore! Don't you
ever call me a whore! Don't ever, ever say that about any
decent woman. And, if you want to talk about prostitution, then
let's talk about owners of daily labor businesses who have sold their
...
The
siren of a police-car speeding down Franklin Avenue drowns out Mary's
words for a few moments again. Joe presses his face, briefly, to the
window, and sees Mary standing, in a magnificent rage, talking to
Sam. Mary glances toward the window, and Joe quickly moves back.
SAM'S
VOICE
(Oily.)
... So, you say that you want
to work, do you?
MARY'S
VOICE
We've been here at
five-thirty,
every morning, ready to go to work. Every morning for the past three
weeks, Joe, 'Lil and I have sat in your waiting room, complying with
our side of that contract to the letter. But, you have not
sent us on one single job, not even one of us, not even once. In the
past three weeks, you have not given any of my family even an hour of
work.
We come here ready to work,
wanting to work. I thought that your business was supposed to be
sending people out to work. We're hard workers, and we do
high-quality work that is a credit to your reputation. What you're
doing to us isn't fair, and it doesn't even make good business sense.
Mr. Wendell, the way that
you've been treating us isn't fair, and it isn't right. The people
who work for you are human beings, and it's time you saw beyond your
racism and your class prejudices, and realized that. If you're going
to make us sign a six-month exclusive contract, then you have an
obligation to us, too. Fair is fair, and fair is good business
practice.
SAM'S
VOICE
So ... now you think you
can
come in here and tell me how to run my business, do you? Well,
I've got some news for stuck-up little (pauses for emphasis)
whores like you. It's time you found out what the real world
is like, Mary. I'm a busy man, and I don't have time to listen to
knocked-up little kids who think they can come in here and tell me
what to do. You don't even have enough sense to know when to keep
your legs together. I'm a busy man. I've got a business to run, and
I don't like to be insulted.
If you came in here to make a
deal, then let's deal. If not, then get out.
(Pause.)
Well, Mary? I'm waiting. Do
you want to make a deal, sweetheart? Just how badly do you need a
job?
Joe
tentatively puts his hand on the window, ready to jerk it open. He
starts clenches his other hand into a fist, then wills himself to
release it. His lips are tight, and anger smolders in his eyes.
ANGLE
ON Joe, with about twenty feet of alley included in the
background. A boy, about ten years old, runs from the background
through the alley, past Joe, and off camera. The boy is shabbily
dressed, but looks healthy. His cheeks are apple-red from the cold,
but he is smiling. It seems from the boy's expression that he is
running in childish exuberance.
SAM'S
VOICE
(Continues.)
It's up to you, Mary. I can
put all three of you to work. You'll get good pay, clean jobs,
decent jobs. I can call your landlord and have him give you another
two weeks to pay your rent. I can even get your boyfriend a steady
welding job, with lots of overtime.
(Pause.)
Or, I can freeze you out. If
you don't have anything to give me, I will call Max and have him
evict you this afternoon. I will put the word out, and none of you
will ever work in this town again. Is that what you want?
(Pause.)
It's up to you, you little
whore. ...
As
Sam has been talking, a policeman has been jogging, heavily, down the
alley from the background, apparently looking for the boy who ran
through the alley earlier. Although the policeman's approach is
faintly audible, Joe has been so intent on the conversation between
Mary and Sam that he does not notice. Just as Joe moves to open the
window, the policeman taps Joe on the shoulder, none too gently, with
his night-stick.
POLICEMAN
Alright, put your hands
against
the wall. Slowly.
Joe
complies, anxiety and frustration writ large on his face as he turns.
The policeman frisks him, then handcuffs him. As the policeman is
escorting Joe back up the alley and off-camera in the background, Joe
turns his head to look back at the window with an anguished
expression. When Joe and the policeman are about half way up the
alley, another jet airplane roars over south Minneapolis in a
low-level takeoff. The sound echoes off of the buildings, and the
snow on top of the Minneapolis municipal trash containers vibrates. The
roar reaches a crescendo before Joe and the policeman reach the
end of the alley, and has not completely abated when they walk
off-camera.
DISSOLVE
to Franklin Avenue, about a block from the A-1 Daily Labor office. Joe
is walking east, very quickly, not quite running. He looks
worried. He passes a pawnshop, and several clocks in the window show
the time as 11:16, 11:18, 11:14, 11:23 and 4:45. The gray light of
the overcast morning is brighter, there is about an inch of
accumulated snow, and the movement of traffic and people on Franklin
Avenue is appropriate to around a quarter past eleven in the morning
on a cold winter Friday which is the third of the month. A bus
rumbles past.
JOE
(Voice-over.)
They told me that they were
just taking me in for questioning, so they didn't read me my rights.
They took me downtown, and roughed me up a little bit on the
elevator. They detained me for about an hour in a holding cell--but
they never talked to me, and they didn't book me. Then, they just
let me go. They never even asked me my name. I had to walk back,
from downtown.
Joe
walks past the window at the front of the A-1 Daily Labor office, and
glances inside. There are three old men sitting in the back row of
chairs, talking. Joe walks to the corner of the building, and down
the alley on the east side. When he reaches the door on the side of
the building that leads to the back hallway, he tries it
experimentally. It is unlocked. Joe opens the door slightly, and
peeks into the empty hallway. He goes in.
CUT
to an interior shot of the hallway outside Sam's office. Joe is
standing near Sam's office door. He pauses, contemplatively, for a
moment, and then tries the door. It is unlocked, and he walks into
Sam's office.
Sam
is sitting at his desk, eating a fast-food hamburger and drinking
coffee. His nose is swollen, and he chews cautiously, as though his
jaw hurts. As Joe enters, Sam's eyes flick toward him, but then Sam
pointedly ignores Joe, and continues eating his hamburger. He makes
a show of enjoying every bite. When he finishes eating, he crumples
up the paper wrapper, and tosses it in the heaping wastebasket. It
bounces off the pile, and rolls onto the floor.
Joe
stands about three feet away from the front of Sam's desk, in the
motionless shadow-stance of a man still-hunting, three feet downwind
from a deer. Sam continues to ignore him: finishing his coffee,
smoking a cigarette while he reads through a pile of papers on his
desk, digging through his desk drawer for a candy bar and eating it.
Sam reaches for an extra-large fast-food container of coffee which is
sitting amid the clutter on his desk. He removes the plastic lid,
and takes a drink from it. Joe remains silent, still. Even the
movement of his chest when he breathes is almost imperceptible. Sam
lights another cigarette, and smokes half of it. He looks casually
around the room, as though he does not see Joe. Joe does not move.
Sam
finishes his cigarette, and stubs it out. He massages his neck with
one hand, stretches, and then puts his feet on his desk and leans
back in his chair. He closes his eyes, and appears to relax for
several minutes. Joe remains motionless.
The
phone rings, and Sam answers it on the third ring.
SAM
Sam here.
(Pause.)
Yeah, I think we could get that
for you.
(Pause.)
Hmmm. I dunno about that,
Harry. ... Yeah, you know how it is. Ain't all that many skilled
workers come through this place.
(Pause.)
Truck drivers? Yeah, I can get
you all the truck drivers you want.
(Pause.)
Yeah, I think I got a couple'a
pretty decent machinists. You never know in this business, I might
get a journeyman machinist in the door tomorrow morning.
(Pause.)
Two months steady? Uh-hunh.
There's some real reliable guys here. I've got everything you need,
Harry, yeah, everything but the welder. I ain't had a decent welder
in here for darn near a month, now. ... I guess that's how it goes,
Harry.
(Pause.)
You got it. I'll send them
over in the morning. Everything but the welder. You might try Tom
over at Man-Power for that.
(Pause.)
'Betcha. And tell that little
girl of yours that Uncle Sam says she's the sweetest thing this side
a' Fanny Farmer.
(Pause.)
Uh-hunh!
Sam
hangs up the phone, and writes on some work-order sheets. He gets
up, and walks over to the stack of file folders on the couch, passing
within six inches of Joe, as though Joe does not exist. He shuffles
through the files, his back turned three-quarters to Joe, and then
returns to his desk with two files.
Sam
reads through the files, making notations. He drains his cup of
coffee. Joe remains motionless, silent. Sam starts reading files
again, then runs his finger along the swollen side of his nose, and
grunts. He digs through one of his desk drawers, and finds a bottle
of aspirin. He shakes two tablets out onto the palm of his hand, and
reaches for his coffee cup, which is empty. He sets the two aspirin
down on top of one of the filing folders on his desk, and stands up.
Coffee-cup in hand, he walks out of the office, this time passing
within an inch of Joe. In the next office, he can be heard joking
with the secretary, although is words are unintelligible. He laughs,
and in another few moments returns to the office.
Sam
closes the door behind him, and turns to open the drawer of a filing
cabinet just inside the door. There is a clink of metal on metal,
and then Sam closes the drawer again. Joe remains in his motionless,
still-hunter's stance. Sam returns to his desk, carrying a fresh cup
of coffee, and sits down. He retrieves the aspirin, and takes them,
chasing them with a swallow of hot coffee.
Sam
drinks about half of the coffee, and then pulls a business checkbook
toward him. He gets up for a ledger which is sitting on top of one
of the filing cabinets on the exterior wall of the office, and then
goes to the safe and unlocks it. Swinging the door of the safe open
enough so that the piles of money within are visible from Joe's angle
of vision, Sam squats down in front of the safe, and rummages through
the papers on the top shelf for a second ledger. He takes both
ledgers and sits back down at the desk. Joe remains absolutely
still. His eyes do not even flicker toward the piles of money in the
safe.
Sam
sits at his desk, cross-checking the entries in the ledger with those
in the register of the checkbook. He drinks coffee and smokes
another cigarette. He writes eight checks, recording seven of them
in the checkbook register. He drains his cup of coffee, and,
coffee-cup in hand, exits the office. He passes within a
hair's-breadth of Joe as though he does not see him. Joe does not
move. The sounds of Sam talking in the other room filter through the
wall, followed by the sounds of a woman's laughter. Sam returns to
the office, shutting the door behind him. He sits back down at the
desk. Joe has not moved a muscle.
The
phone rings again. Sam answers it on the fourth ring.
SAM
A-1. Sam here.
(Pause.)
Goddam, Dick, you're the second
person that's asked me for that today. I sure as hell wish I had
one.
(Pause.)
Six months, union scale? Damn
it all to hell. But you know how this business is.
(Pause.)
Nope. You got me, Dick. If I
knew what all this demand for welders lately was about, I'd be
sittin' back, getting rich in the stock market, instead of working my
hind end off in this goddam daily labor racket.
(Pause.)
Think so?
(Pause.)
Nah, prob'ly not.
(Pause.)
That kid, Joe? I ain't seen
him since this mornin'. He was in here drunk again, him an' that
little slut he hangs around with. He ain't a very steady guy,
no-how, Dick.
(Pause.)
Yeah? Must'a been a fluke.
(Pause.)
Naw, I wouldn't.
(Pause.)
Betcha. Just about anything
else, I can get you a dozen.
(Pause.)
(Laughs.) Uh-hunh! Didn't
nobody ever tell you, Dick, you're spose'ta wash it
afterwards?
(Pause.)
Yep. Later.
Sam
hangs up, and drinks some coffee. Joe remains standing, motionless
and silent. Sam looks around the room contemplatively, and retrieves
a book of OSHA regulations from under the clutter of papers on his
desk. He leans back in his chair, with his feet on the desk,
propping the out-dated but unworn book up on his extended legs, and
reads. The book is held so that Joe is directly in his line of
sight, if Sam were to look over the top of it. Sam reads, and
mutters something about 'Goddam government busy-bodies' under his
breath. He turns the page, reads a few lines, and reaches for his
coffee-cup.
Sam
glances up as he gets his coffee, and looks at Joe as though he had
just that moment come into the room. As soon as Sam acknowledges
him, Joe drops his still-hunter's stance as though it never existed.
SAM
Hey, Joe! You come in so
quiet, I didn't even hear you. (You gotta watch out, walkin' up on
people like that, y'know it? There's some that might not like it.)
(Pause.)
It's good to see you again, my
boy. What can I do for you?
JOE
My wife, Mary, she came
in here
earlier this morning to talk to you. She told me that she was
getting concerned, that you haven't been sending us out to work much,
lately.
(Pause.)
To tell the truth, I've been
noticing that, myself. Is there some kind of problem?
SAM
Mary ... hmmm. Yeah,
that's
right, I did talk to her this morning. Lovely little wife you've got
there.
(Long pause, lengthening
slightly beyond the parameters of normal discourse.)
You ain't been knocking her
around, have ya, my boy? As I recollect, she had her arm in a sling
this morning.
(Long pause.)
CUT
to Joe, who is standing intensely, his face devoid of expression, his
eyes compelling Sam to continue talking. CUT back to Sam.
SAM
(Continues.)
You said she thought there
might be some kind of problem? Naw, ain't no problem that I can
think of. ... Of course, there's some kinds'a jobs she ain't able to
do right now, what with her arm in a sling like that.
(Pause.)
Now that you mention it, my
boy, I'll keep my eyes open for light work for her, jobs 't she kin
do wid a busted-up wing.
(Pause. Sam picks up some
paper-work, and glances at it.)
Good of you to come in, m'boy.
... Yep, we're always glad to be of service, here at A-1. ... Drop by
again, sometime.
Sam's
body-language indicates dismissal of Joe. He moves to resume his
paperwork, but Joe locks eyes with him. For a long moment, the two
men stare at each other. The moment stretches. Joe stands lightly,
completely focused and unmoving, apparently prepared to stand there
for hours or even days. Sam finally breaks eye contact, looking down
at his papers for a moment, and then looking up again.
SAM
What, are you still
here?
JOE
It isn't only my wife
Mary,
who's been sitting out there (motions) all morning, waiting for a
job. It's been three weeks since you've sent me, or my mother-in-law
'Lil, out on a job, too.
I can understand your not
having any jobs for us, for a day or two ... maybe, even for a week.
The labor market fluctuates, I couldn't argue about that.
But, three weeks? You've
built up a thriving business here, Sam. I don't believe that there
hasn't been one single, solitary, job for any one of us--not for
three weeks.
We would just walk away, and
look elsewhere. I am a first-rate welder, and a hard worker, and I
don't need to play games. But, you've got us tied to you, with a
six-month contract.
As
he talks, Joe walks casually toward Sam's desk. He leans slightly
over the desk, with his left hand resting on the papers cluttering
the desktop. He looks Sam directly in the eyes.
JOE
(Continues.)
A hard-headed, successful
businessman like you doesn't throw away money for no reason, Sam. And
that's exactly what you're doing by not sending us out to work,
throwing away money. When all three of us were working steady, you
were putting a pretty tidy sum into your pocket, or into your safe
over there (indicates the safe with a slight motion of his head). You
know it, and I know it.
(Minimal pause.)
Start talking straight, Sam
Wendell. You've got a problem. What is it?
SAM
I don't hire no uppity
niggers
that's got an attitude problem. OK? Just 'cause you ain't
half-African, don't mean you ain't a nigger, kid.
JOE
Then cancel that
six-month
contract.
SAM
That's going to cost you
money.
JOE
Deduct it from the
kickbacks
you've already extorted from us. How many thousand dollars are you
talking about?
SAM
Your wife is a
rat-finking,
double-crossing whore, Joe.
JOE
I heard you telling her
that
this morning, Sam. She gets upset when people insult her with lies,
doesn't she?
SAM
(A flicker of surprise
flits
across his face for a microsecond, before Sam regains control of his
expression.)
What else did you hear? ... I
fucked your wife on that couch over there this morning--did you hear
her moan with pleasure? Did you hear her cry in ex-ta-sie, when she
found out what it's like to fuck a real man? She's a horny
little bitch, ain't she?
JOE
Are you going to cancel
that
contract, or do we go to court?
(Pause.)
I know an attorney who's very
interested in tax evasion, OSHA violations, extortion, racketeering,
sexual harassment ...
(Ticks off the charges by
motioning with the fingers of his right hand. He does not, however,
move his hand more than ten inches away from his jacket pocket.)
Which one do you want,
S'Wendell?
(Joe shifts his position
slightly, leaning a few inches closer to Sam.)
SAM
Hmmm. You offer me so
many
choices, kid. It's hard to choose. ... I think I'll take ... Gosh, I
can't decide. Tell you what, kid. I'll talk to your wife Mary about
it. We take good care of our employees, here at A-1. We could
probably help her out, with her medical bills and all of that.
JOE
I'm waiting, S'Wendell.
Are
you going to cancel that contract, or not?
SAM
I'll cancel that
contract in
Hell. I know that I'll go to Hell, but I'm going to take you with
me.
JOE
If that's what you say,
Samuel
S'Wendell, Junior.
In
a blur of motion, Joe pulls a pistol from his right jacket pocket,
and aims it at Sam's chest. It is a tidy little .22 caliber magnum,
with a compact, professionally-machined silencer screwed onto the
front of the barrel. Joe has moved only minutely, and holds the
pistol with his right hand in approximately the same position as his
hand was before he drew the pistol.
Sam
acknowledges the pistol with a minute, almost involuntary, eye
motion, but appears to ignore it. He laughs, an uproarious
belly-laugh.
SAM
Say, Joe! I just thought
of
the funniest thing ...
(Chortles, then explodes with
laughter again.)
You like jokes, don't you, kid?
Did you ever hear the one about ...
(Chuckles, apparently tries to
restrain himself, and then convulses with laughter.)
... you know, the one about the
...
(Straightens up, meets Joe's
eyes, and then leans over his desk, contorted with hilarity.)
... maybe you've heard
it--about the hooker who ...
(Laughs again.)
Joe
cuts him off with the click of the hammer, as he cocks the pistol.
JOE
I'm not fooling around,
S'Wendell. I don't take it as any joke, what you've tried to do to
my family. I don't think it's very funny, when my wife and child go
hungry. Insulting my wife, and then trying to rape her isn't much of
a joke, either. Do you think it's funny? Do you, S'Wendell?
SAM
So, what are you going
to do
about it? You think you're a tough guy, don't you, coming in here
and waving that little toy pop-gun around. I'll tell you something,
kid. You don't have the balls to kill me.
JOE
Try me. But, I'd rather
settle
this non-violently. Cancel that six-month exclusive contract, and
stop blacklisting me. That's what I came in here to talk to you
about. Cancel that contract, and I'll walk out of here as quietly as
I walked in.
SAM
(Appears to consider.)
Nah. I'm done making deals for
today, kid. I think you'll have to kill me.
Joe
moves, bringing the pistol up in front of his body, aiming it
precisely and steadily at Sam's heart.
JOE
Samuel S. Wendell,
Junior, I'm
deadly serious.
SAM
(Shrugging
nonchalantly.)
So, kill me. Go ahead, I dare
you, kid. Kill me.
JOE
I will, Sam. You have
about
fifteen seconds to change your mind.
SAM
I fucked your sweet
little wife
this morning, Joe. And I'll keep right on fucking her, if you don't
kill me. C'mon, what'cha waitin' for? Pull the trigger on that
pea-shooting toy!
JOE
I don't believe you.
(Pauses.)
I don't want to kill you, Sam,
and I don't want to play some crazy dare-devil game with you. I came
in here to talk to you. If you're not going to send me and my family
out on any jobs, I want you to cancel your contract. How can that be
so very complicated?
(Pauses.)
Either we're working for you,
and we get sent out to work. Or, if we're not working for you,
cancel that contract. You're not upholding your side of it, anyway.
Terminating the labor contracts of three employees can't be that
important to you. Just let us out of those contracts--I'll walk out
of here and never bother you again.
SAM
(Snorts.) Just wait. You
will
believe me, you cuckolded kid. The time will come, I promise you,
when you look at your wife and see my face. You will lay awake at
night and wonder... Was Sam Wendell lying? Or was Sam Wendell
telling the truth? You will never know. In your doubts, I will
haunt you. Uncertainty will drive you insane.
(Laughs.)
You came to me to get out of a
labor contract. Kill me, and you can walk out of here a free man. No
more exclusive clauses. No more blacklists.
(Pause.)
Or, do you dicker with a devil? In
the soft summer nights, as you caress your wife, you will see my
eyes in the darkness. My relentless stare will goad you. You will
want to know the truth. You will need to know the truth. Your soul
will scream to know the truth. Kill me. Or don't. In the end, I
will destroy you. You will devour yourself, to catch a mirage. Only
in your bitter old age, as you lay alone with your hatred, will you
remember what I am telling you now: that certainty you seek, is an
empty illusion.
JOE
Are you talking to
yourself,
Sam?
(Pause.)
Are you trapped, forever
fighting the battles of your own history? ... Are you haunted by
your own illusions? ... and your own delusions?
(Pause.)
There are no doubts in my
heart: there is deep love between my wife and me. That partial truth
is enough for me.
You cannot haunt me. If you
touched my wife this morning, you raped her. For that, I can only
comfort her. I cannot blame her for your evil.
I know my wife, and I know her
mother and grandmother. I know the patterns of their lives, the
fabric of their words and actions. For me, that is abundant
certainty.
I don't need to torment myself with any abstract
mind-games about 'absolute truth.'
I came to talk to you about
that contract, and you refuse to discuss it--instead, you try to
insult me, and tell me lies. If I find out that you have hurt my
wife, I will avenge her.
I leave you to your own
demons.
Joe
makes a move to walk away.
SAM
Wait! If you want to
talk
business, let's talk business.
Joe
looks back at him, cautiously.
JOE
OK. Talk, then.
SAM
I raped your wife. Are
you
going to kill me?
Joe
aims carefully, and shoots Sam twice: once in the heart and once in
the middle of the forehead, about an inch and half above the eyes. The
silencer on Joe's pistol is effective--only two quiet "whuffs"
are heard, followed by the "thunk" of the bullets' impact. Sam is
pushed back in his chair from the force of the bullets, and
then slumps sideways. Blood pours across his face from the wound in
his forehead.
Joe
stands for a moment, looking at Sam, then pockets the pistol. He
turns, and without looking back, walks out of the office and closes
the door behind him.
FADE
OUT. In the blackness of mid-fade, there is a one-frame cutaway
shot: a close-up of Joe, against a black background, in the dark,
with minimal, apparently single-source, firelight-yellow lighting. Joe
is crying, his heart torn apart by his anguished empathy for the
pain of his wife. The lighting glistens on the sheen of his cheeks,
soaked with tears.
In
the feature-length version of this film, Scene VIII begins with a
fade into the interior of the church. Joe, 'Lil and Dave talk
for a little while, and then are alerted to the approaching morning
by the roar of the early jets to Chicago, taking off low overhead. Two
or three of the derelicts in the back of the sanctuary wake up
and leave. Rex and Carter arise, somewhat hung-over. They briefly
join the conversation around the fire, before leaving for the
streets.
Eve
and Mary wake up, and there is a tender, evocative embrace between
Mary and Joe. The fire on the manhole cover has burned to low
embers, and the chill in the boarded-up church is bitterly apparent.
Trish wakes up, shivering, and Dave decides to invite Eve, Mary, 'Lil
and Joe to breakfast. They make their way, crowded into Dave's
graduate-student 1982 Toyota, to the Chief Cafe on the corner of
Chicago and Franklin. Mary has a flash-back of walking by that cafe,
extremely hungry and cold, during the proceeding week.
They
group sits in a booth in the back of the cafe, drinking coffee,
smoking a pack of cigarettes that Dave inconspicuously buys for them.
(The cigarettes are in a glass case, along with an assortment of
candy and other oddiments, under the till.) They eat from heaping
plates of bacon and eggs, pancakes and home-fried potatoes. The cafe
is unusually quiet for a Saturday morning, and they sit fairly
isolated in the back of the cafe. After their breakfast has settled,
they linger in the booth, drinking coffee, smoking and talking,
uncertain of what to do next. There is a brief cutaway shot of
Tillie, making tea and bannock over the small fire on the manhole
cover in the church. She is burning Bibles and pieces of the pulpit
to cook her breakfast.
Cut
back to the Chief Cafe. Eve starts talking, gradually easing into
her story. As she approaches the main part of her narrative, she
pulls out a worn photograph album, one of the few personal
possessions which remain to her or her family. Her story is launched
by a series of shots--a chronological sequence of photographs from
Eve's album: beginning with cracked black-and-whites of Eve as a
child, in an indeterminate village setting. These relics of Eve's
childhood consist of a handful of candid and semi-posed
talented-amateur photographs of hinting at intimate warmth: people
smiling into the camera, young girls carrying babies on their hips,
old people in the almost-stereotypical wise-elder pose frequently
photographed by Americans of nonwhite elders. This sub-set of the
photographs was apparently taken in three episodes of a couple of
hours apiece, in about 1932 (Eve is about seven years old, then),
1934 and 1936. It seems that the photographer was a sympathetic,
somewhat informed but urban (probably Western) outsider, who took the
photographs during brief episodic visits to Eve's village, and gave
copies of some of them to the villagers. There is not enough
background visible in the photographs to establish the locale, and
the people are dressed in the loose cotton dresses common all over
the third world. Eve could have spent her childhood on Bikini, at
Leech Lake, or in rural Guatemala. Clues are inconspicuously absent,
which renders Eve as generic.
The
series of shots continues with a formal, posed photograph of Eve in a
school uniform, about sixteen and looking very serious, and then a
photograph of her with a young man in a military uniform. This is
followed by two photographs of a military wedding, apparently in the
United States, and then by baby and childhood pictures of 'Lil, as
well as of 'Lil and a boy who is apparently her previously
unmentioned brother. There is a wedding picture of 'Lil, and then a
few baby and childhood pictures of Mary. Some of the baby pictures
are of the K-Mart baby-photo style of about 1983. There is a posed
family photograph in front of a white-painted, skilled trades
working-class small-town house, which from the architectural style
appears to have been built in about 1920; the photo was taken in
about 1990. The last photo is of Mary, 'Lil, Eve, Joe and 'Lil's
now-deceased husband. It is a relaxed and informal Christmas-eve
snapshot, and looks as though it was taken the previous Christmas. The
group appears happy, and there are piles of gifts under the tree
in the background of the comfortably-furnished living room, and
heaping dishes of candies and cookies on the coffee table which is
partially visible in the foreground. 'Lil's husband does not seem
completely healthy.
The
series of shots dissolves into Eve sitting on the snowbank on Oakland
Avenue amid her few possessions, shortly after having been evicted. She
tells her story, an analytically interwoven one, based in part on
what she hears from passers-by, including the secretary at A-1, who
has left early from work to attend to a sick child, but pauses to
talk when she sees Eve. She also incorporates her intimate
understandings of 'Lil, Mary, and Joe, as well as what she has
learned from an extensive network of acquaintances she has made while
in Minneapolis. It turns out that she has even talked to Willy
Steele at a bus stop in mid-October, and that there seems to have
been extensive neighborhood discussion of Sam Wendell's allegedly
heavy-handed business practices. Eve draws on more than one point of
view to describe how the secretary found Sam, apparently already
dead, in his office in late afternoon. As one of the neighborhood
gossips tells Eve, he was taken away in the 'municipal meat wagon,'
moving slowly through rush-hour traffic.
According
to Eve's narrative, she was not sleeping during the series of stories
told during the night at the church, but merely sitting, listening,
with her eyes closed. She draws out the similarities of the stories,
both in dialogical and temporal terms, and with examination of their
deeper structure. As might be expected, the chronology established
by the jet airplanes plays an important role. The cinematographic
rendition of these narratives is shot: from yet another perspective
on the appropriate sets, in general with a wider-angle lens, a
slightly more diffuse light, and with a little bit less color
saturation and an extremely subtle sepia undertone. Eve does not
offer a definitive opinion on who killed Sam Wendell, although she
regretfully doubts that it was Willy Steele.
The
scene winds down, with Dave filling his second notebook, finishing
his writing on the writing on the inside of the cardboard covers, on
the backs of other papers he happens to have in his back-pack, and
then on paper napkins. He looks at the group uncertainly, wanting to
do something for them, but not knowing what to do. Dave and Trish
consult briefly, with the words 'money left over after the rent' and
'you'll get paid in another week' distinguishable. Trish exits
outside briefly, and upon returning, extracts an envelope from a cash
machine from her pocket. She hands it to Eve, who declines, and
then, when pressed by Trish, accepts, and puts it discretely in her
inside coat pocket. Eve is dignified, but there is the glimmer of a
tear in her eye. The envelope is not opened on-camera. Shortly
thereafter, dissolve into the last scene.
Trish
and Dave are sitting in a restaurant close to the University of
Minnesota campus. It is early Saturday evening, January 4, 1997, or
at least there is a somewhat-used copy of the Minneapolis Star
Tribune for January 4 pushed to the side of the table, and the
movement of people and traffic on Washington Avenue, seen in the
background through the plate-glass window, is what would be expected
at about six-thirty in the evening on the first Saturday in January. It
has stopped snowing, but it is apparently quite cold outside: the
few people walking by on the street are heavily bundled and walking
briskly, some of them with heads their bent into the wind.
Trish
and Dave have apparently just finished eating supper, and are
drinking coffee. Dave is eating a pastry. It appears as though they
have slept and showered since their breakfast at the Chief Cafe,
although they both still seem to be somewhat tired. Except for their
boots, they are wearing different clothes, fairly new and recently
laundered. Trish's jeans have been ironed, as has the collar of
Dave's shirt, which is showing above his expensive hand-knit sweater.
Trish is wearing cosmetics and tasteful gold earrings. Dave is
wearing a watch, which was not visible previously. Their hats and
gloves are in a pile on the table beside them, and their jackets are
draped over the backs of their chairs. Both have student backpacks
with them, sitting on a third chair at the table. Melodious,
richly-orchestrated music is playing softly.
The
cinematographic style of this scene: average eye-level camera angle.
Slightly more inter-cuts for dialogues, a few more detail shots, and
more use of establishment shots. Greater depth of field, in general,
both from wide-angle focal lengths (about 3 mm narrower, on the
average, than in Eve's story), and from smaller lens apertures.
Slightly warmer color balance. Tends to a matter-of-fact, practical
style. The skin tones of Sam Wendell are a shade darker than they
have been previously, toward a golden-brown, and he has a more dapper
and less corpulent appearance.
TRISH
I wonder how many people
are
named Samuel Wendell, in the metro area?
DAVE
I suppose we could get a
pretty
good idea from the phone book. Why?
TRISH
Oh, just something I
overheard.
... Marcia and I were eating lunch in the cafeteria, and the guys at
the table behind us were discussing their rounds. Robert said
something about a Samuel Wendell, or at least that's what it sounded
like. I just thought it was an odd coincidence, that's all.
DAVE
I'd have expected he'd
turn up
in your bailiwick.
TRISH
Maybe so. ... It's
strange,
though. I'm so tired that maybe I'm just hearing things, but I could
have sworn that Robert was talking about a gunshot wound, and how a
steel plate in the guy's head probably saved his life.
DAVE
(Looks at his watch.)
I wonder ... If you're not too
busy, we could drop by the hospital for a little while.
I was going to type fieldnotes
tonight, but I don't think I'd get all that much done, anyway. Do
you want to go check at the hospital?
TRISH
I'd like that. I'm
curious if
it's really him.
CUT
to hallway in the University Hospital, near the nurses' station on
the surgical floor. Trish and Dave are talking to one of the nurses,
who speaks with the deferential movements of nurse to doctor. Both
Trish and Dave have shed their jackets and backpacks, although Dave
carries a new notebook and a pen. Trish is wearing a white
physician's coat over her sweater. Her name-tag, shiny-new, reads
PATRICIA ANDERSON, MD. They finish the conversation, and walk down
the hallway toward the camera.
CUT
to Sam Wendell's hospital room, a single near the far end of the
hallway. Sam is in a hospital bed which is has been cranked up to a
near-sitting position. He has a bandage on his head, and is hooked
up to an I.V., but he is alert, drinking coffee and watching CNN. Not
unexpectedly, he is the Samuel S. Wendell, Jr., who owns A-1
Daily Labor. He is wearing a hospital bathrobe over his gown, and
does not appear to be in much pain. The door is open, and Trish and
Dave enter. Trish closes the door behind them.
TRISH
Mr. Wendell, I'm Doctor
Anderson, and this is David Teslow--he's a student here at the
University. You don't mind if he sits in while I talk to you, and
takes a some notes, do you?
Sam
does not object. Trish and Dave both sit down on the vinyl hospital
chairs near the bed. Trish speaks with a professional bedside
manner.
TRISH
So, Mr. Wendell ... or,
do you
prefer to be called Sam?
SAM
Yeah, call me Sam. I
like it
when a pretty young woman calls me Sam.
TRISH
How are things going for
you,
Sam?
SAM
Well, not too bad,
considering
that the guys who shot me, thought I'd be one very dead man.
TRISH
Mm-hmm ...
SAM
On January 3, 1969, I
was point
man on a foray, so far back in the jungle, even the Gooks didn't have
a name for the place.
(Explaining to Trish.)
They always put us Brown
Brothers in the front.
(Laughs dryly.)
I don't know if the third of
January is my lucky day, or what. ... The U-nited States Marine Corps
sent me home from 'Nam with a quarter-inch a' surgical quality
stainless steel, 'up front, where it counts.'
Sam
takes a flattened '22 caliber bullet out of a small cardboard jewelry
box on the bedside stand, and shows it to Trish. She examines it
carefully.
SAM
(Continues.)
Ironic, ain't it? Charlie's
the one who saved my life. I got dented, though.
(Indicates the center of his
bandaged forehead, about an inch and a half above his eyes. Then, he
looks at Trish with wry amusement.)
Ain't many neurosurgeons, know
how to do that kind of body work. They tell me the University
of Minnesota's got the best there is. After his first case, here,
prob'ly the only there is.
(Smiles, half-ingratiatingly,
but half-seductively, at Trish.)
You docs are alright.
TRISH
Thanks, Sam. ... How are
you
feeling now? Are you in any pain?
SAM
Not really. The skin on
my
forehead, what's left of it, doesn't feel too good.
TRISH
What about a headache?
Sam
shakes his head.
TRISH
Is there any pain where
that
metal plate joins your skull?
SAM
No. It feels alright,
there.
TRISH
That's good. I suppose,
in
your line of work, it doesn't hurt to have a hard head.
SAM
(Chuckles
appreciatively.)
Now, that's what I like, a
pretty doctor with a sense of humor.
TRISH
Tell me about it. Your
business, I mean.
SAM
I'm the founder and sole
proprietor of A-1 Daily Labor, down at 2108 East Franklin Avenue. I
went to college for about a year on the G.I. Bill, and I did take
some business courses, but it didn't seem all that relevant. I
wanted to make a difference in the world, I guess.
Right after I got out of the
hospital, I knocked around for a few months. Maybe now you'd call
what was bothering me, "post traumatic stress syndrome,"
but at that time, I just thought it was reverse culture shock. I'd
seen too much in Vietnam, and I just couldn't get it out of my mind.
I suppose I'd got into quite a
bit of drinking, too, if you want to know the truth about it, Doctor.
Some of my best drinking buddies were two guys who'd been in my
unit, Darwin and Ignatius, their names were. Before I joined up with
the Marines, I would'a never thought I'd meet an Indian named Darwin.
Anyway ... both'a these guys
had grown up in the Cities, in what they called the 'red ghetto.'
Darwin's folks was from up north, they was Leech Lake Chippewa, and
Ignatius was a Sioux from South Dakota, the great-great grandson of
Sitting Bull, he told me. I've still got their picture with me,
after all these years, if you'd like to see it, Doctor.
Trish assents, and Sam takes his
billfold out of the drawer in the
nightstand, and shows her an amateur photograph of six young men,
none of them white, dressed in civvies. The background is a street
scene: the military 'R & R' district in Saigon.
SAM
(Continues.)
That's Darwin, there, and
that's Ignatius. Those guys in the back are Simon, Donnie and
Muhammad. And, in case you didn't recognize him, the one in the
front was me.
(Pauses, and puts the
photograph away.)
Those six of us, we're the only
ones who came back from Hill 43. We kept in touch over the years.
Donnie died last year, so I'm the only one who's left, now. Donnie
left a girlfriend and a young daughter in Cleveland, an ex-wife and
two kids in Chicago, and every once in awhile his son D.J. comes in
to visit with me, at A-1.
Chumming around with Darwin
and 'Nashus, I was moving in a social strata I might never'a
otherwise seen, Doctor, and it kinda bothered me. We worked a few
times, now and then, at one'a them day-labor places there was on the
Southside at that time, and I just couldn't get it out of my mind,
even after I went back to college. 'Nashus, he was the great-great
grandson of one of the greatest warriors in American history, and
'Nashus himself, he was a damn' brave guy. More times'n I care to
count, 'Nashus went in through enemy fire, to bring back one'a our
outfit who'd been wounded. He saved my life, 'Nashus did--more than
once.
There was a stretch, in the
summer of '70, when we worked quite a bit out of that day-labor
place't used to be on Lake and eighteenth. Louis Johnson's place. Old
Johnson, he'd sit in his back office, and have his hired help run
the counter. One of those guys in particular, Raymond C. McLellan
his name was, I just couldn't take the way he treated my buddy
'Nashus. I wanted to go up behind the counter, and drag Mister
McLellan--that's what he insisted we call him--outside. 'Treat this
man with respect,' I would'a told McLellan, 'don't you know
who he is?' And, I prob'ly would'a punched him a few times, just to
knock a new idea into his head. But, 'Nashus and Darwin, they always
held me back. 'Don't make no trouble,' they'd tell me. So I'd sit
back, but I cogitated on it.
On October 23, 1970, Darwin
and 'Nashus died.
DISSOLVE
TO a short series of shots: Darwin, 'Nashus, Sam, and a very
pretty young woman, drinking in the Bear's Den, a now-defunct Indian
bar in South Minneapolis. The Bear's Den is decorated with a
menagerie of stuffed wildlife, as though the proprietor had bought
out the entire estate of a semi-skilled taxidermist. The group is
sitting at a formica and chrome table, vintage 1956, directly beneath
the slightly moth-eaten stuffed head of a moose with half of his rack
slightly askew. A black cowboy hat adorns the moose's rack. In the
near background is a large bear, mounted in a standing, aggressive
position, his mouth open in a simulated roar. Sam is sitting very
close to the young woman, and they are caressing each other and
kissing intimately. There is a striking resemblance between the
young woman and Mary. In a few moments, the pair leave together.
Next
shot: Darwin and 'Nashus getting into a well-worn and visibly
rusty 1956 Buick which is parked outside the Bear's Den. It is quite
late at night. Darwin and 'Nashus are laughing, somewhat inebriated.
Next shot: the 1956 Buick going around a curve much too fast, and
then, in slow motion, flying off the road, rolling three times, and
crashing against the base of a billboard with some insipid and
trivial message. The crash replays from another angle, and then
another.
Next shot: An Indian wake at a well-worn community center
in south Minneapolis. Sam is sitting in a folding metal chair
between two closed coffins, with an arm around each coffin, grieved
beyond tears. A group of people are sitting in folding chairs in the
background, toward the right edge of the frame, singing Chippewa
hymns.
Next shot: Sam, laying a wreath at the base of the billboard.
The tracks of the car as it careened toward the billboard are
visible in the soft ground, highlighted by the angled sunlight of
early morning. The post of the billboard is splintered where the car
hit, and the sunlight glints off of a litter of broken glass from the
smashed windshield of the car.
DISSOLVE
back to the scene in the hospital room.
SAM
(Continues, as a
voice-over in
the last shot of the death sequence.)
It done something to me, when
my buddies died. After all they got through, in 'Nam. It was just
the sheerest coincidence that I didn't die with them ... almost like
I owed it to them, to do something particular with my life, that was
spared.
(Continues, speaking in his
hospital room.)
I tried going to college, but
't seemed like it didn't have no meaning. Then, on October 23, 1971,
I seen the building that I've got now, the one at 2108 East Franklin
Avenue, advertised for sale. A year to the day, from when my buddies
died. Maybe this sounds silly to you, Doctor, but it was almost like
that building was calling me. To do something decent, for guys like
Darwin and 'Nashus.
TRISH
I understand, Sam.
SAM
'Nashus, he used to call
Louis
Johnson's place 'The Slave Market.' I resolved to establish a
business that would treat men like them, right--with respect and
decency ... provide them with good jobs. I called it A-1 after
Darwin and 'Nashus--they were both A-1, top-notch, the best there
ever was.
The first thing I did, before
I opened my doors for business on December 12, 1971, was put in a
coffee urn, the biggest one I could find. I remembered too many
mornings when me an' my buddies, we didn't have a dime for a cup of
coffee. We'd sit there in Johnson's slave market early in the
morning, 'just wishing for a cup'a mud,' that's how Darwin use'ta put
it. I make some good coffee. I make it myself, and even with what
the price of coffee's gone up to now, I don't skimp. Before the
Tasty Bakery down on the southside closed, I'd stop by there, before
I opened up, and purchase their day-old donuts. I'd put those donuts
out right next to the coffee urn, up there on the counter, and I
didn't charge for them, either. I remember what it's like to go to
work on an empty stomach.
Sam
pauses, and empties the light brown institutional thermal
coffee-pitcher into his plastic cup--about an inch of cold dregs. He
looks at Trish.
SAM
Maybe I've been going on
too
long, Doctor. I don't want to take up too much of your time.
TRISH
I'm glad to hear your
story,
Sam. We're not that busy tonight, and I doubt that any of my other
patients will be needing me for awhile. If there's an emergency,
I've got a beeper.
(To Dave.)
Maybe you could go get some
more coffee, and a couple more cups.
Dave
sets his notebook, now with several pages filled with writing, down
on the chair and leaves, coffee-pitcher in hand. Sam and Trish
resume talking. In a few moments, Dave returns, with two
coffee-pitchers and two more cups. Without interrupting the flow of
conversation, he unobtrusively fills all three cups with steaming
coffee, and then sits down and resumes writing.
SAM
It's real nice to have a
beautiful woman-doctor like you, ma'am.
TRISH
Thank you, Sam. ... You
were
telling me about A-1.
SAM
Yeah, that's right. ...
The
business world is tough, a lot tougher than I'd thought it would be. A
few college courses, don't really prepare a man to do business in
the real world.
I did a lot of learning by
trial-and-error in the first few years, but I kept the doors open,
and always met my payroll. Even after I got married, that was back
in 1975, and my boy Nat was born, I had to work some pretty long
hours.
The daily labor business is
competitive. There's a lot of wheelin' and dealin' amid that field,
and more'n a little bit a' greasin' the big wheels. I done what I
had to do, to stay in business. I prob'bly've got a bit of an edge,
over the competition, being what you might call a minority myself. I
understand those people, in a way that white guys like Johnson
didn't. People feel like they can come an' talk to me, an' I try to
keep an open-door policy in my office.
My first priority has always
been to treat my employees fair, an' giving them a good break. Some
of the people who come into my place, they may be down on their
luck--but I don't care what anybody says about 'people like that.'
People are pretty much the same, the world over, and if you give 'em
a decent motivation to work, they'll generally come through for you.
I've got a good reputation in the business ... most'a the people I
send out, they do quality work. ... Maybe there's a few bad apples,
an' some of 'em 'r people whose thinking's just kinda cockeyed, but I
keep 'em culled. I reckon you could call my business, A-1 Daily
Labor, a success.
Over the years, I managed to
put by a little bit of money, an' my son Nat, he'll be graduating
from the University of St. Thomas, this June. (Smiles.) I'm sure
you'll understand, when I say I'm real proud of my boy.
(Pauses.)
Somehow, I just can't put
Viet-Nam behind me. There's nights when those people's eyes seem to
watch me from the darkness, and sometimes I can hear my some'a the
guys from my old unit, still screaming. There was things that
happened, there, that no man should'a had ta know about, and some of
it, I just can't forget it. In 1990, Donnie started sponsoring
refugees, an' when he told me about it, I did, too. It costs quite a
bit, what with lubricatin' the creaking bureaucratic mechanisms an'
all a' that, but so far I've helped eleven people get out of the
living hell they call the refugee camps.
Sam
pauses, drinking his coffee contemplatively. Trish picks up her cup
and sips coffee with him.
SAM
Damn. One thing about
this
place, is they won't let a person have a smoke in here.
TRISH
I'll check on it later,
but
probably tomorrow you'll be able to go out into the courtyard and
smoke ... as soon as they take you off the I.V., anyway.
(Pauses, then speaks
sympathetically.)
You've got through some really
tough times, Sam.
SAM
In one way or another,
we all
have to.
(Pauses, musing.)
One thing I will say, though,
is that the neighborhood around Franklin and Twentieth has gotten a
lot tougher, over the past ten years or so. Roughneck nigger-gangs,
wanna-be toughs like the Crips and the Bloods, comin' in from Chicago
an' Las An-gles, are helpin' send that neighborhood slidin'
not-so-slowly downhill. ... Though, I can't say that the folks up in
City Hall have tried to do much to stop it. Sometimes, it kinda
seems to me like those fellows in the upper crust ... seems like they
want to keep some people in the down-and-out.
Runnin' a business like my A-1
Daily Labor, there, a person needs to keep a lot of cash on the
premises. A lot a' the people who work for me, they don't keep no
bank accounts, an' those check-cashing places put the screws to 'em.
They charge ten percent off the top, just to cash a check. So, I've
got the cash to pay some'a th' people that I've known for awhile,
them that wants it that way.
It's gettin' rougher, though.
About five years ago, I started wearin' a bullet-proof vest, one of
them Keflar ones that you can't hardly see under a person's clothing.
(Chuckles softly.) Might be bad luck, though, to tell you how many
times I've been glad I had it. Like yesterday ...
Sam
trails off, and starts to drift off into reverie. Trish waits for a
few moments longer than a natural conversational pause, and then
speaks softly.
TRISH
Like yesterday ... go
on, Sam.
SAM
Yeah, I was mentionin'
yesterday. The third of January, nineteen-ninety-seven. Helluva
day. Damn' cold, too--I don't think it got warmer'n ten below zero,
all day ... prob'ly with that wind chill, thirty or forty below. I'm
gettin older, an' tireder ... you prob'ly seen on my chart that I'll
be forty-seven in March, and on days that's as cold as yesterday was,
occasionally I starts dreamin' of selling out and movin' to eastern
Kentucky. But then, I remember the people that's dependin' on me for
their daily bread, an' I get back to work.
(Pauses.)
But, yesterday started off like
one of those days that just ain't gonna go right, no matter what you
try to do about it. Twenty-eight years ago, yesterday, that's when I
got damn' near killed in Viet-nam, and every year, 'bout this time,
that anniversary's hangin' around in the back of my mind.
(Laughs.)
At this rate, I'll be
eighty-four years old when I get shot in the head again, in the year
twenty-oh-thirty-five. If I should live that long. But, maybe I
shouldn' talk about it that way.
(Pauses, takes a drink of
coffee.)
I open up at five
o'clock in
the morning, an' yesterday, I had a pretty good crowd in the sitting
room of A-1 Daily Labor, by five-thirty in the morning. Most of 'em,
I recognized as pretty regular people, steady as they get in the
daily labor business, an' ready an' eager to go to work. ... I
gen'rally get a few drunks in there, too, lookin' for a warm place
and some free coffee, but as long as they don't bother nobody, I let
them be. Some of them people, they might come in drunk for a few
days in a row, but then they sober up and work steady for a good
stretch before they go off, on another bender. Steady long-term
employees, an' predictable as hell, some of 'em drunks are, if you
treat 'em right.
When somebody new comes in, I
have 'em fill out an application an' some workin' papers, an' then
I've got them fixed in my mind. Some of 'em, in particular them
older Indians who works seasonal off of the reservations, they ain't
had much of an education, an' so I help them fill out their papers.
After a person's been in business as long as I have, there isn't too
much about people you don't know ... an' most of the people who comes
in to work for me, I know their names, their job preferences, and
'most always somethin' about 'em as a person, too.
By five-thirty in the morning,
it looked like I had a good workin' group a' people, an' I had some
pretty good jobs to send 'em out on, too ... damn' good, if I say so
myself, for the post-Christmas slump. I'd had some coffee, an' my
donuts, an' I was beginning to think that my premonitions were just
an ol' flashback. 'Let it go, Sam,' I told myself. 'Yesterday's
gone, an' bad luck don't necessarily have to come in threes.'
I should'a kept quiet. No
sooner did I say that to myself, then in walks three trouble-makers.
The ringleader's a street-wise little ... gal named Mary, too pretty
for her own good, real conceited--she thinks the world owes her a
living, an' she's knocked up higher 'n a kite. She comes in with her
mom, who can't see no wrong in anything her little girl does, an' her
boyfriend, he's a smart-aleck kid they call Joe.
When them people first came
in, lookin' for work las' September, I give 'em a chance. I guess
that's just the kinda guy I am, tryin' ta find the best in people an'
help it develop. It works often enough to keep me on the same track,
anyway.
But, that Mary, she's a
back-stabbing little ... conniver. I disregarded my instincts, an'
give her a good job at Apache. The ungrateful ... wretch, had to go
and stick her arm in a metal-stamping machine--an' she crushed her
arm, hopin' to collect a big insurance settlement. She caused me all
kinds'a trouble, goin' around crying to the Union, to OSHA, an' to
everywhere else she could think a' goin'. She plays a good
'innocent' act, an' she had them people fooled, stringin' 'em right
along with her.
I had enough con-fron-tations
in Viet-Nam to last me six lifetimes, an' I gen'rally try to ease
them undesirables out gently. But, there's some people, like that
damn ... Mary, that just don't want to take a hint. She just kept
comin' in, draggin' Joe and her momma in with her, an' sittin' there,
day after day, tryin' to look pitiful and martyred. Even if I
would'a been fool enough to trust her again, after what she tried to
do to me, in my business there ain't no kinda job I'd be likely to
have for a knocked-up kid with a busted-up arm, anyhow.
An' then, on that Friday,
January third, there she comes in, again, her an' her
disciples, just a little after five-thirty in the morning. She sat
there simpering and sulking, tryin' every trick she knew, to pull on
an' old man's heart-strings. An' I'd had enough of it. More'n
enough. It was so damn' cold that mornin' that I didn't want to send
them outside while it was still dark out, even if she is a
trouble-maker, so I let them three sit there, drinkin' my coffee and
keepin' nice an' warm, until after seven o'clock. Then, I pretty
much straight-out told 'em that I didn't want her, nor her doting
momma, tryin' to come there workin' for me. That Mary's a sneaky
little snake, an' so, I told 'em in front of the whole crowd, them
that was left, jus' for my own protection.
I don't know where some people
gets the kind of chutzpa that ... Mary's got. She jus' sat there,
makin' eyes at me, like she was tryin' to use her charms to mesmerize
me into somethin' I didn' want to do. So, I tried talkin' to Joe. He's
a smart-aleck, but except for his infatuation with that little
... vamp, he's got some common sense. If he didn't come with a
scheming little harlot as baggage, I would'a kept him on--he's a real
skilled welder. But, the three of 'em come as a package deal, so I
had to tell him, straight to his face and in front more'n several
people, that he was wastin' his time, comin' into A-1 Daily Labor
lookin' for any kinda work.
DISSOLVE
into the waiting room of A-1 Daily Labor, from Sam's point of view
behind the counter, looking out into the room. There are people
scattered through the room: those who remain after Doris and Louise
leave just after 7:00 on Friday, January 3, 1997. Joe is standing,
looking toward the counter.
SAM
Joe, I'm sorry, but you
folks
might as well leave, because there's not gonna be no welding jobs for
you here.
Joe,
looking slightly disappointed but not too surprised, turns away, and
leans over to Mary and 'Lil, as though to ask them to leave with him.
Mary reaches out to him, and says something which is inaudible. Joe
interacts with Mary like a lovelorn puppy, and instead of leaving,
comes up to the counter to refill three coffee-cups.
SAM
Hey, Mac, you're the
only
welder here, that I'm gonna hire. Could'ja take a job at Dick's
plumbing?
Mac,
who has an alcoholic's morning shakes, heaves himself up out of his
chair and stumbles toward the counter. Joe returns to Mary and 'Lil
with the coffee, and sits back down.
DISSOLVE
to the scene at A-1 at 8:00 the same morning. There are only a
handful of people left in the room, including Mary, 'Lil and Joe, who
are sipping coffee.
SAM
(Voice-over.)
Mary an' her devote-ees were
still sittin' an' drinkin' my coffee at eight in the morning. I'd
tried to let them go, politely, and that ... Mary was keepin' the
three of 'em in there. Short of callin' the cops to haul 'em out of
there, which is somethin' I've only had to do twice, in all the years
I've been in business, I didn't have much choice, but to be rude.
Willy
Steele is sitting in the back of the room with three derelicts,
passes a bottle. They are all visibly intoxicated.
SAM
You guys in the back
there, an'
Willy Steele, I'm talking to you too, it's time to go. This ain't a
cocktail lounge.
DERELICT
Will 'e steal? Ask him!
The
other derelicts laugh, and stir in their chairs as though they are
thinking about leaving. Willy puts his bottle back in his inside
pocket.
SAM
Alright, folks. You
might as
well clear out, because I don't have no more jobs for today.
(Looking straight at Mary.)
And you, Mary, don't work here
anymore. I'm sorry, Joe, but you and 'Lil don't work here, either.
That's it.
They
look at Sam, but do not make any move to leave.
SAM
The door's behind you.
Get
going.
The
three stand up and talk for a moment. Joe's shoulders are slumped,
and he looks tired. Then, Mary seems to come to a decision, and,
with a flounce of her head, starts walking toward the front of the
room with a sly smile. Joe and 'Lil say something inaudible to her,
but she ignores them and keeps walking. She faces Sam coyly across
the counter.
MARY
Sam, Sam. What are you
doing?
You're not being fair. How can you do this to us? My mom and Joe
are hard workers, and you know it!
SAM
You're fired. All three
of
you.
(He gives Mary an implacable
look, then speaks sharply.)
I've got work to do in the back
office.
Sam
turns on his heel, and walks away. Mary hesitates for a few moments,
and then chases after him.
CUT
to Sam's office. Sam wearily shuffles through the stack of papers
which engulf his desk and sighs. He then leans back in his chair,
with his feet up on the desk, sips a cup of coffee, and lights a
cigarette. Mary comes sauntering into the room, and closes the door
behind her. She makes herself at home on the office couch, moving a
pile of file folders to the floor, and sits in a seductive pose on
the couch.
SAM
(Patiently.)
I told you, you're fired, Mary.
You don't have any business in here. Now or ever.
MARY
But Sam, I've got a proposal
for you.
SAM
I don't want to listen
to any
proposals you make to me. Get out.
MARY
Oh, Sam! Please listen
to me.
Since I got hurt, we're desperate. We really need the work. You
know that my mom and Joe are hard workers, steady workers. They've
done their best on every job you've sent them out on, and more than
once, supervisors told them that they'd like to hire them steady, if
it wasn't for the penalty fees in your contracts with them. Sam, I
don't know what your problem is. You've got jobs, I know you do. Why
don't you put us to work? Sam, I'll do anything for you ...
A
jet airplane roars overhead, cutting off the conversation for long
moments. The window behind Sam rattles.
SAM
I told you once already,
kid. I
don't want to listen to any proposals you have to make to me. Don't
make this any harder than it has to be. Just get going.
MARY
Sam, I don't know why
you're
trying to freeze us out. You haven't sent any of us out on a job in
three weeks. You've got jobs, Sam, I know you do. Why don't you put
us to work?
Sam
swings his feet down from the desk, and sits up straight in his
chair. He swivels toward Mary.
SAM
Listen, Mary. I tried to
tell
you in a nice way, and you haven't listened. You ain't an airhead--I
know there's some sense behind that pretty face, somewhere. You
asked me, so I'll tell it to you straight. I don't have no jobs, now
or ever, for someone who intentionally gets herself hurt, and then
tries to screw me over on my insurance. Do you hear me, Mary? That's
it. That's how the real world works. I don't want to listen
to none of your deals. You shouldn't have come in here, and now I
want you to get out.
MARY
(Simpering.)
Sam, oh, Sam. You know
that isn't true. You sent me out to Apache, and I was supposed to be
working on that machine. The Union Rep can testify to that. It's
not my fault!
SAM
You're was ...
MARY
It's cold outside, and
we're
suffering, Sam. The rent is overdue, and the landlord is threatening
to evict us. Please, give us another chance.
SAM
(Sarcastically.)
What do you want me to do, call
your landlord and plead with him? Should I tell him that you're in
my office, crying, because you spent your rent money?
Mary, I know your landlord,
Max, and he's a fair guy. If he's threatening to evict you, then
it's because you haven't paid your rent in at least two months. He
knows it's cold outside, and he doesn't want to freeze anybody out. But
he's got bills to pay, too.
You already used up your last
chance, Mary. Don't ask me for any favors or any deals. And, I
don't want to hear any proposals. It's time for you to go now, Mary. If
you want a job, look someplace else.
MARY
But, we've been here at
five-thirty every morning, for the past three weeks. We came here
because we want to work. That's your business, isn't it, sending
people to work? We're hard workers, and you know it. I don't know
what you're trying to do to us, Sam Wendell, but it's just not fair! We
signed a six-month contract with you, and we've upheld our
side of the contract.
(Wriggling seductively on the
couch, and unbuttoning the top button of her blouse.)
Won't you just listen to my
proposal?
SAM
I've been in business
for
twenty-six years, right here, and I don't need you to tell me how to
run my business. I thought you could read, or I would have read that
contract to you. It's an employment option, it's not a guarantee
that I'll have a job for everybody who comes in the door, every day.
The temp-labor market fluctuates, and sometimes there's jobs, and
sometimes there ain't. I've got a lot of people depending on me for
jobs, and I try to be fair. If you've lost your copy of that
contract, I'll give you another one.
Sam
tears a printed contract off a pad on his desk, writes "VOID"
on both sides, and hands it to Mary.
SAM
(Continues.)
Take it home and read it. If
you can't read, take to somebody who can read it to you--and start
thinking about going back to school so you will be able to
read. It's not an exclusive contract. If you want to work, go find
a job someplace else. At A-1 Daily Labor, you're fired. I don't
care how bad you want to work, there ain't any jobs for you here.
You've been fired, Mary.
(Sighs, as Mary makes no
motion to leave.)
As long as you're just sitting
there, I'll give you a piece of free advice, from an old man who's
been around a long time. You're a cute kid, Mary. You've got a
pretty face, and you've got a lot going for you. Joe's got some
growing-up to do, but he's a real decent guy. Save yourself a lot of
pain, kid, and stop acting like a whore.
Now, go away, Mary.
MARY
I am not a whore! Don't
you
ever call me a whore! Don't you ever, ever, say that about
any decent woman!
SAM
If you're not a whore,
then
don't act like one. You're insulting me, and you're insulting
yourself, when you come in here talking about proposals. I
don't have time for stuck-up kids who come into my office and try to
insult me. And, I don't have jobs for people who try to stab me in
the back.
Get your act together, kid. What
you do with your life is up to you. Instead of wasting your
time sitting in my place, sitting here drinking my coffee and feeling
sorry for yourselves, just sitting for three weeks after I told you
that you were fired, why don't you folks go out and look for steady
jobs? If you look long enough, you'll find them. I'm in the labor
business, and I know there's decent jobs out there: steady work, good
pay. If one of you finds a job, you could probably get Max to extend
you a little more time to pay your rent. Joe's got good job
skills if he looks, he's certain to find a steady welding
job, Union time, even lots of overtime if he wants it. But, that's
up to you folks. I'm through with you.
I've asked you nicely to get
out. And now, I'm throwing you out. Good luck, Mary.
Sam
stands up, and walks toward the couch. He puts his hand on Mary's
shoulder, and urges her into a standing position. He then walks
toward the door, pushing her at nearly arm's length ahead of him.
MARY
Take your hands off of
me!
SAM
Then get out.
He
goes to the door of the office, and opens it. Mary leaves, just as a
jet airplane flies overhead, on a low takeoff. Sam returns to his
desk, and sits with his face in his hands for a moment. Then, he
sits up, sighs, pours himself a cup of coffee, and starts dealing
with his paperwork.
Sam
has just started writing, when Willy Steele walks in the door.
SAM
Hey, Willy! You picked a
really busy morning to drop by and visit.
WILLY
You sure spent a lot of
time
talking to that hot little kitty-cat, Mary.
(With a sly inebriated
expression.)
What were you doing with that
cute little chickadee for all that time in here--and with the door
closed, too! I wish I had your job.
SAM
I'm almost ready to give
you my job, Willy. It's been a helluva morning. I fired her. She
didn't want to hear me, when I told her that she didn't have a job
here, anymore.
WILLY
I've been standing
outside for
awhile, Sam. Waiting, 'cuz the door was closed. You've got a loud
voice, buddy, from hollering across that waiting room all these
years. I could hear you talking about proposals.
SAM
She's just a kid, Willy,
and
'way too pretty for her own good. She thought she could charm me
into giving her another job. ... I told her to behave herself.
(Sighs.)
I'm too old, buddy, and I've
seen too much. I tried to talk some sense into her. I don't know if
she heard me, or not. She didn't want to listen to me tell her she's
fired.
Willy
gives Sam an exaggerated wink, and nudges him in the ribs with his
elbow.
WILLY
If you say so, Sam. She
sure
is one hot momma.
SAM
And I feel old enough to
be her
grandfather. Today ain't been a good day for me, Willy. I've got
stacks of papers that I gotta take care of before Monday.
Willy
takes his bottle out from his inside coat pocket, uncaps it, and
offers it to Sam.
WILLY
Want a drink, Sam?
Sam
gets up from behind his desk, picks up his coffee-cup with his left
and, and walks to Willy. He clasps him on the back in a gesture of
friendliness, but also gently eases Willy toward the door.
SAM
Thanks, Willy, but give
me a
raincheck. I was just getting up to get a cup of coffee.
Sam
and Willy walk out of the office. In a few moments, Sam returns with
another cup of coffee, and sits back down at his desk. He leafs
through the stack of papers, stares at the wall for a few moments,
sighs deeply, and puts his face into his hands. He presents an image
of being stressed and exhausted. In less than ten seconds, his
shoulders slump, as though he has fallen asleep.
Almost
immediately thereafter, 'Lil storms into his office.
'LIL
Sam Wendell, wake up!
What did
you do to my daughter?
Sam
moans, with frustration and fatigue, and does not lift his head as he
speaks.
SAM
I
fired her, 'Lil. You're fired, too. Please go away.
'LIL
Sam, wake up! Right now!
SAM
For Jesus' sake, 'Lil,
please
don't bother me now.
'Lil
walks around to the side of Sam's desk, and kicks him sharply in the
shin. Sam sits up and looks at 'Lil. He seems very tired. 'Lil is
standing about two feet from Sam, with her hands on her hips. She
looks furious.
'LIL
Sam Wendell, you've done
enough
damage to people to send you to Hell, six times over. If you don't tell
me what you did to my daughter, right now, I'm going to kill you!
SAM
With what, your voice?
'LIL
Sam, do you know who I
am?
SAM
Of course I do. You're
'Lil,
Mary's mother.
'LIL
What the hell did you do
to my
daughter?
SAM
I fired her. And, you're
fired, too. Now, please get out of my office.
Without
warning, 'Lil steps forward on one foot, and gives Sam a lightning
fast roundhouse punch. Blood spatters from his nose, and his glass
eye pops out and rolls across the desk. Sam stands up, quickly, and
retrieves his eye as he does so. His stance makes it clear that 'Lil
will land no more blows. He puts his eye in his pocket, and speaks
with forced patience.
SAM
'Lil, you were fired
this
morning. If you'll remember, I fired you three weeks ago, but you
didn't pay any attention. After I fire people, I don't send them out
on any more jobs. You, Mary and Joe have been fired. You don't work
here any more. You are trespassing in my office, and you are
trespassing at A-1 Daily Labor. Get out of here, and please don't
come back.
'LIL
Where is Mary?
SAM
I don't know. I fired
her, and
she left about ten minutes ago. I don't know where she went. If you
leave and go look for her, I'm sure you'll find her.
'LIL
Sam, I've called you a
sleazy,
abusive, greedy, sadistic, parasitic bastard to your back, and now
I'll call you that to your face. We've worked hard for you, and you
have the temerity to fire us!
Look at you. You're sitting
there in a nice warm office, and yet you're throwing us out into the
cold street. How the hell can you fire us?
SAM
I just did. I own this
place,
I'm the boss, and you're fired. Now get out, right now. Don't start
any trouble, 'Lil. Just get out.
'LIL
You're a goddam
capitalist
sunnuvabitch, Sam Wendell, and you're a Commie pinko motherfucker,
all rolled into one. How can you eat, while we go hungry?
SAM
I work for a living,
'Lil. If
you want to eat, go find a job. But not here. You're fired. Do you
understand that? You do not work here any more. Go away. ... I'm
busy. I work for a living, remember? I've got a business to run. Get
out of here. Now.
'LIL
What kind of business
are you
running, that you can fire people just like that? You are a
bloodsucker and a leech, Sam. You are feeding on our blood, the
poorest of the poor. You're a goddam spider, drawing us into your
web and draining us dry, grinding our worn-out husks into the muck
beneath your feet--and you enjoy it. You send us, who have no
political or economic power, who are already worn-down from
exhaustion, from malnutrition, to do the jobs that upper-class guys
like you, faggots who don't like to get your hands dirty, are too
prissy to touch. You exploit us, and then you blame us for the
consequences of your own oppression.
Sam, you send children and
debilitated old men to do jobs that any humane society should
abolish. We work in sweatshops ... with toxic chemicals and
hazardous waste. You treat us as social outcasts. In your eyes, we
are maggots crawling through the fetid offal that rots beneath the
seamy undersides of your high society. In your flush-toilet mind,
you deny the inseparable connection between this filth and the
sparkling towers of downtown Minneapolis--that Ptempkin perversion
you call civilization. Who the hell do you think you are?
SAM
Nice speech, 'Lil. Where
did
you hear it?
(Pauses.)
Listen, I'm not who you think I
am. ...
'Lil, I agree with you,
completely, that there are a lot of things about this society that
are, like you're saying, obscene perversions. I've seen things that
maybe even you wouldn't want to know about, and could add 'vile,'
'corrupt' and a long speech of other words the diatribe that you've
borrowed.
And, I've spent a lot of my
life, working to make this a better world, in the best way I know
how. But 'Lil, I don't want to talk about it now. I'm tired, I've
got a stack of paperwork to get done before Monday morning, and when
you punched me, you gave me a headache.
I don't have anything personal
against you, so don't take it as an insult that I've fired you. It
just didn't work out, not at A-1 Daily Labor. You're a hard worker,
and you do a good job. There's a decent employer for you
somewhere--but not here. If you would'a listened to me three weeks
ago, when I fired you then, you'd already have another job.
Sometime, when you ain't so
angry and I ain't so overworked an' tired ... sometime after you've
found another job, drop by and we'll go out for a cup of coffee and
talk about what's wrong with this filthy, dehumanizing civilization.
But, not today, and not next week.
Please go away, now, 'Lil.
'LIL
Where is Mary, Sam? What
have
you done to my daughter?
SAM
I fired her, 'Lil. I
didn't
hurt her. She walked out of here angry, but she'll get over it. She's
got some growing up to do, but she's a good kid.
Sam
walks toward 'Lil, and starts easing her out of his office.
SAM
Hurry, 'Lil, and go look
for
your daughter. She just left a little while ago, and she can't have
gone very far, not yet.
Sam
escorts 'Lil to the door. He then shakes his head, and sighs, and
leaves his office.
DISSOLVE
to Sam's office, shortly after eleven o'clock on the same day. Sam
has washed his face and changed his shirt, and his glass eye is back
in place. He has a takeout bag from a fast-food restaurant on his
desk, and he is eating a hamburger and drinking coffee. His nose is
swollen, and he chews as though his jaw hurts. Joe walks into his
office. Sam motions him to the couch, and Joe sits down.
SAM
Hey, Joe! You're just in
time
for a hamburger.
Sam
takes a second hamburger, still in its paper wrapping, out of the
bag, along with a container of french fries, and, getting up, hands
them to Joe.
JOE
Thanks, Sam.
Joe
starts eating the hamburger, trying not to seem too hungry. Sam
finishes his meal, and tosses the crumpled-up paper wrapper into the
wastepaper basket, which is filled to overflowing with fast-food
wrappers, discarded papers, and takeout coffee-cups. The hamburger
wrapper bounces off the pile and rolls onto the floor. Sam sighs,
and moves to retrieve it.
Sam
opens an extra-large container of coffee from the same fast-food
restaurant, and from it, fills an empty coffee-cup which reposes
among the paperwork on his desk. He hands the still more than
half-full takeout cup to Joe, and offers him a cigarette. Joe
accepts. He puts the cigarette behind his ear, to smoke later.
JOE
Thanks again, man.
Sam
lights a cigarette, and has just started smoking it when the phone
rings. Sam answers it on the third ring. Joe continues eating his
hamburger while Sam talks.
SAM
Sam here.
(Pause.)
Yeah, we've got some guys like
that for you.
(Pause.)
Mmmm. I dunno about that,
Henry. ... Yeah, you must know how it is. Most'a the guys that come
through here aren't all that skilled.
(Pause.)
Truck drivers? Yeah, gimme a
couple'a days and I can prob'ly find you those truck drivers.
(Pause.)
Yeah, there's gen'rly a few
guys who know how to run one'a them. I don't say they're journeymen,
but they're competent. You never know in this business, though. I
might get a journeyman machinist with twenty years of experience,
steady hands, and a Class-A security clearance comin' through the
door tomorrow morning.
(Pause.)
I dunno about a welder, Henry. I
ain't got any real decent ones right now. Tell you what, though, I
just heard that Tom, over at Man-Power, got a top-notch guy over
there, not too long ago. ... Joe, that's what they said his name
was. Tom's prob'ly left town for the weekend already, but you could
try him first thing Monday morning.
(Pause.)
Yep. You betcha. And tell
that little girl of yours that Uncle Sam says 'hello.'
Sam
hangs up the phone, and turns to Joe.
SAM
You heard that. As soon
as you
leave here, go see Tom over at Man-Power. You can tell him I sent
you.
JOE
(Eyes sparkling with
pleasure.)
Alright! Thanks, Sam.
Sam
starts to say something, and then winces with pain and puts his hand
to his head. He rummages around in his desk drawer, but does not
find what he is looking for.
SAM
I'll be right back, Joe.
Sam
leaves, and in a moment returns with a bottle of aspirin and two more
cups of coffee. He shakes two tablets out onto the palm of his hand,
and takes them with a swallow of hot coffee. He lights another
cigarette, and starts to say something to Joe, when the phone rings.
SAM
That damn phone hasn't
rung all
morning, and as soon as you walk in here, it won't quit. Excuse me,
Joe, I'd better answer it.
(Sam answers the phone on the
fourth ring.)
A-1. Sam here.
(Pause.)
Hey, Rick, how's it goin'?
(Pause.)
You don't say!
(Pause.)
Think so?
(Pause.)
Nah, prob'ly not.
(Pause.)
Yeah? Must'a been a fluke.
(Pause.)
Naw, I wouldn't.
(Pause.)
Betcha.
(Pause. He laughs.)
Uh-hunh!
(Pause.)
Yep. Later.
Sam
hangs up, and returns his attention to Joe.
SAM
It's good to see you,
Joe. What
can I do for you?
JOE
Uh ... What is this
about
getting fired? What's the problem?
SAM
Goddam, Joe. I wish I
wouldn'a
had to. You're a good worker, and I was lucky to have you here. It
ain't nothin' personal, you can be sure of that. But, hey, you heard
me talking to Henry. That's Henry Devries, D-E-V-R-I-E-S, over at
Redmond Metal Products on 25th Avenue and 25th Street. It's a little
bit of a hike, but you're young enough that it's not too far to walk.
You can go to Tom at Man-Power, or, if you're wanting a permanent
job, talk to Henry. He's busy enough that he should be thinking
about hiring somebody full-time. If you'd like, I can call him with
a recommendation--just let me know. It's not Union scale, but he
pays pretty good. It'd get you back into circulation as a skilled
tradesman, and I think its about time you did that. You've got real
talent, Joe.
JOE
Thanks very much, I'll
do that.
... But, what about those contracts we signed with you?
SAM
It's not an exclusive
contract,
Joe. It doesn't guarantee that I have to give you a job, and it
doesn't keep you from working for somebody else. All it says, in
plain English, is that if I want to, I can offer you a job, and if
you want to, you can take the job I offer you. And, that if you
work, I'll pay you a daily rate. That's it. That's all there is to
it. I just use them because it makes the bureaucrats happy. They
like paperwork.
Sam
looks at his desk and grimaces. Joe thinks about what Sam has said,
and then gets up and walks to the front of Sam's desk.
JOE
OK. But, you know what,
Sam?
There's something that's really bothering me.
SAM
Let's hear it.
JOE
A hard-headed,
successful
businessman like you doesn't throw away money for no reason, Sam. And
that's exactly what you're doing, by giving me away to Tom. It
doesn't make sense to me. And, it doesn't make sense that you're
firing us, either. It just doesn't add up, Sam. There's something
you're not telling me.
SAM
You're sharp, Joe. And,
you're
right. And I'd tell you that it had something to do with some good
buddies of mine who died ... and in a way that'd be true. But, it'd
be a half-truth, and there's something about you that I respect too
much for half-truths. So, I promise that I'll talk to you about it
six months from now, and you can either trust me, or don't trust me.
And, that's all I can say about it right now. Damn, I'm sorry, Joe.
That's the best I can do for you.
JOE
It don't have nothin' to
do
with my wife, does it? Some of the guys out there talk like you're a
pretty horny old guy. ... If I ever find out that you've been
messin' with my wife, Sam, no matter how good you've been to me, I
swear, I'll kill you.
SAM
Joe, I promise you, from
the
bottom of my heart and in the names of my buddies who've died: I have
not messed with your wife, and I never will. I haven't even thought
about messing with your wife. This is such a crazy goddam business,
that there's days, and today's one of 'em, when I don't hardly even
think about my wife.
(Pauses.)
And, Joe ... don't worry too
much about it. There's things about this business that don't add up
to me, either--and I've worked here for twenty-six years.
JOE
OK. ... If you say so,
Sam. I
don't like operating half in the dark, but I guess I might give it a
try, trusting you.
SAM
Thank you, Joe. While
you're
still here, is there anything else you wanna talk about?
JOE
(Pauses to consider.)
Not really. ... Thanks, Sam.
SAM
Don't mention it. Let me
know
if you get the job, OK? If you don't, I might've heard of another
good welding job.
JOE
OK.
Joe
leaves, and Sam once again resumes his paperwork, chain-smoking and
drinking coffee.
DISSOLVE
to the Sam's hospital room, a continuation of prior scene with Sam,
Trish and Dave. The most noticeable difference is that Dave's
notebook is more than half filled.
SAM
Goddam, I hated to let
Joe go,
not really trustin' me like that, but I didn't know what else to do. If
I would'a said something to him about his wife, I would'a lost him
completely. Maybe, she'll change--I hope so. Or, he'll just have to
find out for himself, what kind'a woman she is.
(Pause.)
And that paperwork! You asked
me earlier 'bout if I had a headache, Doctor. When 'Lil punched me,
she really give me a hum-dinger of a headache. I must be getting
old, that she caught me with my guard down like that. An' yesterday,
I had an awful pile of paperwork. Did'ja ever try to do paperwork
with a splittin' headache, Doctor?
TRISH
(Smiling ruefully at the
recollection.)
Yes, I have, Sam. And, it
truly is not a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, doing paperwork
with a headache.
(Pauses.)
Y'know, you came in here with a
gunshot wound. I was wondering about that.
SAM
(Laughs ironically.)
Oh yeah, that. I got so
involved in talking to you, that I almost forgot about getting shot.
Funny, ain't it? You're an awful nice woman to talk to, Doctor.
(Pause.)
TRISH
Thank you, Sam. ... You
were
telling me about getting shot.
SAM
Mmmm.
(Pause.)
Your curiosity is showing,
Doctor. Is that professional?
(Pause. He chuckles.)
OK, you're such a nice lady,
an' such a pretty one too, that I'll quit teasing you.
(Pause.)
But, really, except that I've
still got half that pile of paperwork, unfinished ... and a pretty
hefty hospital bill, I reckon, it wasn't much.
(Pause.)
Some young wanna-be toughs came
in late that Friday afternoon. It's not such a good neighborhood,
down there on Franklin and Twentieth, anymore, and that kinda thing
happens. They wanted me to open up my office safe for them, so they
could help themselves to the payroll, and they shot me when I
wouldn't do it. That happens every now and then ... that's why I
wear a bullet-proof vest. Only thing is, this time, one of 'em
thought he was a hot-shot sharpshooter, and shot me in the head.
That's dumb, even for punk
kids. How could I open that safe for them, if I was dead?
(Laughs again.)
News travels fast, in that
neighborhood. Some calls 't the 'moccasin telegraph.' The last
thing anybody in the southside saw of me, was my being loaded
feet-first into a meat wagon. There's probably all kinds of wild
stories going around, prob'ly already was by last night, about how I
got killed.
Sam
turns to Dave, and looks at him intently.
SAM
(Continues.)
Say, Dave. Didn't your
girlfriend here, tell me you're an anthropology student?
(Pause.)
ZOOM
IN on Sam, to a tightly framed close-up of his face, as he looks
at Dave.
SAM
(Continues.)
Would you give me your expert
opinion--do you think there might be any va-li-di-ty to my hypothesis
about wild stories?
FREEZE-FRAME
on Sam's face, and FADE OUT.
REFERENCES
CITED
Browning,
Elizabeth Barrett. Aurora
Leigh. 1856. Reprinted in Showalter,
Elaine. Women's Liberation and Literature. Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc. 1971.
NOTES
i.
Browning, E.B. Aurora Leigh. Lines 180-201.
ii.
Browning, E.B. Aurora Leigh. Lines 206-221.
iii.
Browning, E.B. Aurora Leigh. Lines 263-276, 279-283.
