American Ghosts & Old World Wonders (4 page)

           
The rancher knew nothing. He worked. He kept the iron core of grief within him rustless. He looked forward to his solitary, once-monthly
drink, alone on the porch, and on those nights they took a chance and slept together in the log cabin under the patchwork quilt made in the "log cabin" pattern by their mother. Each time they lay down there together, as if she obeyed a voice that came out of the quilt telling her to put the light out, she would extinguish the candle flame between her finger-tips. All around them, the tactility of the dark.

           
She pondered the irreversibility of defloration. According to what the Minister's wife said, she had lost everything and was a lost girl. And yet this change did not seem to have changed her. She turned to the only one she loved, and the desolating space around them diminished to that of the soft grave their bodies dented in the long grass by the creek. When winter came, they made quick, dangerous love among the lowing beasts in the barn. The snow melted and all was green enough to blind you and there was a vinegarish smell from the rising of the sharp juices of spring. The birds came back.

           
A dusk bird went chink-chink-chink like a single blow on the stone xylophone of the Chinese classical orchestra.

                               
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE PORCH. DAY

                               
Annie-Belle, in apron, comes out on homestead porch; strikes metal triangle.

                               
ANNIE-BELLE
: Dinner's ready!

                               
INTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. NIGHT

                               
Supper-table. Annie-Belle serves beans. None for herself.

                               
JOHNNY:
Annie-Belle, you're not eating anything tonight.

                               
ANNIE-BELLE: Can't rightly fancy anything tonight.

           
The dusk bird went chink-chink-chink with the sound of a chisel on a gravestone.

           
He wanted to run away with her, west, further west, to Utah, to California where they could live as man and wife, but she said: "What about Father? He's lost enough already." When she said that, she put on, not his face, but that of their mother, and he knew in his bones the child inside her would part them.

           
The Minister's son, in his Sunday coat, came courting Annie-Belle. He is the second lead, you know in advance, from his tentative manner and mild eyes; he cannot long survive in this prairie scenario. He came courting Annie-Belle although his mother wanted him to go to college. "What will you do at college with a young wife?" said his mother. But he put away his books; he took the buggy to go out and visit her. She was hanging washing out on the line.

           
Sound of the wind buffeting the sheets, the very sound of loneliness.

Soranzo:
Have you not the will to love?

Annabella:
Not you.

Soranzo:
Who, then?

Annabella:
That's as the fates infer.

           
She lowered her head and drew her foot back and forth in the dust. Her breasts hurt, she felt queasy.

                               
EXTERIOR. PRAIRIE. DAY

                               
Johnny and Annie-Belle walking on the prairie.

                               
ANNIE-BELLE
: I think he likes me, Johnny.

                               
Pan blue sky, with clouds. Johnny and Annie-Belle, dwarfed by the landscape, hand in hand, heads bowed. Their hands slowly part.

                               
Now they walk with gradually increasing distance between them.

           
The light, the unexhausted light of North America that, filtered through celluloid, will become the light by which we see America looking at itself.

           
Correction: will become the light by which we see
North
America looking at itself.

                               
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE PORCH. DAY

                               
Row of bottles on a fence.

                               
Bang, bang, bang. Johnny shoots the bottles one by one.

                               
Annie-Belle on porch, washing dishes in a tub. Tears run down her face.

                               
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE PORCH. DAY

                               
Father on porch, feet up on railing, glass and bottle to hand.

                               
Sun going down over prairies.

                               
Bang, bang, bang.

                               
(Father's point of view) Johnny shooting bottles off the fence.

                               
Clink of father's bottle against glass.

                               
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. DAY

                               
Minister's son rides along track in long shot.

                               
Bang, bang, bang.

                               
Annie-Belle, clean dress, tidy hair, red eyes, comes out of house on to porch. Clink of father's bottle against glass.

                               
EXTERIOR. FARMHOUSE. DAY

                               
Minister's son tethers horse. He has brushed his Sunday coat.

                               
In his hand, a posy of flowers -- cottage roses, sweetbrier, daisies.

                               
Annie-Belle smiles, takes posy.

                               
ANNIE-BELLE
: Oh!

                               
Holds up pricked forefinger; blood drops on to a daisy.

                               
MINISTER'S SON: Let me . . .

                               
Takes her hand. Kisses the little wound.

                               
. . . make it better.

                               
Bang. Bang. Bang.

                               
Clink of bottle on glass.

                               
(Close up) Annie-Belle, smiling, breathing in the scent from her posy.

           
And, perhaps, had it been possible, she would have learned to love the Minister's gentle son before she married him, but, not only was it impossible, she also carried within her the child that meant she must be married quickly.

                               
INTERIOR. CHURCH. DAY

                               
Harmonium. Father and Johnny by the altar.

                               
Johnny white, strained; father stoical.

                               
Minister's wife thin-lipped, furious.

                               
Minister's son and Annie-Belle, in simple white cotton wedding-dress, join hands.

                               
MINISTER
: Do you take this woman. . .

                               
(Close up) Minister's son's hand slipping wedding ring on to Annie-Belle's finger.

                               
INTERIOR. BARN. NIGHT

                               
Fiddle and banjo old-time music.

                               
Vigorous square dance going on; bride and groom lead.

                               
Father at table, glass in hand.

                               
Johnny, beside him, reaching for bottle.

                               
Bride and groom come together at end of dance; groom kisses bride's cheek. She laughs.

                               
(Close up) Annie-Belle looking shyly up at the Minister's son.

                               
The dance parts them again; as Annie-Belle is handed down the row of men, she staggers and faints.

                               
Consternation.

                               
Minister's son and Johnny both run towards her.

                               
Johnny lifts her up in his arms, her head on his shoulder. Eyes opening.

                               
Minister's son reaches out for her. Johnny lets him take hold of her.

                               
She gazes after Johnny beseechingly as he disappears among the crowd.

           
Silence swallowed up the music of the fiddle and the banjo; Death with his hair in braids spread out the sheets on the marriage bed.

                               
INTERIOR. MINISTER'S HOUSE. BEDROOM. NIGHT

                               
Annie-Belle in bed, in a white nightgown, clutching the pillow, weeping.

                               
Minister's son, bare back, sitting on side of bed with his back to camera, head in hands.

           
In the morning, her new mother-in-law heard her vomiting into the chamber-pot and, in spite of her son's protests, stripped Annie-Belle and subjected her to a midwife's inspection. She judged her three months gone, or more. She dragged the girl round the room by the hair, slapped her, punched her, kicked her, but Annie-Belle would not tell the father's name, only promised, swore on the grave of her dead mother, that she would be a good girl in future. The young bridegroom was too bewildered by this turn of events to have an opinion about it; only, to his vague surprise, he knew he still loved the girl although she carried another man's child.

           
"Bitch! Whore!" said the Minister's wife and struck Annie-Belle a blow across the mouth that started her nose bleeding.

           
"Now, stop that, Mother," said the gentle son. "Can't you see she ain't well?"

           
The terrible day drew to its end. The mother-in-law would have thrown Annie-Bell out on the street, but the boy pleaded for her, and the Minister, praying for guidance, found himself opening the Bible at the parable of the woman taken in adultery and meditated well upon it.

           
"Only tell me the name of the father," her young husband said to Annie-Belle.

           
"Better you don't know it," she said. Then she lied: "He's gone, now; gone out west."

           
"Was it --?" naming one or two.

           
"You never knew him. He came by the ranch on his way out west."

           
Then she burst out crying again, and he took her in his arms.

           
"It will be all over town," said the mother-in-law. "That girl made a fool of you!"

           
She slammed the dishes on the table and would have made the girl eat out the back door, but the young husband laid her a place at table with his own hand and led her in and sat her down in spite of his mother's black looks. They bowed their heads for grace. Surely, the Minister thought, seeing his boy cut bread for Annie-Belle and lay it on her plate, my son is a saint. He began to fear for him.