IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE

This play is a new resource for local events. We highly recommend performing or reading it, and then discussing and organizing for impeachment.

Please check for permission for performance from the author at peteowl@aol.com

Based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis
by Lee Roscoe (c.) 2005

Time: 1930s

Place: Fort Beulah, a small Vermont town, and Washington D.C.

Characters:

BUZZ WINDRIP U.S. President. Nasty, angry, smug, self-righteous with heavy dose of good ole boy charm; loves a crowd; is convinced that he is serving the higher good.

DOREMUS JESSUP Editor of the newspaper “New England Informer,” graceful, charismatic Yankee; a basically cheerful, protective personality, 60s; believes that reason can conquer all. Values control over his life. Part of a WASP hierarchy which has worked, is in disbelief that it could fail.

LORINDA PIKE Brunette madonna; runs an Inn, partly New England Indian; 40s. Has an overlay of self-educated blue stocking. Wants to be self-reliant and to do the right thing.

ROSCOE TASBROUGH Businessman, 50s; has a veneer of upper crust over a roughneck crudity.

SHAD LEDUE JESSUP’s hired hand who becomes a militia Captain; 30s-40s.

PHILIP JESSUP Lawyer, DOREMUS’s son.

LEE SARASON WINDRIP’s right hand man.

BUCK TITUS Farmer, 30s-40s. Long time friend of DOR and brother in law to LORINDA.

ANNOUNCER entirely pre-taped to come in through the radio.

MM MILITIA MAN any actor as needed

6 Actors can double:
Doremus
Lorinda
Windrip
Tasbrough, Announcer
Ledue, Sarason
Buck, Phil

A simple set, surreally appointed -- along with prop changes-- could indicate the spaces in which action takes place. The spaces could be individuated on varied height levels and stage sectors. If possible a radio should be in a symbolic space of its own upstage left perhaps with Lorinda’s space. When President Windrip or the Announcer is speaking, the radio could be highlighted. Windrip’s mike can be in his White House space, key lit as needed.

(The lobby should be plastered with posters and pictures from the 30s. 30s music should be playing.)

Run time, under two hours with intermission

DOREMUS
(in shadow possibly from jail)
How come I didn’t see it coming? See what it would do to you Lorinda, to my best friend, my family, my country?
The country was in a depression and many were out of work. The economy was in a spin. Candidate for President Buzz Windrip promised relief. Surely I was a skeptic, but part of me wanted to believe. In our idyllic Vermont town where everybody was subject to the pressures of a pretty normal life, Hitler, Stalin, Franco and Mussolini, the horror of totalitarianism in Europe seemed far away.

ACT ONE
Scene 1
Election eve, 1936: The office of DOREMUS JESSUP’s newspaper, the New England Informer. The teletype machine is on. (WIND)

LORINDA
(enters, taking her coat off, stomping off snow.)
Hello sweetheart! I’ve missed you, too much. I hate that.
Nasty out. How was it in the big city?

DOREMUS
You wouldn’t believe how many people are out of work down to Burlington. How’s your business?

LORINDA
No one has the money to stay at Inns like mine any more. I’m pretty worried, I have to say. If Windrip gets in I just don’t know what will happen!

DOREMUS
Windrip’s against the dole. He’s saying if you can’t be self-reliant then go to the churches for help.

LORINDA
Lotta help they give—-canned food and mothy blankets. I ought ta know; my husband’s church gave plenty of charity…

DOREMUS
Well, tonight’s the night we’ll see! (after a pause, some business)
I just had to re-mortgage the house to Tasbrough’s bank to cover the lost subscribers from my rants about Windrip. What would Emma do if we lost the house? It’s her inheritance helped set up my newspaper, kept me from being a nomad newspaper bum! What I owe her in security is in part why I didn’t up and leave her when your husband died.
Could we have got it wrong on this Windrip thing? Emma thinks he’s the cat’s meow.

LORINDA
Are you serious!

DOREMUS
Could be I’ve been biased. It’s my obligation to remain unruffled and objective.

LORINDA Stroking his hair.)
No it’s not. And you are not unruffled.

DOREMUS
I think I just want to sit here in the corner next to the warm window, like the cat keeping out of the cold. You know, the older I get the more joy I take out of the small, unambitious
things of life.

LORINDA
Doremus Jessup, famed editor of the New England Informer, playing it safe?

DOREMUS(gives her a quick kiss)
It’s odd how it is so natural between us, we never feel guilty.

LORINDA (smiling)
Because I make it too easy for you. Because I feel guilty for both of us.

DOREMUS
You don’t demand anything from me, it’s true.
Maybe you should be a little less selfless, babe.
(With humor)
Force the issue, make me leave her, tell me how lonesome you are, pull at my sympathetic, protective nature…

LORINDA
I do want to be with you, especially holidays when everyone has family... but I try to make my family at the inn with the guests-- I just wouldn’t want to hurt Emma. It’s not for her sake even. I can deal with hurting a bit myself from loneliness, but I can’t stand hurting other people.

DOREMUS
We’re safe; she doesn’t think I could be a lover at my age anyway.
(They pull apart quickly as BUCK enters:)
Hey friend, come to see the results?

BUCK
Don’t think one or t’other be any better, really…

LORINDA
Glad there’ll be a few of us here to get the horrible news. How’ya bein Buck Titus?

BUCK
Salutations theyah our little fire brand!

LORINDA
You’ve been a stranger.

BUCK
Ayep. Haahvest took up all my time. Then we had to rebuild some outbuildings

LORINDA
I brought some truffles from the Inn to ease the pain.

BUCK
You angel. (teasing) If I’d known that I mighta voted different!
(to DOREMUS) Here, made you this decoy, been meaning ta give it ya.

DOREMUS
It’s handsome! How much do you want for it?

BUCK
Nah, it’s a gift; I have time on my hands at night.

(Enter ROSCOE TASBROUGH)

TASBROUGH
D’evening Buck, Dor; Missy Lorinda.
Thought I’d wait here for the wire, even though it will come in on the radio tomorrow. Wire makes it official, anyway. Kind of a tradition to gather here for the results, isn’t it?

DOREMUS
Yup. You know we are on opposite sides of this one cousin.

TASBROUGH
I have a lot riding on Windrip; I may have a position in his administration.

DOREMUS
You don’t say? Make yourself to home. Coffee?

TASBROUGH
Don’t mind if I do. You’re far too old to be politically naive---come in with us. You got your jollies off muckraking with those peevish editorials on Windrip.

DOREMUS
Come on. You know the man will be the worst thing for this country since the Revolution.

TASBROUGH
Come again?

DOREMUS(joking)
Mighta been better if we stayed with the monahchy.

TASBROUGH (very pointedly)
If he gets in the paper should get behind him. The rewards could be great!

DOREMUS
He doesn’t need my paper; he’s got all of Hearst’s.
How can anyone be conned by that huckster? He’ll decapitate democracy as an inconvenience to his backers!

BUCK
Give the guy the benefit of the doubt,Jessup; he might turn out all right after all; surely we need a change!

TASBROUGH
He’s a strong man who knows what he wants and how to get it, and that’s just what we need with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, living on my income tax and yours.

DOREMUS
Those “lazy bums” are miners and mill-workers and farm laborers on relief because guys like you, Roscoe Tasbrough--pay them a beggar’s wage, then cook the books so you keep all the profits, overextend….

TASBROUGH (interrupting)
Don’t give me that socialist propaganda! If it weren’t for guys like us, our banks, our quarries--you wouldn’t have your America…

LORINDA
How about when you lose your shirt…

TASBROUGH
Never happen..

LORINDA
…And are stone broke, stock market crashed again, no job, wouldn’t you want a little help?

TASBROUGH
A fiction. I’d build up another Tasbrough dominion all over again. Yes, our local radical bleeding heart still thinks that more government is the answer to our woes!
Buck, you got that farm a yours electrified yet?

BUCK
Nope. I kind a like my gas lamps, reminds me there’s a hangnail between us and the forces of nature.

TASBROUGH
Trouble with nature is; it’s too adversarial. I’ll take civilization myself.

BUCK
I’ll bet you will.

TASBROUGH
I don’t like an aching back or getting dirt under my fingernails all day long; rather live off my investments, thank you. Why live off your back when you can live on your brains?

(LEDUE enters passing TASBROUGH, greets the big man
obsequiously, pointedly snubs LORINDA.)

LEDUE
Hoping our man gets in Mr. Tasbrough! He’s gonna get this country everything it needs!

TASBROUGH
Jessup here doesn’t cotton to that fact!

LEDUE
Here, boss, got that piece a machinery you been wantin’.

DOREMUS
About time! Help me set it in will you? The election results are just about in and I need to get the morning edition out, pronto!

LEDUE
Why’n you bring it in yerself? I done my job. Here’s the bill.
Well look who’s here, my cousin Buck.

BUCK
Lo, Shad.

LEDUE
Stolen any land lately? Think I’ll be leavin here, smells bad.
(LEDUE sneezes loudly without covering his mouth. Wipes his nose on his sleeve.)

BUCK
Jesus, you might have the courtesy not to sneeze all over me.

LEDUE
Takin’ the Lord’s name in vain.
Can’t catch a cold from me. Catch a cold from the cold.

BUCK
You should be wearing a jacket, it must be minus four out; you’ll get pneumonia.

LEDUE
I don’t need a jacket. I ain’t a child.

DOREMUS
Bring it in, will you, dammit? (LEDUE exits)
He is the most exasperating person this side of tarnation; brings me the part I need for the press at the 11th hour! I
prefer someone who is good but a tad dumb to someone who is smart and evil, but this one’s shoht on both brains and goodwill!

BUCK
(to Doremus so Tasbrough won’t hear)
His mother, my aunt -- one of the last of grandpappy Ledue’s eight-- is a mental case. A wonder Ledue and his five brothers survived her!

(LEDUE returns with the part.)

DOREMUS (AS LEDUE hangs back.)
Come on! Help me set this up, please.

BUCK
I’ll help.

DOREMUS
Ledue, I would have thought all us poorer folk would vote Trowbridge. He’s on our side.

LEDUE
Everyone I know’s fer Buzz. He’s one of us. You gotta know when the likes a Father Coughlin and General Haik’s stumpin’ for him, he’s some fine! Make this a godfearin’ nation again; take care of us working folk don’t sit at a desk all day!!

DOREMUS(getting it off the teletype)
Here it comes, here it comes--history being made!
“November 2nd, 1936: “Buzz” Windrip defeats Walt Trowbridge, wins the Presidency by a landslide.” AS:
(MUSIC and Cheers as: WINDRIP enters stage front)

WINDRIP (to microphone)
As President of these United States, I won’t let you down. Ah will give you economic security, and reform the great
institutions to give everyone a stake in this country, whereby everyone will be a master of their own destiny!

Act One, Scene 2
January after the inauguration. WINDRIP is hoisting a drink, feet up in an art deco office (indicated by a single wall or some such) in the White House:

WINDRIP (to Sarason off-stage)
Well, Sarason, now it begins. I always saw the lights on the hill, and I awways wanted to be there. And now, I can have it, the mansion, the silverware, the movie stars draped over my swimmin’ pool with all of nature for my backdrop.

SARASON (enters)
You weren’t exactly a member of the immigrant class back in your governor days, Buzz.

WINDRIP
It was Ok, but that state was a backwater.
This is the whole damned government.

SARASON
Yeah, well, your daddy was one of the richest men in....

WINDRIP
My poppy was a cigar chomper; always givin’ me hell. Dirt poor son of a bitch, vowed he’d git his chunk o’ the pie or die! Made a man of me. “Read –your- Bible. Make something of
yourself. You’re a weakling. I’ve given you everything and YOU are a nothing.” I started out on my own with nothing.

SARASON
Nuts. You were a WASP deb with a silver spoon up your ass and your dad shipped you all the way east to private school. Your “daddy” bought you your first senatorship, with your grandfather’s oil money!

WINDRIP
Well, he ain’t my pappy boss any more. I am.
Why you so scratchy with me, Sarason? Tryin’ to make me feel guilty for havin’ some privilege? I chose the right parents when I was a soul searchin’ for a womb to get born by. Destiny put me in the long line of people built this nation; we are entitled to get what is ours! And I will protect those like us, save this country from external AND internal threats arrayed against American interests!

SARASON
I am with you on that! I don’t mean to be short with you, Buzz. I am just a sinner deserves his punishment!

WINDRIP
As are we all.
It’s true I was spoiled, I drank and I fornicated...but I’m a changed man. I have been washed in the blood of the lamb who forgives all sins! Forget it!

SARASON
I know how you believe in this country, Mr. President.

(WINDRIP puts his arm around SARASON’s shoulders warmly. SARASON shudders.)

WINDRIP
I do, Lee, I do. I know we can get this country on track again!

SARASON
Drown this welfare government in the bathtub, liberate business
from all restrictions…

WINDRIP
Take it away from the incompetents. How do we proceed?

SARASON
It’s already started. A group of American soldiers from Custer’s own seventh -- are dressing up as Mexican banditos. They will be attacking Galveston with bombs. It should take about a month to get into a full blown war! Nothing America’s more afraid of than little brown men invading.

WINDRIP
(in a petulant, tough-boy voice)
We suren’ hell need to get the const-tution up to date--and get rid of what’s left of these here pansy protectionist laws bindin’ us up like a hog tied heifer.
No more government molly coddling, get rid of those all social programs. Competition’s good--let the best rise—if that
drives the little guy out of business, so be it-- consolidate the power of the corporations and banks; with monopolies we’ll
have order, low wages, high prices, fixed prices.. But I’m just not so sure about this here war.

SARASON
(to audience)
I love this guy. I owe him. He is a great man. My family were insignificant graspers who lost their opportunities. I was a just a pimply kid from the wrong side of the tracks of a farm town when I helped organize a campaign for Buzz for governor. He sent me to law school; let me get next to the right people- -and here I am, his advisor, soon to be attorney general. I have to pinch myself. But this is an amazing country, filled with opportunity for those with talent who work hard.
(To Windrip)
We need this war, Buzz… I thought you understood that

WINDRIP
Tell me again.

SARASON
We need this crisis, Buzz! It’s a many edged sword. It’ll let us begin to transfer, drain monies from the treasury to the private sector. Ripping out the damned socialist underpinnings of the government will create an economic train wreck which purges our economy! That’ll make a malleable labor force and we’ll have all the workers we need for whatever price we want to pay them.

WINDRIP
(with his simpy laugh, chants)
We’re the king of the castle, and they’re the dirty rascals!

SARASON
Beneath the feet of the Lord, stamping out the grapes.

WINDRIP (glowing) (to the audience)
It may take some harsh measures to do the right thing, but this nation will be privatized; I will cleanse and free this country to its greatness! Some will hate me, but in the end my
pappy will be proud of me. I and mine will be kings in this nation, and the people will all love and thank me, like Lincoln.

Act One, Scene 3

WINDRIP (steps forward to the mike)
My fellow countrymen, let this day of February 2nd, ground hog day, 1937, never be forgot! Let it be known that the United States of America is under attack! Galveston has been fire bombed by godless commanchero anarchists; even at this moment the Texas Rangers are responding to protect you the American People from our enemies!
We have it under advisement that Mexico has weapons of annihilation which have been smuggled to them from Russia.
Do your patriotic duty!
Be on the lookout, your neighbor could be an enemy agent!

(Beat)

ANNOUNCER
Thousands line the way to cheer on their Chief Buzz Windrip as he announces the formation of a Special Moral Man Militia, to help end unemployment and fight the enemies of America at home and abroad. Attorney General Lee Sarason announces “the biggest restructuring of the government in the history of the nation.” America will be reorganized into eight major provinces to better allow an internal militia to protect the Homeland!

{DOREMUS
There were parades and war bond rallies left and right. Though the chorus of generals and preachers had a field day in support of Buzz Windrip’s war and his moral men of God militia, mobs had been forming in front of the White House protesting the war, and demanding jobs. The President himself, trying to sell the war, came to a rally in our town.}

Act One, Scene 4
(Patriotic band MUSIC)
Town Green. A pro-war rally sponsored by Rotary Club.
We hear:

ACTORS
BAKED GOODS FOR BUZZ OVER HERE, RAFFLE FOR THE MM HERE. BUY BONDS HERE.
DOREMUS is there as a newsman. LORINDA is carrying an anti-war placard. TASBROUGH and LEDUE are there on another part of the town green. Director must indicate crowd. Perhaps the ACTORS not directly involved in the scene might be wearing masks of the booboisie, waving flags. Additional VOICES might be taped in.

DOREMUS
Quite a parade they got up for our President.

LORINDA
I can see why men go blindly off to war.

DOREMUS
I’d rather be inside writing up the fishing report. By the way, hon, did I leave my Wiley Grey at the Inn?

LORINDA
(to DOREMUS) No. (to Crowd) Stop the War!

DOREMUS
Trout’s jumping on the river. Can’t wait to get a line in.
Is Buck sugaring?

LORINDA
Think so.

TASBROUGH (walks over to DOREMUS)
I wanted you to be the first to know cousin—and this is a front page story… I have just been made Militia Commissioner over the whole northeast Province from Ver-mont to Maine and Massachusetts!

DOREMUS
Suppose you will want to be running for governor next.

TASBROUGH
Could be!

DOREMUS(pen and notebook ready)
For the record. Will you personally profit by the contract to build barracks for the war, funded through the Tasbrough Bank?
Don’t you feel that is a conflict of interest?

TASBROUGH
I am a veteran of the last war. Signed up as soon’s I heard; got wounded in the leg and they sent me home. You owe me more respect, cousin!

DOREMUS(writing in his notebook)
I suppose you’re firm for the war then?

TASBROUGH
This war will get the economy up and running again.

(DOREMUS notices, and goes to interview, someone else as:)

LORINDA
This war will bankrupt the country! They’ve already spent the treasury money for the year.

TASBROUGH
There’s always taxes and bonds from the likes of you to refill it…

LORINDA
So‘s the likes of you can get richer on war contracts with no government regulation!?

TASBROUGH
Who the hell do you think you are? I crawled back from the Depression by sheer will. I’ve got a half a million in
assets and more, I run a bank, a railroad, a quarry and three
other industries, and I am now advisor to a president!
(She walks away; he follows her) My mother’s family goes back to the Mayflower. The Tasbroughs were Scotch farmers and lawyers since the 1700s here, haggis and kilts-- but I have raised them up; and my son will inherit with the best of them!
What are you? And what do you have? And what the hell have you ever done? People like you want to go back to the dark ages.

(DOREMUS has been keeping an eye on LORINDA, sees something is wrong and reenters the scene as:)

LEDUE
(enters into the scene, he’s been overhearing)
She botherin’ you? What do you know about any of it, anyhows? Your kind always has enough food on your table.
Move on, Miz Lorinda!

DOREMUS
Ledue, you’re fired!

LEDUE
Well feature that, (snidely): boss. I won’t be needin’ those odd jobs of yourn anymore! I been appointed me Battalion leader, Secretary for the Northeast Province militia. I’m Tasbrough’s man now. (Tasbrough nods yes) Why with this economy made so lousy by the Jew financiers run this country, Windrip’s givin’ us militia, jobs! I’ll be getting my new uniform tomorrow! Whadyya think o that!

LORINDA (aside, can’t resist) Peachy!

LEDUE
Ya know, everybody in this town hates you!

LORINDA
What did I ever do to you? You’ve made your contempt for me abundantly clear ever since I first came here!

LEDUE
You don’t even belong in Fort Beulah likes a you, snotty half breed bitch--go back to Russia. We all know about you and Doremushere. It’s women like you bringin’ this country down.

(LORINDA is badly shaken, speechless)

DOREMUS(almost at fisticuffs)
That’s enough! Carrying tales!

(TASBROUGH walks away, and LEDUE follows:)

LEDUE
What right she have to run an inn, jess money her hubbie left her? My maw ran a boarding house for thirty years. Seems like
it’s not fair that ingrate traitors get t’have money while REAL Americans’s outta work.

TASBROUGH
She despises everything American. Ledue, See what you can do what you can do to destroy her reputation, her business, her “friendships”. Break these nonbelievers’ sexual pride; make them kneel to their flag! She will see what it is to make an enemy of a Moral Man! There he is!

(He hops up on the podium as PRESIDENT WINDRIP quickly ascends. They shake hands.)
(MUSIC)
ACTORS/VOICES CHEERS, AND BOOS AS:

TASBROUGH
Here is the man who will get us back our pride and get government off our backs: President BUZZ WINDRIP!

ACTORS/VOICES CHEER DROWN OUT BOOS
WINDRIP (to audience)
Hello good people of Fort Beulah Vermont! I am here to tell you, I am forming the Patriotic Corporate Party, the Corpos for short! Take notice, you are either for us or against us!

ACTORS/VOICES
Cheers, “God Bless America”“The Corpos” “All for one and one for all” “America first!” etc.)AS:

LORINDA
The Corpses! Oh Corpos, excuse me.

ACTORS/VOICES
“BOOO!” “Stop the War.”“Stop Monopolies bustin our backs!” “Help the farmers!” “Stop the Rise of the new Robber Barons”
CHANTS of “DOWN WITH THE MILITIA, WE WANT REAL JOBS!
(The parade music drowns out the protestors and continues.)AS

WINDRIP
Let me remind you that “God ordered the revolution which set us free and now he is decreeing the greatest epoch in history about to begin.”

LORINDA (TO THE CROWD)
He’s a fool. His version of god is a god of war and hate; not of mercy; the more Godly you are, the more people you can kill!

WINDRIP
I am asking you to buy bonds and to support our war effort by enlisting now! “Evil is real…and the sacrifice of idealism” is to keep this country safe from enemies who hate and envy her!
America must end tyranny, and establish democracy, peace and freedom all over the world!
(MUSIC)

ACTORS/VOICES
God Bless President Windrip, God bless the Militia. Down with Mexico.

LORINDA
People of Fort Beulah. Windrip doesn’t serve your interests! Can’t you see through him? “Peace and freedom” means eternal war around the world to “liberate” all the resources to his cronies.

ACTORS/VOICES
“Shut up, communist bitch!” BOO! “Down with the DRIP!” “You unpatriotic bastards! Take that!”

(Sounds of a fight, off.)

WINDRIP
I am empowered as your Commander in Chief to act against insurrection! These protestors threaten the security of America and endanger American lives! Militia men, do your duty! Restore order!

(There is the sound of gun fire, off)

DOREMUS
Lorinda, come quickly; they’ve shot some of the protestors!

WINDRIP
(as he scrams off podium, to Tasbrough who helps him get down:)
Loathsome snakes in the bosom of our republic. I’d like to kick the crap out of that traitorous scum. I hope to Christ they killed some!

Act One, Scene 5
The White House.
We hear Protestors shouts:

VOICES
“Down with Windrip!” “The Drip’s a Murderer!” “Wake up Congressmen! And “Lynch the enemies of Buzz Windrip! Traitors!” “DOWN with Mexico”.

SARASON
(shows him some:)
What with the news of the unfortunate killings at the rally leaking out and the war not as popular as we thought, we have literally truckloads of Telegrams piling up.

WINDRIP
Throw them out. How do we smoke screen em?!

SARASON
Just as long as you’re famous, Buzz, they think you are good.
Use your fame to change the blame: Hollywood wants to turn us all into fornicators; your detractors are disloyal, unpatriotic saboteurs trying to smear you. The rally shootings weren’t your fault, but the fault of malcontents who can’t pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, who wanna take over the government.

WINDRIP (aside)
That’s the truth. Selfish agitators, don’t realize America is on a mission!

SARASON
Keep pushing your truth, your story, just like the Smoothies push their home cathartic.

WINDRIP
That’s why they like me! I could sell a snake his own venom!

SARASON
Remember, Americans wouldn’t know the difference ‘tween a capitalist dictatorship, communism, or democracy--- all they know is if it’s American its all right by them; it’s like a baseball team. The people like lies. Reason is too hard. Emotion is easy.
(Off on his own tangent, not speaking to Windrip but to audience:)
Look at your empty lives chasing after the buck, powerless; you feel inside you’ve been cheated; you hate your mewling kids and your money grubbing mates--but you’re stuck; bunch o’hypocrites!
(to Windrip) Nothing they like better than large hate in the name of god and country. Get out on the stump and convince em! How you love to be conned. Suckers!

WINDRIP
You tellin’ me I don’t know how to do my job!

SARASON
I’m not criticizing, Buzzper. Just keep on givin’‘em that folksy feeling. You represent them, scrappy, righteous; make ‘em love you. The leaders are the nation. Look at Hitler, look at Mussolini, unquestioning followership.

WINDRIP
I know the game, I been doin’ it for how many years now! Tell em what they wanna hear, and then do what we need to do.
Now what’s this about some cocky-mamey lawyers trying to sue the government for unconst-utional, for by-passing the legislature? I’ll give them unconst-utional.

WINDRIP CONT.
(In a thick Western-style accent) I want to stand up on my country boy hind legs and not just admit but frankly holler right out that this country is in great trouble and we’ve got to change our system a lot, maybe even change the whole Constitution (but change it legally, and not by violence) to bring it up from the horseback and corduroy epoch to the automobile and cement highway period of today. The Executive has got to have a freer hand and be able to move quick in an emergency, the kinda emergency we got with our economy right now!and not be tied down by a lot of dumb shyster-lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates.

SARASON
Don’t worry. As your attorney General we will block them-- appoint amenable judges and otherwise convince the rest it is in their best interest to concur with us.

WINDRIP
Yeah, well, the usual deal-making and emotional persuasion may not be enough this time to convince the damned legislature. Although most of the house and senate are in our pocket, one way or the other--a few are agitatin’ for more of their own pie.
If I can’t sell em (with a grin) ..do you have the dossiers, Sarason?
I hope you have a better plan than your PR campaign, because I don’t want to be embarrassed by failin’ in front of history!

(He uses some special salute:)
Glory to America against her enemies!

SARASON (returns it)
Glory to America against her enemies!

(As a door in the office opens we hear offstage:)

TASBROUGH
…Hall of mirrors, we buy each other’s bonds, float them at way more than they’re worth, sell short--a boat load of businesses go under; we buy them up AND make a huge profit off the paper …
(Laughter is heard out the door)

SARASON
What’s that provincial doing here?

WINDRIP
(actor note: Windrip dislikes Tasbrough as a westerner might hate and vie with an eastern establishment Rockefeller.)
I sent for him. I’m calling him on the carpet. Was that cousin of his at the New England Informer leaked the news about the shooting at the rally.

SARASON
He’s is one of our biggest backers, be nice.

WINDRIP
He got somepin’ on you?

TASBROUGH (entering)
Sarason; Mr. President. How’s the missus?

WINDRIP
The Frau is tending the home fires raising chickens and spinach, which she knows I abhore-- and our spoiled kinder. She’s devoted to ‘em, devoted as much to her Bible study, and cannot be coaxed to come on east. Go marry a good woman, eh.
(Tasbrough snorts, or some such.)
By the way, Sarason, on that foreign stuff, what’s the best cat house in London, to recommend to junketing contributors?

SARASON (With distaste)
I wouldn’t know.

WINDRIP
Well find out will ya! What’s with you and women?

SARASON
Too busy.

WINDRIP
I mean I sincerely believe that a woman’s place is by her husband, obedient to him, and that copulatory pleasure is for making babies.
(Leering)
But the ones you’re not married to…? Right, Roscoe?

(Lewd laughter)

TASBROUGH
How about that secretary of yours out there with the big ones. Like to see her come out of a bowl of champagne, eh! Don’t the women have the life of Reilly, eh, not working; and the ones that do I treat like men.
I’m glad you called me here; I wanted to see you too…

WINDRIP
If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.

TASBROUGH
What are you talking about?

WINDRIP
I realize it may be hard to discipline kin, but we who are comrades in belief are brothers in the new order.
You or your militia should manage to muzzle that loose cannon Doremus Jessup...

TASBROUGH
He’s a fixture in my area.

(WINDRIP
One stone of rumor causes a whirlpool of rancor. We can’t have it!)

TASBROUGH
Do me a favor and forget it.

WINDRIP
I can’t show favoritism; my legacy. I’m the man’s changin’ America, remember!

TASBROUGH
That’s hogwash and you know it.
Does my syndicate get the labor camp deal or no? Although some of that trash isn’t worth the lumber to warehouse them.

WINDRIP
Look, while, your syndicate’s contribution to our campaign helped me get elected…

TASBROUGH
..and I intend to help you win the next election, Buzz! And the one after that… (Laughs)

WINDRIP
… remember we have only so many dollars from the public fees—from war and T-bonds to go ‘round! … Naturally, I am gonna deep six taxes for you who deserve my support…

TASBROUGH
Buzz, what in Christ’s buggered kingdom are you talking about? My trust and those like mine buy up half more of the t-bills
than Joe-q-public, which finance this great nation. We deserve pay back; you have to spread our bread.

WINDRIP
I’m in the driver’s seat now, not you.

TASBROUGH
We own the car. Car’s break down, have accidents.

WINDRIP
You threatening me? You own the rear fender, Tasbrough.
Jesus owns the steering wheel, and my closest backers own the motor. (Out the door:)Lee! (to SARASON as he reenters) I’ve been meaning to discuss this with you.
(to TASBROUGH, implying a returned threat:)
Stay, I want you to listen to this, because I trust your loyalty one hundred per cent and because this will help resolve the problem with your relative there. Sarason, I want to keep tabs on the populace. I want to target, harass, black list and otherwise eliminate all the state’s enemies. Make sure they cannot make a living. Or make sure they cannot live.
Order a list to be compiled of undesirables. We can delegate that kind o’ stuff through the churches to the Moral Man militia- from the New Provinces up to you as attorney general. I want a snitch in every school, post office, and town square. I want an iron fist inside that velvet glove.

TASBROUGH (calling his bluff)
I say we take the glove off!

Act One, Scene 6
The Newspaper
DOREMUS and BUCK

DOREMUS
We’ve lost more circulation; it’s way down. My key advertisers have dropped out and I had to let my typesetter go, couldn’t pay him. Thanks so much for helping …

BUCK
You …and Lor lit my way through Lizzy’s death; you help me at baling time; Emma sends me baked goods—-you know that a friend in need’s a friend in deed. You don’t need ta thank me!

Yikes! Here’s another note canceling…
(He opens some more envelopes)
And the same here!

DOREMUS
Nobody wants to hear the news of the wounding of two innocent human beings by gun shot? And the beating of a dozen? I cannot believe it; rather than blame Windrip or his militia for this heinous thing, they call the Informer a trouble maker!

(A rock comes through the window):
VOICES
(From off stage)
Traitor! We oughta run you outa town.

DOREMUS (Looking outside)
Show yourself. Come in here and face me, you bunch of cowards!

BUCK
Hasn’t the AP picked it up yet?

DOREMUS
Nothing. It’s been a week. They should have had it in headlines in every newspaper in the country! It seems we are the only one!

BUCK
Jessup, what’s happening here? Freedom of the press is part of the American way; there is no possibility that it can fail!

DOREMUS (reading off the teletype)
Wait here’s something!
At a recent rally in Vermont, misunderstanding the President’s orders for a military show of parade arms, some weapons misfired and wounded two bystanders. The President hopes this kind of unfortunate accident! will not happen again.
This all has got to be a fluke. Windrip’s a fraud but the system should hold.

(Enter LEDUE)
LEDUE
Militia been ordered to deliver your afternoon edition.

DOREMUS
I didn’t authorize that! Where are my boys?

(HE exits to check all this out.)

LEDUE
Wyn’t you joined t’up yet?
(BUCK shrugs)

BUCK
When they pay us vets from the last war the bonus they were supposed too, then maybe I will join.

LEDUE
Guess you college types don’t exactly favor Windrip’s views on things, eh?

BUCK
Depends

LEDUE
Like this here war with Mexico to get her back into the United States, where she belongs.

BUCK
I’m a fahmer, not a politician.

LEDUE
You don’t believe your betters know what’s best fer this nation?

BUCK
I don’t need to find my pride in somebody else’s shadow, from arrogant people who think they have some kinda special position or prestige...

LEDUE
Well aint you lucky? Kind of unpatriotic of you not to believe in your President and his aims. After all, he wouldn’t be president if he didna know better ‘n us.

BUCK
Don’t see as government makes much difference in our lives anyway, long as it leaves us alone, helps us when we need it, and doesn’t get in our way--

LEDUE
So how is farmin’ these days, Buck?

BUCK
T’aint a good day. I thought these Windrip people o’ yours were gointa cut taxes; tax me so high I have barely enough cash to replenish my stock. The middle man gets an udder full of money while I am left holding an empty cow teat. How’s youah land?

LEDUE
That stony land! Ain’t fit for the niggah and furrener types you get to do the work fo’ you.

BUCK
You sayin’ I don’t work my farm!

LEDUE
You just set up and hire ems t’watch workin’ fer you!

BUCK
{(Sadly aside)
Yeah, well I don’t have sons to help me, like your daddy had.}
(to Ledue) Ya know you’d rather go complainin’ then put your back to the hoe. Gives ya an excuse doesn’t it? Have somebody “lower” n’ you to put your failures on; I never seen such squalor as you live in!

LEDUE
I wouldna be judgin what you know less’n nuthin about, Buck Titus. If you hadna stoled that land…

BUCK
You still harping on that? You in such bad shape, shoulda come and got that harrower I left for you. Just needed a part replaced; it’s been settin there for six months!

LEDUE
I been too busy.

BUCK
YOU lost that land for taxes and I bought it; I offered you a piece for cheap rent. Get off your tear! Ever tried just being in the woods fishing, or hunting?

LEDUE
I hunt squirrels and rabbits, and coons, and fish some. What you gettin’ at?

BUCK
Get yourself a ten point buck , get a sense of accomplishin’ somethin’; stay still, watch the woods--Peaceful. You understand what peaceful is? It’s…

LEDUE (cuts him off)
Yeah, well. Mebbe if Ida been born with your advantages, I’da be makin’ the speech now.
You people who don’t go to church, don’t support our president or his militia, aint for war when we are attacked, who hate this country that give ‘em the very privilege and money makes em so high and mighty—you burn me up!

BUCK
I don’t hate this country!

LEDUE
Hear a lot of folks gonna get their farms confiscated by th’government for the common good ta feed the unemployed. I’d be watchin my back, if’n I was you, Titus.

ACT TWO
Scene 1
LORINDA’s living quarters. She is knitting by the light of a Coleman lamp. LEDUE knocks and she answers, tries to close the door on him but he enters.

LEDUE
Gonna have to requisition some rooms at this here Inn. After the mishap at the rally the other day, Province leader Tasbrough’s assigned more MM to this town for our own good!

LORINDA
I’m not putting up anybody for free, let alone the militia. I have to make a living here! This is not charity, you know. Please leave!

LEDUE
New law allows the Province to place people anywhere they choose, due to poverty or military circumstances. Your mouthing off didn’t put you in good with the Commissioner. All I have to do is put word out on you and your business would be off in a fly’s minute!

LORINDA
What do you mean?

LEDUE
Militia’s got lots of family and friends….and friends talk to friends…

LORINDA
I’ll go to the police.

LEDUE
Police all our friends. Working for Chief Buzz Windrip now. Don’t like troublemakers. You got some fire law violations I hear. You know if I was you I’d cooperate. If you lose this place, where would you find work? Seems like you’d have ta go to a work shelter up to Burlington.

LORINDA
Work shelter?

LEDUE
Thems is unemployed is vagrants; get to go to work camp run by Moral Man Militia churches, get put out to work where government finds them jobs.

LORINDA
Look, I think you can do better than this, I mean, I remember when I taught you Sunday school. I was twenty and you were fourteen...

LEDUE
People like you and Jessup, think they’re so above it, you need to be taught a lesson.

LORINDA
I’m not above it all!
Listen, I know you had a tough life.

LEDUE
You don’t know nuthing. I don’t need your pity!

LORINDA
It’s not pity; I know something about tough lives...

LEDUE
You do, do ya? Outsider like you? …(to himself) Life never turns out the way it should.

LORINDA
Yes, there are a lot of disappointments…

LEDUE
My paw, seems we was never good enough for him or maw— him beating maw, strappin’ us when he were drunk. They was allahs breathing down our collars anyway. Everything we coulda had, he lost. No wonder we wan’t book smart; had to work since I was in ninth grade.

LORINDA (empathetically)
That’s a shame.

LEDUE
You know, mebbe I am sorry they gave you such a rough time about taking rooms in the Inn. You coulda had a protector if you’da been a little nicer to me. As it is you gonna need one.
How about going out with me?

LORINDA (with some humor)
You hate me, why would you want to date me?

LEDUE
Commissioner of Culture, Adelaide Tarr, says woman’s place is in the home… having babies, say its ungodly, un-American, women like you… don’t have any babies… it’s unclean.
You just need tamin’, learn to be obedient to a man. How about it? Thursday, there’s an Adelaide Tarr, League of Decency approved film out.

LORINDA
I don’t think so, thanks.

LEDUE
Think I got no couth, eh? No culture? Or, still pinin’ for your late husband? Tweren’t my fault. Or is it Jessup keeping you off me? Well maybe he won’t be around much longer ya know.

LORINDA
What do you mean?

LEDUE
Secret. Top MMs from around here meet, decide who’s going to be reported to Tasbrough all the way up to Attorney General Sarason. Report in code. But I’m spillin’ beans I shouldn’t.
I’m a County Commissioner now; I know people. I do things. And you still think I ain’t good for nothing except lugging in kindling!

LORINDA
I’m sure you’re just as good as anybody Shad. I’ll bet you have a lot of smart plans.

LEDUE
Let me tell you how on the money you are! Tasbrough’s quite a businessman--but I help get him the deals selling granite from the quarry for public buildings (shows his pistol) and Tasbrough overcharges, kicking back some of the profit to me, some. He keeps a little red book of figures--of course he’d never expect a loyal Corpo such as myself to be lookin’ over his shoulder. But I got big ideers. I’m learnin’!

Act Two, Scene 2
White House

SARASON
This ought to make it all easier, Chief. Look over there.

WINDRIP
What’s that?

SARASON
The Senate is on fire. Anarchists allied with the Mexican revolutionaries! Your life is in danger!
No member of the senate or house will refuse you now—-won’t want to seem weak and unpatriotic!

WINDRIP
Brilliant! Let us pray.

(They hold hands.)

SARASON
Dear Lord, our duty is to pray to be broken and forgiven, that we may better obey and follow to be part of Your family. We know democracy is a vanity, only Your kingdom will prevail. Jesus, You make covenants amongst men, just as Hitler and Stalin make covenants among their followers. God commands that what we know as evil may be next to the greatest good.

WINDRIP
Let us humble our souls to ask that the thorns in Christ’s side of subversives, liberals, and sinful impure disbelievers will be pulled out of his suppurating flesh.
Break me Jesus. Make me submit to thy will!

SARASON
Thank you, Lord.
Amen.

(WINDRIP steps into the audience, the US Legislature)

WINDRIP
Due to the increasing national emergency I am asking you gentlemen of this joint session to increase funding for the war with Mexico, and to pass and fund post haste a Freedom Protection Act with all the powers we need to investigate enemies, jail traitors, and seize needed resources!
(Aside)
If it is not passed,
(says with charm:)
I will effect it by executive order, because I am the President!
(aside) It will take years for them to challenge me in the courts!

(Beat)
ANNOUNCER
The House and Senate have unanimously funded and passed the Freedom Protection Act in record time! This Valentine’s Day as Patriots march off to war, the militia rolls increase to half a million, as men from the YMCA, the Masons, the Rotary, and the Kiwanises join up!
(as:)

WINDRIP (subliminally at the side of the stage)
I was appointed by God to save this country!

Act Two, Scene 3
The Newspaper.

TASBROUGH
I know you’re in trouble; you want labor camp help?

DOREMUS
I wouldn’t stoop so low.

TASBROUGH
You need to restructure according to Tasbrough Bank and the Province’s suggestions. You’re running in the red.
Stop writing inflammatory articles like the one about the rally, or I’ll have to pull the plug on you.

DOREMUS
This is America; I have a constitutional guarantee to print what I want to!

TASBROUGH
Why print something divisive?

DOREMUS
Because it’s the truth. What my readers pay us for!

TASBROUGH
Well, they’re not paying you now. No one wants to hear it. We need unity not traitorous carping. What you perceive as the truth is just subjective emotionalism...
I don’t understand why you would want to betray your own kind!

DOREMUS
Our kind! If they made the system which can rot so fast, then I am surely not one of them!

TASBROUGH
I can’t afford to have a reckless tongue in the province. There is too much at stake for the country! I should’ve cut you off when you incited those union strikers at my factories!

DOREMUS
Where’d'you get your unlimited arrogance? I’d like some. It must come in useful on a cold day.

TASBROUGH
Shape up and do it our way, or ship out!

DOREMUS
Look, we’ve had our differences but you should be with me on this: these Windrip people are nothing but brown shirts.

TASBROUGH
{Come off it.} This is America, fascism can’t happen here!

DOREMUS
This is my newspaper. You cannot just call me out and call out my debt without a chance for me to cover it! I am sixty years old; I cannot start all over again! (beat)
My wife has bonds. She bought them at your bank…

TASBROUGH
Those bonds she bought at a Buck apiece are now 30 cents on the dollar!

DOREMUS(turns pale)
You’ve ruined us; you did it deliberately, you bastard!

TASBROUGH
Now, now, that’s crazy, the bonds just devalued that’s all. It affects me too!

DOREMUS(reels)
Let me get solvent again. Remember the Golden Rule.

TASBROUGH
It happens I do live the golden rule. My self interests serve the world. My gold makes jobs, buys goods, makes money for people.

DOREMUS
Give me a chance to get back in the black, to recoup for the bank...

TASBROUGH
If your paper cannot make it, that’s the market place.
I am not my cousin’s keeper! Nor is the state.
If people can’t take care of themselves, stand on their own two feet, compete--it’s their problem; that’s nature’s law.

I am putting Emil Staubmeyer in as editor.

DOREMUS
You are one prime s.o.b! I’m not going to stay and watch someone take over what I’ve built for thirty years!

TASBROUGH
You will advise him, stay on the masthead as a figure head -- and you can make a salary at least. Start writing Pro- Windrip; when your circulation goes up again we will reconsider.

(DOREMUS is overcome by the loss of his paper. Sits down in a heap.)

Act Two, Scene 4
Some weeks later.
LORINDA’S rooms. She knits by the light of a Coleman lamp. SIRENS wail in town beyond. Some cornball music plays on the radio.
(MUSIC)

DOREMUS
Turn that off, will you?
Lord, this country deserves what it’s going to get. Dolts, idiots, distract them with entertainment and they don’t even know they’re being taken. (Beat)
I see you’ve sold a few things, haven’t you?
(Tenderly, going to her)
Do you need any help?

LORINDA
(Shaking her head vehemently NO)
It’s so demeaning, the word’s been put out on me. Business is way down. My partner treats me like I’m a fallen
woman; and the stares from the rest of the help; I know what they’re thinking: “Guess she got hers, that one.” I did not know people had so much hate in them. Partridge owns the bigger share, won’t even let me hostess; says I’ve a bad reputation now. I mean I don’t mind cooking and cleaning, but I like to mingle with my guests… Guess they don’t want to mingle with me.
Even Ed Howland won’t give me store credit any more…

DOREMUS
Maybe it’s not personal. He’s going under. The Cole furniture store next to him just closed. Town green’s looking pretty shabby, stores shuttering up their windows.

LORINDA
It’s personal. I always paid him on time, always would. He just looked at me like… I can’t even describe it.
How long have I known him? Since I came here with my husband twenty years ago?
I went to my cooking club this afternoon, it’s down to three women.
Place is so full of militia no one will come here with a family.
My church, my late husband’s church, your father’s own church!--they have asked me not to sing in the choir anymore. Pastor says my women’s suffrage point of view is against the teachings of God; that God wants men to have control over women, their minds and bodies. Not my God.

DOREMUS
I’ll talk to him. I’ll talk to Partridge, too. Damned human beings, always protecting their own backs!

LORINDA
I won’t give in and get out. It’s my place, too. I’ve years here. They can’t just ruin it like a house of cards. I’ll stay and work until I can sell my share and…I’ll do it just to spite them all.

DOREMUS
Will they let you?

LORINDA
No. I’m to be out by a month. And they consider that generous. I’m terrified. If, when-- I lose this place, they could place me where they want to!

DOREMUS
They can’t do this.

LORINDA
I’ve already phoned lawyer Meacham. They can do what they want.
It’s not fair, to take something I’ve worked so hard for, just because someone else wants it, and has the power to do it. It’s not fair.
(Angry and crying. DOR holds her.)

DOREMUS
There, there.

LORINDA
Doe, you’ve given me so much; you gave me the faith in myself to buy in to this inn and to start the business with Partridge. If it weren’t for you I’d just be a sad old widow.

DOREMUS
Lorinda, I am sure Buck will let you stay at the farm. You won’t be on the streets. We’ll take care of you.

LORINDA
I’m looking for work now. Maybe I can live on my share of the inn when I sell it. How about you?

DOREMUS
I’ve tried to find work at other papers, figured I could move and all...even New York, was an opening in Rochester. Seems there’s some type of black list or other, they reject me
politely but distantly, like I am some kind of undesirable.
If nobody will hire me, I’d be willing to start back as a typesetter, just to get away from Staubmeyer. I cannot stand seeing him run what I put my years of blood into, using my
paper for his propaganda, his plagiarisms of every writer alive. I just don’t know what I will do, sweetheart.
I don’t mean to burden you.
(Some business and then:)

LORINDA
I can’t believe that we live in such a beautiful place, and this goes on. Look at the brook down there, flourishing in ice and snow, flowing on through the big firs, down the mountain. How does that peace jibe with what’s happening?
How’s Emma taking it all?

DOREMUS
If she hadn’t put everything in bonds I could have gotten out of this mess.
Truth is, she’s asking for a divorce.

LORINDA
What?

DOREMUS
Ledue told her about us. Guess he hoped it would seem like it came from you, drive you and me apart. Didn’t work.
Funny thing is, as much as I want to be with you, and, that would free me to, Emma has kept me from becoming a complete
neurotic. Her ignorance has been my bliss in a way. Her cocoanut cake is my holy sacrament.

LORINDA
Oh, Doe, I didn’t mean to cause you or Emma any grief. I guess I’m a terrible person. I guess I am being punished for some arrogance.

DOREMUS
Sweetheart. It’s not your fault. She is sick of my being “a wild haired reformah” anyway. Our children are grown up; it’s not like they’ll be hurt…

LORINDA
Maybe it’s my fault that you lost your paper!
I keep hearing owls….

DOREMUS
No dear-heart, its not you; don’t be superstitious and ridiculous…

LORINDA
I know I can be cold and short with people, but is that a reason to dispossess me? ‘Cause I was aloof and prideful and hurt someone’s pride once or twice? Well they hurt my feelings plenty, over and over again, from a little tyke up to now. I had so much guff growing up for being different, not one of them, a half breed, not a “true Christian”--all I wanted to do was be as white as anyone; probably why I married my husband.
I’ve never been good enough in their eyes, just only in my late husband’s eyes and in yours, and in my mother’s eyes, my poor
mum. I wanted to make good for her sake, and then she up and died…I’m rambling.
(she’s crying)
I try to have compassion for these evil people---Tasbrough, Ledue, Windrip, why are they what they are; what terrible angers, sorrows, fears?

DOREMUS
I’m not that generous. I try to figure their motives; think maybe we could change them, but seems to me they are as irrational as a cat on catnip and as malicious as a nor-easter!

LORINDA
Doe, Ledue says the MM are reporting on people, on you—(Doremus reacts) in secret. I think I may have something on Ledue. But I don’t know if I should use it. I wish we could get to him in some way, humanize him. Curfew’s in an hour. You better go. What will you do?

DOREMUS
Stay at the paper and dish out what the state orders. Nobody has the spine to stand up to these people, and I have to look like I approve!
I have no choice. I’m not that brave just to quit. Maybe I can find a way to subvert ... I cannot live with this kind of mediocrity made of my life….

Act Two, Scene 5
At the Newspaper.

PHIL
It’s a shame we won’t be able to make it here for Emma’s birthday, dad. I’ll be in Washington for one solid month if things go right. So, we bought you and mother a gift; really for mother!

DOREMUS
What is it?

PHIL
Keep it a secret? It’s a brand new Bendix washing machine! She’ll be the first one in the Province ever to have one.

DOREMUS(sourly)
She would have preferred a vacuum cleaner; keeps nagging me for one. When I was young the community had to hang together and be thrifty. (Almost aside, thinking) You could blame this whole fix we’re in on Mr. Edison and Rockefeller. Without electricity, oil, and the machine industries they spawned—-we wouldn’t covet all the gadgets the ad masters encourage us to buy. Now nobody’s satisfied, and the ambition is making us monsters… rabid for scraps--

PHIL
I just thought she’d like a washer.

DOREMUS
Your lawyering business must be doing well.

PHIL
Yes, and so are my stocks. Cousin Tasbrough’s been very thoughtful and cut me in on some great tips!

DOREMUS
Really? How nice of him. (beat) Well then, let’s have it, Phil. Can you loan me the money to get the Informer into the black, or to start another paper?

PHIL
Look dad; sit down and be comfortable...

DOREMUS
So the answer for the loan is no?

PHIL
How can I help you when you’re in bad odor with the administration? Cousin Tasbrough called me, himself.
You could get a loan on your reputation, yourself, without involving me.

DOREMUS
Not any more I couldn’t. The little banks can’t loan out money to small businesses like mine because people like us these days do not have money to put in the banks in the first place-- and because the Central Bank is spending all its money on war so fast they can’t loan out to the local banks. More small businesses fail---fewer jobs, it’s a downward spiral……Besides… the banks I’ve been to just treat me like I’m a disease.

PHIL
It’s hard times, father; we have to hang on to what we have got, don’t you think? Merry and I have a child to support, a house… In spite of my stocks, everything is so expensive...you have got to be practical whether you like it or not. It’s a
matter of survival. The fact is that Windrip and the Corpos are here to stay, and besides, the country’s safe now; look
outside; there are MM everywhere guarding us from lunatic strikers and anarchist bombers.

DOREMUS
Safe! It’s Windrip we need to be safe from.

PHIL
This administration has done wonders. That’s what you ought to be saying as a publicist.

DOREMUS
Don’t you call me a publicist! I used to be a newspaperman.
Tell me, do you have any idea of what it’s like to have what you’ve worked for taken away from you? Like the Informer!

PHIL
People usually reap what they sow.

DOREMUS
I can’t believe I’m hearing that from my own son!

PHIL
You behave like a radical!

DOREMUS
It’s my fault. I spoiled you. I never let you see what the world outside Fort Beulah was like.

PHIL
We live in Worcester, not exactly a small town.

DOREMUS
That bastion of culture.

PHIL
If you had read the psychiatrists you would know: People get what they want on the deepest level of their psyche...

DOREMUS
So when I am completely destitute and humiliated you will say I got what I wanted! You think the homeless and hungry forced into work camps are getting what they want!

PHIL
They get what they deserve, what their talents afford them. Everyone has free will. This is a meritocracy, after all.
There are no breadlines on the streets of Worcester. Buzz G. Windrip has provided for them all in the labor camps!
(after a pause, they look at each other)
There is no chance for you to start a new paper. It simply won’t happen. I’m sorry.
Not unless you come round.

DOREMUS
Why do they need me! I’m not the goddamned New York Times after all. My readership is penny-ante. I’ve been writing conciliatory pap!

PHIL
Because you are a respected voice in the community; you can change opinion!

DOREMUS
Why should I compromise my integrity further? You do it, once, twice, then they’ve got you; the power has got you; expedience ruins you. Gutted.

PHIL
Do you want to end up on the streets, working for a business the state assigns you to? What would happen to mother?

DOREMUS
What’s your angle? Why won’t you really give me the loan?

PHIL
I have been approached in regard to the very high honor of an assistant military judgeship for the whole of New Province 8 down to Connecticut. These are exciting times full of opportunity--but if I help you--your reputation as a subversive crank may well jeopardize my chances.

DOREMUS
Where is my sanctum?

(HE starts to exit to his back room)

PHIL (calls him back)
Walk away, it’s what you do best. You always liked your mind better than the real world.
(To audience)
I can’t talk to him. He was always that way.

DOREMUS
I can hardly believe you are my son!
What is it makes you arch conservatives so inhumane; why do you prefer to cling to illusion rather than reason or compassion? You must be very angry under there. I should have read Freud and Adler. It must be something I did, Emma and I. Where are your values?

PHIL
My values! I work a sixty hour week to pay my mortgage -- put food on the table, and create some assets which I intend to protect. You never put anything substantial by for us while you piddled away your time at your hick newspaper.
I don’t feel a whole lot, father -- but I know when to get with the winning side, which is more than you do.

DOREMUS
The lies, all this man Windrip can do is lie. How can you stand it? I can’t. I spent my life looking for the truth, in very small ways to be sure, but now I have to see the truth destroyed and with it my country!
Please leave. I don’t think I want to see you again...

PHIL
That works both ways!
It’s a wonder I was able to get up on my feet and do anything with my life with you for a father.
But I have and I have moved up and out and beyond this place, and I rub shoulders with the best of our society now; they come to me as clients! I don’t have to curry favor with you anymore.
And, you are so holier than thou, I’ve known about that mistress of yours ever since you took up with her.

DOREMUS
What are you talking about?

PHIL
Mother and I think that that Lorinda Pike has influenced you; I think if she hadn’t gotten you all fired up at the rally, you wouldn’t have written that over the top editorial. Tasbrough told me what a little Crazy she is; he mightn’t have come down so hard on you if it weren’t for her sass.
She’s a manipulator that one; I don’t know what her game is, but she’s just using you; I guess the cuckold’s always the last to know—

DOREMUS
You don’t know what you’re talking about!

PHIL
Is it worth throwing away your career and your family for? My mother is a blueblood, how can you have anything to do with that half breed...

(DOREMUS exits to the back of his office offstage.
Phil exits to the town green where LEDUE wearing a hLoret and goggles pastes up handbills with dark, Hispanic faces which say: “BE ON THE ALERT FOR ENEMY AGENTS! WATCH FOR MEN WHO LOOK LIKE THIS.” He also is pasting up big pictures of WINDRIP and TASBROUGH, along side Generals and Father Coughlin. PHIL salutes LEDUE.)

ACT THREE
Front stage mike and on the radio.(Perhaps as the audience returns to their seats:)

WINDRIP
..thus we need free trade, to be able to let capital flow from market to market; we must have unfettered access to our needs, whether it be oil in Pennsylvania or in Russia!
I am today further announcin’ the formation of free Corpo schools emphasizin’ spiritual and commercial skills to replace liberal arts colleges, hotbeds of sin and anti-American activities. Books disrespectful of church and country and the divine right of presidents will be burned.

(lights up on)
Scene 1

A hunting camp hidden in the woods.
A grey day.

DOREMUS
What did you want to meet here for?

BUCK (Urgently)
We’ll talk in a minute, but first I need to check outside for ears. (Exits)

LORINDA (enters)
Hello, Dor.
(DOR is cold, ignores her.)
Why haven’t you come to see me at Buck’s? If it weren’t for him I would’ve gone out of my mind losing the Inn. He’s saved my life. I’ve been worried sick about you…

DOREMUS
I told Buck to tell you, I couldn’t make it down.
Did you get a good price for your shares?

LORINDA
Don’t you know that I lost just about everything? Partridge gave me pennies for what they were worth.

DOREMUS
That’s too bad. Life’s not fair.

LORINDA
“Too bad”! Why are you being so cold to me?

DOREMUS
Too much work, teaching Staubmeyer the ropes, I guess.

LORINDA
Your attitude has changed to me… Why?

DOREMUS
Maybe if you’d been less impolitic with Tasbrough, he might have protected us!

LORINDA
Blaming me!

(Entering, overhearing some of this:)
BUCK
What in hell’s got in to you?

DOREMUS
Look, I’ve heard what you both were up to behind my back. I don’t think we need to discuss it!

LORINDA
What do you mean?

DOREMUS
What you’ve been doing with your own brother in law here!

LORINDA
What are you talking about?

DOREMUS
You deny it?

LORINDA
Deny what?

DOREMUS
That you and Buck are lovers!

LORINDA
Who is saying these things?

DOREMUS
Ever since I went to talk to Howland, to your minister about how they treated you… people have come out of the woodwork; friends, people I trust in town!

LORINDA
You know me; how can you believe such lies?
Do I have to tell you that you are the only man I’ve known since my husband? I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you!

BUCK
Have you lost your senses?

DOREMUS
I don’t blame you. I don’t have any rights over her!
They say not to trust her, that she’s a manipulator.
We shouldn’t be helping her; let her stand on her own two feet!

LORINDA
I thought you loved me! Do you want me to have nothing left? No Inn, no money, no pride, and no love at all? Haven’t I been through enough?

BUCK
Lorinda is my sister in law! If not, it’s true that I might have been interested in her; beautiful woman like her. Christ, I only just found out about you both; been makin’ excuses for you ever since: My brother didn’t make Lor’s life a bed of roses before he killed himself; you both deserve some happiness. Thought well, if Emma doesn’t get hurt …

LORINDA
I can’t believe this! Give righteous power to jealousy and see what evil happens!

DOREMUS
(walks up her and looks into her eyes)
…I’m a jackass.
I guess they just snapped my head around; next thing they’ll have me in a moral man trance…
Christ, they’ve been working on me; they get to you after awhile. Forgive me.

(Tries to embrace her.)

LORINDA
(she looks at him mournfully)
What does my single life matter? Not much anyways.
You’re so filled with your own woes--you don’t even know what’s happened.

DOREMUS
What, what’s going on?

BUCK
They’ve just gone and done it. They’ve taken my fahm.

DOREMUS
Oh my God, Buck.

BUCK
Half of my flesh is the land I’ve fahmed. The time put in. The seasons of it. It’s reliable.
Orderly. The snow leaves and the mud comes. March, I sugar in the sweet breath of frosted spring. April, I plant; and the mountains green up. By this time of year I start to see some wheat and corn; … And now it’s gone for good. Like Lizzy, like…

DOREMUS
No! How did it happen?

BUCK
Militia. Goddamn Ledue and his men come bargin’ in, out of control, drunk -- saying my “niggahs better leave and tell their mastah” to give up their jobs to white folk! Jen and Jeff about all I have left of family. Been with me since I was a youngster. Militia already had my guns, down to my best rabitter -- or there’s no tellin’ what I woulda done. They know what a crack shot I am…

DOREMUS
Are Jen and Jeff all right?

BUCK
They’ve been ordered down to Burlington work camp.

DOREMUS
Isn’t there anything we can do? I’ll ask Philip.

BUCK
You can try, but from what I hear, he is authorizing, some of these arrests!

(DOREMUS turns away, sickened)
DOREMUS
There must be some mistake!
My house, maybe I could borrow against it—we could bribe them…!

BUCK
Too late. They’ll be confiscating the antiques directly: sleighs, high boys go back to my great great grandfather. Couldn’t be theyah to see it. I feel like a field of corn they just pulled up in the middle of growin.’
I’m damned if I’ll work foreman on my own farm been in my family since before the Revolution, but that’s what I’ll be forced to do. They threatened to jail me if I don’t!
(Lorinda gives Buck a quizzical look.)

DOREMUS
Lorinda, will she be able to stay there?

BUCK
I don’t know!

DOREMUS
She’ll stay here!

LORINDA
I love this cabin, but …

DOREMUS
I so often wanted to stash you here and keep you safe…

BUCK (to her)
I could say I had an inkling youda gone back to your own people in Jeffersonville.
All of this is like the magician who pulls the tablecloth out from under the place settings—--a little bit at a time, and then, bingo, the cloth is out, and you don't even hear the dishes rattle. They betrayed us all; this isn’t what my country is about.

BUCK
(Trying to convince himself)
Well, no use sobbin’. Lorinda and I know what we can do to fight back.

DOREMUS
What?

BUCK
Get out the real news.

DOREMUS
No such thing these days!

LORINDA
Yes there is! It’s what’s happening to people like us! And my Worker Party connections have an ear out all over to what’s going on beyond Fort Beulah, too!

DOREMUS(mildy teasing)
Buck, you associating with Wobblycrats?

BUCK
(still covering his upset)
Used to think, the what is it? the 3 per cent of the people who own some 90 percent of the wealth just worked harder, were
smarter or something. I got what I need, they weren’t hurtin’ me. But what’s being done to folks who worked hard, kept our noses clean -- you know something’s wrong. Maybe the
Communists are right, it’s just going to be one despot like Windrip after another.

DOREMUS
Capitalist, communist, seems to me if the power -- the money, the land, the armies -- get concentrated in the hands of the few, the many will suffer...

BUCK
Look. Fixin’ government’s beyond me. I just know what’s right and what’s wrong. And these goings on now are just plain wrong.
So here’s the plan.
Pretend to accede to Tasbrough.
Work with the idiot who’s the new editor.

DOREMUS
I HAVE been! But now I think I’ll clear out, get my things and pack up. Take the consequences.

BUCK
No! Tell ‘em all you’ve seen the light, get behind Windrip all the way.

DOREMUS
Then what?

BUCK
Then we’ll start an underground press, a resistance press—you shoulda thought of it yourself! Surprised you didn’t.

DOREMUS
I did. But they would know who it’s coming from.

LORINDA
Not if we distribute outside of Fort Beulah.

DOREMUS
Why bother doing anything? It won’t make a difference.
People just don’t care. The ones worst affected support Windrip the most. I don’t get it. Our neighbors aren’t protesting—-they are going along with it!

BUCK
I think if they knew what was really happening--they’d wake up.

DOREMUS
It’s too dangerous if it’s true that they’re keeping tabs on us. Maybe my son is right and we need just to go along to get along.

BUCK
Get some spine Dor; we havta or we’ll all lose! They’re taking it all! I had enough. What are you waiting for?
(Overlapping:)
ELMA
You saw what they did at the rally
BUCK
Do you want to wait till they kill someone else?

ELMA
Don’t you even know there’s more? They just arrested your old friend Victor Loveland at the University for protesting military training on campus, and they picked up Carl at his auto shop for supposedly having anarchist literature!

(DOR turns away in self disgust that in the past as a journalist he would be giving this news.)

DOREMUS
I know. They wouldn’t let me print it.

BUCK
They’ve ruined everything you’ve worked for! {Don’t you want it back?

DORLEUS
Want it back! When I can’t trust anyone in town; I’m always looking behind me.} (Beat) We can’t fix it the system; they broke it right under our nose! It doesn’t work.

ELMA
It can before it’s too late if you don't sit around letting them punish you, feeling sorry for yourself! (to BUCK)I’d try to get his courage up but I’m only a woman “doncha know”.

BUCK
They’ve unmanned you. Let’s go Elma. He’s an…

DOREMUS
Are you calling me a coward? If so we can end our friendship right now…

BUCK
Listen, Jessup, you and I known each other for how long? You introduced me to Lizzy! Got me interested in books beyond farmin’ so I went to the university! You’n I, why we exchanged our best secrets: woodcock and pahtridge coverts for flies and trout riffles! I come across the mountain to find another man here: You’re not the Doremus Jessup I thought you were. If your head can get turned around so fast, if you don’t know me by now, how can you tell friend from enemy, anyways? And if you can’t then you aren’t trustworthy. You would jeopardize the whole enterprise! Lorinda and I will do it!

DOREMUS
You wouldn’t know the first thing about how!

LORINDA
We’ll do it without you, Doe.
(They begin to exit)

DOREMUS
No damme. I’ll do it. We’ll smuggle my old jobber press in here and get started! Someone needs to put these tyrants back in the box!

Act Three, Scene 2
LORINDA and DOREMUS print broadsides on a small Poco jobber press which can be covered with a table, coverlet and the Coleman lamp from Lorinda’s rooms.

(As BUCK enters)

LORINDA
Anyone follow you?

BUCK
Not exactly.

LORINDA
What do you mean?!

BUCK
I took the usual precautions; circled up to Henry’s farm-- walked in through the sugar bush. But then I find a hobo snoozing in the woods, and when I roust him, turns out he’s from the underground. Cahn’t believe how mean ta him I was; wonder he didn’t spit at me. He was looking for you.

LORINDA
Looking for me! My God, how did he know I was here? How did he know you would know me!

BUCK
Said you’d been trying to contact them. He gave me this.
(Hands an envelope to LORINDA.)
I told him to come in; he looks hungry. Do we have any food left?

LORINDA
You told him to come in? Are you a fool?

DOREMUS
Lorinda, calm yourself.

BUCK
Look out there. See him? Does he look like a spy? If we haveta suspect everyone, ‘nif we’re gonna be at each other’s throats…

DOREMUS
…Here’s some cold sausage and bread; ask him in.

BUCK
He’s gone anyway. Dammit.

DOREMUS
Read the letter! What does it say?

(There is a pause as she opens and reads the letter to herself.)

LORINDA
They’ll get us more news; we’ll give them our sheets to distribute! (Beat) If that man found us so easily, so could our enemies!

BUCK
Nobody’s looking for us!

LORINDA
Yet! In the day, when the wind blows and the moose wander through the woods here is the only time I feel at ease. But every little noise at night…I wake up in a sweat, shaking… so many more arrests in town… So many people taken to the work
camps. So many businesses shut. Fort Beulah looks a like a ghost town.

BUCK
You’re luckier than most. You have shelter. At least for now.

LORINDA
I know, and I’m thankful. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make a fuss. I am lucky to have my two good men. Don’t be mad at me. I’ve been feeling like a moon eaten up by an eclipse. There’s just less and less of me.

BUCK
You hold your own.

DOREMUS
I need to be here with you. I’ll tell Emma I have to work at the paper nights.

LORINDA
It’s risky enough with just me here.
Goodness knows what we will do in the winter. We will have to use the woodstove—and even if we use the driest hardwoods they might spot the smoke!

DOREMUS
Hopefully they’d just think it was hunters! Like the Purloined Letter: nobody hiding would want to be visible.

BUCK
You know, turns out, she’s right. Suppose that hobo were a spy.
We have got to get arms! Not only to protect ourselves, but to put a few of these bastards like my cousin Shad up against the wall. I been lookin’. But everything’s dried up, after the
last confiscations! All I have left is my pistol from the Great War.

DOREMUS
I didn’t sign on for an armed insurgency.

BUCK
This is a war.

DOREMUS
It’s not a war; war is to die on the field in ugly clothes as you oughtta know! We don’t need weapons! We can do it with words!

BUCK
Like you I used to think reason could conquer all; that words were better than a fight-- but I’m afraid all that has dried up
like a spring frog pool in the June heat!

DOREMUS
I am the descendant of two Congregationalist ministers; pacifism’s a hard habit to break! If we are going to turn into them, they win! (Beat) This camp brings back so many memories, my father and I fishing with the mist off the lake at
sun-up: I always used to walk down to the lake to get my bearings if anything was bothering me; doesn’t work anymore…

(BOTH very nostalgic, emotional)

BUCK
…Met you playing down here when I was little; you kinda adopted me—-used to helped me with chores, wood chopping, milking…

DOREMUS
… in this place of respite -- it’s just hard for me to picture anyone coming to harm. (Beat) I don’t know, guess I am being unrealistic. I am pretty sure my mail is being opened at the paper and I know they’re listening on my phone’s party line at home. Besides, we couldn’t take on the militia single handedly.
And even if we could…

LORINDA (interrupts)
We have work to do now while we still can. Doe, read him the new broadsides?

DOREMUS
How does this sound? “Americans, while we were too busy watching our own backs, not paying attention, our country was one-two punched by a small gang of criminals armed with well buttered words, and a lot of guns. These people have bypassed the constitution with so-called emergency laws, looted our country’s treasury, and K.O’d the economy into chaos. Meantimes, the real casualty count of American boys in Mexico is up to 2000, with thousands more crippled for life--while some 4,000 plus Mexicans have been killed. But nobody’s showing pictures of that are they?”

LORINDA (continues reading)
“In Virginia, farmers protesting government coal mining on their lands were recently rounded up, beaten and sent to work camps where they were denied medicine for their injuries!
In Nebraska a couple who did not attend a Moral Man church rally were made to run in front of a Militia tank until they dropped, whereupon they were shot in the head. Arrests, unlawful detentions, suspicious killings of dissenters--what have you done to make the authorities come after you? Don’t think that if you keep your nose clean they will leave you alone.”

BUCK
I guess we are luckier than those folks, ya know. Just add, “take arms, resist!” Say, maybe the underground will get weapons!
(He looks at Lorinda, who is unsure, while Doremus shakes his head NO.)

DOREMUS
(Feeding in sheets by hand)
This press is the creature of the truth! Feed its mouth that it might speak.

LORINDA
Truth, it scares me even to hear the word, when the Corpos think they have a patent on it.

(DOREMUS gives her a stack of broadsides; she places them in a special deep pocket inside a three quarter sweater.)

DOREMUS
Crumple them up like this and BUCK them anywhere when people aren’t watching. The red headline shows enough to make people curious: “MM MURDERS.”

LORINDA
I may lose my nerve sometimes, but this danger -- it simplifies things. One thing to think about, only one thing to do, fight back!

BUCK
There are more MM checking ID and enforcing the curfews then ever before in town. We better not throw caution to the winds. I’ll take the river path down.

LORINDA
After a day like today with the wind crisp in the sky and the clouds all plump high above, and now the stars going to come out clean, every last one of them in our breath -- it’s like a child’s game; I feel I could take the power of the mountains and beat these people — turn their sickness back on themselves!
I’ll meet you at the truck in twenty minutes.

(BUCK and LORINDA exit, each going a separate way.
DOREMUS lingers, writing. Night is dark now. It is very quiet save for a wind from the mountains through the trees. He goes to the door to enjoy the night silence. Then he hears VOICES, drunk and carousing, menacing - and sees a lantern in the distance.)

Act Three, Scene 3
(CHRISTMAS MUSIC)
Months later.

SARASON
Henceforth, any person who by word or act seeks to harm or discredit the American government, or who threatens violence against it, will be interned immediately. I have deputized seventy thousand National Guardsmen, militia, police and members of the secret services to handle this crucial security issue, and ask you to remember these brave servants of the people in your prayers tonight.

WINDRIP
Our good citizens will be asked to swear an oath of loyalty to Jesus Christ and the USA to prevent further acts of terrorism!! And so Merry Christmas to you.

Act Three, Scene 4

Perhaps the Christmas MUSIC rises again and seques into this scene at the hunting camp. Perhaps shutters conceal the windows from the Coleman which lights the inside. LORINDA and DOREMUS are working near the woodstove.

LORINDA
(slowly)
Doe. I have news.

DOREMUS
What is it?

LORINDA
The underground, they need me on the Canadian border--to help take charge of a cell there--open up a tea room as a front to get people across.

DOREMUS
Do you want to get away from me so much, to let me sour and wither? I was just going to tell you: Emma’s done it, moved in with our son Phil. We could be together! If you’ll have me.

LORINDA
This is a chance for me to be independent again, not a burden.

DOREMUS
A burden! Under any other circumstances your being here would have been the best part of my life!

LORINDA
Oh Doe, it’s so tempting to capitulate to one’s own needs, but it’s not right. These few months of having time together, taking the risk of the broadsides together, I’ve been getting so that I can’t think of anything but you. I am too close to you to be any good, losing my resolve for my own safety’s sake.

DOREMUS
You never quite got over my doubting you that day we decided to start the press, did you? That’s it. Isn’t it?

LORINDA
I couldn’t stand it if they did turn you against me. Somehow if you stopped trusting me, it would be worse than losing your love.

DOREMUS
What about my resolve? We need you to do the work we’ve been doing! Finally we may be having some little effect. There’s been sabotage at Tasbrough’s factories and in Burlington a group of disguised, angry citizens captured the militia and jailed them!

LORINDA (Sadly amused)
I know; I gave you that news.

DOREMUS
I so often recollect the day you first came into my office congratulating me on my editorial against Tasbrough’s scabs;
eager to discuss Jane Addams; your hair shiny like a black bear’s fur. My grouchy old heart just went, oh, oh! (Pause) Life has no meaning without a bit of love.

LORINDA
It’s had some meaning. No dictator can completely smother us now. Defeating these people is more important than love. And if love is to be—it needs to be done! (softly)

DOREMUS
The older I get the more I think perhaps nothing is more important than love; everything else hangs on it!
(after a pause)
When are you going?

LORINDA
As soon as they’re ready. It could be a few weeks.
I’ll miss this, here; you...
(Beat, as she covers her personal pain with the political.)

America used to be so good. What happened?

DOREMUS
Were we?
(pause)
Will we ever see each other again?

(DOREMUS is quiet, perhaps assessing his life—perhaps using the wild area of the cabin to solace himself.
Enter BUCK bursting in.)

BUCK
Forest fire’s gettin’ closer. They just arrested the editor of the Rutland Herald. Rumors have it the broadsides’r so poplar they ah lookin’ for the author! Doe, you’ve got to get out!

DOREMUS
How? The government is watching every inch of the border.
Senators passed the legislation two months ago. That bit of news we got. I’d have to go via the underground…

BUCK
No time. I’ve got a Canadian driver’s license and fake registration plates ready for you. It’ll do. Here.

DOREMUS
I’d need money.

BUCK
Might as well go down in a blaze, hey? Take this. It’ll get you across the border. The last of the Titus inheritance.

(BUCK hands a wad of money to DOREMUS.)

DOREMUS
Buck, under this tyranny most friends are a liability; but those like you keep a body’s spirit alive. But I’m a fool! They won’t just be looking for the author. We all must go; and soon!

(LEDUE off stage, through the loudspeaker, interrupts:)
LEDUE
By order of Province Militia Commissioner Roscoe Tasbrough and Emergency Military Judge Phillip JESSUP, we are authorized to search all premises. Do not resist. Stay still or you will be shot!

LORINDA
The press!

(They quickly cover the small jobber press with a table, tablecloth and a Coleman lamp. LORINDA shoves the broadsides into the fire in the woodstove as LEDUE kicks the door of the cabin in. The masked MM holds them all at gun point.)

BUCK
What in hell do you think you’re doing?

LEDUE
(at first he shows a little embarrassment at his act to his
former employer--and then covers it.)
Staubmeyer told us you’da took your papers out from the office.

(LEDUE starts going through the few things in the hunting camp. Finds a file cabinet or box with papers, goes through them, ripping them up and throwing them into a box for disposal.)

DOREMUS
You can’t do this. Let me go to town and call my lawyer. You are violating my rights. Show me your warrant.

LEDUE
You ain’t got no rights, mister, no matter how fancy you write.

DOREMUS
So let me ask you a burning question--what is it makes you so ornery, such a nasty brute?

LORINDA
How can you call yourself men and do this to another human being!

LEDUE
Orders. Just doing our job.

LORINDA
Job! Get paid to destroy a man. These papers are this man’s work, his life…

LEDUE
You in enough trouble, Mizzy Lorinda.

LORINDA (with loathing)
What’re you gonna do report me, smear my reputation, take my business? It’s all been done.

DOREMUS
(Tries to overcome his disembowLorent by being the responsible male)
It’s only papers from the Informer, love. Don’t fret.

(DOREMUS sits down, head in hands. LORINDA goes to comfort him. There is silence as LEDUE kicks open more boxes of papers. Ominous music such as Copland’s “Ode”.)

LEDUE(to DOREMUS)
Your next door neighbor Howland’s been followin’ you for months. We know about the press.
(He uncovers the press:)
And see right here’s the proof you been betrayin’ your country!
(holds up a broadside.)
And looky here.
You are all under arrest!

(Perhaps LEDUE sees BUCK’s decoy given to DOREMUS in the first Scene, and takes it; maybe he throws it into the woodstove.)

LEDUE
Let’s go.

DOREMUS
Take your hands off her!

(DOREMUS pulls LEDUE’S arm off of her; the MM lifts his lowered pistol, edgy. LEDUE stops.)

DOREMUS
Since you put us this position I oughtta be pretty angered at you. And no doubt I am, but a kind of unreasonable sorrow has just rushed over me. If you ever loved a person, or even this place here we live in, I don’t see how you could hate us so bad. Or, maybe if I’d been less short, I don’t know, offended you… in some way… can’t you see fit to absolve me of whatever it is I have done? Where’s your heart, Captain? Let us go.

LORINDA
(still furious, but swayed by DOREMUS’s sorrow)
I once thought there was hope for you, Shad.
There’s so much sorrow in the world, why would you want to cause more? It should make men brothers not enemies.

LEDUE
(yielding almost, then giving in to his hate)
Don’t you worry ‘bout me, thank you very much--I do jess fine without your help. It’s not what you ever did ta me anyway, buster--it’s who ya’re, type a person! Always lookin’ down
on such as me, no matter what you say. I am just as good as you. Better. I deserve everything you got!
I’m righteous in the Lord, in the league of Moral Men, and in the President’s armed force, brother; what about you? I was a nobody, a failure before I joined; didn’t like my lot in life t’all, but now, juss by being a Corpo, by believing in Jesus and Windrip and America, I am a success.
You think I’m gonna help traitors like you take that away from me? D’rather fight you to the death!

LORINDA
These men were always decent to you. If you have to jail someone, jail a crusty old widow like me.

DOREMUS
(trying to convince him, sadly)
I thought you fancied yourself a patriot; patriots care about freedom! But you don't care about freedom or democracy do you?

(BUCK is eyeing DOREMUS, looking for an opportunity to use the pistol in his pocket. The green MM has lowered his pistol.)

LEDUE
I care about this country bein’ safe from furreners; and f’r my ec’nomic securrity.

DOREMUS
So the harder times become the more you’ll fight to maintain the status quo even though it oppresses you?

LEDUE
It don’t oppress me! They’s my friends, the top people; what I admire, they take care of me...

DOREMUS
You really think Tasbrough and his buddies will take care of you when they’re through using you!

BUCK
(His own pistol now aimed at the MM, eyes DOREMUS.)
You got a beef with us, then why don’t you stand tall and fight it out with us now. Come and get me man to man?

(BUCK lowers his weapon. DOREMUS reaches for LEDUE’S throat and his holstered pistol.)

DOREMUS
Please, put the guns down!

(The nervous MM raises his weapon and shoots BUCK just as LEDUE struggles with DOREMUS to get the upper hand, pushing him to the ground.)

LORINDA
You dogs! You low, inhuman curs!

(Black Out)

Act Three, Scene 5
The Newspaper later that night or another undefined space.

LEDUE
Well, I done what you commanded. Now do me a favor?

TASBROUGH
You deserve it.

LEDUE
Take back that order come down to send me to the front in Mexico. Truth tell, I don’t want to git blowd up down there.
I hear men coming back parts amputated off; government keepin’ the whole ones down there for three years, n’iffen they complain they git court martialed.

TASBROUGH
Don’t want to do your duty to the Chief?

LEDUE
Rather be your right hand man.

TASBROUGH
Speaking of which… there’s a little matter of cheating me which the good Lorinda Pike informed me of awhile back. You can go to Trianon concentration camp, where the inmates you’ve betrayed on the outside will undoubtedly murder you “right quick,” or you can go to war.

LEDUE
I’ll kill that old whore!

TASBROUGH
Too late. Sending her down to Burlington work camp. Tries to get out, her face is on posters of undesirables.
(He shows him one)
No one will take her in, less they want to end up in camp themselves.
I like things tied up neat and tidy.

LEDUE (looking at the handbill)
Say that’s me on there!

TASBROUGH
I thought you were better then the resentful trash around here…

LEDUE
I am! Oh, boss, you treated me white. I didn’t know what I was doing. I wanted to be like you, put down the enemies of the state, be a hero, too; to have something, not always to
be a failure, a nothing; I didn’t think a little skimming would matter.

(A phone rings, newly installed in the newspaper office and TASBROUGH answers it.)

TASBROUGH
…..What! I’ll be right there!

Act Three, Scene 6
The White House office.
SARASON and WINDRIP playing poker and drinking.

WINDRIP
What’s the militia doin’ about some of the regular army types who are making rebellious noises with that General trying to supply ‘em with guns from Canada? And what about this counter revolution of unarmed folks just sittin’ down tryin’ to make our militia and judges feel guilty and stop arrestin’ folk!

SARASON
Chaos can be turned to our own advantage! Keep the people anxious for a strong hand.

WINDRIP
(with a beatific expression)
Might be time to use a little painful persuasion of interrogation to root out the traitors, don’t you think? Keep the servants lickin’ the boots of the masters!

SARASON
Mass purges, that’s the answer.
These single executions are simply not enough to keep them in line!

WINDRIP
Sarason, I don’t understand why some folk aren’t with us. We have their best interests at heart. If everyone would just behave themselves, let us regulate them, get rid of the bad apples -- we could have utopia; everyone’d be satisfied with his place in the world! (Beat)
I didn’t know this job could be so boring.
I’m tired of being inside all the time.

SARASON
It’s for your own good…

WINDRIP
Do you think the Lord still loves me?

SARASON
I still love you, Buzz. Forget God. Take the glory and the gelt, hey?

TASBROUGH (Bursts in)
What in hell is going on? I just took a VIP train here.
There’s a bank run in Province 8! Every time I tried to reach you I got the bums rush! Central Bank has used most of the Treasury money on the war; there’s nothing left to fund the Province banks with! I am losing everything!

WINDRIP
The Lord works in mysterious ways; don’t worry.
You’ll get another Freedom Protection contract…what do you want, ammo, roads, bridges, buildings? How can you doubt me?

TASBROUGH
I can’t wait! I’m going under, now!
Have you fools thought of what happens when you bankrupt the country? The foreign banks are calling in our debt!

WINDRIP
So what; we’ve just about taken Mexico and we’ll be getting over to other countries that need fixin. You should have socked enough away overseas. What about your stocks?

TASBROUGH
Stocks? You know the market’s taking a tumble!

WINDRIP
Look. We are succeeding beyond our wildest dreams!
We have set the American people free to survive or die by the free market. We have made the government the vessel for the
corporate power which makes this country great! If you’re gonna be disloyal, there’s nothing we can do for you. Leave!

TASBROUGH (to Windrip)
You spoiled simpleton masquerading as a self-made man; (to Sarason) you Midwestern peasant Sarason--what do you have to say!
No one is going to bring Roscoe Tasbrough down! I’ve built an empire! More than either of you have ever done, with my own two hands… and I am not some kind of spear-carrying beast to survive and die in dirt! The future of my name, my family name is not going to be brought down by the likes of you!
How do you expect me to survive? I have debts, a wife and family to support!

WINDRIP (giggling)
And a red headed doxie you keep.

TASBROUGH
You bastards aren’t going to cut me loose.
You know it’s impossible to live without money!
(He takes a pistol out of his pocket)
I am not suffering this kind of indignity, like some goddamned patsy. The only thing between death and oblivion is what I have gained! There is no other meaning.
(Says with great dignity:)
I will not question what I know!

(SARASON backs off with his hands up)

SARASON
Not me, Taz.
(Points his chin at president)
He’s your man. It’s his craziness that’s done this.

(TASBROUGH shoots the president. He aims hesitantly for SARASON.)

SARASON
Remember I got you the labor camp contracts! You and I, we think alike. I’ll make you president!

(A masked MM rushes in and shoots TASBROUGH.)

SARASON
Sometimes in seconds fortune puts gifts into our hands!
Roscoe Tasbrough has just completed my plan! Vice President Beecroft will make a great leader; he has always seen things my way!
(Laughs happily)

ANNOUNCER
Terrorists have assassinated the President! The Vice-President will assume the presidency. In one hour he will proclaim a state of martial law!

EPILOGUE
A Labor Camp holding room. A man is asSarasonp on the filthy floor, back to us. There is a VOICE from offstage.

VOICE
All right, who is ready for work?

LORINDA
(pushed out onto stage, slovenly, a complete mess)
I am. I’m hungry! Don’t take that lazy bitch! Take me.

VOICE
Wait there, incarceration number 18510.

DOREMUS
(who is the man asSarasonp--awakens)
Is this Lorinda Pike?

LORINDA
Is this Doremus Jessup? Dor? You’re alive?
(clutches him in an embrace)
How did you get out of jail?

DOREMUS
Phillip. Saved me from being shot, but he didn’t take me in. (long pause) I tried surviving in the hills, couldn’t; no
one would help me. Couldn’t get any traps, rope for snares, not even an axe...My house is gone. Emm had a stroke. There is nothing left.

LORINDA (clinging to him)
Oh, Dor; poor Doe.

DOREMUS
You?

LORINDA
For some reason they spared me jail; just sent me straight here to work camp. I wanted to write to you, but they wouldn’t let us, so I wrote letters in my head—I can’t bear to see my country come to this. To see my own life…

DOREMUS
They beat me in solitary to get me to tell names of “traitors”.
Then they threw me in an eight by eight cell with two dozen men, and starved us.

LORINDA
Oh God.
(aside) It was almost a relief to be in here, after the danger…

DOREMUS
I wanted to kill, for the first time in my life, to maim and destroy these men; and then I vowed not to sink to these people’s level.
It stinks in here. I don’t want to think of you in here. You can’t be… You whom I was so proud of…

LORINDA
I don’t recognize myself; I have become so sharp, so.. nasty!
I think of you, of how we were together; it keeps me from dying…

DOREMUS
I see all of us in this filth and I am overcome at my own diminishment, and then try to be glad for those who are still free. I try to remember my life, my home, the mountains; my family when they were little… my few successes to cull nourishment. But the mountains blaspheme against me! And the memories. I curse those who have stolen my time to live what I have learned at the end of my life; our time; and I despise them for the curdling of my heart, and the waste and the ignominy!..of this! And I try to figure out what we could have done to prevent this! If I had fought back sooner, Buck might be alive! If only we had left, if …

VOICE
Levrett, get moving out of that holding room!

LORINDA
Pray that our sorrow guide us back to becoming human again; that we may have time, freedom, time to fight these people; to avenge Buck , to be again, to do, to live. And to be together again! Keep hope. Keep hope my love. That people will rise up together like a great avalanche on the mountain and we will still this evil and begin a nation anew!

DOREMUS
(stops)
What was it like a decent life? Can you remember?
(Turns to face the audience.)
Can you?

THE END