Bermuda A One Act Play
By Logan Stallings
Cast of Characters BENNY, Male, 19-22, vain and flirtatious, good looking but narcissistic and volatile. He’s the human threat. He wears tight jeans, biker boots, a white button down shirt with the first few buttons undone, and an ‘80s style denim jacket, and he has a red aluminum baseball bat. LOTTIE, Female, 16-18, quiet, has a bible. She’s the daughter of a preacher and tries to stop all the violence that she sees. She wears a black skirt, white shirt, black and white saddle shoes, and a red letter jacket that says Lauderdale ‘56 on it. ARLO, Female, 15-18, kind, responsible, young. She’s a camp counselor. She has a red whistle, wears a checkered short sleeve camp button down, high waisted shorts, tall socks, and hiking boots. She has circular wire-rimmed glasses. GUTHRIE, Male, 35-45, grumpy, gruff. He is a sheriff and feels inclined to fight for the little guy. He wears a khaki sheriff outfit with boots, a red belt, and a sheriff hat. He smokes. LEWIS, Male, 22-26, sullen, quiet. He’s a busker, and has a guitar in a black hard case that’s covered in luggage stickers. He wears black jeans, a white t-shirt, a black jean jacket, boots, and a red bandana around his neck. JONATHAN, Male, 15-18, scared, young, wide-eyed. He’s a runaway, and he has a red backpack. He wears rolled up jeans, sneakers, a black t-shirt, and a windbreaker. Place: a multidimensional twilight-zone-esque diner Time: the diner looks 1950s inspired, but the eras of the characters are flexible.
OPENING SCENE I The scene opens inside of a small diner. There is a soda fountain bar parallel to the stage right wall/curtain but tilted for the view of the audience, with a single vinyl stool on the stage left side, the side closer to center stage. Above the soda fountain bar, there is a neon sign that reads “Bermuda” with a small neon palm tree. Downstage, by the audience, is a jukebox. The jukebox is turned away from the audience, so the back is visible. The front/inside of the jukebox can be removed with wood, wire, and glass inside the hollowed out area. Downstage center but left of the jukebox is a diner table with two chairs facing the audience. In one of the chairs is LEWIS, and he sits slouched, turned around to face away from the audience. Beside him is his guitar case. Upstage left is a diner table with a vinyl booth facing the audience. In the downstage left corner, there’s a diner door with a window and blinds. Outside the door is a red glow. While the lights are down, BENNY can be heard hitting the unseen inside of jukebox with a baseball bat and singing/chanting a children’s rhyme through gritted teeth. The lights come up and Benny is seen, back to the audience, beating the smoking, sputtering jukebox with the red tin baseball bat. A fire alarm on stage begins to sound after the lights come on. BENNY [Sung/chanted with the stage lights still off. Every few words, he hits the smoking jukebox with the bat]Indent SDs 10, not 5.
Lies, [HIT] Lies, lies, lies, tell me no more lies. Miss Susie had a tugboat [HIT] The tugboat had a bell [HIT] Miss Susie went to heaven, and the tugboat went to [HIT] [The lights comes up] Hello operator [HIT] give me number nine [HIT] [Onstage, a fire alarm starts due to the smoke from the jukebox] If you disconnect me, then I’ll come beat your [HIT] Behind the refrigerator [HIT] there is a piece of glass– [ENTER GUTHRIE and LOTTIE from stage right from behind the soda fountain bar. LOTTIE carries a bible in her hand. LOTTIE and GUTHRIE run to BENNY to stop him from destroying the jukebox.] LOTTIE No! Benny, stop it! BENNY And if you can’t be careful [HIT] you’ll slip and cut your Ask me no more questions [HIT] Tell me no more Lies. Lies, lies, lies, lies [HIT] Tell me no more– LOTTIE Stop it! Benny! STOP! [She grabs BENNY’s arm and pulls at him, trying to take the bat, but he shoves her away roughly]
BENNY [Grumbling and slightly out of it, then looking at LOTTIE and GUTHRIE] Making it sing… Okay? Sing! Sing, sing, sing, sing, sing! Okay? [Hits the jukebox again] GUTHRIE [Gruffly] Get the door, Lottie. [LOTTIE crosses to the door, crying, and swings it open. She stands by the doorway swinging to door open and closed repeatedly to move the smoke out so the alarm will stop] [GUTHRIE turning to BENNY who is still thrashing the jukebox] Son, that’s enough. BENNY Lies, lies, lies, lies! Tell me no more lies! [GUTHRIE wrestles the bat from BENNY, and they have a scuffle] LOTTIE [Crying, and still swinging the door open and closed] Stop it! [The fire alarm stops, and BENNY and GUTHRIE break apart] GUTHRIE [Furious with BENNY] What the hell were you doing, you little snot nosed– BENNY [Interrupting] Get offa me! Get away! I’m gonna make it sing, Okay? Okay? I want to leave–I can’t just wait around here–I can’t just sit around here! [BENNY falls to his knees in front of the jukebox and holds his hands out before his eyes. They are shaking. He starts to pull wires from its center panel of the
jukebox. The smoke from the jukebox gets heavier, and GUTHRIE tries to pry BENNY away from the jukebox.] Get offa me, old man! [LOTTIE, lets the door close and runs to help GUTHRIE pull BENNY away from the jukebox.] [When the door closes, the fire alarm starts again.] Nice! [When LOTTIE and GUTHRIE try to pull BENNY away from the jukebox, BENNY shoves LOTTIE away, and he struggles with GUTHRIE. LOTTIE stands to the side crying and holding her bible. She starts to recite the Lord’s Prayer.] ARLO [ARLO ENTERS from behind the soda fountain bar.] What’s going on?! [She takes in the scene, runs to prop open the door and then runs to GUTHRIE and BENNY who are still fighting.] Hey, what’s going on? Hey, quit it! Stop it! [After she can’t make GUTHRIE and BENNY stop, she runs upstage to LEWIS and shakes his shoulder.] Why’d you just let this happen? You were supposed to watch the jukebox. Hey, Lewis! Do something. Lewis! [LEWIS shakes ARLO off and waves her away, saying nothing.] [ARLO groans furiously and goes to pull BENNY off GUTHRIE herself, but when she tries, BENNY hits her in the face with the butt of his bat, causing her to grab her (bloody) nose and stumble back into LEWIS, who stands up and catches her.] LEWIS Hey, that’s enough, alright?! [He yanks BENNY away from GUTHRIE, throwing BENNY to the floor, bat in hand.] BENNY Don’t you fuckin’ touch me! [He scrambles to his feet, holding his bat.]
[They all stand tensely while LOTTIE cries and the fire alarm blares. The jukebox smokes less and less.] JONATHAN [ENTERS through the open door, wearing his red backpack. He is dazed and unsteady, fresh from a car crash. He reaches out a hand to everyone in the room, but they don’t speak to him.] Excuse me… I need… I need help. There was a… crash. I couldn’t get the driver out. I need to get the driver out. I need to phone– [The fire alarm stops, and at the same time it stops, BENNY, out of the blue, hits JONATHAN in the head with his bat. JONATHAN collapses to the floor, unconscious. BENNY advances, about to hit him again.] ARLO NO! Leave him alone! What are you doing? BENNY! [GUTHRIE and LEWIS wrestle the bat from BENNY and force BENNY into one of the diner chairs.] LOTTIE [Points at JONATHAN] Is… is he okay? ARLO [Squatting to examine JONATHAN] He’s breathing. BENNY [Tries to rise from the chair] Goddammit, give me the bat. I gotta finish it! LEWIS [Shoves him back into his seat] Finish it?! BENNY Yeah! Finish it! Don’t you get it?! You know there can only be five! There’s only ever five and now he’s just walked right fucking in and I’m not gonna be the one who dies to right the number, Lewis! I haven’t made the jukebox sing yet! I need more
time. I won’t be the one to die to right the number! I won’t die for you. I won’t. I’ll kill him first. Better him than us. [He tries to get up, but LEWIS pushes him back into the seat again.] ARLO Why won’t he wake up? GUTHRIE [He kneels and tries to wake JONATHAN, and he checks his pulse when he doesn’t wake.] He’s okay, just out cold. BENNY I’ll finish it! Give me my bat. [BENNY struggles to get up and get his bat, but LEWIS pushes him back into the seat again.] LEWIS The Hell you will. LOTTIE Benny, be reasonable, you can’t murder that kid! ARLO [She wipes the blood from her nose that she’s been holding.] You think your life is worth more than his? Really, you son of a bitch? GUTHRIE [GUTHRIE pulls out his handcuffs and handcuffs one of BENNY’s hands to the bottom of the chair he’s sitting in.] We aren’t animals, son. Your life ain’t worth more than that kid’s there. BENNY Guthrie! [Pleading] Think about it! Just think about it. You know what’ll happen, why won’t any of you do anything?! There are only five seats in this diner. Five plates. Five cups. Five forks. Only five cots in the back. [BENNY points to the door behind the counter]
I’m the newest one here, and I’ve been here what, three weeks? You all know what happened to the one before me. Something pulled her out that door to right the number twenty-four hours after I showed up. I saw it. She’d only been here a month. She’s gone! She’s dead because there can only be five people here at a time. You know it! [He struggles against the handcuffs.] The only way to get out of here alive is to get the jukebox to sing to you, and it hasn’t sang yet! LEWIS You just beat the jukebox to a fucking pulp, Benny. You probably broke it. We could all die here because of you. … You know, maybe you’re right… maybe we should right the number ourselves. [LEWIS picks up the bat and points it at BENNY.] You were pretty eager to take someone else’s life, Benny. Maybe you shouldn’t be too attached to your own. LOTTIE Lewis, no. That isn’t funny. LEWIS It shouldn’t be. [LEWIS throws the bat to the floor, disgusted.] GUTHRIE The kid said something about a wreck, I’ll go look outside. BENNY There’s nothing out there, old man. You know there’s NOTHING out there. You know there’s no wreck. No emergency vehicles coming for anyone. There’s no way out. Except, maybe… a song… [BENNY looks at the jukebox] GUTHRIE Lewis, keep an eye on this degenerate son of a bitch. [GUTHRIE tosses LEWIS the handcuff key] I’m going out for a smoke. [Guthrie takes the carton of cigarettes and from the soda fountain bar and exits out the open door, closing it behind him. He is visible, in red light, smoking just outside the door.] [The sound of wind grows louder and the lights fade to black]
OPENING SCENE II The lights come up and BENNY sits with his head lolled forward, slouching, and handcuffed to the diner chair facing the audience. He mumbles his children’s rhyme absentmindedly. ARLO sits in the other diner chair that is pushed over so she sits across the table from LOTTIE and LEWIS who sit in the booth. They all face each other over the table between them, and they play cards, a game that LEWIS started, while they wait for JONATHAN to wake up. JONATHAN still lies unconscious on the floor. LOTTIE Do you think he’s okay? [She looks at JONATHAN] ARLO [Sets down her cards, then stands and walks over to squat by JONATHAN, placing two fingers on his neck to check for a pulse.] He’s still out cold. [Speaking to BENNY] He could have brain damage. BENNY Well, he could be worse. He could be splattered on the linoleum. ARLO You’re sick, Benny. If you really think you can get the jukebox to sing to you now, you’re delusional? Nothing can save your soul. LEWIS Leave him, Arlo. He’ll get what’s coming. BENNY But this whole place is a fucking delusion. It’s nothing to do with souls, baby. It’s just a minor inconvenience being stuck here. It’s just the luck of the draw… Natural selection.
[He stomps his foot on the floor, startling everyone] ARLO Bullshit, Benny. You don’t end up here if you’re destined for a long happy life in the sun. You don’t end up here if you still got a life to live. You end up here if you’re damaged, Benny. Beyond repair. So, what’s your damage? BENNY You preachin’ to me, now baby? Ain’t that Lottie’s job? You’re just the same as me. You’re no better, just scared, and you ain't brave enough to do what needs to be done. [BENNY jerks his head to JONATHAN] There’s no guarantee who bites the bullet, baby. It could be any one of us gets pulled through that door. Sucked out into whatever lies beyond. Now, if our guest [gestures at JONATHAN] stays in town, your only shot is that there jukebox, and it looks in pretty sorry condition. Whoops. ARLO [She crosses to stand over BENNY and look down at him.] It will be you, Benny. Somehow I just know it. The jukebox won’t sing for you. You’ll be the one it chooses to right the number. It won’t sing you home. BENNY Aw, honey, don't be cross. Bet I can sing you home, baby. Bet I can sing you… HOME! [With his free hand, BENNY grabs ARLO around the waist and pulls her into his lap despite her struggles and sings his children’s rhyme to her viciously. LEWIS and LOTTIE don’t seem to notice at first.] Ask me no more questions. Tell me no more lies! The boys are in the girls' rooms and their pulling down their Flies are in the meadow! Bees are in the park! And if you come to need us, we’ll be kissing in the dark! ARLO [Struggling against BENNY, disgusted.] Fuck off, you pervert! LEWIS
[LEWIS looks over, realizes BENNY has ARLO by the waist, and gets up.] Let her go! What’s wrong with you, you degenerate SOB?! [LEWIS grabs the bat from the floor and BENNY lets go of ARLO.] BENNY [Continues to sing to himself now. His eyes are closed and he moves his head to his song.] Dark! Dark! Dark! Dark! Dark is like a movie. A movie’s like a show. A show is like a TV screen and that’s just how it goes! [BENNY continues to sing quietly as LEWIS talks to LOTTIE] Miss Susie had a tugboat The tugboat had a bell Miss Susie went to heaven And the tugboat went to Hello operator Give me number nine… [His song trails off] LEWIS [Puts a hand on ARLO’s shoulder.] He’s just an asshole, Arlo. Are you okay? [ARLO shrugs off his hand and goes back to her seat.] JONATHAN [Stirs from the floor.] Mmmh… [He opens his eyes and sits up slowly.] Where am I? BENNY [Looks down at JONATHAN wildly.] That’s the question of the goddamn century! Ain’t it, champ? Hey Lottie, honey, baby, why don’t you tell our new friend exactly where we are huh? You can give him your friendliest orientation? [BENNY winks exaggeratedly] ARLO [Speaking to BENNY] Shut up.
LOTTIE [Ignoring BENNY] I’ll get Guthrie. [She EXITS out the door to get GUTHRIE. She stands outside with him, and they whisper until they enter.] ARLO [She kneels beside JONATHAN and addresses him.] You’re in a diner. JONATHAN Where? ARLO … We don’t know exactly. We’re all just… kind of stuck here. JONATHAN [Looks around and at the door] What about the wreck? LEWIS [Shaking his head] There’s nothing out there. JONATHAN What do you mean, “there’s nothing out there?” [LOTTIE ENTERS through the door, followed by GUTHRIE.] ARLO Just nothing. You can maybe see a couple feet ahead of you if you stand by the door, but, past that… nothing. JONATHAN What does any of that mean? Where are we? Where am I? GUTHRIE Well, kid, that answer depends on who you ask. LOTTIE [Kneels by JONATHAN to address him and sets her bible down on the floor beside him.] Do you follow the path of the Lord?
BENNY [to LOTTIE] Fuck off, bitch. LOTTIE [To BENNY] You’re only afraid of faith because it’s true, and we just saw your true colors, Benny. We know where you’re headed. [LOTTIE takes her bible and sits at the booth.] JONATHAN [Starts to hyperventilate] I don’t understand. I was just in a wreck but, the driver, I couldn’t pull her out… I need to call for help. [He looks at GUTHRIE, speaking frantically.] I need to call for help! [GUTHRIE shakes his head and goes to stand by the soda fountain bar, and LEWIS sits beside ARLO on the floor] ARLO Hey, it’s okay! It’s okay, don’t worry. Just breath, alright? Breath. What’s your name? JONATHAN [He speaks shakily] … It’s Jonathan. What is this place? Are we dead? Am I dead? I’m not. I can’t be. I made it out of the car. I got out. ARLO It’s okay just breath. I’m Arlo, and this is Lewis, and that’s Lottie and Guthrie over there. That’s Benny right there. [JONATHAN looks nervously at BENNY] I’m sorry he hurt you. He won’t hurt anyone again. And it’s okay, you’re not dead, see, you’re fine. I was at the Vista Camps before I ended up here. You’re fine. We’re all… fine, we’re just stuck here, but it’s okay. There’s food and water and cots in the back. JONATHAN [Moaning] Nooo.
[He puts his hands on his head and runs his fingers through his hair.] Where are we? Is this some kind of government conspiracy? Are we trapped in a bunker or something? How long have you all been here? ARLO I’ve been here a couple months. Guthrie and Lewis have been here the longest. Lottie got here just after I did, and Benny’s only been here a couple weeks. [JONATHAN nervously glances at BENNY again] I’m really sorry about him. See, the thing is… there are only ever five of us here at a time. There are only five seats, and five cots, and five of, well pretty much anything you might need. But… now you’re here, so there’s six of us… so the number’s going to right itself, you know fix itself, in just a matter of time, and one of us is gonna get sucked out there to right the number. JONATHAN That’s horrible. You’re joking. GUTHRIE It’s no joke. JONATHAN That’s why he acted the way he did…? [He nods to BENNY] ARLO No. Benny has no excuse. We’re all scared, but what he tried to do is unacceptable. JONATHAN So this isn’t some kind of conspiracy…? [LEWIS shakes his head.] ARLO I wish, but no. No. This is something else. It’s different, even the air here is different. Can you tell? [JONATHAN shakes his head]
Look, lie down on your back. It’s okay. Yeah right here. [ARLO lies down on her back and motions for JONATHAN to do the same.] Come on, Lewis, you too. [LEWIS and JONATHAN both lie down on their backs beside ARLO, and ARLO begins her monologue.] You know how to float? I’m not the strongest swimmer, but I’d never drown ‘cause I can float on my back for hours. For days. I could fall asleep floating and just drift. My grandma taught me when I was young, maybe even before I could walk, and ya’know, people say it’s a natural born talent, but it’s not. It’s a learned talent. Look. If you lie down, it’s easy. Just, look, look at me. Watch my chest. Watch my stomach when I take a deep breath. It’s like a balloon ya’know. It’s like a balloon that inflates when you breath in, see? It’s nothing about the shoulders, ya’know. Like in cartoons, when somebody takes a big ol’ breathe and their shoulders go up and down like a shrug? Yeah, that’s not it. You want your whole body to inflate, so not just your lungs, but your legs and your arms and your head. And you wanna keep that space there even when you breath out. You wanna keep your chest feeling hollow because if it’s hollow it’s full of air no matter what. It’s best outside, though. I used to lifeguard at these public pools. There was this one pool I worked at and it was indoors, and it was horrible, you never wanted to float in there ‘cause you didn’t want to fill yourself up with that awful contaminated chlorinated air. You didn’t want it in your body, you didn’t want to breathe it in. The chemicals made it all wrong. You could feel it prickle inside you all sterile and mean, and it didn’t lift you up. That air didn’t lift you up at all. It was so heavy. So, I didn’t like to swim there. I didn’t like to float there. See, like how the air here’s too heavy. But air that lifts you up, up outta the water, up outta your body, so you’re weightless and alive, it’s like you could float forever. And if there’s a current just kind of moving you. Not really pulling you, but it’s like you’re the water, and you’re moving with it, and you don’t really even notice if you are moving, and if the sun isn’t too bright, you can open your eyes and see the sky. See if it’s blue or gray or if it’s night. Oh man, if it’s night you can see all the stars. See, I used to go, every year… to the river. Me and my brother, Jon, and our friends, Ian and Hannah and Travis. We’d go out at night and swim to the raft just upstream from the camp I work at, and we’d lie out there and watch the stars and tell each
other stories, ya’know? Not so much secrets as stories, just things that were true. Jon and Ian liked to swim out to the other side and jump off the bluff in the dark. You could hear them laughing, and you could hear the splash, but you could never see them. Even then, though. Even then when the night was so dense and black and the water was cold, and everything was invisible, we could still just float and float for hours. The air was cool and full, and it would keep you up. You could feel it in your arms and legs and it would lift you, and you’d be weightless, lifted right outta your body. Not like here. Here. The air’s just so heavy. It’s heavier than anything I’ve ever felt, and if you were tryin’ to float with this air, it’d sink you like you were made of lead. That’s how I know something’s wrong here, wrong with this place, ‘cause it’s not like an indoor pool were the chemicals weigh you down. It’s like the air itself is pressing you. Like it’s pressing you against the floor, do you feel it? JONATHAN [Nods] I guess. It’s heavy. It’s all so heavy. I feel it… it’s too heavy. Is it even real… are we? Are we really here? LEWIS I don’t know. I mean… the last thing I know for sure is that I was on a bus. One of those long trip busses that shuttles you from city to city, and I was goin’ down to Austin ‘cause I had a couple gigs lined up, and I was gonna stay with a friend down there. But then the wind picked up. It was like when an airplane hits turbulence, but it was a bus, so it was bizarre. It’s not like there was a tornado or anything, it was just wind. There was just so much wind shakin’ and rattlin’ and then all of a sudden it stopped, but the bus wouldn’t move. It was like it stalled or somethin’, so I volunteered to go find us some help. I was gettin’ stir crazy in there anyways, so I took my guitar and I started walkin’, and it’s a damn good thing I brought it with me too. ‘Cause, you know, without it, I probably woulda done a jackknife off the roof by now. This guitar’s really all I got… This place has nothin’. All you do here is exist. I’ve been here six months. Guthrie says it’s Hell. He think’s we’re all in purgatory, but maybe it’s just the waiting room for purgatory, and I mean, sure I never really went to church, but I don’t think I’m such a bad person. Lottie keeps gettin’ all righteous on us. Tryin’a preach us words from the good book, make us confess. I think she thinks if she can lead us to the
light, then maybe she’ll get out too, like on good behavior or something. Maybe she didn’t make the quota of bible-belt converts to get into heaven. Nice! I think we could be in the Bermuda Triangle or some alien shit like that… some twisted twilight zone version of it at least. I mean, I think I saw a plane from the lost flight 19 out there rusting by a water tower before I stumbled onto this place. Everyone thinks something different, but the name on the diner is “Bermuda” like some fun twisted joke. About why we’re here or where here even is though… none of us really know. I was halfway through New Mexico when I got here, and it was 1978. Now Lottie came about a month ago and says she’s from Kansas City and it’s 1956, so who knows. I guess wherever we are, “Bermuda” exists outside time… None of us can leave though… I tried when I first got here. I ran out into the dark, and the wind shoved me straight back in through that door. Ya know what I think… I think this place needs five people, but it can’t bring in new people. We just wander in here somehow, but when there’s too many of us, it can trim the fat.Ooh—nice! There’s no calendar for when people come or go either. There’s no way of knowing except sometimes the wind picks up and rattles this place all around, and when someone new comes, when there’s a fresh face, everyone gets scared cause the number’s always five. five people. five seats in the diner. five cots in back. It’s like someone laid it all out for five dolls. The number always rights itself. It always defaults to five. Me, Lottie, Guthrie, Benny, and Arlo. That’s five. Now, you, Jonathan. You just showed up an hour ago. That’s six. So we got approximately twenty-three hours before the number rights itself again. It’s not like someone’s gonna drop dead or anything though. They just disappear. They’re just gone and no one knows where to. It’s a helluva lottery, but I’m not so convinced it would be that bad to leave here. Hell, when you disappear from here maybe you wake up at home. I mean[,] it could be we’re all in a coma and this is a shared hallucination, or maybe it’s all just my hallucination. LOTTIE Don’t say that. LEWIS Why not? LOTTIE ‘Cause I’m real. And this is real. And I know it is. I know why I’m here.
BENNY You’re always toting that Bible around,[.] you think you know more than us, but Honey, you’re clueless. LOTTIE Belief is all any of us have now. BENNY You got the answers, baby? Really? Are the answers in that good book of yours? [Whispers] Are they the answers of the Lord? LOTTIE Shut up, Benny. BENNY [He rattles in his chair] Ooh. What’s the truth, Lottie? What’s the truth, baby? It’s too late for my soul, you already told me that. So what’s this, then, the cosmic waiting room and we’re just hangin’ out ‘til our number’s called? Heaven or Hell. Heaven or Hell through that door? Is that it? Lottie, it that it? But, your daddy was a preacher, so of course, that’s what you’d think. That’s all your little head can handle. Baby, it’s what you were born to believe. LOTTIE If you don’t believe in it, why does it scare you so much? Why are you so afraid of what’s out there, if it isn’t judgment day? BENNY Why are you here, baby? We all did somethin’ downright awful to land us here, didn't we? So, what’s your poison, baby, what’s your damage? You wanna come whisper it in my ear? Like the slut you are? … Oh, you think I can’t tell, well I can tell. I know a slut when I see one. I can smell it on you, and no amount of scripture can change that. GUTHRIE [Picks up the bat off the ground and approaches BENNY.] Watch your mouth, son. LOTTIE
No. No, it’s okay. [She takes the bat gently from GUTHRIE’s hand.] Let him talk. It’s all he has left. It’s sad, really. BENNY Well, aren’t you righteous, baby. Aren’t you just… [he closes his eyes and rolls his head back] … a true disciple… did you ever get any converts, I wonder? With all those long nights you musta’ been pullin’? Is that why you’re really here? Is that your damage? Didn’t make the quota of souls to be saved? … Pitty… and to think you coulda had mine… not that you’d want it, but you coulda had it sooooo easy. [He gnashes his teeth savagely] Daddy musta been real proud, though, huh? His baby girl’s a real entrepreneur, a real workin’ woman, right Miss Susie, right? Dark! Dark! Dark! Dark! … Hah! But that doesn't really matter, no, not as long as you’re making disciples, right? Saving souls, right? … come on baby, come on, show me the light. Take this awful, awful black soul and make it clean. I don’t think you really can. [He whistles and calls to her like at a dog] Come on. Here girl. [He licks his lips] LOTTIE [Steps closer to BENNY] You think you know me? BENNY Aw baby, ‘course I do. You’re just like the rest. You might dress like a lamb but you’re not. No. You’re not. You might teach your Sunday school, and you might carry your good book but, you’re just the same as me, just as crooked, you pretty little thing. You pretty little… Lottie Lottie Lots-of-Love. You’re just the same. Got some unfinished business maybe. [He licks his lips and grins] LOTTIE Unfinished business? [She swings the bat and it makes contact with the chair, not BENNY.] You don’t know me! BENNY
[Laughing] Sure I know you, baby! You got fire, honey, we all see that, but you’d just as soon roll over and take it. All bark and no bite. [He spits on her] LOTTIE [LOTTIE swings the bat into the side of BENNY’s head, knocking him and his chair over. BENNY collapses on the floor, unconscious.] Maybe you’re right. Maybe I can’t save your soul, maybe I don’t want to! Maybe I have to worry about my own. It’s not my fault I’m here. It’s not. [She squats down by BENNY’s unconscious body] I’m not like you. [She stands and wipes BENNY’s spit off her face. She tosses the bat to the floor, disgusted, and sets her bible down on the table. She turns and approaches the jukebox. She puts her hands on the front of the jukebox and leans into it, then, she pushes a button, then another, waits a minute, and music starts to play. The song is “Trees” by The Spaniels from Heart and Sound Vol. 2. The lights fade into a soft red, and the others are barely visible except LOTTIE who is illuminated with the jukebox by a spotlight. She dances to the music, slowly and delicately, and slowly, the others start to dance one by one, then all the lights fade to black.]