Act ll Scene 6
Early Sunday morning. Thunder and rain. Some contemporary Christian music comes up – perhaps something sweet and melodic by Keith Green, like “Open Your Eyes.” A.D. and ESTHER are up in her room. There is a portable cassette player connected to headphones, which are connected to A.D., who is listening to something we can only faintly hear. He rips the headphones off.
A.D.
Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? Tonight was a blast. Midnight trip through the woods … skinny-dipping … massive thunderstorm … whoa. But … “Christian rock”? Like getting scratched to death by kittens while Pat Boone pounds a spike through my head.
ESTHER
You don’t like it.
A.D.
I wouldn’t say that. I hate its sexless guts. That’s what I’d say.
ESTHER
It’s not supposed to be turned toward sex. It’s supposed to be turned toward God. That’s the point.
A.D.
There’s only one “point” rock music is turned toward, Princess …
ESTHER
Why do you have to be such a jerk. I’m trying to share something really important to me –
A.D.
– I told you –
ESTHER
– Yeah, your daddy kicked you out and it’s all Jesus’s fault. Is that your excuse for everything?
A.D.
Screw you.
He heads for the door.
ESTHER
Why do you have to be so vulgar all the time?
A.D.
Because I damn well feel like it. Oh, am I supposed to tiptoe round your virgin ears … Saint-Esther-of-the-Manure-Pile? I came to save you from all that Jesus People garbage – and now you lay this on me. One minute you’re done being a country bumpkin, the next minute you’re all Back to the Land. You’re done, you’re back, you’re done, you’re back, hand me a scorecard, I can’t keep up.
ESTHER
You know what? You’re an ignorant bigot and I’m not putting up with it any more.
A.D.
I’m a bigot?!
ESTHER
You think all Christians are country, and everyone country is Christian, and all of us are idiots. That’s ignorant. So what if there’s six churches in Baker’s Creek: some people don’t go to any of them, and why’s there six churches if we’re all the same? Plus, if we lived in some village in India or something, then that would be all cool, and you would talk all nice, no matter if you agreed with me or not. Well guess what. I could say Christians built this country. I could say city people are useless as tits on a boar. I could say that, but I don’t.
ANTHEA, in barn clothes, comes into their space.
ANTHEA
You’re awake. Time to do the chores.
ESTHER
In a minute.
ANTHEA
You do the poultry, I’ll do everything else.
ESTHER
In a minute.
Beat.
ANTHEA
We’re leaving for church at 8:45. A.D., you’re welcome to come.
Beat.
A.D.
Thanks.
ANTHEA goes.
ESTHER
Please tell me I’m not turning into her.
A.D.
You were a little scary there for a moment.
ESTHER
Sorry …
A.D.
Actually, I … I like your mom.
ESTHER
What?
A.D.
I know it’s wacky, but … I kind of like your mom.
ESTHER
My mother thinks you’re going to hell.
A.D.
Yeah, but … in this life, she’s been nothing but nice to me. And it’s not like she made the rules … plus, she’s always feeding me. The other night, we had pie.
Beat.
ESTHER
You are so weird.
A.D.
I know you are but what am I?
Beat.
ESTHER
I want to play you something … different. It’s … I don’t know what you call it, exactly … but I like it.
As ESTHER puts a cassette in the player, A.D. idly picks up the case, glances at it … and stops dead.
A.D.
Where’d you get this? This album just hit the gay scene and we get everything first.
Beat. He points at a track listing.
They wrote this song for us.
ESTHER
He wrote it for his mother. It’s a Christian band.
A.D.
The album’s called Boy, there’s a song called “Stories for Boys,” the cover’s a shirtless boy. Work it out.
ESTHER
You mean, that kid is supposed to be … attractive, or something? That’s disturbing.
A.D.
Oh, grow up, I am so sick of that straight-people crap. I don’t want to make out with that kid, I want to be that kid. He’s … so … complete.
Beat.
There’s nothing Christian in this music.
ESTHER
It’s turned toward God. Listen.
She puts the headphones on A.D. and herself, and presses Play. They listen for a moment, and their heads begin to bob along to what will sound to us like a small tinny squawk.
A.D.
HEY.
ESTHER
WHAT.
Beat.
A.D.
I NEVER HAD A SISTER BEFORE.
Beat.
ESTHER
ME NEITHER.
The sounds of U2’s “I Will Follow,” from their 1980 album Boy, come up full. On the porch, TODD and SETH have blankets and coats drawn up around them, and are a few bottles down. Perhaps a soft rain is falling.
SETH
I liked you. So if you’re … one of them, what does that make me?
TODD
A jackass, same as always.
SETH
Does that make me what you are?
TODD
How should I know? (seeing SETH’s distress) Oh, look. We were seventeen. Who knows what all we were thinking back then. When you’re seventeen in Baker’s Creek, even the organist looks pretty hot.
SETH
Miss Pritchard? No, she doesn’t.
TODD
Okay, maybe not Miss Pritchard.
SETH
That woman scares me.
TODD
Bad example. What I’m saying is, it was a long time ago and we were very, very young. Want to kiss me?
SETH
What?
TODD
When you look at me, right now, do you want to kiss me?
SETH
(considering TODD) Go jump in the lake, you hairy old buggerlugs.
TODD
Exactly. So then what’s the problem.
Beat.
SETH
You want to kiss me?
TODD
(considering SETH) Don’t think so. You were a handsome lad, once, but … you haven’t aged well.
SETH
Neither’ve you.
TODD
We’re probably safe, then.
SETH
Here’s to that.
They drink.
You broke their hearts, you know. My mom and dad.
TODD
They broke my heart, too.
SETH
Mom, to her dyin’ day, she always thought you would come back. Repent your sin. And all would be forgiven. But you chose your “lifestyle.” And don’t give me some bull how life is unfair for people like you; we all want things we can’t have. It don’t matter what you think about at night. It only matters what you do.
Pause.
TODD
You remember that Northern Nights tournament back in ’56?
SETH
The Manitowabi brothers –
TODD
– The Manitowabi brothers –
SETH
– Tough –
TODD
– Tough as nails –
Points to his chin.
– Still got that scar –
SETH
– Yeah, you shouldn’t a’ cross-checked him though –
TODD
– He started it, the big bugger. But I guess his brothers finished it.
Beat.
Ran into one of ’em a while back. The little one.
SETH
Kevin.
TODD
Kevin Manitowabi. At a training seminar for volunteer youth counsellors. He was running it. Where’s your brothers, I said: I want payback. Dead, he said. All dead. Suicide … booze … Kevin almost drowned himself in aftershave before he was done …
SETH
(whistles) Poor Kevin.
TODD
Then one day he’s taking flowers to his family’s graves. And he remembers how he and his brothers got put in a school where if you talked Indian or acted Indian, they’d punish you. “God will love you: all you have to do is choose to not be an Indian.” So he stands by those graves with his flowers in his hand and he looks up at the sky and says, “I don’t know about God’s plan no more: good or bad, right or wrong … I only know one thing: I am an Indian. So let’s start with that.”
Pause.
SETH
Why’re you goin’ on about Indians.
TODD
Oh, for Pete’s sake, Seth, it’s a metaphor –
SETH
– Don’t you know enough to call them “Canada’s First Nations”?
Beat. TODD grins.
TODD
Up yours, dumb-ass –
SETH
– You’d like that, fairy boy –
TODD
– You ignorant, inbred, xenophobic, homophobic, Tory-votin’, rifle-totin’, Bible-thumpin’ hick.
SETH
(toasting him) You limp-wristed son of a bitch.
Sunday. A few hours later. In the church.
ANTHEA
When did Our Lord become human?
Beat.
I’ll tell you when He became human. Not when He was born. Not when He died. No. Matthew 27:46: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” or “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Jesus comes to earth to take on human life and human death … but in that moment He feels the Godhead in Him dying … and is so profoundly alone … can you imagine what it meant, for someone who experienced the Divine more fully and constantly than anyone who has ever walked this earth … to be cut off from it altogether? Living on in body, even for a second, without that connection, that sustenance, that hope. The horror. The emptiness.
Beat.
You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?
She looks around for several moments.
Kids, let’s have a song. Let’s have “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” I need to hear your little voices. I just … really want to hear them now.
A group of youngsters, untrained, joyous, sings “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”
Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world …