Plays Part 43

FEJEVARY: Listen, Madeline-plain, straight truth. If you go out there and get in trouble a second time, I can't make it right for you.

MADELINE: You needn't!

FEJEVARY: You don't know what it means. These things are not child's play-not today. You could get twenty years in prison for things you'll say if you rush out there now. (she laughs) You laugh because you're ignorant. Do you know that in America today there are women in our prisons for saying no more than you've said here to me!

MADELINE: Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself!

FEJEVARY: I? Ashamed of myself?

MADELINE: Yes! Aren't you an American? (a whistle) Isn't that a policeman's whistle? Are they coming back? Are they hanging around here to-(pulling away from her uncle as he turns to look, she jumps up in the deep sill and throws open the window. Calling down) Here-Officer-You-Let that boy alone!

FEJEVARY: (going left, calling sharply) Holden. Professor Holden-here-quick!

VOICE: (coming up from below, outside) Who says so?

MADELINE: I say so!

VOICE: And who are you talking for?

MADELINE: I am talking for Morton College!

FEJEVARY: (returning-followed, reluctantly, by HOLDEN) Indeed you are not. Close that window or you'll be expelled from Morton College.

(Sounds of a growing crowd outside.)

VOICE: Didn't I see you at the station?

MADELINE: Sure you saw me at the station. And you'll see me there again, if you come bullying around here. You're not what this place is for! (her uncle comes up behind, right, and tries to close the window-she holds it out) My grandfather gave this hill to Morton College-a place where anybody-from any land-can come and say what he believes to be true! Why, you poor simp-this is America! Beat it from here! Atna! Don't let him take hold of you like that! He has no right to-Oh, let me down there!

(Springs down, would go off right, her uncle spreads out his arms to block that pa.s.sage. She turns to go the other way.)

FEJEVARY: Holden! Bring her to her senses. Stand there. (HOLDEN has not moved from the place he entered, left, and so blocks the doorway) Don't let her pa.s.s.

(Shouts of derision outside.)

MADELINE: You think you can keep me in here-with that going on out there? (Moves nearer HOLDEN, stands there before him, taut, looking him straight in the eye. After a moment, slowly, as one compelled, he steps aside for her to pa.s.s. Sound of her running footsteps. The two men's eyes meet. A door slams.)

(CURTAIN)

ACT IV

SCENE: At the MORTON place, the same room in which SILAS MORTON told his friend FELIX FEJEVARY of his plan for the hill. The room has not altogether changed since that day in 1879. The table around which they dreamed for the race is in its old place. One of the old chairs is there, the other two are modern chairs. In a corner is the rocker in which GRANDMOTHER MORTON sat. This is early afternoon, a week after the events of Act II.

MADELINE is sitting at the table, in her hand a torn, wrinkled piece of brown paper-peering at writing almost too fine to read. After a moment her hand goes out to a beautiful dish on the table-an old dish of coloured Hungarian gla.s.s. She is about to take something from this, but instead lets her hand rest an instant on the dish itself Then turns and through the open door looks out at the hill, sitting where her GRANDFATHER MORTON sat when he looked out at the hill.

Her father, IRA MORTON, appears outside, walking past the window, left. He enters, carrying a grain sack, partly filled. He seems hardly aware of MADELINE, but taking a chair near the door, turned from her, opens the sack and takes out a couple of ears of corn. As he is bent over them, examining in a shrewd, greedy way, MADELINE looks at that lean, tormented, rather desperate profile, the look of one confirming a thing she fears. Then takes up her piece of paper.

MADELINE: Do you remember Fred Jordan, father? Friend of our Fred-and of mine?

IRA: (not wanting to take his mind from the corn) No. I don't remember him. (his voice has that timbre of one not related to others)

MADELINE: He's in prison now.

IRA: Well I can't help that. (after taking out another ear) This is the best corn I ever had. (he says it gloatingly to himself)

MADELINE: He got this letter out to me-written on this sc.r.a.p of paper. They don't give him paper. (peering) Written so fine I can hardly read it. He's in what they call 'the hold', father-a punishment cell. (with difficulty reading it) It's two and a half feet at one end, three feet at the other, and six feet long. He'd been there ten days when he wrote this. He gets two slices of bread a day; he gets water; that's all he gets. This because he balled the deputy warden out for chaining another prisoner up by the wrists.

IRA: Well, he'd better a-minded his own business. And you better mind yours. I've got no money to spend in the courts. (with excitement) I'll not mortgage this farm! It's been clear since the day my father's father got it from the government-and it stays clear-till I'm gone. It grows the best corn in the state-best corn in the Mississippi Valley. Not for anything-you hear me?-would I mortgage this farm my father handed down to me.

MADELINE: (hurt) Well, father, I'm not asking you to.

IRA: Then go and see your Uncle Felix. Make it up with him. He'll help you-if you say you're sorry.

MADELINE: I'll not go to Uncle Felix.

IRA: Who will you go to then? (pause) Who will help you then? (again he waits) You come before this United States Commissioner with no one behind you, he'll hold you for the grand jury. Judge Watkins told Felix there's not a doubt of it. You know what that means? It means you're on your way to a cell. Nice thing for a Morton, people who've had their own land since we got it from the Indians. What's the matter with your uncle? Ain't he always been good to you? I'd like to know what things would 'a' been for you without Felix and Isabel and all their friends. You want to think a little. You like good times too well to throw all that away.

MADELINE: I do like good times. So does Fred Jordan like good times. (smooths the wrinkled paper) I don't know anybody-unless it is myself-loves to be out, as he does. (she tries to look out, but cannot; sits very still, seeing what it is pain to see. Rises, goes to that corner closet, the same one from which SILAS MORTON took the deed to the hill. She gets a yard stick, looks in a box and finds a piece of chalk. On the floor she marks off FRED JORDAN'S cell. Slowly, at the end left unchalked, as for a door, she goes in. Her hand goes up as against a wall; looks at her other hand, sees it is out too far, brings it in, giving herself the width of the cell. Walks its length, halts, looks up.) And one window-too high up to see out.

(In the moment she stands there, she is in that cell; she is all the people who are in those cells. EMIL JOHNSON appears from outside; he is the young man brought up on a farm, a crudely Americanized Swede.)

MADELINE: (stepping out of the cell door, and around it) h.e.l.lo, Emil.

EMIL: How are you, Madeline? How do, Mr Morton. (IRA barely nods and does not turn. In an excited manner he begins gathering up the corn he has taken from the sack. EMIL turns back to MADELINE) Well, I'm just from the courthouse. Looks like you and I might take a ride together, Madeline. You come before the Commissioner at four.

IRA: What have you got to do with it?

MADELINE: Oh, Emil has a courthouse job now, father. He's part of the law.

IRA: Well, he's not going to take you to the law! Anybody else-not Emil Johnson!

MADELINE: (astonished-and gently, to make up for his rudeness) Why-father, why not Emil? Since I'm going, I think it's nice to go in with someone I know-with a neighbour like Emil.

IRA: If this is what he lived for! If this is why-

(He twists the ear of corn until some of the kernels drip off. MADELINE and EMIL look at one another in bewilderment.)

EMIL: It's too bad anybody has to take Madeline in. I should think your uncle could fix it up. (low) And with your father taking it like this-(to help IRA) That's fine corn, Mr Morton. My corn's getting better all the time, but I'd like to get some of this for seed.

IRA: (rising and turning on him) You get my corn? I raise this corn for you? (not to them-his mind now going where it is shut off from any other mind) If I could make the wind stand still! I want to turn the wind around.

MADELINE: (going to him) Why-father. I don't understand at all.

IRA: Don't understand. n.o.body understands. (a curse with a sob in it) G.o.d d.a.m.n the wind!

(Sits down, his back to them.)

EMIL: (after a silence) Well, I'll go. (but he continues to look at IRA, who is holding the sack of com shut, as if someone may take it) Too bad-(stopped by a sign from MADELINE, not to speak of it) Well, I was saying, I have go on to Beard's Crossing. I'll stop for you on my way back. (confidentially) Couldn't you telephone your uncle? He could do something. You don't know what you're going up against. You heard what the Hindus got, I suppose.