Southern Dreaming by Trevor Scott Floyd
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Southern Dreaming by Trevor Scott Floyd Draft 3.3 3.4.18 1 Characters YOUNG DAVEY (M, 10): Innocent, Curious DADDY (M, late 40s): Old school blue collar southerner. Davey's father. DAVEY (M, mid 40s): Charming. Extremely charming. A big heart. Dylan and Marie's father. MARIE (F, 16): Bright, unmotivated DYLAN (M, 17): Has his dad’s big heart, his mom’s big brain, and no idea what to do with either. PASTOR ERIC (M, Early 40s): Manipulates followers with ease, perhaps unconsciously. He is sincere, cautious, and firm when he needs to be. PASTORS WIFE/TAMMY/PAMMY/FANNIE/JENNIFER/NIKKI HALEY (F, 40s) ASSOCIATE PASTOR/BUDDY 1/CONFEDERATE SOLDIER (M, 40s) CHURCH GUITARIST/BUDDY 2/CONFEDERATE SOLDIER (M, 40s) CHURCH DRUMMER/BUDDY 3/CONFEDERATE SOLDIER (M, 30s) MICAIAH (M, 26): Not completely immature, but not exactly mature enough for his age. Played by the same actor who plays Jeremy. JEREMY: Perennially underachieving. Kind of a redneck. Played by the same actor as Micaiah. UNION SOLDIERS: Played by the same actors as Pastor Eric, Pastors Wife, Micaiah 2 Prologue Rural Georgia, 1977. Nighttime. Open on DADDY’s private room. Guns on display. Daddy is cleaning one, inspecting it. A shotgun. A glass of bourbon accompanies him, which he periodically drinks. A moment passes, then YOUNG DAVEY enters in pajamas. DAVEY Daddy? DADDY (wheeling around) Davey! Son, what are you doin’ up? DAVEY It’s too hot. I can’t sleep. DADDY Go put your drawers in the icebox and sleep on the porch then. DAVEY It’s raining! DADDY (He laughs) A little water won’t kill you, boy. DAVEY Why are you still up anyhow? DADDY Just enjoying some peace and quiet. DAVEY Ohhhh…well then I’m gonna enjoy some peace and quiet with you! DADDY That’s not really how it works. (Davey looks at him with a slightly confused, slightly sad expression). Oh alright fine, you can stay up with me for a few more minutes. DAVEY Yippee! DADDY Just don’t tell your mama! She’d skin me alive if she knew I was letting you stay up this late. 3 DAVEY I won’t daddy, I promise. DADDY Good boy. Us men got to look out for each other. We’re outnumbered in this house, you know. DAVEY But wait, there’s only one girl and me and you and Ricky makes three men. DADDY Yeah, but the only girl is your mama. She whips us all day long, all night too. I don’t think she even sleeps. It’s like having a whole army patrolling around all the time. DAVEY (Doesn’t really understand) Girls are weird. DADDY Son, you don’t have a clue. DAVEY (A moment) What were you doing with that shotgun? DADDY Cleaning it. So it’ll fire properly. In case I need it. DAVEY Need it? DADDY Yeah. Never know when you need a shotgun. There are a lot of bad guys out there who want to do bad things to our family. You and me, we’re men. It’s our job to protect your momma and your little brother. We can do that with a shotgun. DAVEY We? DADDY (Laughs) Yes, we. What if a bad guy comes by while I’m at work or somewhere else? Don’t you want to protect your family? 4 DAVEY Of course! DADDY Well then, you ought to learn how to use it. DAVEY I’m not sure. DADDY Does it scare you? DAVEY I ain’t scared of anything! DADDY You should be scared. A shotgun is a powerful weapon. It’ll blow someone’s head right off. Do you know what the first rule of handling a gun is? DAVEY Don’t drop it? DADDY (Laughs) Well shit, I never thought of that. Okay, don’t drop it. But the second rule is: don’t ever, ever point it at somebody unless you are planning on shooting them. And if you are planning on shooting them, you better plan on killing them. DAVEY I don’t know if I could kill somebody. DADDY Nobody? Not even bad guys? DAVEY Not even bad guys. Not even Darth Vader. DADDY (Laughs) Not even Darth Vader? Even if he had the Death Star pointing at Earth and you and all your friends and family were gonna get zapped? DAVEY Well…maybe. 5 DADDY It’s a hard truth, son. But a man’s got to protect what’s his. That means his property and his family. DAVEY I guess. DADDY There are lots of bad guys out there. Some of them are just low lifes that don’t wanna work for themselves so they want to hurt you and take what’s yours. A lot of people will tell you to worry about niggers, but it ain’t just them. It’s the poor white folk too. Let me tell you, Davey, there ain’t nothing worse in this world than the poor stealing from the poor. It just isn’t Christian. Black, white, whatever. You get what I’m saying? DAVEY Yes, sir. DADDY That’s not it, though. There’s also bad guys that come from the bank, or the government. They’re the ones that keep all of us poor and keep us fighting and robbing each other. The point is, you gotta protect what’s yours from whoever wants to take it. Understand? DAVEY (A little more hesitant) Yes sir, I think so. DADDY Good. You’re growing up. It’s about time you heard these things. DAVEY We learned about the government at school. We watched Schoolhouse Rock! And we learned that song…”We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquilityyyyy.” Isn’t the government supposed to protect our freedoms? DADDY Is that what they teach you at school? Listen here—freedom comes from God, Davey. It’s something you’re born with, something nobody can take away from you, unless you let them. Don’t let anybody tell you different. (sensing his confusion) You got the world at your feet, you hear me? You are the smartest kid I’ve ever known. I’m serious. You got the freedom to do anything you want, you just gotta have the brains and choose to do it. What do you want to be when you grow up? DAVEY Uh, I don’t know. 6 DADDY Come on, you ain’t thought about it? DAVEY Maybe I could run the hardware store? DADDY Son, if Jimmy Carter can be President, you can do better than a hardware store. DAVEY But isn’t that what you chose? Ain’t you got freedom too? DADDY Sure I do. I was free to marry your momma, I was free to have you, and I was free to open that hardware store to make a good life for us so you could be free to do something even better. Think about it. What do you wanna do more than anything? DAVEY (Thinks for a moment) I wanna be a pilot, like Luke Skywalker! DADDY (Laughs) Well, alright then. You’re going to be a pilot. Just don’t let anyone take your freedom away from you, alright? It’s the only thing a man has really got in this world, which is why everyone wants to take it from you so bad. You gotta defend it with everything you’ve got. DAVEY From the bad guys? DADDY Right. From the bad guys. DAVEY Do I have to use a gun? DADDY I don’t know of anything else that’ll get the job done. Do you want to learn how to shoot it? DAVEY (Thinks for a moment) No, sir…I don’t think so. 7 DADDY Well how about for now I just teach you how to clean it? DAVEY Okay. DADDY Come over here, and I’ll show you. You know, your Grandaddy taught me how to do this when I was about your age. It’s pretty simple really. Over this next passage, Daddy disassembles and reassembles the shotgun, showing Davey how to clean it at every step. He is very thorough. He treats the weapon with tremendous affection. Any time you fire a gun, it contributes to residue buildup. If too much residue builds up, it can cause the gun to misfire, and that’s really dangerous. So, what’s the first step? DAVEY Don’t point it at somebody you ain’t gonna kill! DADDY See, I told you that you’re smart. Point it away from yourself, then remove all the shells. You just push this little release by the trigger, and keep pushing it until all there aren’t any shells left. (He does so) Next, take the barrel off the end. Just unscrew the cap, take off the forearm, then twist the barrel off. Take a clean cloth and wipe down everything. Want to help? DAVEY Sure! Daddy grabs two cloths and hands one to Davey, and a piece of the disassembled gun. Davey vigorously wipes. DADDY Keep cleaning until the cloth is black. Then get another cloth. If you want a good, clean shot, the gun has got to be spotless. Davey holds up a black cloth. Daddy hands him another one, and throws that one into a rag pile DADDY Then you spray this stuff (picks up a bottle of solvent) all over the gun, and then take this brush (picks up a brush) and really scrub it. Can you do that for me? DAVEY 8 Yeah! (He does) DADDY Good job, son.