TEA

CHARACTERS
BRANDY MACGRINGER age 18, mulatto, feminist
BLUE JAY JONES age 29, black-Nootka Indian
ULYSSES WATERS age 33, black, light-heavyweight, angry
AMMI WHITE age 20, white
BOSTON WATERS age 76, black, strong-willed
PETER MACGRINGER age 55, white, Scots-Irishman
REDWOOD MCDEAL age 48, white, sprightly.
RIGHTTIME BLUFF age 28, black, big, bushy-haired.
"ENGLISH" TOBY O'BRIEN age 29, white, menacing

SCENE
A barn fashioned after a 17th-century English sailing
vessel, situated on a small farm at Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Constructed in colonial times and patched piecemeal during its history, were a flood to drown planet Earth this ark wouldn't float.

Several unlit lanterns placed on nails in beams and posts. Soiled hay strewn on floor. Stored about, farm implements of Plymouth Colony vintage: hoe; forked hoe; sickle, weeding tongs, metal sheathed shovel, plow, harrow, farm cart. Rear-Center, hatchway and stairs to Below. Front-Left, ramp to Hayloft, several bales of hay. Left-Rear, passageway to side portal. Right-Rear, portal to barnyard.

ACT I

TIME

Sunday, December 12, 1773; 6:00 A.M

AT RISE

Portals closed. Hatchway open. Colors contrast as night turns to day, dark to light, black to white. Visible portion of sky at Concord, Massachusetts. Sunrise and starlight through spaces and knotholes in planking. Mild wind blows through. Front-Right, AMMI WHITE sound asleep between several Indian blankets, dreams, his warn raccoon skin coat, musette bag and canteen nearby.

After a moment:

BRANDY MACGRINGER

(Enters Right-Rear, looks about; calls)

Blue Jay?

BLUE JAY JONES

                     (Enters at top of Hayloft ramp, wears
                      woolen, long underwear; indicates
                       AMMI WHITE; whispers)

Hush! Don’t disturb the guest.

BRANDY

(Looks, sees BLUE JAY)

Ammi White passed out so drunk last night, thunder won’t wake him. I’m disturbed by you, perched on high in your natural underwear.

BLUE JAY

Where’s your mending needle?

BRANDY

What makes you so cocksure I own a needle? ‘Cause I’m a girl? You have some nerve, Blue Jay Jones, poking on my window at half-past five of clock in the morning, telliing me: “Girl, bring your mending needle to the hayloft.” You just want to lure me up there.

BLUE JAY

That’s your wishful thinking.

BRANDY

Fool! Two times you equals zero.

BLUE JAY

Brandy, a splinter in my backside is killing me.

NOISE OF BOLTED PORTAL RIGHT-
REAR RATTLED FROM OUTSIDE

BRANDY

(Startled; whispers)

Uh-oh! If that's my poppa, he'll shoot us both dead for you being half-naked around me.

BLUE JAY

Haul your body up here and let’s hide!

BRANDY

Molest me and die!

(Quickly ascends ramp; BOTH Exit
to Hayloft)

ULYSSES WATERS

(After a moment, Enters Right-Rear,

wears racoon fur jacket and cap;
mud-soiled boots, leggings, stockings,

pants; brusquely nudges AMMI WHITE
with foot)

Hit the deck!

AMMI WHITE

(Startled, awakens; during following,

rises; locates musette bag,

canteen; prepares potion of herbs)

Odysseus? Ulysses!

ULYSSES

                     (During following, removes, boots, clothing
                      down to HIS underwear and stockings;
                     covers himself with available blanket)

You disappointing simpleton! My toes are froze on account of you. I sent you here with simple instructions: introduce yourself to my father; politely steal a pair of his antique boots; and bring them to me at Wigwam Brook-- last night.

AMMI

Forgive me my failure, Master.

ULYSSES

I’m nobody’s master.

AMMI

(During following, ingests potion,
rinses his face, generally revives)

I am your indentured servant. Slaves are captives taken in just wars, or such as willingly sell themselves.

ULYSSES

If you would have shown up at Wigwam Brook, I’d be at Salem Harbor right now, stabbing to death the slaver Captain George Walrus. I'd have comandeered his yawl and sailed away to freedom land with all his likely slave women.

AMMI

Life is but a dream! Your scenario omits telltale footprints from the slaughter to the gallows.

ULYSSES

Tracks would be washed away. A ferocious storm is brewing: sunrise over the horizon is painted red; temperature is rising; wind is changed from easterly to nor’easterly. Explain what kept you!

AMMI

Today is your father's seventy-sixth birthday. The law prohibits partying on the Lord’s Day. So, the celebration was last evening. To not to appear unsociable, I imbibed rum into the wee hours.

ULYSSES

My father conspired with you to lure me here.

                      (During following, removes stone, flint,
                       wooden match from AMMI's musette
                        bag, gathers small mound of hay)

I was sick to death with fever at Kingston, bleeding out my nose, and woke up to hear you mumbling Biblical paragraphs over me, forcing herbs down my gullet. I convalesced, and for whatever insane reason, you pleaded with me to take you on for twelve months as my indentured servant. Come midnight, our arrangement is done with.

(Strikes match and flint against stone to
ignite hay)

"And God divided the light from the darkness": Book of Genesis.

AMMI

Your kindling is perpendicular to twenty half-barrels of gunpowder.

ULYSSES

(Hastily extinguishes lit hay strands)

Hell's fire and damned nations! My father pipedreams of blowing-up rum distilleries to dismember the slave trade triangle. I spied a campfire built leeward a rockpile at Wigwam Brook. A black buck— tall, wide; bushy-haired; sports one long-bone earring through his nose; wears a sash about his waist— was cradling a blunderbuss, standing guard over two asleep white men.

AMMI

A blunderbuss! Isn’t that a clumsy firearm with a bell-shaped muzzle, projects a shower of nails, stones, lead slugs, lethal at close range.

ULYSSES

That’s the one!

AMMI

We had best notify your father.

ULYSSES

What’s best is for you to silently borrow me a pair of Boston’s old boots.

AMMI

Yes, Ulysses, your command is my wish.

(Genuflects, Exits Right-Rear)

BRANDY

(OFF in hayloft; eerily)

Oh, stupid voice in the wilderness.

ULYSSES

(Startled, looks up; calls)

Who’s up there?

BRANDY

Who dat down there, asking who up here?

(Enters from hayloft)

ULYSSES

Look at you, Brandy MacGringer,-grown-up full-breasted!

BRANDY

(Descends ramp)

Look at you in your underpants, you no-account bastard!

ULYSSES

You’re the bastard. My purely black momma’s and poppa’s wedlock had legal status. Your white daddy not only broke the law, taking a colored wife; he was too cheap to pay her fifty pounds manumission fee. She was his chattel slave when you were born: the child is the status of the mother. Bitch!

BLUE JAY

(Enters from hayloft fully dressed)

Brandy, alert Boston Waters to the Wigwam Brook situation.

BRANDY

Alert Uncle Boston your own self!

ULYSSES

(Gives BLUE JAY the once over)

And who might you be?