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?

BRANDY

Useless Waters, meet Blue Jay Jones; Blue Jay Jones, Useless Waters. Shake hands and come out fighting.

ULYSSES

Alert your boyfriend that I do fisticuffs in the professional prize ring.

BLUE JAY

(Descends ramp)

I’ve heard of a stumblebum, Troubled Waters.

ULYSSES

I'll knock you silly!

(Throws left and right hand punches
at BLUE JAY)

BLUE JAY

                     (Centers HIMSELF, employs Okinawan
                       karate technique. blocks punches,
                       throws ULYSSES to floor)

Gheeyyaagh! Kyaakh! Haagh!

BRANDY

Nice moves, Blue!

ULYSSES

I'm handicapped by blankets.

(Removes blankets, charges headlong
at BLUE JAY)

BLUE JAY

Chhaagh! Khyaa! Kyaakh!

(Chops to ULYSSES' head, floors HIM
with kick to back of knee)

ULYSSES

(Stunned)

Unnnh!

BRANDY

The winner and still world champ, Blue Jay Jones.

BLUE JAY

Mister, If push ever comes to shove, I’m prepared to accommodate you. Right now, I must alert your father to initialize emergency procedures.

(Exits Right-Rear)

BRANDY

Blue teaches me Okinawan hand and foot fighting. Care to see me jam my elbow in your throat?

AMMI

(Enters Left with dry garments on his arm)

Master, your father sent you these dry garments.

(Gives ULYSSES clothing)

ULYSSES

(Takes garments)

You denounced me to him! Where’s any boots?

BOSTON WATERS

(Enters Left-Rear, carrying a pair of dry
boots concealed behind him, eyes ULYSSES)

Mistress MacGringer, set perimeter traps and unmark pitfalls; lock and load all mortars, swivel guns, cannon and muskets. Mister White, will assist you.

BRANDY

Yes, Uncle.

AMMI

Yes, Major Waters.

(HE and BRANDY Exit Left-Rear)

ULYSSES

(Guffaws)

Major Waters!

BOSTON

(Tosses boots to ground at ULYSSES’ feet)

Ulysses Waters, to what do I owe the displeasure of your company?

ULYSSES

I'm here to ask if you posted my manumission bond.

BOSTON

I ask you to outgrow your deliquent slave mentality.

ULYSSES

(During following, dons clothing, boots)

A year ago, to celebrate my absence of freedom on my thirty-second birthday, I signed on board Captain George Walrus for a slave-triangle voyage, thinking I'd jump ship at Kingston and look for my mother. I didn’t suppose he knew of my kinship to her or you, but he did. One night, he drank himself into a stupor, boasting as how, twenty years ago, he’d shipped the slave woman Hagar down to Jamaica; he raped her and threw her overboard. I chewed on it all the way from Newport of the Rhode Island to Madagascar. During the middle passage to Jamaica with the hold full of dying, rotting, black cargo, I added dead African rot to Walrus's fish chowder. I should have killed him outright. I took sick with scurvy and he stranded me at Kingston.

BOSTON

You accomplished serious damage to George Walrus’s brain. He hoists a Jolly Roger now. I'm more bothered by men you spied at Wigwam Brook. They could have their sights set on Ponkawtasset Hill. King George has spies and informers everywhere. Son, this is confidential— Peter MacGringer knows nothing of it: a revolution for America's independence is in the making. Military arms and supplies are being stockpiled at Ponkawtasset Hill. I’ve dispatched Mister Jones to alert folks there. Run to Concord church—

ULYSSES

And do what? You want me to pray in the African corner of the white devil's prayer meeting, and shout amens and hallelujahs from nigger heaven?

BOSTON

I want you to cease showing your hostility towards every living white person, alienating our precious few sympathizers. Either tolerate their worst and accommodate their best, or lose your welcome here.

BLACKOUT

ACT II

TIME

Shorlty following.

AT RISE

BOSTON at hatchway, neatly arranges straw to hide traces of access to below deck.

PETER MACGRINGER

                     (Enters Right-Rear with musket and
                      equipment kit: leadbag, powder
                      horn, bayonet, hatchet, cartridge
                     belt, musette bag; ignores ULYSSES)

Boston, I spied Redwood McDeal beyond the cornfield.

BOSTON

Peter, Redwood died at sea, twenty years ago.

PETER

So the clever fiend has had us believe. The blackguard is why I'm landlocked at Middlesex County of the Massachusetts.

ULYSSES

Avast! Captain MacGringer, I’ll blast every man jack in his boat with a broadside.

BOSTON

Peter, my wanderlustful son is returned.

PETER

Nothing good follows in his wake. Remove him from my property.

BOSTON

Our property equally, Peter, yours and mine.

PETER

He’s your chattel! I sold him to you for a half-pence. I sold you your own freedom to boot and a half-interest in my farmland. Boston, hove down your long rifle, man; join my fight. I'm too weak to battle McDeal alone; worn thin and stooped from hoving boulders, filling land and tilling soil.

ULYSSES

Try a good night’s sleep, Captain.

BOSTON

Ulysses Waters! Accomplish the urgent task I gave you.

ULYSSES

Yes, Major, sir.

(Doubletime, Exits Right-Rear)

PETER

Fancy Redwood McDeal in the flesh, still alive and kicking. Still every bit the rednosed harlequin, barely looking older, a bit balded atop, pinkish tresses ahanged to his shoulders. He stood there, sniffing the air, glancing about with his back towards me. I had my musket aimed square into his back when he commenced to kneebend down, up, down, up. down, up, down, up— my hands grew aquiver and the powder spilled from my musketpan. Boston, scan the approach off the starboard stern. When I lure him into view, open fire and kill the blighter.

(Hands musket and equipment kit)

BOSTON

(Takes both)

Peter, I must quote William Penn: "Force subdues but love gains, and he that forgives first, wins the laurel."

PETER

Wave your education at me, will you? "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword." Isaiah One: nineteen and twenty.

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