JUDD
But a storm doesn't need to be a disaster, Maura, and a disaster doesn't have to be a tragedy.
Given that philosophy to start with, I think we can give our New England viewers some tips which will help them prepare for what, from all indications, is apt to be a pretty extraordinary weather-
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maker.
WEATHER LADY What have you got there, Judd?
JUDD
Well, to begin with, warm clothing. That's number one. And you want to say to yourself, "How are my batteries? Have I got enough to keep a portable radio going? Possibly a small TV?" And if you've got a generator, the time to check your gasoline supplies or your diesel or your propane is before, not after. If you wait until it's too late . . .
During all this, THE CAMERA MOVES AWAY from the TV, as if losing interest. It is drawn back toward the hall. As we begin to lose the dialogue, we begin to hear far less pleasant SOUNDS: THE
STEADY WHACK-WHACK-WHACK of LINOGE'S cane. At last it stops. There is SILENCE for a little bit, then FOOTSTEPS. Accompanying them is a CURIOUS DRAGGING SOUND, almost as if someone were pulling a chair or a stool slowly across a wood floor.
JUDD (voice-over)
(continues) . . . it'll be too late.
LINOGE comes into the doorway. His eyes aren't ordinary a distant and somehow unsettling blue but they aren't that HIDEOUS BLACK EMPTINESS that MARTHA saw, either. His cheeks, brow, and the bridge of his nose are covered with FINE STIPPLES OF BLOOD. He comes to EXTREME
CLOSE-UP, eyes focused on something. A look of interest begins to warm his face up a little.
WEATHER LADY (voice-over)
Thanks, Judd. Words of wisdom our northern New England viewers have probably heard before, but when it comes to storms this size, some things bear repeating.
12 INTERIOR: THE LIVING ROOM, FROM OVER LINOGE'S SHOULDER.
It's the TV he's looking at.
WEATHER LADY Your local forecast is next, right after this.
She is replaced by an ad for Punishments of God 2 all the volcanoes, fires, and earthquakes you could ever want for $19.95. Slowly, back to us again, LINOGE crosses the room to MARTHA'S chair.
The
DRAGGING SOUND recommences, and as he approaches the chair and his lower half comes into the frame, we see it's the tip of his cane. It's leaving a thin trail of blood along the rug. More blood is oozing through the fingers of the fist clamped over the wolf's head. That's mostly what he hit her with, the head of that wolf, and we probably wouldn't want to see what it looks like now.
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LINOGE stands, looking down at the TV, where a forest is going up in flames.
LINOGE
(sings)
"I'm a little teapot, short and stout. . . . Here is my handle, here is my spout."
He sits down in MARTHA'S chair. Grasps her teacup with a gory hand that smears the handle.
Drinks. Then takes a cookie with his bloody hand and gobbles it down.
LINOGE settles back to watch JUDD and MAURA talk disaster on the Weather Network.
13 EXTERIOR: MIKE ANDERSON'S STORE DAY.
This is an old-fashioned general store with a long front porch. If it were summer, there would be rockers lined up out here and lots of old-timers to fill them. As it is, there is a line of snowblowers and snow shovels, marked with a neat handmade sign: SUPERSTORM SPECIAL! LET'S TALK PRICE!
The steps are flanked by a couple of lobster traps, and more hang from the underside of the porch roof. We may also see a whimsical display of clamming gear. By the door stands a mannequin wearing galoshes, a yellow rain slicker, goggle eyes on springs, and a beanie with a propeller (the propeller now still) on his head. Someone has stuffed a pillow under the slicker, creating a fairly prominent potbelly. In one plastic hand is a blue University of Maine pennant. In the other is a can of beer. Around the dummy's neck is a sign: GENUINE "ROBBIE BEALS BRAND" LOBSTERIN' GEAH
SOLD HEAH, DEAH.
In the windows are signs for meat specials, fish specials, videotape rentals (WE RENT OLD 'UNS
THREE FOR $1), church suppers, a volunteer
fire department blood drive. The biggest sign is on the door. It reads: STORM EMERGENCY
POSSIBLE NEXT 3 DAYS! "TAKE SHELTER" SIGNAL IS 2 SHORTS, 1 LONG. Above the display windows, now rolled up, are slatted wooden STORM SHUTTERS. Above the door is a lovely old-fashioned sign, black with gold gilt letters: ANDERSON's MARKET*ISLAND POST
OFFICE ISLAND CONSTABLE'S OFFICE.
There are several WOMEN going in, and a couple more OCTAVIA GODSOE and JOANNA STANHOPE coming out. TAVIA (forty-five-ish) and JOANNA (late forties or early fifties) are clutching full grocery bags and chatting animatedly. TAVIA looks at the ROBBIE BEALS dummy and elbows JOANNA. They both laugh as they go down the steps.
14 INTERIOR: ANDERSON'S MARKET DAY.
This is a very well equipped grocery store, and in many ways a charming throwback to the groceries of the 1950s. The floors are wood and creak comfortably underfoot. The lights are globes 18
hanging on chains. There's a tin ceiling. Yet there are signs of our modern age; two new cash registers with digital price-readers beside them, a radio scanner on a shelf behind the checkout counter, a wall of rental videos,
and security cameras mounted high in the corners.
At the rear is a meat cooler running nearly the length of the store. To its left, below a convex mirror, is a door marked simply TOWN CONSTABLE.
The store is very crowded. Everybody is stocking up for the oncoming storm.
15 INTERIOR: MEAT COUNTER.
MIKE ANDERSON COMES out of the door leading to the meat locker (it is at the other end of the rear from the constable's office). He is a good-looking man of about thirty-five. Right now he also looks harried half to death . . . although the little smile never leaves his eyes and the corners of his mouth. This guy likes life, likes it a lot, and usually finds something in it to amuse him.
He's wearing butcher's whites right now and pushing a shopping cart filled with wrapped cuts of meat. Three WOMEN and one MAN converge on him almost at once. The MAN, dressed in a red sport coat and black shirt with turned-around collar, is first to reach him.
REV. BOB RIGGINS
Don't forget the bean supper next Wednesday-week, Michael I'm going to need every deacon I can lay my hands on.
MIKE I'll be there ... if we get through the next three days, that is.
REV. BOB RIGGINS I'm sure we will; God takes care of his own.
Off he goes. Behind him is a cute little muffin named JILL ROBICHAUX, and she apparently has less trust in God. She starts pawing over the packages and reading the labels before MIKE can even begin to distribute them.
JILL
Are there pork chops, Michael? I thought for sure you'd still have pork chops.
He gives her a wrapped package. JILL looks at it, then puts it in her heaped-up shopping cart.
The other two women, CARLA BRIGHT and LINDA ST. PIERRE, are already going through the other wrapped cuts. CARLA looks at something, almost takes it, then drops it back into one of the trays of the meat-display cabinet.
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CARLA
Ground chuck's too dear! Don't you have plain old hamburger, Michael Anderson?
MIKE Right-
She snatches the package he's holding out before he can finish.
MIKE (continues) here.
More folks now, picking the stuff over as fast as he can get it out of his cart. MIKE bears this for a moment, then decides to put on his constable's hat. Or try.