Gardner Meets Zona Scenes
EXT. MOUNT TABOR BAPTIST CHURCH – NIGHT
ON JAMES GARDNER walking along the unpaved street leading to the Negro church where a pair of oil lanterns illuminate the table at the front of the building. He picks up a lantern, opens a side door in the church, enters and walks along a extended hallway where he opens a closed door to view a bedroom.
INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT
GARDNER is in bed, covered with a multicolored quilt. The room is nearly in total darkness. He is not yet asleep and is looking upward toward the ceiling as if in deep thought.
INT. BEDROOM – Night
GARDNER is in bed, but his eyes shift toward the closed door where a dim light has formed and is slowly growing in intensity. He slowly rises on his right elbow as he looks carefully at the dim light that is slowly coalescing into the form of a female figure.
INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT
ON THE IMAGE OF A YOUNG WOMAN who is looking at GARDNER from a distance of six feet away.
IMAGE
James Gardner…
INT. COURTHOUSE – DAY
ON JAMES GARDNER as he enters the courtroom and walks the table used by the defense attorneys in the front of the room. DR. RUCKER looks up as GARDNER pulls a chair out and sits down beside the older attorney.
RUCKER
James, good morning. Are you all right? You look ill and as if you aged 20 years overnight.
RUCKER POV as he scans GARDNER to reveal to us a light frosting of gray that now is on his hair and beard.
GARDNER stares at the judge’s bench of a pair of beats.
GARDNER
I’m fine, Dr. Rucker. I didn’t sleep much last night, that’s all that is wrong. I’ll be fine.
INT. COURTROOM – DAY
The audience to the continuing drama is filing into the courtroom and are moving into the long benches. The pair of prosecutors enter the room with the very observant PRESTON noticing the overnight change in GARDNER as he passes by the defense attorney’s table. PRESTON pauses a full beat and looks as if he is going to say something, but he continues to take his seat at the right of the front of the courtroom.
INT. COURTROOM – DAY
Two armed deputies in uniform enter from the left of the courtroom, one on either side of TROUT SHUE who is in handcuffs. SHUE takes his seat at the defense attorney table.
INTOURTROOM – DAY. C
UNIFORMED BAILIFF (standing at the front of the courtroom)
All rise for Judge Joseph McWhorter.
McWHORTER (taking his seat behind the Judge’s bench)
Please be seated.
POV McWHORTER as he looks at the defense attorneys before turning to look at the jury to be certain that all seats in the jury box are filled with a juror.
McWHORTER
Dr. RUCKER, please proceed with your defense.
CLOSE ON the defense table where RUCKER and GARDNER whisper briefly before GARDNER rises from his chair, turns in the direction of Judge McWHORTER and the jury.
GARDNER (in a firm, professional voice)
The defense would like to call Mrs. Mary Jane Heaster to the witness stand.
CLOSE ON MARY JANE HEASTER as she rises from her seat in the rear of the courtroom and walks forward to the bailiff standing adjacent to the witness stand.
BAILIFF (as HEASTER places her hand on the Bible held by the Baliiff)
Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the trust, so help you God?
HEASTER (visibly nervous)
I do.
CLOSE ON GARDNER as he walks forward to position himself in front of MARY JANE HEASTER.
GARDNER
I have heard that you had some dream or vision which led to the post mortem examination?
HEASTER
They saw enough theirselves without me telling them. It was no dream – she came back and told me that he was mad that she didn’t have no meat cooked for supper. But she said she had plenty, and said that she had butter and apple butter, apples and named over two or three kinds of jellies, pears and cherries and raspberry jelly, and she says I had plenty; and she says don’t you think that he was mad and just took down all my nice things and packed them away and just ruined them. And she told me where I could look down back of Aunt Martha Jones’, in the meadow, in a rocky place; that I could look in a cellar behind some loose plank and see. It was a square log house, and it was hewed up to square, and she said for me to look right at the right-hand side of the door as you go in and at the right hand corner as you go in. Well, I saw the place just exactly as she told me, and I saw blood right there where she told me; and she told me something about that meat every night she came, just as she did the first night. She came four times, and four nights; but the second night she told me that her neck was squeezed off at the first joint and it was just as she told me.
GARDNER
Now, Mrs. Heaster, this sad affair was very particularly impressed upon your mind, and there was not a moment during your waking hours that you did not dwell upon it?
HEASTER
No, sir; and there is not yet, either.
GARDNER
And was this not a dream founded upon your distressed condition of mind?
HEASTER
No, sir. It was no dream, for I was as wide awake as I ever was.
GARDNER
Then if not a dream or dreams, what do you call it?
HEASTER
I prayed to the Lord that she might come back and tell me what had happened; and I prayed that she might come herself and tell on him.
GARDNER
Do you think that you actually saw her in flesh and blood?
HEASTER
Yes, sir, I do. I told them the very dress that she was killed in, and when she went to leave me she turned her head completely around and looked at me like she wanted me to know all about it. And the very next time she came back to me she told me all about it. The first time she came, she seemed that she did not want to tell me as much about it as she did afterwards. The last night she was there she told me that she did everything she could do, and I am satisfied that she did do all that, too.
CLOSE ON RUCKER as he fidgets in his chair before standing.
RUCKER
The defense requests a short recess, your Honor.
McWHORTER
Agreed, Dr. Rucker. I noticed your distress just now. Bad food last night? Let’s resume in 15 minutes.
PAN ON COURTROOM OBSERVERS who are chuckling at Judge McWHORTER’s joke.
EXT. STREET ADJACENT TO THE COURHOUSE – DAY
RUCKER (angry at GARDNER)
James, what’n Hell are you trying to do with all of those leading questions of yours? Our plan was to put MARY JANE HEASTER on the stand so we could discredit the entire case she managed to bring with her stupid ghost story.
GARDNER (sheepish, in hushed tones)
It’s not a stupid ghost story, Dr. RUCKER.
RUCKER
What? Of course she made it all up.
GARDNER
No, she didn’t make it up.
RUCKER
James, I can’t believe what you’re saying. Why did you change?
GARDNER (pausing several beats, looking into RUCKER’s face)
Look at me, Dr. Rucker. My hair turned white overnight. ZONA SHUE came to my room in the church last night. She was in a white light and she told me the same story her mother told PRESTON and GILMER. I asked if she was an angel.
RUCKER (in disbelief)
That’s nonsense, James. Angels are men. I had a lot of time to study the Scriptures when the Rebs had me in prison over my abolitionist beliefs. Angels are men.
GARDNER
That’s what she said, Dr. Rucker. She said she was allowed to return because her husband was determined to murder again. This is why she could come back. She also said her visit to me was her last. Said it was up to us to keep him from killing again and again.
RUCKER (Look of amazement)
You had to be dreaming. The case has had your attention and your subconscious portions of your memory created the dream. That new study by the Austrian, Freud, explained a lot of this well, remember? You experienced Freud’s explanation of complex structuring of all of this unconscious material surrounding Mary Jane Heaster’s story.
GARDNER
I wasn’t asleep. And I had just laid down. After Zona faded away, I spent the rest of last night praying in the church. I’ve never been so scared in my life, but after she left, I felt strangely comfortable. There is another side. This proves the Bible is right.
CLOSE ON RUCKER as he shakes his head from side to side as the two defense attorneys return to the courthouse.
INT. COURTROOM – DAY
RUCKER moves to the front of the court and begins questioning HEASTER while GARDNER looks on from the defense table where TROUT SHUE sits in silence.
RUCKER
Now, Mrs. Heaster, don’t you know that these visions, as you term them or describe them, were nothing more or less than four dreams founded upon your distress?
HEASTER
No, I don’t know it. The Lord sent her to me to tell it. I was the only friend that she knew she could tell and put any confidence it; I was the nearest one to her. He gave me a ring that he pretended she wanted me to have; but I don’t know what dead woman he might have taken it off of. I wanted her own ring and he would not let me have it.
RUCKER
Mrs. Heaster, are you positively sure that these are not four dreams?
HEASTER
Yes, sir. It was not a dream. I don’t dream when I am wide awake, to be sure; and I know I saw her right there with me.
RUCKER
Are you not considerably superstitious?
HEASTER
No, sir, I’m not. I was never that way before, and am not now.
RUCKER
Do you believe the scriptures?
HEASTER
Yes, sir. I have no reason not to believe it.
RUCKER
And do you believe the scriptures contain the words of God and his Son?
HEASTER
Yes, sir, I do. Don’t you believe it?
RUCKER
Now, I would like if I could, to get you to say that these were four dreams and not four visions or appearances of your daughter in flesh and blood?
HEASTER
I am not going to say that; for I am not going to lie.
RUCKER
Then you insist that she actually appeared in flesh and blood to you upon four different occasions?
HEASTER
Yes, sir.
RUCKER
Did she not have any other conversation with you other than upon the matter of her death?
HEASTER
Yes, sir, some other little things. Some things I have forgotten – just a few words. I just wanted the particulars about her death, and I got them.
RUCKER
When she came did you touch her?
HEASTER
Yes, sir. I got up on my elbows and reached out a little further, as I wanted to see if people came in their coffins, and I sat up and leaned on my elbow and there was light in the house. It was not a lamp light. I wanted to see if there was a coffin, but there was not. She was just like she was when she left this world. It was just after I went to bed, and I wanted her to come and talk to me, and she did. This was before the inquest and I told my neighbors. They said she was exactly as I told them she was.
RUCKER
Had you ever seen the premises where your daughter lived?
HEASTER
No, sir, I had not; but I found them just exactly as she told me it was, and I never laid eyes on that house until since her death. She told me this before I knew anything of the buildings at all.
RUCKER
How long was it after this when you had these interviews with your daughter until you did see buildings?
HEASTER
It was a month or more after the examination. It has been a little over a month since I saw her.
RUCKER (turning to PRESTON)
Your witness, Mr. Preston.
PRESTON
You said your daughter told you that down by the fence in a rocky place you would find some things?
HEASTER
She said for me to look there. She didn’t say I would find some things, but for me to look there.
PRESTON
Did she tell you what to look for?
HEASTER
No, she did not. I was so glad to see her I forgot to ask her.
PRESTON
Have you ever examined that place since?
HEASTER
Yes, sir. We looked at the fence a little but didn’t find anything.
PRESTON
Thank you, Mrs. HEASTER
FADE OUT
Copyright © David L. Phillips 2012