(The Madden Kitchen, Summer, 1919, St. Louis. LIZ, 41 year-old-widow with 4 grown and near-grown daughters, responds to the remark of her visiting daughter - Dot - that "The Government" will aid brother-and-son, Bud, when he returns from the Navy)

LIZ: (scorn) What you talkin' about, woman - ain't you been readin' the papers - they're layin' off, not hirin'! (grabs up paper) Looka here(runs finger over first page, reads) "1700 UNEMPLOYED SERVICEMEN APPLY FOR JOBS IN TWO DAYS" (stabs finger at offending story) Just lookit that headline, "CUT EMPLOYMENT OFFICES"! Tell me about the Gover'mint helpin my boy - Congress didn't vote the money to help our fightin' boys find jobs. If'n there was jobs to find, which they ain't. My boy is goin' to need help when he gets home - an' I ain't aimin' to ask them as is ungrateful to him for no favors. (angry) An' don't go sighin' at me - you got somethin' to say, say it! But I cain't ask them for somethin' they unwillin' to give in the first place. I cain't. (continuing to other daughter - ) I'm aimin' to do for my boy what I can, is all.(beat) I ain't said I'd sell the old farm - yet - but they's doctor bills for Helen, an' - an - like I said, I'm just aimin' to do for my boy what I can when he comes home from the war. Boy's only goin' t' be nineteen, not yet a man, an' - an' -- well - he's goin' to need help an' I am aimin' to give it to him. Now you girls just leave me to read my Bible.

#13 (1:30 min.)

ADAPTED FROM "LADYHOUSE BLUES" © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(The Madden Kitchen, Summer, 1919, St. Louis, Evening: LIZ, 41 Year-old-Widow with 4 grown and near-grown daughters, comforts her eldest when Eylie, her youngest, has just exited after telling her to "GO TO HELL". )

LIZ: (smoothing things over) Tch, that girl - tellin' you to go to hell! It's just all that Bolsheviki stuff she an' Terry been listenin' to at those union meetin's - never heard her talkin' that kind a talk till these Bolshevicki started gettin' into ever'thing. (knowing) Papers are full of it. High Cost a Livin' - (darkly) - somebody's behind that. (proof positive) Mr. Grady's own son has gone to Deetroit. To make automobiles for Mister Hen Ree Ford - they's no jobs in St. Louis for him! Mr. Grady says that's mebbe where the Bolshevicki come in - they fixed it so's his son had to go to Deetroit, 'stead a bein' home where he belongs. Takin' us all to Perdition, like it says in Revelation - (chokes up) - an' - an' if them automobiles is such great shakes, how come they got to be fixin' 'em all the time! Big garerodges sproutin' up ever'where you look! Saw another one a them big ugly things today - down on Olive Street - jam packed with broke down smelly ole greasy automobiles as wouldn't work! An' it was bigger 'n uglier'n one a them streetcar-barns yonder! The life's bein' squeezed out'n us - an' nobuddy knows why any more'n The Man in the Moon! Not your muckymuck Senators. Not your Hen Ree Ford. Nor the President even. An' if the Bolshevicki ain't doin' it, it's wicked enough for them to be a-doin' it. So don't be so smart. (taps her Bible) Revelation says, the Enemy'll come out'n the East. We're livin' in The End o' Days, childern, livin' in The End o' Days. (thrusts off sense of gathering Doom) But nemmine all that - long as we all hold together. (picks up Bible and begins to read)

#14 (1 min. plus)

Adapted from LADYHOUSE BLUES © 2000 Kevin O'Morrison

(The Madden Kitchen, Summer, 1919, St. Louis. A few minutes ago, LIZ, the 41 year-old widowed mother of four grown and near-grown daughters, has just outraged her children by telling them that she will not apply for her dead son's $4000 War Insurance. Now she will attempt to make them see why she can't)

LIZ: Better set down, all a you. (beat) Childern - it ain't fair to ask nothin' of you if you don't know what's in my heart. Now. Here's the Navy and the War. My boy takes out insurance with 'em. An' they undertake to pay if'n he gets kilt or hurt. Now that's blood money, to start off with - (quickly, to forestall protests) Howsomever -!- my boy wants me to have it, an' for his sake I am willin' to take it if I have to --- from his hand. Now if the Navy sends it to me di-rect - it is, in a manner a speakin', from his hand. But if I have to ask 'em for it, then I'm sayin' that they got a right to keep it from me if I don't -- an' if I do that, that money ain't no longer a gift from my boy, dear paid-for as it is --- I cain't do that. Just thinkin' about it gripes my innards till they're ready to bleed - (with difficulty) If I do what you're a-askin' -- I'm sayin' the Navy has the right to pay me - $4,000 -- for the life a my only son -- an' call it "quits". (beat) I cain't do that. I just - cain't - do that. (beat) Now you all just leave me to my - (catches herself) - I got some thinkin' to do.

#15 (2:15 minutes)

Adapted from THE MORGAN YARD © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(Summer, 1970. "THE MORGAN YARD" - a family graveyard on a Missouri Ozark Mountain-top. CARRIE MORGAN, a widow in her60's, watches her 18-year-old Army Grandson go down the mountain road to rejoin his waiting platoon)

CARRIE: (watching him go) That Jess - (chuckles) - Lord, Lord, how he takes me back - (smiles at grave at her feet) Your grandson's the spit a you, Davey - when we was a-courtin. Course he's a mite taller'n you. An not so feisty. (smiles) But he's got the same laugh in his eye - stands lookin at you, cool as cool, same as you. An that's just catnip to the girls - (her eyes flash with sudden, hot anger at Bessie McCabe's headstone) - like that Bessie McCabe! (scathingly, she acts Bessie out) The way she sashayed her backside around you. An tilted her head back. An squinched her eyes at you - like she thought she was Theda Bara. (herself, now) Well, sir, I wasn't goin to have none a that! I got holt of her in the schoolyard - just before we was to have our graduation picnic - an I tolt her that whichever one a us got you, you was goin to be got fair an square, with none a that flim-flam. "Well!" she said. "Well, so's your ole man." - just to show she'd been up to St. Louis. An that made me so mad I throwed her down. I throwed her down an sat on her stummick. I said, "Bessie McCabe, you just come near Davey Morgan, now, an I'll stomp you." An I would have. An she knew it. (her triumph is mixed with something else) Oh, but she was a sly one, that Bessie - tried comin at you by playin up to your cousin Bart at the picnic. (chuckles) Didn't know Morgan men wasn't no men to trifle with. (her face softens) My, my, but that was a nice picnic - (she sits on Davey's crypt) - Reckon it was about the nicest picnic anybuddy ever had. We clumb up here. The Piney River was full - we could see the moon on it. An the light from the campfire. An hear the singin - (she hums along with voices she hears as surely as if they were floating up, now, from the river bank somewhere below her feet. She hums accompaniment to the words she is hearing in her head: (WE WERE STROLLING ALONG, ON MOONLIGHT BAY. WE COULD HEAR THE BANJOS STRUMMIN, THEY SEEMED TO SAY...the memory now insists she sing the words) YOU HAVE STOLEN MY HEART, NOW DON'T GO WAY -- Oh, Davey, Davey - I don't know what to think no more. I ain't complainin, Davey - it's just my throat hurts with tryin. Some nights I go to bed with my throat swole shut with hurt, an wake without sleep havin eased the swellin. Feels like somethin's squeezin the life out a everthin. Tradin us down - (angry, now, she points) - Them woods had real wolves in 'em when we was kids - now they's just kyohtees there. It's the same down in town - stead a men we got ghools, men as would rob our graves up here for jobs an the almighty dollar. (grim) Well, let 'em come. I got a surprise or two for 'em. I got me enough dynamite up here, love, to blow a ditch it'd take the Eads Bridge up to St. Louis, to span it.

#16 (2:45 minutes)

Adapted from THE MORGAN YARD © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(Summer, 1970. "THE MORGAN YARD" - a family graveyard on a Missouri Ozark mountain-top. In rural Missouri, it was believed that a whippoorwill was a bird of Omen. CARRIE MORGAN, a widow in her 60's, on self-imposed guard-duty with a rifle across her lap, is wakened from a doze-off by a whippoorwill's cry - uncertain whether she dreamed or was actually wakened by it)

CARRIE: (wide-eyed, a dream still upon her) They're comin, they're comin -! (she hears an echo of the dream-bird's cry again) They're here! (listens intently then shakes her head) Dreamin. Dreamin! (a shrug of self-deprecation) Cause you know I just had to have dreamed that dratted bird - (snorts) - Whippoorwill -!- whippoorwills don't call in the heat a the day. (derisively) 'Ceptin maybe in ghost stories. (laughs ruefully: to herhusband's grave) Gettin old, Davey love. Things is come to a pretty pass when a body caint tell wakin from sleepin, what's what from what aint. Gettin so only this ole graveyard seems real, sometimes. It's down there - in that flat-land town - that it's like dreamin. (getsup, paces) Down there, they got things figgered so it don't matter is somethin good for you, or bad. Or does it do somethin to you. All that matters down there is, do you get paid for it. If you get paid for doin it, then it's a livin - even if doin it kills everbuddy else. (beat) Up here - up here I know where I am. Who I am. An what's what. (stares intently at Davey's grave) An - an that's what's got me worried, love. Army''ll be comin up here soon - won't be dreamin then, they'll be comin in earnest. With bulldozers. Guns, too, I reckon - (paces distractedly) Davey, I'm that cornfluttered -- I asked the Lord for a leadin, an I caint tell did I get it. The way I feel about the danged government an Army, if a leaf fell off a tree, if a bee sat on a clover, I'd read it the way it'd be the Lord sayin, "Don't let 'em take this sacred place." (points off) I got enough dynamite planted out there to blow half this hill to Kingdom Come. I got enough guns an cartridges to make this hill hard to take as Missionary Ridge. An I got the will to use 'em. (snorts) You might even say I got the eagers to use 'em. Question is, Davey love - do I got the right to use 'em. Oh, I got the title to use 'em - I got the papers you give me in a vault up to St. Louis. But I had this dream - you remember the words a Revelation, Davey? "I heard a great Voice from Heav'n, Sayin unto me: Write from henceforth, Blessed are the dead which died in the Lord." Now what would you say that meant - comin in a dream like that? It's a powerful sign, but what would you say it's a sign of? (staring at "him", an irritation, a vexation, comes over her) Oh, I know what you'd say - you'd say it was a sign a whatever it was you'd already made up your mind to do! Aint that just like a man - see it only one way. Act on it like you was certain sure. Well, let me just ask you, Mr. Certain-sure - what if the Lord wasn't sayin that at all. What if the Lord was awarnin us - like our grandson said, wind somethin tight enough, it can trigger itself. An we're all wound pretty tight - us an the Army an the whole town. If'n somebody gets hurt then, we all got a hand in it. An then which of us is blessed?

#17 (2 ins.)

Adapted from THE MORGAN YARD © 1999 Kevin O'Morrison

(Summer, 1970. "THE MORGAN YARD" - a family graveyard on a Missouri Ozark mountain-top. CARRIE MORGAN, embattled widow in her 60s, has just learned the name of her grandson's Commanding Officer - and he's "Kinfolks!")

CARRIE: (startled) Jess, you mean to say your Lieutenant Bonner is Pemiscot County people? (excited) Does he spell it B-O-N-H-E-U-R, is he one a them Bonners? (sees his nod, "yes") Do I know him - why, he's kinfolks! Fact. Kinda distant kin, but you just listen whilst I show you. Ole Onnry Bonner - (chuckles) - aint that a caution, that's French for plain Henry - Well, Ole Onnry Bonner, he come up the river from New Orleans about 18 an 17 or 18. Had a wife an kids with him when he come, settled in what become Pemiscot County, an prospered. Well! Then his grandson Pete - that's, Peeair Bonner, but everbuddy just called him Pete - well, Pete married Marjorie Cooter from over to Dunklin County. (sees his eyes roll up) Now dont go rollin' your eyes up at me, young'un! Us women got to keep track a such things or we'd plain disappear entire. You men folks look around here an all you see is Morgan graves. But that ain't all they are - not if you read 'em right an know your begats. (points, now, as she talks) They's a Lee grave up here - that's Abigail Lee Morgan. They's Brasher's - that's Georgia Ella Brasher Morgan, over there. They's Barrys. An Buchanans. An Manleys. An McCabes - that's Bessie McCabe over there - (can't resist the confidence) She had her cap set for your grandad - had to settle for your grandad's cousin, Bart. howsomever, that's another story. (satisfaction) Yessir! They's a hundred different bloodlines up here, son. Brought in by us women. An these stones is the onliest record some of us got to show we've passed our time under God's will. So you pay attention, now, to what I'm tellin you - (points) "Catherine Desloge Morgan, Beloved wife a Daniel Micah," an so on - (real tears) Well, Catherine - poor thing died in childbirth - she was a Cooter on her mother's side. An her grandmother was own cousin to Marjorie Cooter that married Pete Bonner. (triumphantly) An if that don't make you kin to the Lieutenant, I don't know what does. An if you'll just hold on a minute, I'll figure out exactly what kin you are to him!

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