NORA LOUISE SYRAN

Walking Warm

CAST OF CHARACTERS

REBECCA: oldest sister

SARAH: youngest sister

CHARLOTTE: middle sister

SETTING
Outside Rebecca's summer cottage in Chincoteague, Virginia.

TIME
Sunset during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.


LIGHTS UP ON:

(Three sisters sit outside REBECCA'S Virginia cottage shucking corn in the early evening summer sun. SARAH, the youngest, and CHARLOTTE, the middle child, are visiting from Illinois.)

CHARLOTTE: Uh...this one's no good. The kernels are all dried up. Hand me another will you?

SARAH: Didn't get enough water. They need lots of water, you know. Corn.

CHARLOTTE (already slightly irritated): I know.

SARAH: Dangerous too.

CHARLOTTE: Huh?

SARAH: Intersections. Corn fields. You can't see the other cars coming.

CHARLOTTE: Well, you chose to live there. Who ever heard of Rhyme, Illinois. What sort of name is that? Rhyme, Illinois?

SARAH: Is Evanston any better? Sort of Chicago, but isn't...

CHARLOTTE: Biggest collection of Toby jugs in the country, if not the world.

SARAH: What is it with you and those things?

REBECCA: What is a toby jug?

CHARLOTTE (enthusiastically): Mugs with a sitting figure you drink out of.

SARAH (excitedly): Have they got one of Trump?

CHARLOTTE: Why? So you can kiss his ass?

REBECCA (warning): Charlotte, stop. Speaking of drinking...Chardonnay, anyone?

CHARLOTTE: Too oaky...it tastes like I'm licking a tree.

SARAH (happily): I like it.

REBECCA: Me too. To each his own. I didn't buy anything else. Sorry, Charlotte. I'll get something else on the next run.

(REBECCA pulls a bottle from the cooler she's sitting on, pours out a glass for each of them.)

REBECCA: Here's to us, together again.

(They raise their glasses and drink.)

REBECCA: The sun's setting. It's still hot though (squinting, turning away) and hitting us at such an odd angle. Move that umbrella over a bit, will you?

(Sipping her wine, REBECCA turns to face east, away from the sun. SARAH and CHARLOTTE continue facing west.)

SARAH: Aren't you going to watch the sun set?

REBECCA (confidently): I like looking east. Especially at this time of day. I've never seen the point of staring at sunsets. It's the light on everything I like...like there, look, the water, the tall grasses on Assateague...you can sometimes spot the ponies...

(Sipping, admiring the changing light, CHARLOTTE and SARAH turn their chairs around to see her view and are quiet for just a moment.)

CHARLOTTE: They've tons of celebrities.

REBECCA: What?

CHARLOTTE: Toby jugs. The collection in Evanston...politicians...comedians...

SARAH: Not your favorite, though.

CHARLOTTE: Kathy Griffin is not my favorite comedian.

SARAH: She's nasty.

REBECCA: Stop, Sarah. We agreed. No one is allowed to call another woman nasty.

SARAH AND CHARLOTTE: Yes...okay. Sorry Rebecca. You're right.

REBECCA: Still, she is pretty nasty.

(They laugh and return to shucking corn.)

SARAH: So, they eat corn out east? (sips her wine)

REBECCA: Yes, of course.

CHARLOTTE: And in France, too?

REBECCA: No, not really. It's catching on, though. But it's more for the pigs...fattens you up. They say..."Ça fait grossir"...food for "les américains."

CHARLOTTE: And now it's being turned into good ole hand sanitizer. Ethanol. It's everywhere.

(CHARLOTTE sips her wine and grows accustomed to the taste.)

REBECCA: In France, they've been using all the excess wine to make it. (sipping her wine)

CHARLOTTE: Excess wine?

REBECCA: I know. It sounds like an oxymoron. But between the coronavirus and the Trump tariffs, the wine market has collapsed. Small vineyards are struggling to sell their
wine in time to get their vats ready for the next harvest.

CHARLOTTE: Sad. All that lovely wine...hand sanitizer.

REBECCA: Yes.

CHARLOTTE: Hard to believe it.

SARAH: Hand sanitizer. It's like the masks, you know. Who knows what to believe? Scientists...first they say they're --

CHARLOTTE (slightly patronizing): It's hard to believe there could be too much wine...
unsold...undrunk...turned into hand sanitizer.

REBECCA (giggling): Undrunk wine!? No chance of that here...not with the three
of us. Together. Like old times.

CHARLOTTE: No Al-Anon meetings for us...no, no, no...

SARAH: Q anon?

REBECCA: Huh?

CHARLOTTE: Al-Anon. Alcoholics anonymous. AA.

SARAH: Oh, I thought I heard...I thought you meant --

CHARLOTTE: Yeah, I know you did. Alcohol. I do try to watch it. I know it runs in the family.

(CHARLOTTE sips her wine a little more stiffly and then brightens up at a new thought.)

CHARLOTTE: Did you know we had a horse thief in the family?

REBECCA: There's a horse thief in every family.

CHARLOTTE (taking another sip of her wine): It's not bad. Light on the tree bark. Well, like I always say, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

REBECCA (amused, a bit buzzed): Q anon?

CHARLOTTE (carefully): Alcoholics...if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. (She sips her wine with purpose). You remember those crabs?

REBECCA (thinking): Crabs --

SARAH: What crabs?

REBECCA (melancholy sets in): Oh...yeah. You were too little to remember, Sarah.
Charlotte and I had gone fishing for crabs out on Assateauge --

SARAH: Where the ponies are.

REBECCA: Back then you could get close enough to touch them. We were out all day. The ponies glowed white, brown and warm in the sun as it set. Mom and Dad had no idea what we were up to. Just gave us a bucket when we asked for one. We'd wanted to
surprise them...we brought the crabs home for dinner...but we'd forgotten to leave water in the bucket.

SARAH: What happened?

CHARLOTTE: What do you think? They all died, of course.

SARAH: No need to get...snippy.

(CHARLOTTE spits out her wine, laughing.)

CHARLOTTE (explaining her outburst): Snippy! Crabs...

REBECCA: I can still hear them...squealing...

SARAH: Oh, don't!

CHARLOTTE (soberly): Horrible...sorry you got stuck here, Becks. Hope you'll be back in time for classes to start...if they're starting...

REBECCA: There are worse places to be "stuck"...I'm glad you made it out here.

CHARLOTTE: At least we're far away from the crowds. (sips her wine)

SARAH (enthusiastically): They'll open the borders soon. We have to get the economy
going again you know...classes will start this fall...

CHARLOTTE (softly, hopefully): Yeah...but will France let you back in? Without a quarantine first?

REBECCA: No idea. We'll see, won't we? The whole world's like on standby or something.

SARAH: I hear they're close to making a vaccine, but are they really even safe, vaccines? And masks, well I don't think we really need to be wearing them...I heard --

CHARLOTTE (avoiding an argument): Hey, Becks, it's a super house. I can't believe you found a house so close to Assateague. You're so lucky to have it each summer. It's been...what...four years now?

REBECCA: Yeah, and still feel like I'm living an episode of Misty...the horse, remember? Misty of Chincoteague. I read it over and over again one summer. Bought it in that book shop with the old soda fountain and wooden Coca-cola crates.

SARAH: You always had your nose in a book. (sips her wine)

CHARLOTTE: Probably a good thing she's a teacher, then. (sips her wine)

SARAH: Do you remember the house Mom and Dad rented one summer where we had to shower outside?

REBECCA: Yes, I loved that one! Showering outside, naked. Nothing better.

SARAH: Oh, I hated it.

CHARLOTTE: Too liberating?

REBECCA: Stop. (sips her wine) Coming out here when we were young...we were so lucky and didn't realize it.

CHARLOTTE: We still don't.

REBECCA: You're right. We're really fortunate. Seeing the ponies out there always reminded me of the Dylan Thomas poem.

CHARLOTTE: The one about the, the boy?

REBECCA : "Fern Hill"

CHARLOTTE: I remember it. You read it out loud, over and over again, at least, like, a hundred times..."so it must have been"...something ..."spellbound horses walking warm..."

REBECCA: "So it must have been after the birth of the simple light/In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm/Out of the whinnying green stable/On to the fields of praise."

(They sit looking at Assateague, sip wine.)

SARAH: I don't understand why they had to cancel the pony swim.

CHARLOTTE: Too many people.

SARAH: Can we still go see them? I've always wanted to touch one, but I've never had the chance.

REBECCA: Yeah...we can bike out there tomorrow. There should be more ponies on the island this year...but you're not allowed to touch them.

SARAH: Come on...

REBECCA: No, really, Sarah. They're wild horses.

SARAH: What harm could one carrot do?

REBECCA: For their protection and yours, there are rules.

SARAH: You have carrots at the bottom of the fridge.

REBECCA: It's illegal to approach them or feed them...it's a National Refuge.

SARAH: What possible harm could a carrot do?

REBECCA: The ponies injure visitors every year. They're feral.

SARAH: Huh?

CHARLOTTE: Wild. And should stay that way.

SARAH: It's a free country, Charlotte. If I want to risk giving a wild horse a carrot and having him bite me or something, I'll risk it. They can't just make up rules like that.

CHARLOTTE: Sarah --

REBECCA: Charlotte, don't bother.

(They sip their wine in a moment of icy silence.)

SARAH: Who are you voting for?

CHARLOTTE (taken aback): That's not your business.

SARAH: I'm your sister...you keep cutting me off when I want to talk about things, things that matter to me, how I see things... but you're not letting me talk.

CHARLOTTE: Sarah, if we go there, we're not coming back. You understand that?

SARAH: I can vote how I like, Charlotte.

CHARLOTTE: Yes, you can. And so can I.

SARAH: Separatists fought union brothers too, once upon a time --

CHARLOTTE: And killed them...over the right to have slaves!

SARAH: Most of the presidents on Mount Rushmore had slaves and we've carved their faces --

CHARLOTTE: Most? Two of the four...why can't you check the facts of what you say before you say them?

SARAH: Why do you have to always cut me off?

CHARLOTTE: Because what you say half the time is just...I can't. Sarah, laws aren't always just, just because they're laws.

SARAH: Exactly. What's wrong with a little carrot?

REBECCA: Charlotte --

CHARLOTTE: No, Rebecca. I can't sit here shucking corn in silence about it anymore. It's bad enough with the...the "elephant in the zoom" every time we chat online, but now we're here, all together, and it has to be said. (beat) There's no great world conspiracy, Sarah. This is not an episode of the X-Files! It's not some aliens landing once again in Michigan,
but nowhere else on the planet. It's not “just” happening in the United States of America, and the whole world is "in on it." There are real scientists working out there, trying their very human best, and real journalists trying to out scoop each other to feed us the news we are all asking for...updates day after day...hour after hour... which we barely even have time to read. So many people with access super scary fast to a great deal of information that isn't always accurate...stuff most of us can't possibly understand. And we want it faster and faster and we're drowning...or we're like those crabs grasping at each other,
snapping and fighting and desperate and there isn't any water in the bucket because whoever was in charge was human...and just forgot.

(Silence.)

SARAH: I still think Kathy Griffin is nasty.

CHARLOTTE (exhaling): Hand me another ear of corn, will you?

REBECCA (cheerily): More Chardonnay anyone?

LIGHTS FADE DOWN.

End of Play

A Zoom-style reading of Walking Warm with the Philadelphia Dramatists' Center can be seen here. You can find the author on the web at noralouisesyran.com.

Back to Top
Review Home