Affliction Page #13

WADE:

(hurt)

Marg.

Margie, watching him, quivers, starts to cry. She drops her

suitcase, out of nowhere bawling like a baby.

Wade goes over, puts his arms around her, pats her back. His

face is racked. He, too, seems about to cry -- if he could.

In his arms Margie feels trapped, overwhelmed by Wade's

circumstances and terrible sadness. She pushes:

MARGIE:

(crying)

Leave me alone! Leave me alone!

She struggles in Wade's grasp. Jill, frightened, wildly hits

him from behind:

JILL:

Leave her alone! Leave her alone!

Wade moves back like a bear, covering his face and arms.

Jill, near hysterical, keeps after him, arms and fists flying.

Wade stumbles backwards into the snow. Jill still swings.

Margie dashes to intervene as Wade swings his arms wide.

Jill flies into Marg. Her nose is bleeding. Wade's caught

her across the mouth and nose. She takes cover behind Margie,

crying.

Margie and Jill stand side by side, saying nothing. Wade

looks up stunned, as if hit by a rock. Marg slowly backs

away, her arms behind her holding Jill.

MARGIE:

(to Jill)

Get in.

Marg eases Jill into the front seat, closes the door, edges

around the car slamming the trunk and gets into the driver's

seat. Wade stands.

JILL:

I want to go home. Will you take me

home?

MARGIE:

Yes.

She closes the front door, starts the car. She backs out the

drive.

In her rear view mirror she sees the image of Wade receding,

standing frozen, staring down at the snow. Pop emerges from

the house, looks at his son, grinning.

Wade looks at his old man, that dumb devilish grin plastered

on his father's face. Glen Whitehouse holds an empty whiskey

bottle like a pistol.

Hunters' gunshots echo in the distance.

POP:

(Satanic delight)

You! By Christ, you -- I know you.

(points bottle)

Yeah, you goddamn sonofabitch, I

know you. You're a goddamn f***ing

piece of my heart!

WADE:

(dead)

You don't know me. You don't know

me!

(beat)

So f*** you. F*** you.

POP:

Nah-nah-naw! You done done finally

done it! Like a man done it. Done it

right. I love you, you mean

sonofabitch!

Pop holds up the bottle, pretends to fire it at Wade.

WADE:

Love! What the f*** do you know about

love?

POP:

Love! I'm made of love!

WADE:

Call it what you want.

POP:

Everything you know is from me.

WADE:

Yeah.

POP:

Bang!

WADE:

You and me.

Wade waves his old man off, trudges toward the barn.

POP:

Where the Christ you going? You

sonofabitch, you leave my f***ing

truck where it is! I need... Give me

the Goddamn keys! I need to get me

to town!

WADE:

Crawl!

POP:

Nothing in the f***ing house to drink.

Not a f***ing thing. My house, my

money, my truck -- stolen!

WADE:

I don't know you. My goddamn father

and I don't know you.

Wade walks from the glistening snow into the dark barn.

CUT TO:

INT. BARN - DAY

Wade unloads the cardboard boxes filled with his office

belongings from the back of the truck and sets them on the

ground. He gathers up his rifles.

Suddenly! A whiskey bottle SLAMS against the back of his

head. He drops to his knees, the guns scatter. He looks up

with child's fear and guilt at his father.

Glen Whitehouse hovers over him, huge and ferocious: a

colossus, lifting the bottle like a jawbone.

Wade cringes, scrambles for the dropped rifle. He grabs it

by the barrel and, twisting around, swings it in a slow motion

arc, smashing the edge of the wood stock against his father's

head. A cold hard CRACK of bone.

Glen Whitehouse -- shriveled again, no longer mythic -- flies

back like a stuffed dummy. He collapses beside the empty

C.C. bottle.

Wade, bleeding from the head, stands, staggers off Pop's

inert body, aims his rifle at the old man's face.

WADE:

I know you now. I love you too.

Wade bolts the rifle, flicks off the safety, fires -- a loud

CLICK. The gun's empty.

WADE:

(smiles)

Joke. You scared me.

He kneels down, lovingly touches the old man's face, caresses

his lips, cheeks, nose, brows, smoothes back his stiff gray

hair.

Pop's eyes are clouded. Blood suddenly drips from his ear to

the ground.

Wade rests the rifle against the truck. He bends over, slips

his hands under his father's body, lifts him up. He carries

Pop over to the workbench, lays him out.

Groping beneath the bench, Wade finds the kerosene lamp. He

unscrews it, pours kerosene the length of Pop's body.

Wade takes out his cigarette lighter, ignites it, holds it

for a moment, places it to Glen Whitehouse.

Fire spreads the length of Pop's body, bursting like a shroud

of yellow flame. The oil-stained bench crackles; flames shoot

up the old weathered wall.

Burning flesh and heat drive Wade backwards.

CUT TO:

EXT. WHITEHOUSE FARM - DAY

Wade stands in snow and sunlight. The entire barn is engulfed

in flames. Black smoke billows through the clear winter sky.

Inside Glen Whitehouse, a pyre, burns.

ROLFE (V.O.)

The historical facts are known by

everyone -- all of Lawford, all of

New Hampshire, some of Massachusetts.

Facts do not make history. Our

stories, Wade's and mine, describe

the lives of boys and men for

thousands of years, boys who were

beaten by their fathers, whose

capacity for love and trust was

crippled almost at birth and whose

best hope, if any, for connection

with other human beings lay in an

elegiac detachment, as if life were

over.

CUT TO:

EXT. PARKER MOUNTAIN - DAY

Pop's red truck is parked behind Jack Hewitt's 4x4 on a snow-

banked road. Wade, hunting rifle pointed up, traces Jack's

footsteps down the slope of the mountain.

ROLFE (V.O.)

It's how we keep from destroying in

turn our own children and terrorizing

the women who have the misfortune to

love us; how we absent ourselves

from the tradition of male violence;

how we decline the seduction of

revenge.

Wade spots Jack poised in a spruce grove, watching for deer.

Wade bolts his rifle, releases the safety, aims and FIRES.

Jack, hit in the chest, falls bleeding between trees. Blood

stains the snow.

ROLFE (V.O.)

Jack's truck turned up three days

later in a shopping mall in Toronto.

Even without the footprints, the

bullet, Wade's utter disappearance

seemed evidence enough of his guilt.

CUT TO:

INT. WHITEHOUSE FARM - DAY

Camera glides from room to room, glimpsing details, fragments

of former times, as if this were an historical site or

memorial. The walls resonate: lives were molded here.

ROLFE (V.O.)

LaRiviere and Mel Gordon were indeed

in business. The Parker Mountain Ski

Resort is now advertised all across

the country. Jimmy Dame tends bar at

the lodge. Chub Merritt opened a

snowmobile dealership, Nick Wickham

runs the new Burger King. Margie

Fogg moved to Littleton, nearer her

mother; Lillian and Jill went with

Bob Horner to a new job in Seattle.

Out a window, workers gather charred timbers from the barn,

throw them on a truck.

ROLFE (V.O.)

We want to believe Wade died, died

that same November, froze to death

on a bench or a sidewalk. You cannot

understand how a man, a normal man,

a man like you and me, could do such

a terrible thing. Unless the police

happen to arrest a vagrant who turns

out to be Wade Whitehouse -- or maybe

he won't be a vagrant; maybe he will

have turned himself into one of those

faceless fellows working at the video

store and lives in a town-house

apartment at the edge of town until

his mailman recognizes him from the

picture at the post office -- unless

that happens, there will be no more

mention of him and his friend Jack

Hewitt and our father. The story

will be over. Except that I continue.

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