Beloved Page #25

FROM OUT OF THE WOODS, CHILDREN RUN INTO THE CLEARING.

Camera follows the joyous exodus to reveal:

THE CLEARING IS FILLED WITH ADULTS the entire black

community of the days when Sethe first arrived. The children

run to their respective families;

BABY SUGGS:

(with joy)

Let your mother's hear you laugh!!

The children, loving the game, laugh hard. The adults get a

kick out of it.

Sethe watches her boys and hides her laughter.

BABY SUGGS:

Let the grown men come!!

OUT OF THE WOODS, A GROUP OF GROWN MEN COME INTO THE CLEARING.

BABY SUGGS:

LET YOUR WIVES AND YOUR CHILDREN SEE YOU

DANCE!

The men form a circle and dance as the crowd supports them

with a clapping rhythm. A SONG arises from the women to

accompany to dance....

BABY SUGGS:

Now...you women...I want you to cry. For

the living. For the dead....Just cry.

Camera follows those women who are not singing as one by one,

they remember and weep...

Sethe watches...and weeps.

SETHE:

....Something in me knew Halle was never

gonna knock on our door. He was never

gonna see what I saw that day. I saw what

men look like...and I saw mothers, for

the first time.

EXT. 124 BLUESTONE RD. - DAY.

Stamp Paid walks up to the porch carrying a TWO BIG BASKETS

OF BLACKBERRIES ... his body dirty, scratched and bleeding.

SETHE (VO)

I think it was Stamp Paid who started it.

He walked six miles to the riverbank,

slid into a ravine, reached through blood

drawing thorns, suffered mosquitoes,

wasps and the meanest lady spiders in the

State just to bring us those berries.

He places the baskets on the porch in front of Baby Suggs,

Sethe who is holding Denver..and the Little Girl (Beloved).

BABY SUGGS:

(laughs)

What a sight you are, Stamp.

STAMP PAID:

Worth it though. Just one bite of these

berries and you feel down right anointed.

He puts one into Denver's mouth.

SETHE:

She's too little for that, Stamp. Her

bowels be soup.

BABY SUGGS:

It'll sickify her stomach..Now go wash up

round back...crazy fool..

Stamp exits.

SETHE:

It was real nice of him.

BABY SUGGS:

He's a good one, no doubt of that. I can

get three, maybe four pies out of this.

Seems a shame just for us though. I'm

gonna invite Ella and John over...

SETHE:

How 'bout if I make a couple of chickens

to back it up?

SETHE (VO)

And that's how it began...

INT. KITCHEN - DAY.

Sethe and Baby Suggs and Ella and several other women cook.

SETHE (VO)

...Three pies became twelve...two hens

became five turkeys...

EXT.THE FIELD/124 BLUESTONE RD. - EVENING.

Various images of people gathered enjoying food and

drink...laughing and singing...

SETHE (VO)

...and Ella and John turned into almost

ninety others...

- Women serving up the food...

- Older men sitting and talking as they eat...

- Younger men playing with the children. Chasing them with

sheets on their backs, scaring them into laughter..

- A Man with a guitar playing a blues song and singing.

While Sethe enjoys her free life and, most of all, her

children - the boys running around her..Denver in her

arms..Her Little Girl (Beloved) by her side.. Baby Sugg's

visits with various guests, serving up the food...

SETHE (VO)

... Everybody ate so well and laughed so

much...

INTERCUT; Images of whispers exchanged between some of the

women:

SETHE (VO)

...it made them angry...

Women head to head with a remark or an eye of disapproval

towards Baby Suggs as she continues cooking and feeding....

SETHE (VO)

The pies, the turkeys...the bread pudding

and shortbread..the one whole block of

ice brought all the way from Cincinnati -

it made 'em mad...Loaves and fishes were

Jesus's powers...they did not belong to

an ex-slave who never had a white boy

beat her, who had her freedom bought, who

rented a house from white folks that

hated slavery worse than they hated

slaves...It made'em furious - her

thoughtless generosity and un-called for

pride...She had over stepped...offended

them by giving too much...and they left

their disapproval there so's you could

smell in the air the whole next day...

EXT. THE FIELD/ 124 BLUESTONE RD. - THE FOLLOWING DAY.

Baby Suggs works the field, not far from Stamp Paid...

SETHE (VO)

Later on I wondered why no one warned

us...why no one saw them coming and ran

to 124 to tell us...

She chops at the soil over the roots of the pepper plants.

She stops - sensing something is wrong. She looks up at a

clear blue sky...She hears the birds and the stream way down

beyond the woods..

She looks around and sees Bulgar, Howard and the Little Girl

(Beloved) playing with loud voices by the side of the house.

She sees Sethe squatted in the pole beans with Denver in a

bushel basket beside her.

The clok, clok of wood being chopped causes her to look over

to Stamp Paid, helping out with the axe...

She returns to her work...but something is deeply wrong.

And then she hears it;

THE SOUND OF HORSES and A HORSE DRAWN WAGON coming from the

distance. (The same sound Sethe heard in her first memory of

the sycamores earlier on)

She rises up and looks;

POV;

EXT. BLUESTONE ROAD - DAY.

Far in the distance, FOUR HORSEMEN ARE RIDING TOWARD THEM.

ONE DRIVES A WAGON and IS WEARING A DISTINCTIVE HAT - IT IS

SCHOOLTEACHER.....

CUT BACK TO:

EXT. THE FIELD OF 124 BLUESTONE - DAY.

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