Days of Heaven Page #16

ABBY:

You wouldn't understand, though. He's not like

you. You don't

know how people feel. You only think of yourself.

BILL:

What's going on between us, Abby? Think about

that. If you figure it

out, tell me, will you? I'd appreciate it.

(pause)

Lord, but you do come on! You talking like this,

used to play

around right under his nose. Somebody I met in a bar,

remember?

Or maybe you walked in, thought it was a church. Well, I've

had

it.I'm clearing out. You understand?

They look at each other for a moment.

ABBY:

Go ahead.

This is not what he expected to hear. But now his pride

requires that he face the truth and not back down.

BILL:

Okay.

He looks at her for a moment. He cannot be dealt with this

way. He turns and walks off.

193NEW ANGLE

Ursula flirts with George. He slips a hand

inside her blouse. She bats it away.

194EXT. BEDROOM WINDOW

Bill stands on the ground below the master

bedroom. Chuck leans out the window above him. Peacocks

roost on the balcony, beneath the telescope. The

vaudevillians are loading up their planes. Abby watches from

the porch.

BILL:

I'm going away for a while. They're giving me a

lift.

CHUCK:

What for?

He shrugs.

BILL:

I'm wearing one of your shirts. Let me take it

off for you.

CHUCK:

Never mind.

BILL:

I got my own. Just wasn't any clean today.

Bill takes off the shirt, drapes it over a post and walks

off, hurt and angry, but with a sad dignity.

Chuck is not entirely sorry to see him go, nor is Abby; she

knows that he is getting out just in time. One more episode

like last night's and the fuse would hit the powder.

195NEW ANGLE

Bill gives Ursula his money.

BILL:

We get split up for any reason, you spend that

on school.

196EXT. PRAIRIE

The vaudevillians are ready to take off. Bill

boards the plane which George is piloting, wondering if

today's break with Abby is real or just in anger, a

necessary gesture. With him he carries his only possessions,

a bindle and his trick rabbit. Abby, Chuck and Ursula look

on.

CHUCK:

What's eating him?

Abby shrugs and walks down to Ursula.

URSULA:

Why aren't we going with him?

ABBY:

What for? To sleep in boxcars?

197AIRPLANES

The planes set their wheels in the furrows, rev

their engines and wobble off into the sky. Ursula waves

goodbye to George.

198EXT. PLAINS UNDER SNOW - SERIES OF ANGLES

Winter has come. Snow falls across the breadth

of the plains, on the river and the dark sleeping fields.

199EXT. SLEIGH (OR ICE BOAT) - SNOW

Chuck and Abby skim over the snow in a gaily

painted sleigh (or ice boat). She is wrapped up snug in a

buffalo robe, her feet on a hot brick. Pigs forage along the

fences.

200INT. CAVE

They inspect a cave with a kerosene lantern.

Blocks of ice, covered with burlap and sawdust, cool shelves

of preserves.

Abby drops a stone into a dark pit. Two seconds pass before

it hits the bottom.

ABBY:

Probably that's the first noise down there for

thousands of years.

She speaks as though she had done it a favor. He puts his

hand on hers. She presses it against her chest.

ABBY:

You ever wish you could turn your heart off for

a second and

see what happened?

201OTHER ANGLES

Views of backlit gems, stalactites, salamanders

in their cold dark pools, hidden springs and other mysteries

of nature.

ABBY (o.s.)

Maybe nothing would.

They round a corner and come upon an underground waterfall.

It flows out of darkness back into darkness.

202INT. FORGE

Bill, meanwhile, stands in a line of panting,

sweating IMMIGRANTS.

On their shoulders they carry the huge barrel of a cannon.

With a grunt they drive it into the fiery mouth of a forge.

203EXT. CITY STREET

Bill stands on the corner of a big city street,

stamping his feet against the cold. He tries to catch a

pigeon with some bread crumbs under a box propped up by a

stick, but just as he pulls the string to drop the trap it

darts

out of the way.

204BILL AND YOUNG GIRL

Bill has an improvised conversation with a YOUNG

GIRL who has run away from home. He asks her where she comes

from, whom she belongs to, etc. She tells him of her hopes,

then passes on. Bill gives her all the money in his pocket.

205MONTAGE

Enthralled, Abby surveys the wonders of Babylon

and

Nineveh in a book about the Near East.

Ursula sits with a world globe, taking a geography lesson

from a traveling TUTOR. No doubt this was Abby's idea.

Abby copies from a small plaster model of a Roman bust. She

wants painfully to improve herself.

206EXT. FROZEN LAKE -NIGHT

Abby and Chuck skate around a bonfire on a

frozen prairie lake, carrying torches to guide them through

the dark.

207INT. CHICAGO FLOPHOUSE

Bill sits in a cold flophouse trying to write a

letter. After a moment he wads it up and throws it away.

208EXT. BELVEDERE

Abby, Ursula and Chuck are on a walk outside the

Belvedere. The snow is gone. Abby's hands are stuffed in a

chinchilla muff.

All at once they hear a distant noise like the whoops of an

Indian war party. It seems mysteriously to come from every

hilltop. Abby turns to Chuck with a puzzled look.

CHUCK:

Prairie chickens. That means winter's broken.

ABBY:

Really? Where are they?

CHUCK:

You hardly ever see them.

They stand and listen to the birds. There is a sense of the

earth stirring back to life. Abby breathes in with a wild

joy and hugs Chuck tightly by the waist.

209EXT. TENEMENT HALLWAY

Bill is talking with a FRIEND in the hallway of

a tenement.

BILL:

I can't seem to get my mind on anything. I

thought, when I came

off that place, boy, they'd better get all the women out of

town that day, you know? Somewhere safe. But you know what I

do? I sleep, nothing but

sleep.

A PANHANDLER approaches them with a hard-luck story.

FRIEND:

Okay, here's a quarter, but give me some

entertainment, okay?

Not this old song and dance.

While the Panhandler performs, Bill looks around.

Two POLICEMEN have appeared in the entryway talking with the

LANDLADY. Bill edges out the back door and down the steps,

as though they might be after him.

He walks briskly down the alley without looking back.

210TIGHT ON CHUCK (DISSOLVE TO DIARY)

Chuck holds a handful of seed under his nose.

His heart stirs at the dark, mellow smell.

Into this dissolves an image of Abby writing in her diary.

211EXT. FIELD

Chuck swings a barometer round and round,

checking the weather. Two Case tractors pitch across a field

like boats on a rolling sea. Long plumes of smoke wind off

behind them. Each tows a fourteen-gang plow. A third

tractor follows, putting in the seed.

Ursula chases a flock of blackbirds off with a big rattle.

Every acre of ground for as far as the eye can see is under

cultivation.

ABBY (o.s.)

They put in the wheat the other day. This will

be the biggest

year ever. There was a scare

when a locust turned up. Luckily it wasn't the bad kind.

212NEW ANGLE

The plows have turned up a hibernating locust.

Chuck stands by the tractor, inspecting it under a

magnifying glass. The creature nestles like a fossil in the

black earth.

ABBY (o.s.)

They sleep in the ground for seventeen years,

then crawl up

around the end of May and spend a week flying around before

they die.

Chuck kicks up the dirt around the plow, looking for others.

Benson, back from exile, looks concerned.

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