Even Cowgirls Get The Blues Page #25

View of a bunkhouse trunk.

VOICE:

As a hole in an oak hides a squirrel's

family jewels, the bag had hidden

love letters in the bottom of a

bunkhouse trunk.

Hands lift the contents of the trunk away, rope, spurs, and

blanket and find the hidden sack of letters.

VOICE:

Then one day after work, the button-

nosed little cowgirl to whom the

letters were addressed gathered bag

and contents under her arm, slipped

out to the corral...

We see the Cowgirl saddling her horse late in the day.

VOICE:

...past ranch hands pitching

horseshoes and ranch hands flying

Tibetan kites, saddled up and trotted

into the hills.

We see the Cowgirl riding along a ridge.

VOICE:

A mile or so from the bunkhouse, she

dismounted and built a small fire;

she fed the fire letters.

And this we see also, the lonely Cowgirl feeding the letters

to a fire in the dusky early night. We can see the cowgirl

is Sissy Hankshaw.

VOICE:

...one by one, the way her girl friend

had once fed her french fries.

She is crying now and feeding the fire, close of words like

"always" and "forever" burning up.

VOICE:

As words such as sweetheart" and

"honey britches" and "forever" and

"always" burned away, the cowgirl

squirted a few tears. Her eyes were

so misty she forgot to burn the bag.

INT. BUNKHOUSE NIGHT

Sissy is sobbing.

Big Red offers a piece of homemade fudge and shows no surprise

when Sissy refuses it.

Kym kisses the lips quickly of the despondent Cowgirl, and

the bunkhouse lights go out.

Delores plunks a carefree song on an old Gibson, looks up at

the moon.

DELORES:

You know, podner, you can tune a

guitar but you can't tuna fish.

She plunks a few notes.

DELORES:

God, but it's good to be a cowgirl.

And the bunkhouse lights are turned off. There are some

giggles from the cowgirls.

INT. MAIN BEDROOM RANCH DAY

THE CHINK wakes up and is being cared for by Sissy. He is in

pain, but winking.

SISSY:

Is everything getting worse?

CHINK:

Yes, everything is getting worse.

But everything is also getting better.

SISSY:

The Countess has come to our aid.

The Rubber Rose Ranch is officially

deeded to all the cowgirls. And I

have been asked to oversee the ranch.

For $300 a week. And as it turns

out, the Countess is not going to be

the vegetable the doctors thought he

was... here's a picture!

Sissy shows a picture of the Countess recovering in a hospital

bed, posing next to Doctor Robbins.

CHINK:

I want to go back to the Clock People.

I kind of miss those fool redskins

and wonder what they're up to. What's

happened to Jelly?

SISSY:

She had a one way-ticket to Kansas

City.

CHINK:

You mean she's dead?

The Chink mourns a bit.

SISSY:

But that's an old story now...... I

can't believe that you would leave

the Butte.

CHINK:

Easy come, easy go.

DELORES:

Wow, you sure have a way with words.

The Chink looks over and sees that Delores is standing in

the doorway.

CHINK:

I can't help it if I grew up in an

antipoetic culture. Language will be

different when I'm with the Clock

People though. They're from an oral

tradition. And I'm not talking about

what you horny hop toads do in bed

every night.

The Chink smiles.

Delores blushes.

SISSY:

Well, if the Clock People give you

any inside information on the end of

the world, drop us a postcard.

CHINK:

The world isn't going to end, you

dummy; I hope you know that much.

(he grows

uncharacteristically

serious)

But it is going to change. It's going

to change drastically, and probably

in your lifetime. The Clock People

see calamitous earthquakes as the

agent of change, and they may be

right, since there are a hundred

thousand earthquakes a year and major

ones are long overdue. But there are

far worse catastrophes coming...

unless the human race can bring itself

to abandon the goals and values of

civilization, in other words, unless

it can break the consumption habit --

and we are so conditioned to consuming

as a way of life that for most of us

life would have no meaning without

the yearnings and rewards of

progressive consumption. It isn't

merely that our bad habits will cause

global catastrophes, but that our

operative political-economic

philosophies have us in such a blind

crab grip that they prevent us from

preparing for the natural disasters

that are not our fault. So the

apocalyptic sh*t is going to hit the

fan, all right, but there'll be some

of us it'll miss. Little pockets of

humanity. Like the Clock People.

Like you two honeys, if you decide

to accept my offer of a lease on

Siwash Cave. There's almost no

worldwide calamity -- famine, nuclear

accident, plague, weather warfare or

reduction of the ozone shield --

that you couldn't survive in that

cave.

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