I Walked with a Zombie Page #2

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The stars seem very close and there is always movement in the

sky, as if it were alive -- falling stars and comets, lively

as the flying fish.

EXT. DECK OF SCHOONER -- NIGHT

Betsy is seated on the cabin top just abaft of the foremast.

She is looking out toward the sea and her expression is

ecstatic. She is completely lost in the beauty that she

feels, sees and smells.

BETSY'S VOICE

I smelled the spicy smells coming

from the islands -- I looked at those

great glowing stars -- and I felt the

warm wind on my cheeks and I breathed

deep and every bit of me inside

myself said, "How beautiful --"

The CAMERA DRAWS BACK to SHOW a tall, masculine figure

leaning against the foremast, behind Betsy. This is Paul

Holland. As we see him, we hear his voice.

HOLLAND:

It is not beautiful.

BETSY:

(surprised but smiling)

You read my thoughts, Mr. Holland.

HOLLAND:

It's easy enough to read the

thoughts of a newcomer. Everything

seems beautiful because you don't

understand. Those flying fish --

they are not leaping for joy.

They're jumping in terror. Bigger

fish want to eat them.

That luminous water -- it takes its

gleam from millions of tiny dead

bodies. It's the glitter of

putrescence. There's no beauty

here -- it's death and decay.

BETSY:

You can't really believe that.

A star falls. They both follow its flight with their eyes.

HOLLAND:

(pointing to it)

Everything good dies here -- even

the stars.

He leaves his position by the mast and walks aft.

The group of negroes at the mainmast. They have stopped

singing and they sit about the charcoal brazier. They are

eating, tearing at the meat with cruel, greedy, animal

gestures. Holland walks past them on his way aft.

Betsy is puzzled and a little alarmed by Holland's strange

utterances and his queer behavior. Over this shot of Betsy

looking off at him, we hear her as narrator.

BETSY:

(narrating)

It was strange to have him break in

on my thoughts that way. There was

cruelty and hardness in his voice.

Yet -- something about him I liked --

something clean and honest -- but

hurt -- badly hurt.

FADE OUT:

FADE IN:

EXT. VILLAGE OF ST. SEBASTIAN -- DAY

St. Sebastian is a drab little West Indian village. The

shacks and houses of wood, lath and plaster seem to be

falling apart. Over the doorway of one of the buildings --

evidently an administrative office -- hangs an American flag,

indicating the government of the island. The hard-packed

dirt in the roadway is overgrown with weeds. Everywhere, and

moving indolently, are the little, badly nourished negroes,

some of them tending stalls and sidewalk vending booths,

others walking idly. Betsy, followed by a black sailor with

her suitcases, comes down the gangway. Parallel to this

gangway is another.

Up the second gangway, in file, black stevedores with bundles

of sugar cane and small bales of sisal hemp on their heads,

go up to the boat.

On the dock, Betsy makes her way through a group of clamorous

children, vendors and beggars. As the black sailor puts her

luggage into an umbrella-topped surrey drawn by a gaunt mule,

she stops, delighted, before a great basket filled with

enormous white flowers. The man seated beside the basket

seems to be asleep, his face hidden by the drooping brim of a

straw hat. Betsy picks up one of the blooms, smells it and

then looks at the vendor.

BETSY:

How much is this?

The vendor wakens and lifts his head, revealing a face

bloated and scarified by yaws, a hideous nightmare face.

Betsy, startled, steps back, letting the flower drop. Paul

Holland, passing her, looks at this little tableau of horror

and disgust.

HOLLAND:

(in passing)

You're beginning to learn.

Betsy looks after him as he walks away into the village.

DISSOLVE:

EXT. ROAD TO FORT HOLLAND -- DAY -- (PROCESS)

An umbrella-topped surrey, drawn by a gaunt mule and piloted

by an old coachman in dirty white singlet, a top hat with a

cockade on his graying hair, is making its way along a dusty

road between fields of sugar cane. In the distance, the sea

is visible and above it the great billowing white clouds of

the Caribbean. Betsy, seated on the back seat of the

carriage, is bending forward to listen to the old man.

COACHMAN:

Times gone, Fort Holland was a

fort...now, no longer. The

Holland's are a most old family,

miss. They brought the colored

people to the island-- the colored

folks and Ti-Misery.

BETSY:

Ti-Misery? What's that?

COACHMAN:

A man, miss -- an old man who lives

in the garden at Fort Holland -

with arrows stuck in him and a

sorrowful, weeping look on his

black face.

BETSY:

(incredulous)

Alive?

COACHMAN:

(laughing, softly)

No, miss. He's just as he was in

the beginning -- on the front part

of an enormous boat.

BETSY:

(understanding and amused)

You mean a figurehead.

COACHMAN:

(warming up to his

orating)

If you say, miss. And the enormous

boat brought the long-ago Fathers

and the long-ago Mothers of us all

- chained down to the deep side

floor.

BETSY:

(looking at the endless

fields and the richly

clouded blue sky)

But they came to a beautiful place,

didn't they?

COACHMAN:

(smiling and nodding as

one who accepts a

personal compliment)

If you say, miss. If you say.

DISSOLVE:

EXT. FORT HOLLAND -- DAY

The jugheaded mule slowly pulls the carriage into the scene.

This beast comes to a somnolent stop without the coachman so

much as touching the reins. As the man climbs down and

starts to take the luggage out of the carriage, Betsy looks

through the wrought-iron gate into the garden.

Fort Holland is a one-story house built around the garden,

with low covered porches to give shade and breezeway. At the

open end of the U is a great gate much like the wrought-iron

gates of New Orleans. Through this Betsy can see the garden

and its profusion of verdure: azalea, bougainvillea, roses --

much like California planting; no exotic orchids or man

eating Venus Jugs -- just ordinary, pretty, semi-tropic

flowers and shrubs.

The separate rooms are open to the garden, but have jalousies

of thin wood to give privacy when needed. At one corner

stands a big, stone tower, obviously a relic of some previous

building. The walls of the house have been built right up to

and around the tower so that it has become part of the

building itself. On the garden side of the tower is the

fountain. The most outstanding feature of this spring or

fountain, which flows from a crevice in the stones of the

tower, is that instead of falling directly into the cistern

it falls first onto the shoulders of the enormous teakwood

figurehead of St. Sebastian. From the shoulders of the saint

it drips down in two runnels over his breast. The wooden

breast of the statue is pierced with six long iron arrows.

The face is weathered and black. Only a few bits of white

paint still cling to the halo above his head. Betsy and the

coachman come up to the grillwork of the gate. Betsy looks

around the garden, while the old coachman reaches up and

pulls a bell rope suspended from the gate. As the bell

begins to ring, he pushes the gate open. Betsy walks

through.

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