The Spirit in Me

• Cast of Characters

• Lavinia

• Ella

• Betsy

• Hooper, a deputy sheriff

• Brother Gormer, a preacher

• Miss Bozack

• Darce, a servant

• Jessica, a rich and beautiful widow

• Lyle, Jessica’s suitor

Curtain

Scene I

1936, the porch of a flaking, white-frame company store among the mountains of a southern West Virginia coal town. The porch holds two unpainted wooden benches, each located on opposite sides of a screen door. Just beneath the tin roof of the store is a sign in black paint: Pope Coal & Coke. At an end of the porch is a battered soft-drink cooler that has a lid on top. A large thermometer advertising Honest Snuff is nailed to a porch post. A limp American flag hangs from a pole over the porch steps.

On the porch this hot summer day are three local middle-aged miners’ wives, their names Ella Henry, Lavinia Ackers, and Betsy Terry. They have been shopping at the store. Their clothing is of the 1930s variety, a bit dowdy and out of date, yet with color and attempts at the fashionable—a straw hat, a flower pinned to a bodice, a string of artificial pearls. Lavinia and Ella sit on a bench, their grocery bags beside them are on the floor. A fiddle plays a jolly hillbilly tune before the curtain opens, and tails off as actors begin to speak.

Lavinia: (Fans her face with a languid hand) This hot, how we ever going to make it all the way through July?

Ella: (Wipes brow) So humid my wash won’t dry on the line.

Betsy: (Has just arrived and sets her grocery bag on a bench before sitting) Streams running dry.

Lavinia: Leaves shriveling on the trees.

Ella: Ground’s cracking open.

Betsy: Grass snapping like twigs under your feet.

Lavinia: Hot enough to melt rocks.

Ella: Coal going to catch itself on fire.

Betsy: Food’s so dry it’s like chewing sawdust.

Lavinia: Wind’s done forgot how to blow.

Ella: Dogs too hot and lazy to bite at they fleas.

Lavinia: Hotter than Hell’s kitchen.

Betsy: (Rises to cross to soft-drink cooler. She opens the cooler’s lid, lifts a Big Orange from chunks of ice, and uses the bottle opener to lever off the cap.) Need me a swallow to put out the fire. Helps for a second anyhow. (She drinks, stops at the screen door, and calls out as she holds up the bottle.) Just put it on my ticket, Willie.

Giles Hooper, a deputy sheriff, strolls in from stage right, touches his trooper hat in greeting, and lifts a booted foot to a porch step. He wears a brown uniform shirt open at the collar, a badge, a whistle, a holstered Smith & Wesson revolver, a black cartridge belt, whipcord riding britches, and brown leather puttees. He smiles as he pushes back his hat.

Hooper: Afternoon, ladies. I know you all been talking it over.

Betsy, Ella, Lavinia: What you mean? Roof fall at the mine? Somebody hurt?

Hooper: (Holds up a hand as if stopping traffic) Whoa now. Nobody’s hurt. I figured you’d heard about Miss Jessica Tucker.

Lavinia: Heard what?

Ella: (Excited) She married again?

Betsy: Or come home?

Hooper: You got it, Miss Betsy. She coming from France sometime this afternoon.

Lavinia: How’s she look?

Hooper: Ain’t seen her yet.

Ella: They opening the big house?

Hooper: They been working at it.

Betsy: She not been ’round here since they laid Captain Tucker in the grave.

Lavinia: (Uses her fingers to count) Been at least three years.

Ella: She still pretty?

Betsy: Or got herself a man?

Hooper: (Amused, he takes off his trooper hat to fan his face.) Yeah, a man from what I hear, though not a husband. Old Darce has been keeping up the house.

Betsy: Bet she’s marrying again. She’s mourned the captain...