Nelson,+Riley

**Fade In:** Zoom into a lush, green, hillside. At the top of the smallest hill there is a little six-room cabin. 360 to show farmland (surrounding cabin). A girl is walking up the path leading to the cabin. Zoom into the basket of flowers she is carrying. **VO:** My name is Martha Jones and I am thirteen years old. I live in outside Annapolis, Maryland. My family is a farming family. We grow all sorts of things but mostly tobacco. My father, Samuel, and my mother, Anne, got married in 1854 and had my brother Adam a year later. He is 15. When I was two my pa built my ma this cabin and that is where the story began, in the kitchen on: ** November 14, 1864 ** __Anne__: Good morning Honey! How did you sleep? __Martha__: Fine, where’s Father? __Anne__: He’s bringing in the last crops with Adam before the first snow. __Martha__: With Adam? Adam never helps father with the farming because he’s …Adam. __Anne__: I know, but your father and I are worried about him. Ever since the war started he hasn’t been himself. Then when his best friend Tommy went off to fight for the Confederates he didn’t come out of his room for a week. You remember, right? It happened last summer when your best friend Susan’s older brother left. Slowly zoom out of the kitchen and switch camera direction towards the farmland. Zoom in to two little black dots in the distance. The sun is just rising so the two figure’s shadows loom behind them, much larger. The fields are an array of colors. There are oranges, reds, yellows, browns, and even some purple. **VO:** Most of the bright colors you see come from mother’s garden. When she’s not cooking or cleaning she’s there. It is her place to escape to be herself. You might ask why she can’t be her self in the house or around Father. It is because my father is hard to impress. He must have everything perfect, it is his way. Adam and Samuel are pulling up carrots in a tiny enclosed area. Both men are working vigorously to pull up all the carrots before the sun rises. __Adam__: Sun’s comin’ up. __Samuel__: Yea. Son, you and I are similar in a lot of ways. We both keep to ourselves and we don’t talk much. __Adam__: Your talking now. __Samuel__: Well I can’t say I never talk! Oh, Adam I am sorry for raising my voice at you. You know how I get sometimes. All I’m asking is for you not to say such snooty comments. __Adam__: Sorry Father but you are too sensitive sometimes. __Samuel__: You know I don’t mean to be. Anyway that’s not the reason were here. __Adam__: Yea, why are we here? Did you wake me up at 5:30 for nothing? __Samuel__: Son you need to start doing your share of the work. Your mother and I can’t do everything for you. What happens when you get married and have children? Are you going to make your wife do all the work? Adam, you need to start taking responsibility for your actions. You might be upset to hear this but Martha does more work than you. __Adam__: What! You’re kidding, right? You think Martha does more work than me?! Do you not see her picking flowers and reading every time you look at her? Do you really think that I am a lazy, silent, smart mouth? Is that what you think? Adam runs towards house swearing as he runs. __Samuel__: Adam, I didn’t mean it like that! **Fade Out** as Samuel sits on ground and put his head in his hands. ** November 15, 1864 ** **Fade In** it is nighttime and there is a single light coming from the living area. Anne sits on the thumback Windsor crying uncontrollably. She is dressed in all black, basically her nicest clothes. Samuel walks in. He too is dressed in all black. He walked over to the corner stool and sat down. In the position he sat, you couldn’t see his face because of the looming shadows in the room. All of a sudden he spoke. __Samuel__: This is all-my fault. If I hadn’t taken him out to the fields and talked to him, this never would have happened. __Anne__: Samuel, don’t blame this all on your self! (Sniff) We both saw the signs. If you have to blame anyone, blame me as well. He was our son not your son. By the way where is Martha? We need to tell her sometime unless she has already figured it out herself. __Samuel__: I think she is at Susan’s house and I am not going to blame him running away on you. The note he wrote specifically says ‘I am leaving because one person couldn’t see the good in me.’ That clue can only lead to me because yesterday I said that Martha worked harder than him. __Anne__: What! Why on earth would you say that?! __Samuel__: I thought it would intimidate him to do better. I didn’t think it would make him run away Anne! __Anne__: Well, (sniff) apparently it did. **Fade Out**. Just as Anne runs out of the room. **Fade In**. Martha and her best friend Susan are sitting in a small room, Susan’s bedroom. The room is perfectly square and there is one small window behind her bed. I don’t even know if you can call it a bed. It is a small wooden frame with straw in the middle. Her pillow and blanket are just old clothes of her brother. Her clothing is just plied in one corner of her room. The two girls are sitting on the her straw “bed.” Martha is crying. __Martha__: Why would he runaway? (sniff) I always talked to him nicely and tried to be as kind as I could when your brother Tommy left for the army. __Susan__: Martha, it’s not your fault. Everyone has their own reasons for being upset and everyone has their own ways of treating it. He apparently just didn’t want to live with you anymore. (Martha starts to cry harder) Oh, Martha, I didn’t mean it like that. __Martha__: I am not mad at you I am just worried that I am never going to see him again. What if he never comes home? __Susan__: Don’t think that way. I bet you within a year he will start to miss you and he will come home. **Fade In** to the kitchen table. All four chairs are occupied, two men and two woman. They are saying grace. Both of the women are softly crying. On the table there is a cake and some sort of meat. On the middle of the cake there is a fully blossomed rose. **VO:** Today is my brother’s birthday. He is now 16. Even though he is not here we are celebrating. The fourth person at the table is a very close family friend, James. He was probably closer to Adam then my father was. He is friendly, out-going, and very handsome. Adam always looked up to him where as my father, well, most of the time he avoided him. James is here to celebrate Adam’s birthday but he is also here for us to say goodbye to him. What I mean is that James is going to leave our little town to go fight in the Civil War for the Union. Now it is time for my mother and I to cry yet again. **Fade Out.** **Fade In,** Anne and Martha are huddled together by the fireplace. There is a letter in Anne’s hand. Both of them are reading the letter the letter intently. All of a sudden Anne gasps. __Anne__: Samuel, come here! Read the letter! __Samuel__: You know I can’t read, will you read it to me? __Anne__: Yes I will, // Dear Anne, Samuel, and Martha, // // Fighting in a war is hard. My ears are shot from all the gunfire. I can only hear someone if they scream. Anyway I have bad news that I thought you needed to know. I have found Adam. The last battle, The Battle of Averasborough (both of Union and Confederate lost), I saw him fighting in a Confederate uniform. He was talking and laughing with Tommy. Towards the end of the battle the two of them had given up fighting. They walked over to the stream and sat down and started talking. Adam had brought a gun but he threw it to the side so it wouldn’t be much help if someone attacked them. A couple minutes later a man on the Union missed his target completely, instead the bullet hit Tommy in the head. Adam screamed and ran toward the man who had shot Tommy. Out of self defense he shot and killed Adam. I am sorry to have to break this news to you in a letter and not in person. // // My thoughts are with you and I hope to be home soon, // // James // Samuel, he’s dead! Our baby’s dead! __Samuel__: Why must this happen to us? What did we do wrong? (Samuel storms out of the room, very upset. After a few moments of silence, Martha follows him.) __Anne__: Yes (sniff) why must this tragedy happen to us? (Sniff) Where are you going Martha? (Sniff) __Martha__: (from the distance) Susan’s house. **Fade Out** as Anne sits by herself weeping. ** March 22, 1865 ** **Fade In** to a meadow. There are wildflowers everywhere. Two girls sit in the middle both are crying hysterically. There is no way comfort each other. As the camera zooms into their faces you can see it is Susan and Martha. **Fade Out** ** June 1, 1865 ** **Fade In** to the kitchen of the Jones’. Martha is sitting on a stool watching her mother cook. They both start to laugh. Samuel comes in and sees the two women laughing. All he does is crack a smile and walk into another room. He comes back in and embraces Anne with all his strength this time he too is chuckling. **VO:** For the first time in months I saw my father smile. He looked happy almost like he had gotten over the death of Adam. This makes me grin. All of a sudden there is a knock at the door. Samuel, still smiling, walks over to open it. When he sees who it is his smile is a mile wide, but then he looks down and it is as is all of the life and color has been sucked out of him. He is no longer smiling and you can him fighting back tears as his muscles tense up. For a second it looks like he is going to faint. Then, abruptly, he spoke: __Samuel__: James, your home. We, uh, missed you (gulp). __James__: Aren’t you going to give me hug? __Samuel__: Uh, yeah. They hug awkwardly. __Martha__: James! Your home! Did the Union win? __James__: They sure did! May 26 was the day the Confederates gave in. Anne, how are you? __Anne__: I am fine James, how are you? __James__: Wonderful. Anyway, I am sure you are all starting to recover from the shock of Adam’s death but I thought you might want to have a proper burial for him. You see I had someone at my station preserve the body and when I left to come home, I took him with me. So here is the, err… body.
 * __ Civil War Screenplay  __**
 * Fade Out. **
 * January 13, 1865 **
 * March 22, 1865 **

__Anne__: Oh, James, thank you. This does make me sad but it also gives me joy to think that he will be laid to rest, here, at home. __Samuel__: Yes James, thank you. It also makes me feel better knowing that he will always be close by. **Zoom Out** slowly. **VO:** Tommy did end up surviving the shot in the head and came home around the time James came home, fully recovered. We did have a burial service for Adam. The guests that attended were my mum and dad, James, Susan and her family (including Tommy who cried like a baby and blamed the whole thing on himself), and a few others. We wrapped him in an article of clothing from each person he cared most about. We then buried him under the willow tree he used to sit under when he wanted to get away. I guess in a way Susan was right. He did come home to us. He might not have come willingly, but he did come home. // THE END  //