The Unplugging Read online

Page 2


  They sit. BERN drinks her tea. ELENA watches her. After a bit, ELENA goes and gets the pot, refills BERN's cup.

  BERN

  Elena, I— (She goes to get up.)

  ELENA

  Sit. Drink your tea.

  ELENA checks the pot to see how much is left. She pours out the last few drops into her cup, downs it. Then she goes out.

  BERN drinks her tea. She cries, not hysterically, but almost as if she does not know she is crying.

  ELENA comes back carrying a lantern.

  let there be light

  BERN

  where did you get that?

  ELENA

  outhouse.

  She shakes the lantern.

  there's probably enough in there for tonight, and then we will figure out what to burn in it.

  BERN

  ever smart, you

  ELENA

  and—

  She pulls a candle out of her pocket.

  BERN

  wow.

  ELENA

  whoever's place it was did not like to do his business in the dark

  BERN

  lucky for us. (beat) How'd you know that about the tea?

  ELENA

  what about the tea?

  BERN

  that it smells woodsy when it gets old

  ELENA

  my grandma, I guess. She never really trusted the technology. Never used a bank card. Drove an ancient truck with a standard transmission. Fixed things instead of throwing them out.

  BERN

  I never knew my grandparents. I wish I had. So much I don't know about where I come from.

  ELENA

  It was an accident really. My mother used to send me to my father in the summers. He'd pick me up at the bus station near his community, take me to his place, not much more than a shack really. He'd last a couple of days, trying to be a dad, to care about my life… then he'd vanish.

  BERN

  Like—disappear?

  ELENA

  well, there'd be a note—“Have to go work”—and I wouldn't see him again.

  BERN

  He wasn't able to be a parent.

  ELENA

  Oh no. I have no idea how he got together with my mother in the first place. He probably left the marriage the same way—“Have to go work.”

  BERN

  how old were you? When he left you in the shack?

  ELENA

  the first time? Maybe seven.

  BERN

  He left a seven-year-old alone?

  ELENA laughs.

  ELENA

  After he'd been gone a couple of days, my grandma would show up. I don't know how she knew. And we'd go out on the land. Check her traps, hunt, pick medicines.

  BERN

  lucky for us

  ELENA

  When she got really old, she was tiny, like a bird, they put her in a home, but she wouldn't stay. She kept running away. Died in the bush.

  That's what they did to us, Bern.

  BERN

  They didn't lock us up, Elena.

  ELENA

  no, they pushed us out. They drove us out.

  BERN

  they used to do that. Before.

  ELENA

  They?

  BERN

  We used to do that. People. In tough times—we—used to leave people behind.

  ELENA

  because we were a nomadic people! we haven't lived like that in centuries.

  BERN

  still

  ELENA

  Our community—our so-called community—did not leave us behind. It is still there, building walls and gathering up guns to point at whoever they don't want inside the walls.

  BERN

  (beat) not much of a community.

  ELENA

  (beat) not much of a community

  There is a long, full silence.

  Sun is going. Good time to see if this thing will actually work.

  BERN

  It's not quite dark yet. Don't you think we should save it—

  ELENA

  you say there's other cabins around here

  BERN

  yeah, it's quite the village. Was.

  ELENA

  well, tomorrow you will begin to check those other places for more fuel. All these back-to-the-landers, someone is bound to have a supply—

  She fusses with the lantern, then puts a match to the wick. It casts a warm oil-fed light.

  BERN

  and there was light

  ELENA

  And god saw the light, that it was good.

  BERN

  I don't think god has anything to do with it, Elena. God tiptoed from the world when everyone was looking elsewhere.

  They sit looking at the light, the flame and each other.

  NEW YEAR

  Time passes, moving from Little Spirit Moon, December, to Spirit Moon, January. The passage of time can be indicated by movement and light, by the characters building routines, by accumulating things, by building the space in which they live together.

  LOVE

  BERN comes in with a load of wood.

  BERN

  oh my god, what is that smell?

  ELENA

  that is pebeepebonbon—rabbit stew

  BERN

  rabbit. Stew.

  ELENA

  well, stew might be a little generous. Since it is mostly rabbit. But I found some carrots and some onion up at the monk's place.

  BERN

  I don't know why you insist on calling that the monk's place.

  ELENA

  it pleases me to think of him as a monk. Living up there alone, next to the creek, communing with nature. His house is built like a temple to nature. Open spaces, windows that let the sun shine in, simple, elegant, functional. I like to imagine him sitting there, meditating. A Franciscan monk—

  BERN

  so the monk managed to keep carrots?

  ELENA

  under his floor, in sand. Cold but not frozen.

  BERN

  really

  ELENA

  smart monk. People often just left vegetables like carrots in the garden and covered the row with straw or hay, harvest them as they need them. if he did that though, they'd be long gone, so it's good for us that he knew that sand trick. You know, the monk's place might make a good greenhouse, all that glass in that corner where he meditated—

  BERN lifts the lid on the pot.

  BERN

  rabbit.

  ELENA takes the lid and puts it back on the pot.

  ELENA

  he was a good size too. You know, Bern, if you could find a gun—

  BERN

  I'm looking, Elena. Every place, I check for a gun. Though I'm not sure I really want to find a gun.

  ELENA

  If I had a rifle though, I could take a deer. Or a moose. A moose would mean meat for the winter, not having to check dozens of traps in the hope of catching one or two skinny hares.

  BERN

  don't denigrate the poor skinny hare. It was generous of him to step into your little noose—

  ELENA

  Snare. Yes. But if we got a moose, Bern, we could make jerky, and stew, and the hide would be useful for—

  BERN shakes her head in wonder.

  what? I could take a moose.

  BERN

  I have no doubt that you could, Elena.

  ELENA

  then what?

  BERN

  Back there, I never would have guessed that you were this person—so capable, so—

  ELENA
/>   I wasn't this person back there. They were right to expel me. I was a burden. I was negative and bitchy and—you know what they called me?

  BERN

  Eeyore.

  ELENA

  you knew?

  BERN

  everyone knew.

  ELENA

  you know who Eeyore was?

  BERN

  of course

  ELENA

  I had to look it up. In a book. Took me ages 'cause I couldn't figure out how to spell Eeyore. And I had no idea what I was looking for. How do you look for something you don't know?

  BERN

  you never read Winnie-the-Pooh?

  ELENA

  Well, if I had I wouldn't have had to look it up, would I? I had to go to the library. It was creepy. Libraries were creepy when they were—before—now that they're abandoned, they're even worse.

  BERN

  I love libraries. Loved. Full of other peoples' lives, full of other peoples' thoughts.

  ELENA

  ooh no. too quiet, everyone tiptoeing around, all those dead people lined up beside each other on the shelves, librarians frowning at you for touching anything, like all those stories are theirs. Apparently I'm not the only person who felt that way, because the library I went into was trashed. People had burned the books right in the middle of the floor—

  BERN

  idiots. You'd think people would know that we would need those things—

  ELENA

  People didn't think much in those first few weeks, did they? They thought the power was coming back on. It was all just looting and carnage. (beat) The children's section was mostly left alone. And they have encyclopedias for kids, you know. I found out who Eeyore was, and then I found the Pooh books.

  BERN

  and you read them?

  ELENA

  I read them. I would rather have been Pooh.

  BERN

  I think they threw me out because I am too much Pooh… a bear of very little brain.

  ELENA

  You were—free-spirited.

  BERN starts to laugh.

  BERN

  is that what they called me?

  ELENA

  that was then

  BERN

  oh, Elena, I know my failings. I know what they called me. I didn't think I was doing any harm. I was the grasshopper, singing and dancing while the industrious ants were harvesting and storing for the winter.

  ELENA

  but didn't the ants relent and share with the grasshopper, once they gave him a good tongue-lashing?

  BERN

  maybe in the Disney version. I think the original was much grimmer than that. They sent him away. Her. They sent her away to starve.

  ELENA nods.

  see, my mistake was—I didn't think there was anything after—planes drop out of the sky, lights go out, money becomes nothing more than firestarter… I thought, hell, it's the end of the world, let's party, all bets are off. I didn't think we would—line up behind feudal lords. Be assessed on our usefulness. Be found wanting.

  ELENA

  Joke's on them.

  BERN

  I guess.

  ELENA

  turns out you're more useful than most of those who stayed.

  BERN

  Who knew all that socializing would pay off. Summers up here were all about visiting—dinners at this house, at that cabin, up squatter's road, across the lake—drinking too much red wine and solving the world's problems. Fat lot of good it did us.

  ELENA

  You kept us alive. You kept me alive. I would've hung around like a fort Indian until I starved or Laird's goons shot me, the way they did the feral dogs.

  BERN

  I was pissed. I didn't really want to be in that club anyway. Too Lord of the Flies. But I was really pissed that they only wanted “women of child-bearing age.” The power goes off and suddenly we're nothing more than breed-mares.

  ELENA stirs the stew.

  what'd you call it, again?

  ELENA

  what?

  BERN moves to ELENA.

  BERN

  the stew. The rabbit stew. Bipbapbop something—

  ELENA

  Pebeepebonbon.

  BERN

  Pe-bee-pe—

  ELENA

  Pebeepebonbon. (laughs) I don't even know why, that's what we called it when I was a kid.

  BERN

  is that your language?

  ELENA

  I don't know. I don't think so. Because in the language, a rabbit is—waaboos—and soup would be—saaboo—waaboosaaboo—

  BERN

  Waaboosaaboo—

  ELENA

  Which doesn't sound a lot like pebeepebonbon—

  BERN

  Waaboosaaboo

  ELENA

  Pebeepebonbon

  The woman have moved together over this. There is a touch, easy, then suddenly awkward.

  BERN

  Elena.

  ELENA

  Okay, I think we can eat. Bowls, Bern. And you can put spoons on the table.

  BERN pauses, wanting to take the moment further. ELENA squeezes past her, gets bowls.

  BERN

  Elena—

  ELENA

  Spoons.

  BERN breaks and gets spoons. ELENA serves the stew. They sit.

  Thanks to the Creator for this meal. Thanks to this waaboos for giving himself to us for this meal.

  BERN

  Meegwetch, waaboos.

  ELENA

  that's right.

  BERN

  Meegwetch for the shelter, the fire and for you, Elena, who catches and then cooks the waabit for us.

  ELENA

  Eat.

  They eat.

  BERN

  wow. I can feel myself getting stronger as I eat.

  ELENA

  (nodding) meat. We need meat, Indians. It's in our blood.

  BERN

  Do you think they—

  ELENA

  I try not to think of them, Bern.

  BERN

  I think of them all the time.

  ELENA

  me too. I wonder how they are doing. If the canned goods have run out. If anyone has died of botulism, or diarrhea, or strep. (beat) Yeah, I think about them. But I try not to.

  BERN

  (beat) I think I'll go a little further tomorrow. Down around the lake there's a few cabins, see what treasures I can find. More tea would be nice. Sugar. Mmmm. Some kind of canned vegetables.

  ELENA

  Wire. The thinner the better, for snares. Pliers. A hammer. Nails.

  BERN

  this is starting to sound like a pretty heavy pack. I may have to stay out overnight.

  ELENA

  I'll package some of this to take with you. Just in case. Which means you can't eat it all now.

  BERN

  just one more spoon

  BERN goes to dip her spoon into ELENA's bowl, ELENA smacks her lightly.

  Be the first time we spent a night apart since—

  ELENA

  I spent most of my life alone. I'll be fine.

  BERN

  don't you miss it, Elena?

  ELENA

  miss what?

  BERN

  Touch.

  ELENA reacts.

  Intimacy.

  ELENA reacts.

  Sex.

  ELENA

  phhff

  BERN

  really.

  ELENA

  Messy. In every way. Complicated. Nope. I am glad to be done with it. Made e
verything that much simpler.

  BERN

  it makes me grouchy. No sex. (beat) Maybe that's why you are kinda Eeyore.

  ELENA

  if you find a rifle, don't forget to look for bullets.

  MUKWA GEEZIS

  Time passes, moving from Spirit Moon, January, to Bear Moon, February. Again, the passage of time can be indicated by movement and light.

  THE STRANGER

  BERN is out foraging, near the monk's place. She stops a couple of times, sensing something. Then continues. Then stops.

  BERN

  hello? Is there someone there?

  She takes out a knife.

  come out.

  SEAMUS enters, hands held apart. He is young enough, handsome, a bit hungry looking.

  SEAMUS

  Hi.

  BERN

  (beat) Hi?

  SEAMUS

  yeah, hi. We used to say it all the time to people when we met them.

  BERN

  Ha.

  SEAMUS

  no, hi. (beat) do you think—you could—(He motions to the knife.)—it's not very welcoming—

  BERN

  maybe I'm not very welcoming

  SEAMUS

  tough luck for me, then

  BERN considers him for a moment. Puts the knife away.

  thank you.

  BERN shrugs.

  glad you trust me

  BERN

  I don't

  SEAMUS

  but

  BERN

  that's about me, not you. You may still be a rapist, or a murderer, you may still want to harm me. And if you do, if you try, I will fight you, but you look kinda hungry and not very strong, and I am not hungry and I am strong. So.

  SEAMUS

  So?

  BERN

  So. I don't want to be the kind of person who can kill someone. And if I have a knife, then I am choosing to use the knife, and that means I have to be ready to kill you. I don't think I am that person.

  SEAMUS

  wow. Did you just think all that right now?

  BERN laughs.

  what?

  BERN

  so what are you doing here?

  SEAMUS

  just found myself here.

  BERN

  where did you come from?

  SEAMUS points vaguely.

  really. You have been just wandering since the unplugging.

  SEAMUS

  the unplugging? That's what you call it? An apocalypse destroys half the world, and you call it the unplugging?

  BERN shrugs.

  BERN

  I used to think of it as the earth waking and shaking like some great dog, and all the machines and wires being shaken off like so many fleas. The earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, the disappearance of the Maldives… But that was really negative. The unplugging is more—benign.