POSSIBLE NEXT 3 DAYS! 'TAKE SHELTER' SIGNAL IS 2 SHORTS, 1 LONG. Above the display windows, now rolled up, are slatted wooden STORM SHUTTERS. Above the door is a lovely old-fashioned sign, black with gold gilt letters: ANDERSON's MARKET*ISLAND POST
OFFICE ISLAND CONSTABLE'S OFFICE.
There are several WOMEN going in, and a couple more OCTAVIA GODSOE and JOANNA STANHOPE coming out. TAVIA (forty-five-ish) and JOANNA (late forties or early fifties) are clutching full grocery bags and chatting animatedly. TAVIA looks at the ROBBIE BEALS dummy and elbows JOANNA. They both laugh as they go down the steps.
14 INTERIOR: ANDERSON'S MARKET DAY.
This is a very well equipped grocery store, and in many ways a charming throwback to the groceries of the 1950s. The floors are wood and creak comfortably underfoot. The lights are globes 18
hanging on chains. There's a tin ceiling. Yet there are signs of our modern age; two new cash registers with digital price-readers beside them, a radio scanner on a shelf behind the checkout counter, a wall of rental videos,
and security cameras mounted high in the corners.
At the rear is a meat cooler running nearly the length of the store. To its left, below a convex mirror, is a door marked simply TOWN CONSTABLE.
The store is very crowded. Everybody is stocking up for the oncoming storm.
15 INTERIOR: MEAT COUNTER.
MIKE ANDERSON COMES out of the door leading to the meat locker (it is at the other end of the rear from the constable's office). He is a good-looking man of about thirty-five. Right now he also looks harried half to death . . . although the little smile never leaves his eyes and the corners of his mouth. This guy likes life, likes it a lot, and usually finds something in it to amuse him.
He's wearing butcher's whites right now and pushing a shopping cart filled with wrapped cuts of meat. Three WOMEN and one MAN converge on him almost at once. The MAN, dressed in a red sport coat and black shirt with turned-around collar, is first to reach him.
REV. BOB RIGGINS
Don't forget the bean supper next Wednesday-week, Michael I'm going to need every deacon I can lay my hands on.
MIKE I'll be there ... if we get through the next three days, that is.
REV. BOB RIGGINS I'm sure we will; God takes care of his own.
Off he goes. Behind him is a cute little muffin named JILL ROBICHAUX, and she apparently has less trust in God. She starts pawing over the packages and reading the labels before MIKE can even begin to distribute them.
JILL
Are there pork chops, Michael? I thought for sure you'd still have pork chops.
He gives her a wrapped package. JILL looks at it, then puts it in her heaped-up shopping cart.
The other two women, CARLA BRIGHT and LINDA ST. PIERRE, are already going through the other wrapped cuts. CARLA looks at something, almost takes it, then drops it back into one of the trays of the meat-display cabinet.
19
CARLA
Ground chuck's too dear! Don't you have plain old hamburger, Michael Anderson?
MIKE Right-
She snatches the package he's holding out before he can finish.
MIKE (continues) here.
More folks now, picking the stuff over as fast as he can get it out of his cart. MIKE bears this for a moment, then decides to put on his constable's hat. Or try.
MIKE
Folks, listen. It's a storm, that's all. We've gotten through plenty before this, and we'll get through plenty after. Calm down and stop acting like mainlanders!
That gets them a little. They stand back, and MIKE begins distributing the meat again.
LINDA
Don't be smart, Michael Anderson.
She says it the way islanders do 'sma'aat.' And when CARLA says 'dear,' it comes out 'deah.'
MIKE (smiles) No, Mrs. St. Pierre. I won't be smart.
Behind him, ALTON 'HATCH' HATCHER comes out of the cold room pushing a second cart of wrapped meat. HATCH is about thirty, portly and pleasant. He's MIKE'S second-in-command at the market, and in the constabulary, as well. He is also wearing butcher's whites, and a white hard hat for good measure. Printed on the hard hat is 'A. HATCHER.'
CAT (over the market loudspeaker) Mike! Hey, Mike! Got a phone call!
16 INTERIOR: THE COUNTER, WITH KATRINA 'CAT' WITHERS.
She's about nineteen, very pretty, and handling one of the cash registers. She ignores the line of customers and holds the PA microphone in one hand. In the other is the receiver of the telephone 20
hanging on the wall by the CB radio.
CAT
It's your wife. She says she's got a little problem down to the day care.
17 INTERIOR: RESUME MIKE, HATCH, SHOPPERS AT MEAT CABINET.
The customers are interested and diverted. Life on the island is like a soap opera where you know all the characters.
MIKE She hot under the collar?
18 INTERIOR: RESUME COUNTER, WITH CAT.
CAT
How do I know where she's hot? She's your wife.
Smiles and chuckles from the CUSTOMERS. In island parlance, that was 'a good 'un.' A man of about forty grins at MIKE.
KIRK FREEMAN You better go see about that, Mike.
19 INTERIOR: RESUME MIKE AND HATCH AT MEAT CABINET.
MIKE Can you take over here a bit?
HATCH Can I borrow your whip and chair?
MIKE laughs, knocks on the top of HATCH'S hard hat, and hurries on down front to see what his wife wants.
20 INTERIOR: AT THE COUNTER.
MIKE arrives and takes the phone from CAT. He speaks to his wife, oblivious of the watching, interested audience.
MIKE Hey, Moll, what's up?
21
MOLLY (phone voice) I've got a little problem here can you come?
MIKE eyes his store, which is full of pre-storm shoppers.
MIKE I've got a few little problems of my own, hon. What's yours?
21 INTERIOR: PIPPA HATCHER, CLOSE-UP.
PIPPA is a child of about three years old. Right now she fills the whole screen with her SCREAMING, TERRIFIED FACE. There are RED SMEARS AND BLOTCHES all over it. Maybe we at first take these for blood.
THE CAMERA DRAWS BACK and we see the problem. PIPPA is halfway up a flight of stairs, and has poked her head between two of the posts supporting the banister. Now she can't get it back through. She's still holding on to a piece of bread and jam, though, and we see that what we first took for blood is actually strawberry preserves.
Standing at the foot of the stairs below her, looking solemn, is a group of SEVEN SMALL
CHILDREN, ranging in age from three to five. One of the four-year-olds is RALPH ANDERSON, son of MIKE and MOLLY. Although we may not notice it at once (right now we're more interested in PIPPA'S
plight), RALPHIE has a birthmark on the bridge of his nose. It's not hugely disfiguring or anything, but it's there, like a tiny saddle.
RALPHIE Pippa, can I have your bread, if you're not going to eat it?
PIPPA
(shrieks) NO-OOO-OO!
She begins to yank backward, trying to free herself, still holding on to her snack. It's disappearing into her chubby little fist now, and she appears to be sweating strawberry jam.
22 INTERIOR: THE HALLWAY AND STAIRWELL OF THE ANDERSON HOUSE.
The phone is here, placed on a hallway table halfway between the stairs and the door. Using it is MOLLY ANDERSON, MIKE'S wife. She's about thirty, pretty, and right now vacillating between amusement and fright.
MOLLY Pippa, don't do that, honey . . . just hold still . . .
22
MIKE (phone voice) Pippa? What about Pippa?
23 INTERIOR: BEHIND THE MEAT COUNTER, FEATURING HATCH.
His head snaps
