I Walked with a Zombie Page #4

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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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