SCENE 4:       THE DESERT TOWN

Cut to small desert town at night.  Single main street, 19th and early 20th century architecture, small bungalow style houses, a movie theater, drug store, grocery store, post office and one gas station.  Doctor’s office and one schoolhouse.  Main street is lit by street lamps, all other roads are dark.

Cut to Interior of a Pharmacy – back room

After hours, the pharmacy is closed for the night.  The front of the pharmacy is dark, and we can see it through a doorway.  Four older men sit around a table, two of them playing checkers, two of them watching, one is smoking a pipe.  They are all in their late sixties and early seventies.

Each is a character study, pharmacist, town sheriff, gas station owner and the grocer.  We learn from their conversation that it is their habit to gather after supper in the back of old `Doc’s Pharmacy’.  `Doc’, the pharmacist, and the grocer play checkers each night, as the town sheriff and Ernie watch.  Ernie runs the local gas station.  Balding, with a paunch, overalls, perennially grease-stained hands.

Doc:  (Obviously losing the game – exasperatedly, to the grocer, Eddie) “Isn’t it time you got home to the wife?”

Eddie:  “Now you just worry about your game. I’ll worry about the wife.  She isn’t expecting me before nine anyway.  If I got home any sooner, she’d start suspecting me.”

Ernie:  “Suspecting you of what?  That you got no place to go, `cept home?”

Eddie:  “Shouldn’t you be pumping gas someplace?”

Ernie: (To general laughter) “Don’t you worry about my gas.  Got my boy minding the station tonight.  Let `im earn his keep.”

Sheriff:  (After pulling on his pipe, and with a long drawl) “You need the practice anyway, Doc.  I’ve been watching you play Eddie here for almost thirty years, and I don’t remember you winning a game yet.”

Doc:  (In a good-natured dudgeon) “Did too!  I beat him clean, back in `37.  November.  You weren’t here that night.  Figgers.”

Sheriff:  “Yeah, and you been braggin’ about it since.”

Eddie:  “Dudn’t count, noways.  I was off my game that night.  Wasn’t feeling well, and you know it.”

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