Image by AI Leino from Pixabay
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Melissa Anne Crawley: 40s. Female. Owner of the Watsonville General Store. Intelligent, strong-willed single mother in an abusive relationship.
Celestino Tobera: 20s. Male. Filipino migrant field worker. Well-read dreamer disillusioned with his vision of the American Dream.
Bobby Crawley: Late teens. Male. The son of Melissa Anne Crawley. Takes after his late father’s short-temper trying to defend his town and Country against outsiders.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Domestic, Gun, and Anti-Asian Violence.
(Lights up to dimly light up the interior of the Watsonville General Store. It is January 1930 at 4:10 a.m. On one of the sides of the stage, we see a window that is left slightly ajar.)
(A hand is seen pushing the window open.)
(CELESTINO TOBERA, a Filipino farm worker in his early 20s struggles to get through the window until he lands on the store’s wooden floor. After hearing some voices come from the outside, he scurries behind a counter. After a beat, he goes to the window to check if the coast is clear. Realizing that it is, he takes a breath of relief and backs into a display of cans causing some of them to fall.)
(A light from upstage is turned on and CELESTINO searches for a place to hide.)
(MELISSA ANNE CRAWLEY, a woman in her 40s and the owner of the Watsonville General Store, enters wearing a nightgown holding a rifle. She reaches over to one of the walls and flips on a light switch to fully reveal the store.)
(MELISSA scans the store cautiously to see if anyone else is inside. She sees a can on the floor, picks it up and places it on a counter. She still doesn’t see Celestino but as she gets closer to finding him, CELESTINO deftly moves around in the opposite direction where he hits another box that falls – he ducks, she raises her rifle.)
MELISSA
Get up! I saw you!
(CELESTINO slowly rises from behind the counter with his hands raised. He’s dressed in a McIntosh suit, which is usually pristine, but on this morning, his slacks are dirty, a sleeve is torn and his face is bruised and bloodied.)
MELISSA
Good God.
CELESTINO
Not tonight.
MELISSA
What do you…? Get out.
(Pause.)
GET OUT!
(CELESTINO shakes his head saying, “No.”)
MELISSA
Can’t you speak English?
(CELESTINO shakes his head to say, “Yes.”)
MELISSA
Then you can understand that when I say Get Out, I meant, GET! OUT!
CELESTINO
I can’t. My feet are frozen, mam.
MELISSA
They weren’t frozen when you… how did you get in here?
(CELESTINO points to the window.)
CELESTINO
Mam, please. People are trying to kill–
MELISSA
That doesn’t concern me-
CELESTINO
All over Watsonville. My friends were thrown off the Pajaro Bridge, so we had to run(MELISSA whirls her rifle around the store.)
MELISSA
We? There’s more of you in here?
CELESTINO
No. No. Just me, mam.
(MELISSA spins back pointing the rifle at Celestino.)
MELISSA
Bobby! Bobby Jr.! Get down here!
CELESTINO
Shhh… Mam. Shh… Please. I will pay you, Mam! Here!
(CELESTINO digs into his pockets and pulls out a few dollars and
some dance tickets and throws them on the table.)
MELISSA
Let me see your hands!
CELESTINO
So I can stay here until the sunrise. Please.
MELISSA
What are those? Are you trying to swindle me too?
CELESTINO
No. Oh, you meant… Those are dance tickets. From the Palm Beach Club.
MELISSA
That’s where you dance with our girls, isn’t it?
CELESTINO
We’re just using the few hours we have off from the fields for companionship. To to dance. To
feel. To be a human being.
MELISSA
Then you should go home for that.
CELESTINO
This is our home.
MELISSA
No. Home is where everyone around you looks the same. You people are the ones invading our
land.
CELESTINO
Invading? I was hired to come to here because I am a hard worker. Something you Americans
aren’t able to do.
(MELISSA raises her rifle at CELESTINO.)
MELISSA
Watch your mouth, boy!
CELESTINO
Celestino Tobera. That is my name. Not boy.
MELISSA
Dead. That’ll be your name if you keep talking like that.
CELESTINO
No offense, mam. I was just trying to tell you my story.
MELISSA
“No offense, mam.” I know you didn’t learn that from working the Strawberries.
CELESTINO
Mr. Hartendorp. Before we came here. In Manila. I learned English through the stories he would
read to us.
MELISSA
Mary had a little lamb? Or somethin’ like Humpty Dumpty?
CELESTINO
Hamlet… As You Like It… Twelfth Night.
MELISSA
“Is this a rifle which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?”
CELESTINO
Ah. The Scottish Play. Except with a rifle and not a dagger. One of my favorite plays.
MELISSA
I’m not up at 4 in the morning to talk about Shakespeare.
CELESTINO
Then what about poetry?
MELISSA
You’re kidding me.
CELESTINO
American mouth-songs!
Those of mechanics — each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong, The carpenter
singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The wood-cutter’s song — the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission,
or at sundown.
The day what belongs to the day — At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, cleanblooded, singing with melodious voices, melodious thoughts.
Come! some of you! Still be flooding The States with hundreds and thousands of mouth-songs,
fit for The States only.
That poem kept me afloat as our ship left from Manila Bay to Hawaii. From there to California’s
San Joaquin Valley to Alaska and back to Stockton. I chased after the meaning of that song
which Walt Whitman writes about. But now. Now, I wonder if that version of his American had
ever existed.
MELISSA
It does exist but only for people who put in the work for that dream.
CELESTINO
Look at my hands.
(As CELESTINO takes a step towards Melissa, she holds up the rifle.)
LOOK AT THEM!
These are the hands of a person who has worked to be a part of that dream!
MELISSA
For the last time, either get out of my store or I’ll end those dreams of yours with this.
(CELESTINO stops in his tracks and holds up his hands.)
CELESTINO
Okay… alright… I’ll go.
(CELESTINO backs his way out the door. As soon as he’s out of site,
MELISSA sits down in relief until we hear…)
BOBBY (O.S.)
Get in there!
(The store’s door opens with BOBBY JR. with a gun raised backs CELESTINO inside the store. MELISSA stands up.)
BOBBY
Stand over there! You really think that you can run from me again, boy?
MELISSA
Bobby! Where have you been? Who is that?
BOBBY
Doesn’t matter. I’m shooting the person who’s breaking into our store.
MELISSA
But he… he didn’t break in. You pushed him in.
BOBBY
That’s not what I saw. And that’s not what you saw either.
MELISSA
Why don’t you let Sheriff Sinott handle this?
BOBBY
The Sheriff’s only interested in helping these goo-goos. I saw this one at the Club in Palm Beach
with Regina
MELISSA
You said that you broke up with her
BOBBY
So, I rounded up the boys to have a talk with her but the Sheriff and Locke-Paddon Boys were
surrounding the place.
MELISSA
I’m sure those boys were only protecting their Club.
BOBBY
Or them. All we’re trying to do is defend our land. Our families. Our way of life.
Remember when Daddy was alive? We had no troubles with anyone in the valley. Everyone
respected us and our store. We kept everyone fed. We kept everyone in the light at night from the
oil they bought from us. This town needs us. And ever since those foreigners started to cause
problems about wanting to get paid what they think they deserve, or bringing in their diseases, or
breaking the law by trying to marry our women, they destroyed the balance of life in
Watsonville… and in this country.
(Points the gun at Celestino.)
And this is to tip the scale… back to us.
CELESTINO
Mam, help me! Please! Use the dagger in your hand
BOBBY
Wait what… how did you know what…
(BOBBY turns and points the gun at MELISSA.)
BOBBY
She always mutters under her breath when…
MELISSA
Put the gun down, Bobby!
CELESTINO
It was because I was in here earlier.
(BOBBY spins back to pointing the gun at CELESTINO.)
CELESTINO
I was just trying to get away and I saw the window-.
BOBBY
SHUT UP! I wasn’t talking to you! Ma, was he in here earlier?
MELISSA
No.
BOBBY
This is what you get for lying, boy!
MELISSA
Stop! He was in here! He was in here! Celestino came in a bloody mess and I couldn’t turn him
away.
BOBBY
You know his name!? How could you lie to me like that? You had him in here?! Do you know
what he could have done to you?
MELISSA
Nothing. Nothing happened. He just needed a place–
(BOBBY hits MELISSA, but she doesn’t fall.)
BOBBY
(To MELISSA) No wonder Daddy always called you weak. You never learn, do you? Get out of
here. I’ll deal with you after I’m done with Celestino here.
(MELISSA doesn’t move.)
BOBBY
GO!!!
(MELISSA starts to make her way up the hallway where Celestino
went earlier to go to the bathroom.)
(To Celestino.)
Get on your knees.
(BOBBY stands over CELESTINO pointing the gun down at him ready
to pull the trigger. Just as he’s about to fire, MELISSA re-enters the
scene, grabs a can and hits BOBBY in the back of the head stunning
him and causing him to fall.)
MELISSA
(To Celestino.)
C’mon, get up! Get out of here!
CELESTINO
Come with me. He will kill you if you stay.
MELISSA
He won’t. I know him.
(In mad mixture of confusion and fear, CELESTINO runs out the door.
BOBBY regains some of his senses and starts after CELESTINO out
the door.)
BOBBY (O.S.)
Get back here!
(Almost without thinking, MELISSA grabs the rifle, and standing in the
open doorway, takes aim and fires a shot! And then another one! In a
daze, she backs away from the door and slowly points the rifle down.)
(Silence.)
(CELESTINO runs from off-stage to the door and immediately stops
and slowly enters with his hands raised in the air.)
CELESTINO
Mam, he’s…
(MELISSA is still in a daze as CELESTINO moves towards her, slowly
takes the rifle, places it on a counter, and pulls out a chair for her to
sit in.)
CELESTINO
Sit here. Everything will be… Thank you for… Is there anything I can get you?
(MELISSA finally makes eye contact with CELESTINO and rises from
the chair and goes to the counter, takes out a box and the money inside
it.)
(She goes back to him and gives him all the money.)
MELISSA
Take this and get out of Watsonville.
CELESTINO
I can’t take this.
MELISSA
Yes, you can and you will. You have to.
CELESTINO
What about you? And what about…?
MELISSA
This doesn’t concern you now.
CELESTINO
I can’t leave you like this. Come with me.
MELISSA
No. It’s best I stay here. It would only raise suspicion about Bobby if I went with you.
CELESTINO
I don’t know what to say.
MELISSA
Say, “Goodbye”.
CELESTINO
I’m so sorry things had to end like this.
MELISSA
The sun is starting to come up. You don’t have much time.
(CELESTINO moves to exit out the door.)
MELISSA
I know that America isn’t everything that Walt Whitman wrote about, but promise me to not lose
hope. Seems like you know what this country is supposed to be, more than the ones who were
born here. We need people like you.
CELESTINO
“I can no other answer make but thanks; And thanks.”
(CELESTINO exits.)
(Lights fade out.)
END OF PLAY
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