Brady City, Texas, 1929

by Jay Squires

CHARACTERS:

Fanny Barnwarmer: Eighty-five-year-old woman with plenty of spark and sizzle still in her. Has been performing at the Tavern for forty-four years.
Juniper Albright: Seventy-six-year-old woman who was Fanny’s former companion from their first years at Brady City.
Reporter: Mid-thirties. Works for the New York Times; now in Brady, Texas to write a human-interest story on the famous Fanny Barnwarmer.

SETTING: Front porch of Fanny Barnwarmer’s home. Rocking chair, DOWNSTAGE RIGHT, facing kitchen chair CENTER, and front steps behind, descending to street level with a flowerbed to the side. UPSTAGE LEFT, is like a separate SET placed at an angle to the main stage with indistinct, smoky walls (conveying a sense of unreality). A very plain cot faces DOWNSTAGE. This section is always in shadow when downstage is in full light—and vice-versa [Remember this is from the actors’ perspective, not the audience’s. What is “left” to the actor would be “right” for the audience. What is far back on the stage to the audience is designated “upstage” to the actor.]

PLACE/TIME: Brady Texas, Aug. 8, 1929

AT RISE: FANNY sits in rocking chair facing REPORTER. She is wearing a flowered housedress and he is wearing a suit with the tie loosened at the neck and askew, a hat on the floor beside him. JUNIPER sits on the cot, in shadow.

FANNY:
You might as well hear it from my mouth, young man. This face sure ain’t gonna hide it none. I’m eighty-five years old. Back in my sixties, when I looked in the mirror I saw a forty-year-old woman smiling back. Now I cain’t even find the mirror without my specks.

[The young REPORTER smiles genuinely, then scratches a spot above his right ear. FANNY watches this, then looks above his head, a slight smile lingering on her lips]

[Stagelight dims on FANNY and the REPORTER, and falls full on JUNIPER, sitting on her cot, the letter held in both hands]

JUNIPER:
(Reading)
Well, I watched him smile, sweet Juniper, and scratch a spot just north of his right ear. Now, I know you always want me to get to the point—and I know they only give you a few minutes for letter-reading time—but if I don’t get the details right, it’ll all just flutter ’round like a butterfly on this dried up field of my memory till it can’t find a fresh flower stalk to light on, and it’ll be gone. So, yes, the place he scratched was just north of his right ear. Then, I said to him:

[Full light on FANNY and REPORTER, while JUNIPER goes into shadow. NOTE: hereinafter stage directions will be shortened to “Switch to”]

FANNY
Hells bells, son, don’t bother now sayin’ how wrong I am—how I’m still a charmer! It’s too late. Your timing’s way off. If mine’d been that bad I wouldn’t’ve lasted so long at the Tavern. And you wouldn’t be here now interviewin’ me.

REPORTER:
That’s right. Forty-four years!—It’s hard to imagine? Tell me about that, Miss Bar-Barn … um, Miss Barnwarmer.

[Switch to:]

JUNIPER (Reading):
I wait for him to finish tussling with my name. Then I smile at him and I say ...

[Switch to:]

FANNY:
That’s how it all started, you know. With the name.

REPORTER:
What do you mean?

FANNY:
That first night. Back in eighty-five. Juniper and me, we was sittin’ at the table in Hazel’s Tavern—that’s what it was called before she shortened it to the Tavern. A couple of unescorted ladies, sittin’ in a man’s bar.

REPORTER:
(Writing on his tablet)
Your friend … Juniper’s her name? J-U-N-I—

FANNY:
P-E-R- yep, we was travlin’ companions. Sisters, we’d say if’n it ever came up. You could say we was more grit than brains. But the stagecoach left us thirsty and besides, Juniper wanted Brady City to know we weren’t plannin’ on leaving any time soon.

REPORTER:
Why was that, Miss Barn—warmer? Brady’s not a big city even now. But back then—

FANNY:
There was close to a hundred. But outta that hundred was one … Thurston Flourney!

[With the name “Thurston Flourney” the REPORTER is seen writing intently on his tablet]

[Switch to:]

JUNIPER:
(Reading)
Juniper, I watched that young man write that name down just as quick as I said it, then underline it, not once, but twice. And before the day was done, he had it circled. Oh, I tell you, love, he was a reporter, true to his story.

[Switch to:]

REPORTER:
(Tapping his pencil on his tablet)
So, Thurston Flourney—You’re saying that’s the name it all started with?

FANNY:
No … an’ you’re gettin’ ahead of yerself. I cain’t believe your editor sent you fifteen hundred miles to write a story ‘bout Thurston Flourney.

REPORTER:
No, Ma’am.

[Switch to:]

JUNIPER
(Reading)
Just then, I watch the color leave his face like a south-goin’ bird in winter. I think he was afraid I’d send him away without his story.

[Switch to:]

FANNY:
Then get your pencil ready again, and listen. Juniper an’ me was at the table. I had my sarsparilla and Juniper had her shot of whiskey alongside a glass of water. A couple of fellas walks up to our table an’ one of ’em flattens his hands on it and gets up real close.
(Hunched forward, her hands on her knees,
elbows out, her voice takes on a deeper, more
threatening tone as she acts out the character
in her story)
He says to us, looking from one to th’other, ‘Think yer mama’d approve you bein’ in a ’stablishment like this—two little things like you? What’s yer names?
(Beat)
Well, Sir, Juniper just stares at him, like a rattlesnake would afore it struck. I knew I had to say somethin’, and quick. I was just hopin’ he couldn’t see my heart poundin’ through my dress, cause he sure was lookin’ hard enough at where my heartbeat was comin’ from.

REPORTER:
(Animated, a slight smile)
Okay … yes ...

FANNY:
I says, ‘Sir, my name is Fanny—Fanny Barnwarmer.
(Sitting up straight, holding up a finger
to REPORTER)
You see, son, it’s all in that timing I talked about earlier. I wait till the timing was just right and I tells ’em —now remember, there was only about ten in the bar back then—and so I says right through that curtain of bad breath … and it was baaaaaad—
(Suddenly, leaning in again toward the
REPORTER)
I says, ‘Now, I ask you, Sir, who’s gonna saddle a pretty little thing like me with the name Barnwarmer?’
(Beat)
Now I gotta interrupt myself, Mr. Reporter, cause this next part’s very important—details, details—but just as soon’s I says ‘pretty little thing’ I let drop my right eyelid, not like a flirty wink, but like one o’ them curtains ya pulls down over a window—like this …
(Demonstrating)

[Switch to:]

JUNIPER
(Clearly showing her emotion, stopping
her reading now and then to stare off in
space)
Juniper, Darlin, I wish you coulda seen his face when I did it! His laugh came so sudden-like when I dropped my eyelid, that he, hisself, lets go his pencil and he had to get up and fetch it from where it rolled to, off the porch, and into the flower bed …. Oh, I know, sweet Jun, how you hated that look, 'specially when it came to be a part of my act. You thought it was a cheap trick, and made a clown of me and all … and was disrespectful. For a woman, I mean. Sometimes, I’d catch the look on your face from my one open eye as you was sitting where you always did in the audience—I miss you sittin’ there, Jun. Nowadays, I insist that table be always empty now, but with a whiskey and water glass aside it—Anyhow, I know how my clownin’ around pained you. But it worked, Darlin. It worked! …. Anyways, once the reporter got his pencil and settled a bit I went on ….

[Switch to:]

FANNY:
So after I raise the curtain on my one eye and then look at them so innocent-like, I says, ‘I ask ya, kind Sir, who’d saddle me with the name Barnwarmer, and then plop a first name like Fanny on top of it?’ Well, he stood straight up, and he looked at the other fella, then looked back at me, and then he let out a guf-faw that came all the way from his gut, and the two start laughin’. And that goes on for near-five minutes, while I keeps a straight face.

REPORTER:
I’d like to have been one of those ten who were in there, just to lean back against the bar and watch you perform.

FANNY:
Turns out the fella’s sister was Hazel. Now, he may o’ been no more’n a turd in the hen house full ’o turds, but his sister—ah, well, sir, she was one sharp Gal. She knew if she’s gonna make Hazel’s Tavern a respectable success, she’s gotta draw families in from miles away. That you do through entertainment … an’ advertisin’.

REPORTER:
And so he tells her about you?

FANNY:
It happens she’d been keepin’ an eye on her brother all along to see as he didn’t get hisself in any trouble. So she saw what I’d done. Then, after he stops laughin’ he goes up to her and I see him pointing at his eye and tryin’ to do what I did. He’s tryin’ to hold his eyelid down with his other hand, and I see they’s both laughin’ by now.

REPORTER:
Well, it is funny, Miss Barnwarmer. It was kind of a one-liner and a sight gag, wasn’t it? Like on vaudeville. But still, it’s not an hour and a half performance, is it?

FANNY:
(Pauses, as to study him)
No, it ain’t. So she buys Juniper a whiskey an’ me another sarsparilla and she plops herself down at our table. She asks me if I knew I had a knack for makin’ people laugh. I tell her people usually come around to laughin’ if I talk long enough. For some reason that makes her laugh. She asks about Juniper and me’s stagecoach trip from Springfield to Brady City. And she laughs some more. Afore I finish my sasparilla she’s offerin’ me two dollars a night, twice a week, just to talk to the people. And that, young man, is how it all started.

REPORTER:
I can’t wait to see you perform tonight.

FANNY:
Well … It’s a differnt Fanny Barnwarmer you’ll see tonight. Back then I had my legs. And some would say …
(With difficulty, bending to raise
her housedress to just above her ankles)
they was mighty fine legs. Now they just cross at the ankles underneath my rockin’ chair. Up till five years ago, the stage curtains would open and there’d be only the rockin’ chair on the stage. And I’d come from the backstage side carryin’ my newspaper in one hand an’ my specs in the other. Now, I’m sittin’ there, my specs on an’ the newspaper unfolded in my lap. But when I open my mouth, young man—well. Forty-four years! And things just keep gettin’ better. You know why?

REPORTER:
Tell me.

FANNY:
Because the world just keeps gettin’—crazier. An’ it’s all right there in the newspaper. The good old Brady Sentinel. There’s nothing I cain’t find to talk about that ain’t in the Sentinel.

REPORTER:
(With a small shake of his head, and a
skeptical look on his face)
Is that a fact, Miss Barnwarmer?

FANNY:
That is a fact, son.
(Her head tilts, and she seems again to
study the REPORTER)
I been startin’ out my act like that at the Tavern since the get-go. But listen … you been squirming round your chair like you got more to say, but you jus’ don’t know how to say it.

REPORTER:
It’s just that—Ummm … Well … there was someone, the name of Will Rogers, who got very famous saying that. He said, “All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.”

FANNY:
I have heard the young fella’s name. I’ll give you that. I’d have to check Hazel’s logs.

REPORTER:
Her logs?

FANNY:
Up till she died, ten years ago, everyone who bought a ticket for my act had to sign the register, including their address. She’d use it in advertisin’. Said it was good for business.

REPORTER:
I’m not sure I understand. You’re saying Mr. Rogers …?

FANNY:
Mighta been. Might not o’ been. Don’t know. What I’m sayin’, young man, is that I didn’t steal that sentence from no Will Rogers.

REPORTER:
No … Steal? No, no, I didn’t mean to infer that—

FANNY:
See … my Daddy always brought me up to read the newspaper, front to back, every day. So, the day our stage got into town, the first place I went to was the Sentinel—an’ I was loadin’ up with all the back issues—while Juniper was introducing herself to Sheriff Clayton Peckham.
(Looking up, smiling at a thought)
But that last part, about bein’ an alibi for his ignorance … Dang! That was good! I wish I’d thought of that.

REPORTER:
(Chewing on his pencil and looking
intently at FANNY)
Miss Barnwarmer, I’d like to get a kind of timeline for what happened. So, the first thing you and Miss Juniper did was go into the tavern?

FANNY:
(Showing impatience)
Nope. An’ if’n you check your notes … first thing I did was go to the Sentinel. On account of I wanna know about Brady City and the people and what they care about every day.

REPORTER:
(Frowning, but recovering with a
puzzled smile)
Sorry, Miss Barnwarmer. I—I just need this to go well. And there are a few things I don’t … that are just—just a little hazy. Like, well, like Miss Juniper.
(Beat)
So … Miss Juniper goes straight to Sheriff—
(He turns back a page on his notes)
—Sheriff Peckham? While you’re loading up on past issues of the Sentinel?

FANNY:
That’s right. She was lookin’ to see if there was a Thurston Flourney in Brady City.

REPORTER:
Yeeeeees. Yeeeeees. I see. So—so, Miss Barnwarmer … was—was … um … was this Thurston Flourney … was he Miss Juniper’s—beau?

FANNY:
Her what? HAW! No! Now, what’d make you think o’ that, young man? Her beau!

REPORTER:
Well … I don’t know. To come all the way to Brady City from across the United States—I just wondered—

FANNY:
No, ha-ha! no—we come to Brady City ’cause she aimed to kill Thurston Flourney—kill him dead.

END OF SCENE 1

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