EXT -- THRANE’S PROPERTY -- SUNNY

Open on THRANE’S barn, paint peeling and scattered at the base of its wall. Camera pans smoothly to ranch house, crossing an open expanse between, in which, in mud, Thrane’s daughter is lying facedown. It is not completely clear at first it is a body, nor does the camera slow or break in its movement.

EXT -- FRONT -- RANCH HOUSE --DAY

Thrane is gathering together some things, tools. Tied to a stake near the house is a puppy. It is wagging its tail, sometimes responding to Thrane, it will try to reach him to play with him as he passes it and in subsequent scenes. He ignores it. He starts out of the house, into the land behind.

EXT -- RANCH HOUSE -- SIDE -- DAY

Near the corner of the house, he catches sight of his daughter’s body. Stops dead. Setting the tools carefully down, he moves toward it, slowly, cautiously. When he arrives beside her, he squats down.

He stares at her back a long moment. Thrane looks at once desperately wounded and incredibly laconic. Devastated yet extremely subdued. He reaches down and turns her up, and she comes free with a sucking, the air coming out of her in a sigh, blowing bubbles of mud on her lips. He smears away the mud from around her mouth. He lays her out beside the mud hole and works at bending the body straight. But the body doesn’t want to stay straight, keeps slowly migrating back.
He picks her up, folds her best he can, and carries her across the yard. He ducks under the window, hurries past a worn back stoop with the door on top of it. Thrane kicks hens and chicks out of the way, booting loose turbid clouds of pinfeathers.

EXT -- THRANE’S BARN -- DAY

Hooking the barn door with his boot, he hop-skips back until it is open wide enough to let his foot free and for him to shoulder himself and his daughter in.

INT -- BARN

It is quiet inside, and dark except for the shafts of light from the roof traps, four long pillars of bright dust descending to the scatterings of hay below.

He goes to the far wall and runs his eyes over the hooks and what hangs there: shears, axe, hatchet, hacksaw, hand-saw, hand-rake, horse-rake, pitchfork, hoe. He stands staring, running his eyes over them again from the beginning. He looks over each shoulder in turn, turns in a slow circle in the half-dark of the barn, and walks jaggedly around the barn, kicking apart the damp clumps of hay that coats his boots in a yellow mold.
Moving hay in loads across the uneven dirt with his boots, he drags some together in a pile at the far wall and puts her atop the pile. He brushes the dirt off the dress, pulls the socks up past the calves again, loosens the buckles of the blunt-ended shoes. He scoops up an armload of hay and dumps it on top of her.

INT -- RANCH HOUSE -- STOOP -- DAY

Coming back to the house, he scrapes the soles of his boots on the edge of the stoop. He stamps a few times, pulls the screen open, goes in.

INT -- RANCH HOUSE -- KITCHEN

WIFE is cutting venison into thin strips.

WIFE
Your shoes good?

THRANE
Yes. Boots.

WIFE
Better be.

She turned in a squint toward him, hands red. He holds on to the end of the counter and lifts first one foot, then the other.

WIFE (cont’d)
Pass. (goes back to cutting)

THRANE
Seen my spade? The long-handed job?

WIFE
What for? What do I want with it?

THRANE
You seen it or not?

WIFE
You lent it out to Quade. Your mind’s a blunt one today.

THRANE
I reckon it haent, Quade, is it?

WIFE
Heard me, or didn’t you?

He watches her shoulder blades shiver beneath the dress with each blow. He does not say anything.

WIFE (cont’d)
You seen your little lullaby?

He pushes open the screen. Stops.

THRANE
I haent seen her.

WIFE
She still feeling better? You think it going to stick this time?

Thrane shrugs.

WIFE (cont’d)
We probably should have called Daddy Norton to bless her.

THRANE
Maybe so.

WIFE
Any case, she shouldn’t be out running around so much so soon.
You tell her get her butt here, you see her.

THRANE
I haent seen her. (pushing out onto the stoop,
letting the screen clap to.)(loudly) You know where I’m off.

WIFE
(calling) I know where.

INT -- BARN

Thrane goes into the barn, to the far wall, and takes down the hoe. Uncovering the girl’s face, he looks at her, then covers her quickly over again. He goes out with the hoe in his hands.

EXT -- BARN -- DAY

Drawing the doors shut, he jams the handle of the hoe through the aligned rings. Grunting, he shakes the doors, pulls on their handles.

INT -- PICKUP TRUCK

He gets into his truck, starts it. It starts immediately without difficulty, the engine noise strong and regular.

EXT -- RURAL ROAD --DAY

He drives the pickup truck down the road a little way, parks it at the entrance of a dirt path leading off the road.

EXT -- DIRT PATH -- DAY

He sets off down the path, walking on the mounded sides instead of down in the ruts. The mud in the low spots is drying up, going white and hard. He walks a sunlit five hundred feet down slope to QUADE’S fence.

EXT -- QUADE’S GATE -- DAY

There are ants aswarm on the fence, darkening the knotty rails. He opens it gingerly, walks down a dirt path towards a barn. Stops in barn doorway.

EXT -- QUADE’S BARN -- DAY

THRANE
(from the door) Hey Quade.

INT -- QUADE’S BARN

Quade looks up from the box he is nailing, his half-gaunt face red and stringy, lumpy as the flesh of an old rabbit slaughtered too late.

QUADE
Bet I know what you’re after.

THRANE
(entering barn) Bet you do.

Quade spits nails into the box, drops his hammer on the dirt. He rubs the sweat off his neck, undoes his bags to let them slide off his waist down to the floor. He goes to a corner which sprouts handles. Messing about for a bit, he pulls forth an axe from the angry snarl.

THRANE (cont’d)
That mine?

QUADE
Isn’t it?

THRANE
Hell, (spitting) I come for the spade.

QUADE
(sqinting, looking at the axe) Well, whose the hell is this?

Thrane shrugs.

Quade goes back to the snarl, fishes around, pokes his way through it, drawing out tool after tool, leaning them in a row. His hands hanging loose, he stands staring at the row of handles stacked stiff against the mold-blistered wall.

QUADE (cont’d)
Well I’ll be damned if I know where it got to.

THRANE
Got to have it today.

QUADE
What you need it for?

THRANE
Digging.

QUADE
Digging what?

THRANE
Just digging.

Quade shakes his head and goes out of the barn. Thrane scavenges loose a quarter sheet of plywood from underfoot, throws it on top of the box,(which is the rough beginnings of a coffin - this shouldn’t start to be evident, until Quade begins speaking below), and eases his full weight down upon it. The wood has been ripped ragged on one end, leaving a furry edge. Bending down, he picks up the hammer, hefts it, lets it fall onto the dirt. He stares at his big, empty hands.

Quade comes back in, shovel in hand. He stops moving at the sight of Thrane.

QUADE
Can’t say it is good luck to be sitting on that,
even with the plywood between.

THRANE
It don’t matter, Quade. It really don’t.

Quade shrugs. Thrane takes his time to stand up and reach for the shovel.

QUADE
How’s the wife?

THRANE
(taking the shovel) Good.

QUADE
The girl,

THRANE
(slow to respond) Sick.

QUADE
You take care of those two.

THRANE
You got it. (walking out the door.)

EXT -- QUADE’S BARN -- DAY

Thrane walks towards gate.

EXT -- QUADE’S GATE -- DAY

Opening the latch with his shovel blade, he lets the ant-ridden gate swing his way. He goes through, on the other side turning the shovel scoop-down and reaching back over the gate with it, dragging it back, pulling the gate closed.

EXT -- DIRT PATH -- DAY

He swings the shovel up over his shoulder and makes his way, through the heat, to the truck.

INT -- PICKUP TRUCK

It starts smoothly. He drives home.

EXT -- RANCH HOUSE -- DRIVEWAY

When, home, he turns off the engine, gets out, he hears his wife calling out his daughter’s name:

WIFE
Lyndi! (pause) Lyndi!

EXT -- PATH -- DAY

He rounds the bend to see the house in front of him, his wife standing in front of it, hands cupped around her face.

EXT -- RANCH HOUSE -- DAY

WIFE
(to Thrane) You seen her?

THRANE
I haent seen.

WIFE
Where in hell?

He shrugs.

WIFE (cont’d)
(pointing to the barn doors) What of that hoe there?

THRANE
I put it there.

WIFE
What about it?

He shrugs.

EXT -- THRANE’S BARN -- DAY

He walks over to the barn doors and pulls the hoe handle out of the rings, leaving a long streak of rust on it. He steps inside and pulls the door shut.

INT -- BARN

Hanging the hoe back where it goes, he paces out the floor and starts to dig, heaping the dirt against the wall.

Banging the shovel clean on the side of the hole, he hangs it in its proper place. He sprinkles the bottom of the hole with hay, dropping in handfuls. He digs through the hay, pulling out the body, jaundiced now with grain dust. He kneels, lowers it in. Thrane gets the shovel and drags the dirt back in over it with the shovel blade, stamps the grave down, kicks the rest of the dirt around the barn until it is no longer visible.
Thrane puts the shovel away. He leaves the barn.

EXT -- RANCH HOUSE -- STOOP -- DAY

His wife is standing on the stoop, looking out into the low, clear sun.

WIFE (cont’d)
What you been doing?

THRANE
Nothing.

WIFE
Thinking?

He looks at her for a long time, thinking, trying to understand what’s going through her mind.

THRANE
Thinking.

WIFE
About what?

THRANE
About nothing.

WIFE
You know what I been thinking about?

THRANE
I can guess.

WIFE
Where could she be?

Thrane doesn’t answer.

WIFE (cont’d)
You think we give the sheriff a call?

THRANE
No.

WIFE
You seen her?

THRANE
No.

WIFE
You going to look for her?

He does not answer. He looks at what the sun is doing through the aspens. He looks at the way the stoop has grown worn underfoot, and at the difference in how the sun shines off the rough spots.

WIFE (cont’d)
Will you look for her?

THRANE
I will not.

WIFE
Look at me to tell me.

He turns to face her, turns all the way around, dragging his boots until he is facing straight at her. He opens his eyes all the way open and stares her in both her eyes. He looks at her in the eyes and looks at her, and looks at her, without blinking, until it is she who blinked and, pale, turns away.

FADE OUT.