Incomparable Fanny Barnwarmer #7

by Jay Squires

The author has placed a warning on this post for violence.

Bird’s Eye View of Previous Scene: Welcome back from intermission with the memory still fresh, I hope, of the two-witness account of Juniper’s murder of Thurston Flourney on the streets of Brady, forty years earlier, back in eighteen-eighty-nine. We left with the reporter harboring some unanswered questions.

ACT II
Scene 2
(To Completion)

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.
Reporter: Mid-thirties. Works for the New York Times, on assignment 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, which descend to street level with a flowerbed to the side. OFFSTAGE LEFT are street sounds of traffic: of vintage 1928 cars, some horse whinnying, etc., that continue as a kind of stew of white-noise background throughout the scene.

PLACE/TIME: Brady Texas, afternoon, Saturday, August 11, 1929

At Rise: FANNY in her rocking chair, the tray of stickyberry crullers in her lap. On the porch beside her, a tray with two empty glasses. The REPORTER sits opposite her on a kitchen chair.

REPORTER:
I suppose the Sentinal’s editor has the account of the trial in its archives ….

FANNY:
Such as it be. T’warn’t much’ve a trial. T’warn’t no jury nohow.

REPORTER:
What? No Jury?

FANNY:
Juniper, she waived that.

REPORTER:
But—but Miss Fanny … why?

[FANNY bends to remove a stickyberry cruller from the tray. She straightens, takes a bite, then looks out past him, meditatively]

REPORTER: (Continues):
Miss Fanny? … You know I have to ask.

FANNY:
(Talking around the bite of stickyberry cruller)
Reckon all the manners yer mama teached you got throwed clean outen the window when you become a Reporter.

REPORTER:
Yes … I suppose so.
(With some hesitancy)
But … um … Was—was it because she knew that a clever prosecutor could’ve gotten you implicated in the plot? I mean, the town knew that you and Miss Juniper lived … here … together—right? I’m sorry, Miss Fanny, but … but a prosecutor worth his salt had to know that Miss Juniper wasn’t likely to have planned something as profound as a murder without her partner knowing about it. Wasn’t that what Juniper was afraid would happen?

FANNY:
(Finishing the last of her stickyberry cruller, then licking off the stickiness while never taking her eyes off the REPORTER)
I shun’t a let you talk me outen gittin’ those napkins, Robert.

REPORTER:
(Doggedly)
You disagreed with Miss Juniper, didn’t you? You felt she shouldn’t have waived her right to a jury trial. Right? You feel she might have earned her freedom, don't you? Or at least a lesser-than-life sentence if she had a trial. Am I right, Miss Fanny?

FANNY:
With all yer schoolin’ Robert, din’t they ever teach ya ’bout the reasons o’ the heart. If’n Juni’d o’ up an’ died from somethin’ or ’nother afore her work was done … well, sir, her life woulda meant nothin’ to her. Nothin’! She’d best o’ not ev’n been borned. If’n—
(Holding up an index finger with all the authority of a stop sign)
If’n when my Juni stood up ’afore Thurston Flourney an’ point Li’l Missy at his chest … if’n, right then, Thurston Flourney, he falled over dead at her feet from heart failure … well, sir … it be best she never be borned on ’counta her job not bein’ done. You unerstan’ that, Robert?

REPORTER:
True … Okay … that's—that’s … I understand that … but …
(thumbs back to an earlier entry on his tablet)
but earlier, you started to say something but didn’t finish it. When I told you how much the town of Brady loves you, and how much power you wield … you told me …
(reading)
Ain’t got no power! Power’d a kept—
(Looking up from the tablet)
What did you not finish telling me, Miss Fanny? If I interpreted the emotion of those words rightly, there was an awful lot of regret, maybe even some guilt behind your Ain’t got no power! Power’d a kept—. Did you feel guilty that you might have had the power to have convinced Miss Juniper not to kill Thurston Flourney in the first place?

FANNY:
(Screwing up her face)
I swon, you jes’ ain’t been listnin’! I’s same as talkin’ to an empty chair.

REPORTER:
You’re right, Miss Fanny, and I’m—I’m sorry. It was her life’s mission, of course!… Only, now I must come back to the other. I’m left with one possible reason …
(taps the eraser end of his pencil to his tablet)
for the guilt behind your—your what?—your powerlessness—in not being able to convince Miss Juniper to have a jury trial.

FANNY:
(After a long sigh and a slow shaking of her head)
That I did try, young man. T’ next mornin’ a-when Sherrif Peckham, he locked me in the cell with Juni … an’ he an’ his depity went out front so’s we could talk.

REPORTER:
But you didn’t know then what her decision was. You hadn’t—The two of you together—you hadn’t decided that beforehand. Had you?

FANNY:
’Bout no jury? No. ’Course not. Not till she telled me. There, in the cell.

REPORTER:
To keep you out of it.

FANNY:
No! She din’t say thet.

REPORTER:
But in your heart—I mean, she didn’t have to tell you that, didn’t she, Miss Fanny?
(Beat)
So, she pled nolo contendere?

FANNY:
Ya do knows yer Latin. Here in Brady, e’en her ’torney calls it no contest.

REPORTER:
… and no jury.

FANNY:
Thought thet was clear.
(Beat)
Jes’ Jedge Collins. Two days, start ta finish. Coulda been one, ’ceptin’ t’ jedge, he needed th’ overnight to consider her ’torney’s appeal fer a life sentence, ’stead of hangin’—what be normal fer murder.
(shakes her head and averts her eyes; then, as though to herself)
Oh, Juni …

[The REPORTER lays his pencil on his tablet and reaches his hand to FANNY. For a moment it just hangs there until she sees it; she takes it in hers and they share a silent and tender moment ]

REPORTER:
(After giving her hand a final, gentle squeeze, he withdraws his)
You must have been—torn, Miss Fanny … conflicted. The judge had to find her guilty of murder, but out of his wisdom and kindness, he spared her from being sentenced to hanging.

FANNY:
(Staring Stone-faced and unblinking at the REPORTER for a long moment)
Spared her?!
(A short, spiked laugh)
D’y’all reckon my Juni thinked thet decision was wise? Do ya? D’y’all reckon—fer e’en a minute—she mighta wanted thet sentencin’ to be fer death by lynchin’?

REPORTER:
(With a loud intake of breath)
Like her daddy!

FANNY:
Tit fer tat.

REPORTER:
But—but why—Oh, I’m so confused Miss Fanny. Why would her attorney, then, appeal for a life sentence instead of death by—uh—lynching?

FANNY:
Oh, Robert! Juni, she fit her ’tourney like a cornered bobcat o’er thet … till he tell her no defendin’ ’tourney—narry a one—gonna plead fer t’death penalty. The prose-se-cu-shun be doin’ that. Her ’torney either be pleadin’ guilty by insanity, or pleadin’ with the jedge fer life in prison.
(beat)
An’ he come to Juni bearin’ pictures o’ how them crim'nal hospitals teks care o’ the crazies.

REPORTER:
So he left her no choice.
(Beat)
But … really, Miss Fanny. I don’t understand Miss Juniper’s thinking anyway. If the judge had given her the death penalty, and the sentence was carried out here in Brady Texas, a town of maybe a thousand people at the time, who would’ve been there to acknowledge that justice had been done? The Brady Sentinal might be a fine newspaper and all, but it was tiny. It didn't cast a very long shadow of influence. Who was going to take note of justice served?

FANNY:
’Spect I woulda. An’ Juniper. She’d o’ knowed. That's all what mattered to her.

REPORTER:
But did she know? Did she really, Miss Fanny? She was five years old when her daddy was lynched. Her Mama had fainted away and dragged into the cabin … for who knows what reason. You were not there for the lynching. Isn’t that right? You weren’t there, were you, Miss Fanny?

FANNY:
I telled you that.

REPORTER:
The only other witness, for a time, at least, was the man who came racing around the side of the house to try to stop the lynching … before he was overtaken by the mob.
(Beat)
You know who that man was, don’t you, Miss Fanny?

FANNY:
That be my Daddy.

REPORTER:
That’s hard to understand. Darn it all, Miss Fanny, I just have to keep raising the corners of the past, and I’m sorry for that.

FANNY:
That be yer job, Robert.

REPORTER:
What I don’t understand is your father was part of the original plot. He was the one to lure Mr. Albright to the door. But then your daddy apparently had a change of heart. He didn’t leave but hid alongside the house. I surmise that … because once the lynching proceeded, he raced around the house to stop it. It’s all very perplexing.

FANNY:
That’s a’cause y’all warn’t at the trial back then.

REPORTER:
You know I have to rake up some embers on that trial, Miss Fanny.
(Looks behind him at the sky)
But you're exhausted.

FANNY:
I am a mite tuckered out.

REPORTER:
You don't have a show tonight, so you can get some sleep. And I must leave tomorrow for New York. Do you suppose I can come back tomorrow morning?

FANNY:
If'n y'all wanna spend yer last day in the mu-trop-uh-lus o' Brady with an' ol' lady, I reckon y'all have enough problems. I ain't addin' to 'em by sayin' no.

REPORTER:
(Laughing, standing)
Sleep well, Miss Fanny.

COMPLETION OF ACT II, SCENE 2

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