Romancing the Ruins, a Film Treatment
by
Lois Foyt and Jon Foyt
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 and Registered with the Writers Guild of America, West by Lois Foyt and Jon Foyt
All characters in this film treatment, which is an adaptation of the novel, The Architecture of Time, are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is coincidental.
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Opening:
From a low-flying airplane, as titles appear on the screen, we see below us massive stone structures—one after another—in the chain of archaeological ruins that comprise the ancient Anasazi center of Chaco Canyon. As we pass over the largest of these 12th-century pueblos in northwestern New Mexico—the multi-story Great House of Pueblo Bonito—we hear the ominous sound of a distant train whistle growing louder and louder.
Scene One:
Worthington Rhodes (tall, handsome, blue eyes, early 40’s) and his nine-year-old precocious, curly-haired daughter, Emily, browse the news shop in the Dulles International Airport as they await the arrival from Greece of Worthington’s father, “Dusty,” an archaeologist. Emily holds up a children’s book about archaeological fables and tells her father she’ll read them so she can surprise her grandfather.
Seeing the book, Worthington recoils with memories of the humiliation he suffered when, as a high school student, he went to his father’s archaeological excavation in Greece.
Fade to a flashback. A young Worthington is standing in the hot sun looking down into an archaeological dig. His father and all the men are laughing at him as he tells his father he wants to be a pop singer and not go to college to study archaeology.
Belittling him, his father tells him the ancient Greeks will sing all the tunes he needs to know. “Besides, you’re destined to carry on our three-generation family tradition of archaeologists here in Greece.” Young Worthington reacts by storming out of the excavation site, returning to the Greek village, entering a taverna and getting into a fight with the bartender. (These temper outbursts will haunt him the rest of his life. He will cope by being in denial.) Flashback ends.
Worthington is abruptly brought back to the present by a firm hand on his shoulder. A smiling Senator Schurz of Missouri congratulates him on besting the French T.G.V. technology with The Windjammer, the proposed new transcontinental bullet train. From their dialogue we learn that Worthington is not only a model family man with an attractive wife, Sara, but also the czar behind a momentous national project to construct a magnetically-levitated bullet train that will zip across the country from New York to Los Angeles.
As Schurz dashes for his plane, Worthington is greeted by Ms. C. C. Trinket, a speechwriter for the President whose mother is on Dusty’s flight. She tells Worthington he is to be featured in the President’s speech to the nation’s governors. Gracious in his acknowledgment, he introduces Emily, who wants to tell Ms. Trinket the story she has been reading:
Fade to animation of Emily’s storybook: A Toltec from Mesoamerica is being ostracized by the priests and elders of his city because they disdain his new ideas, especially his invention of the wheel. They banish him far off to what is now the American Southwest. When he attempts to convince the native Anasazi of the merits of his wheel, they, too, reject the technological progress of his invention, brutally bashing in his skull. Animation scene ends.
Visibly shaken by the children story’s conclusion, a worried Worthington frets to Ms. Trinket, “It’s a warning from out of the past: Don’t be the person out there on the edge advocating a new transportation system.”
Scene Two:
“Welcome to Washington, sir.” Worthington’s attempt at a smile fails, and it becomes apparent he and his father (tall, gray-bearded, rumpled and suntanned from years of field excavations) still don’t get along.
Amidst Emily’s childish excitement at greeting her grandfather, Dusty grandstands with gruff male bravado that he has flown all this way to help out the noted archaeologist, Dr. Anna Ardmore, who is about to conduct an important dig in the American Southwest. Worthington recalls Dr. Ardmore’s and his back-to-back testimony before Congressman Roybal’s Congressional committee at its initial hearing for his Windjammer project. Worthington remembers how, though they were on opposite sides of the issue, he was taken by Anna’s humor as she fielded the congressman’s inane questions.
As Worthington drives his Volvo into Georgetown for Dusty’s scheduled appearance at the reception for Dr. Ardmore, he and his father again argue about Worthington’s choice of a career. Dusty says his son is frittering away his life on non-scientific matters. To prove his point that scientists—and only scientists—respect the “truth” about the world, Dusty extols Anna as a potential mentor for Emily. He promises Emily that Anna will autograph her storybook if she and her daddy will come with him to the reception.
Worthington agrees reluctantly, saying it will be a good experience for Emily.
Scene Three:
For this special Georgetown social event, the banquet room of the Four Seasons Hotel is resplendently decorated in a Southwest theme. A large ice sculpture of the 12th- century Taos Pueblo constitutes the food table’s centerpiece, while an array of exotic Southwest foods surrounds the frozen-in-time Indian pueblo.
Anna Ardmore, beautiful and charismatic, dressed in khaki shorts and jacket, a safari hat shadowing her eyes, appears on stage to an orchestral introduction. All eyes are upon her.
Dusty murmurs, “She’s the Delphi Oracle.”
Athletic Lil’ Abner-like Alex Parish, former star third baseman of the Washington Sluggers, remarks, “Gosh, she could coach me any day.”
The African-American mayor of Washington, D.C., Jedson Beyer, says, “She could get elected to any office.”
Prominent Washington benefactor and chairman of the evening’s sponsoring non-profit organization, the Institute and Living Museum of Archaeology (ILMA), Quentin Ford IV (distinguished, impeccably tailored), comments, “Steady men, she’s a good draw. I never know whether it’s her good looks or her scientific accomplishments in archaeology that inspire our rich donors to ante up.”
Young and pretty Brenda Turner, editor of the Four Corners Weekly Tablet newspaper, holds up her wine glass in a toast to Anna.
As Anna comes off the stage to greet Dusty, Emily steals the scene by tugging at her grandfather’s arm and holding up her storybook for Anna to autograph. Anna writes a message on the title page and surreptitiously exchanges glances with Worthington.
But Quentin Ford IV has become agitated at the presence of Worthington in their midst. He says to his executive director, Stuart Wales, that they must do everything they can to stop Worthington from bulldozing the wide right-of-way for his bullet train and obliterating the nation’s treasured Anasazi sites—before it is too late.
Mayor Beyer introduces Anna to the audience, praising her as an authority on the American Anasazi and suggesting that those who accompany her on her excavation in the Four Corners will bask in the glories of the Anasazi. To stir their imaginations about how they, too, could become famous, he tells them about the momentous discovery that changed American archaeological thought back in the 1950s when the black cowboy, George McJunken, unearthed an arrowhead imbedded in the skeleton of a mastodon known to have been extinct for 10,000 years. Until then few people believed human beings inhabited this country before the birth of Christ.
Anna fascinates her audience with descriptions of the ancient culture of the Anasazi people and their massive 12th-century stone buildings. She hints at the pleasures awaiting those in the audience who will accompany her as seminarists on ILMA’s forthcoming expedition. She invites them to come with her to those water-and-wind-carved monuments of red rock rising above an endless, rolling sea of mesas and arroyos, and to search with her among those desert varnished tableaux for buried answers to all their questions.
Worthington is aroused by Anna’s body language and alluring voice. As they leave, he remarks to Emily that Anna would indeed make a good mentor for her.
Scene Four:
In the ladies room of the Four Seasons Hotel, as Anna freshens her makeup, she thinks about the public and private corners of her life. As a career woman, she has vowed not to marry or to have children. For her, sex is recreation, not procreation. She fantasizes about Worthington Rhodes, and her adversary takes on a human dimension. In another world she would be physically attracted to this charismatic trailblazer, but here and now she knows she must suppress those desires and focus her efforts on blocking this pathfinder if she is to win out over him and save the prehistory centerpiece of the Four Corners.
To begin with, Anna concocts a wild plan to elicit from Dusty something compromising about Worthington that she could then use to stop her adversary. She wrestles with whether or not she wants to beguile Dusty into thinking he is sexually attractive to her. But, she decides, instigating her plan of action does promise the evening’s intrigue. So, over dinner in the hotel’s Quorum Room, a flirtatious Anna succeeds in extracting a promise from Dusty to reveal skeletons in their family closet in return for a romp in bed. An eager, blustering Dusty tells her she is safe because he’s had a vasectomy.
Back in her hotel room, Anna ties Dusty’s wrists to the headboard and jumps on top of him and, for a moment, loses herself in her own gratification. After her climax, Anna refuses to untie Dusty until he reveals the bargained-for-nasty-item about Worthington.
Dusty, still festering from Worthington’s refusal to follow a father’s career advice, tells Anna he tried to blackmail his son into going to Northwestern to study archaeology and not to follow Aunt Hattie’s advice to go to Bowdoin for a liberal arts degree. Dusty says he threatened to tell the admissions officer at Bowdoin about Worthington’s involvement in his Uncle Bill’s death. Anna presses him for details.
Dusty explains that after his wife died in childbirth, and while he was off pursuing his archaeological career in Greece, he left Worthington to be raised by Uncle Bill and Aunt Hattie up in Maine. “My brother, Bill, was a fine lobsterman.” Dusty says that one day Worthington deliberately removed the radio and radar equipment from Bill’s boat, knowing full well his uncle planned to take the small craft out in foul weather. An oil tanker demolished the little boat, and Dusty says the authorities covered up Worthington’s involvement. Dusty gives a sinister ring to the word involvement.
A skeptical Anna doesn’t believe him, but Dusty insists, “You just ask his Aunt Hattie up there in Maine...she’ll tell you the truth...the whole story.”
Still dismissing his story, Anna regards her evening mission as a waste of time.
Scene Five:
Worthington’s plush Washington, D.C. offices are decorated with 1930’s advertising posters of famous American passenger trains, including the sleek Burlington Zephyr, the Twentieth Century Limited and the Santa Fe Chief.
Congressman Orlando DeBaca Roybal (from a Four Corners state)—head of the House Appropriations Committee, which is scheduled to vote the Congressional funds for construction of The Windjammer—and his comely press aide, Native American Silver-Bell-in-the-Night from the Taos Pueblo, arrive for a private presentation from Worthington himself on the merits of The Windjammer. They are greeted by Worthington’s assistant, Charlene, who escorts them into Worthington’s theater.
With train songs playing in the background—Glenn Miller’s Chattanooga Choo Choo, Arlo Guthrie’s City of New Orleans and Judy Garland’s Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe—Worthington shows slides describing the bullet train’s magnetically-powered technology. From time to time, in his baritone voice, Worthington harmonizes with the melodic refrains.
Conducting his dog and pony show, Worthington points out the bullet train’s sleek, wide-bodied design and shows a map of the proposed North American transportation system. Several huge new cities are to be built along the arrow-straight route from New York to Los Angeles.
Worthington justifies The Windjammer’s cost and the wide swath of its right-of-way by saying the system is designed to provide for the nation’s transportation needs for the next two centuries.
Congressman Roybal says he is anxious to vote in favor of the train, especially since he’s been promised he’ll be the one to lay out the plans for the big new city that will lie within his Congressional district.
But, quoting her college mentor, Anna Ardmore, Silver Bell decries the train’s intrusions into Indian reservations and the havoc it will bring to sacred Indian sites in the Southwest. In her strategic position as Roybal’s press aide, she poses a formidable obstacle to The Windjammer’s final approval, leaving Worthington determined to find out more about her.
Scene Six:
Across town, Quentin Ford IV escorts Anna into the walnut paneled library of his hundred-year-old restored Washington mansion. Ranting and raving with evangelical fervor, he laments the thousands of irreplaceable archaeological sites that will be obliterated by the wide cut of The Windjammer’s right-of-way. Red-faced, he rails on about saving America’s heritage. Looking straight into Anna’s eyes, he pronounces that Worthington Rhodes must be stopped permanently.
Anna is shocked that Quentin is planning an assassination of Worthington. As much as she wants to stop The Windjammer, she doesn’t want Worthington to suffer a brutal death at the hands of an assassin. To Anna, Worthington’s drive, his determination and devotion to career, to cause and to family is something to behold. Stop him, yes! Kill him, no!
She pleads with Quentin to wait, to allow her time so that she may convince Worthington to abort his project. Quentin finally relents, agreeing to postpone his diabolical plan—but only for 48 hours—allowing Anna an opportunity to come up with her own scheme to stop Worthington. Dusty’s story might well be worth her investigation, after all.
Scene Seven:
At another Washington location, Brenda Turner, whom we first met at the Four Season reception, ascends in the elevator to media mogul Henry DeCamp’s penthouse office. From their demeanor, it is apparent they are having an affair. He shows her a Four Corners map mounted on his wall outlining the borders of his vast 50,000-acre cattle ranch, the Bar 8. He tells her his ranch is to be the site of the new Four Corners city located along The Windjammer’s route. They tour the heart-center of his worldwide news empire. Henry offers to buy her Four Corners weekly newspaper, and seeing the dollar amount, Brenda accepts Henry’s generous offer.
As he embraces her, Henry says he can now put another pin into the North American map on his wall that shows his media holdings—for her little weekly newspaper...and for her.
Scene Eight:
That evening, during the hubbub of Father-Student Night at Emily’s school, Henry DeCamp and his pudgy son, Teddy, meet Worthington and Emily in her homeroom. Against a backdrop of student drawings of Conestoga wagon trains, puffing engines meeting at Promontory Point and maps showing the thousands of early habitation sites of Native Americans, Henry reiterates the clout Silver-Bell-in-the-Night has with Congressman Roybal, describing her as politically astute and fluent in all seven Pueblo languages. He says her grandfather was a code talker for the Marines in World War II; her father is a highly respected medicine man at the Taos Pueblo; her brother is chief of tribal police there; and at thirteen she was qualified by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a midwife.
Worthington is visibly distressed with Henry’s verbal dossier on Silver Bell because he now realizes the breadth of her power base.
Henry also worries that some reporter, yearning to satisfy a hunger for muckraking, will counter-act the favorable public image he has built for Worthington in feature articles. Henry decries how journalism and television have changed from straightforward reporting of news to uncovering dirt on every public figure. Anymore, he comments, members of the press are interested only in advancing their own careers and writing their own books. And while he is the headman of a media empire, he reluctantly admits he no longer can control everything that is printed or aired.
As an unconcerned Worthington assures Henry there is nothing hidden in his past that will tarnish his public image, he is interrupted by Emily’s teacher, prim Mrs. Carson, who informs Worthington he has an urgent telephone call in her office. “The news is not good,” a concerned Mrs. Carson tells a perplexed Worthington.
Scene Nine:
Early the next morning, in the morgue of Henry DeCamp’s media headquarters, we see a determined Anna searching through old newspaper files for the story of Uncle Bill’s death. Having found his obituary in the Portland Press-Herald and another article about Aunt Hattie’s seventieth birthday celebration in a Camden, Maine nursing home, Anna rushes from the building, hails a taxi and instructs the driver to take her to Reagan National.
Scene Ten:
From a commuter turboprop airplane flying at low altitude above the rugged coastline of Maine—in contrast with our opening scene above the dry, high desert of the Four Corners—Anna looks down upon this never-never world of rivers, lakes, bays, and the vast Atlantic Ocean.
Leaving the Camden airport in the local taxi, whose driver points out to Anna the marina with its lobster boats, sailboats and yachts as they pass through the picturesque New England village, they arrive at the Chickawaukie Nursing Home.
Inside, Anna is engulfed by a room full of old people who stare at her curiously. She asks head nurse McGuire for Hattie Rhodes.
Anna is told by resident Mrs. Mittens that Hattie passed away last night. Dismayed, Anna hears nurse McGuire confirm Hattie’s death. Suddenly Anna wonders what in the hell she is doing there. She is shocked to see Worthington Rhodes appear in the doorway of nurse McGuire’s office. His mourning countenance changes into perplexity as he asks, “What are you doing here, Dr. Ardmore?”
Anna is speechless. She stammers, “Dusty sent me.”
Hearing Dusty’s name, Worthington’s temper snaps and he accuses Anna of a conspiracy with his father to destroy him. He is calmed by nurse McGuire, who takes him back into her office, leaving a bewildered Anna standing there looking for an escape hatch. In a world, now upside-down, she feels she can no longer control the events that must play out.
Scene Eleven:
A reeling Anna flees the nursing home to find herself in an unseasonable spring storm, snowflakes swirling about her. Confused, she wanders aimlessly about the old coastal village. As the snowstorm increases in fury and in the growing dark, she comes upon the “Maine Moose B & B.” She enters the foyer of an old sea captain’s house turned into a bed and breakfast and feels the warmth of a fire in the hearth.
Hannah, the innkeeper, in her Down East accent comforts Anna and suggests she rest awhile before “dinnah.” They ascend the stairs and Hannah folds back the goose down comforter on the bed, inviting Anna to curl up and escape into a quiet sleep. The sound of the crashing Maine surf fills the room.
Scene Twelve:
Anna is awakened by the innkeeper’s knock on her door. Rubbing her eyes and trying to orient herself, she hears Hannah tell her there will be one other dinner guest.
Entering the parlor, Anna sees the back of the other guest standing by the window watching the storm. Mounted above the window are the antlers of a large bull moose. The swagged draperies encompass the guest, so that he appears to Anna to be a desert sheik with antlers. His ridiculous appearance tops off the chaotic events of her day in this never-never world, releasing her built-up tensions, and she breaks into shrieks of laughter.
The figure turns. To Anna’s astonishment, it is Worthington Rhodes. Her infectious laughter stops abruptly, just as Worthington’s begins. Falteringly, Anna’s laughter resumes, and together they over talk each other in a jumble of apologies, explanations and double entendre. He suggests that here, tonight in this special place, the two of them pretend they are two different people who are free to communicate, unencumbered by their personal histories.
From the corner of the dining room, Hannah smiles knowingly as she watches their laugh-stimulated relationship develop and then announces that “dinnah” is served.
Over a bottle of Cotes d’ Rhone vintage red wine, their dinner conversation ranges from the Down East dialect with its Shakespearean origins to the sensual fiddlehead ferns of Maine’s Aroostook Valley, which Worthington says retain their lusciousness for only an evening.
Having come out from behind their public facades, and with passion overpowering them, Worthington leads Anna up the stairs and into his room.
Scene Thirteen:
The next morning with the local airport closed by the storm, Anna learns that the only way out of town is by Greyhound bus. During the long arduous journey down old U.S. Highway 1 to the Boston airport, we see her looking out the window, contemplating, visualizing Worthington Rhodes speaking from a platform, then at a shopping center, in each instance being gunned down by an assassin with a high-powered telescopic rifle fired from a passing car or from atop a nearby building. Anna shudders as she sees Worthington lying in a pool of blood.
On the flight from Boston to Albuquerque, Anna continues to agonize about her love/hate relationship with this man. Eventually, her dedication to save her ruins winning out, she calls Quentin Ford IV on the in-flight telephone and confesses she was unsuccessful in dissuading Worthington from building his bullet train.
“My dear, if you weren’t so headstrong, I could have saved you a lot of trouble,” the chairman replies. “Stuart and I will take care of matters with a professional.”
Scene Fourteen:
Stuart Wales paces back and forth along the towpath beside the first lock on the C&O Canal in Georgetown, waiting for Quentin Ford IV. The ILMA chairman arrives, not in his stretch limousine, but perspiring, having walked, as he tells Stuart, “...from the Foggy Bottom Metro Station—no one must see us meeting.”
They walk along the towpath where only an occasional biker and a lone runner pass them. Between interruptions from the noise of jet planes taking off from Reagan National across the Potomac, Quentin expounds on the need to preserve America’s heritage—at all costs. Any action he takes, he says, will be justified in order to save the national patrimony for the sake of children and their children to see, feel and touch—the real things—not just Disneylands.
He hands Stuart two envelopes, one bulging with currency. “For Christ sake, man, put them away! We don’t want anyone to see!” Quentin commands. “Your instructions are in the thin envelope.”
Scene Fifteen:
Following the funeral service for Aunt Hattie in a snow-covered cemetery in Maine, Worthington returns to Washington, thoughts of his torrid affair with Anna dominating his mind, muddling his brain, confusing him. Arriving home that evening, he is embraced by his devoted wife, Sara, who is coloring Easter eggs for the following morning’s hunt. Having tucked Emily away in bed, Sara’s concerns center on Worthington’s wardrobe for his forthcoming national tour promoting The Windjammer.
We feel Worthington wants to confess his one and only infidelity of their fifteen-year marriage, but Sara, in her domestic ramblings, doesn’t give him a chance. He elects instead to put his arms around her and tell her how much he loves her.
Scene Sixteen:
Easter morning, as ten thousand runners gather at the Tidal Basin for the start of the Annual Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Race, participant Stuart Wales tapes the thick envelope to his midriff. Hoping to make contact with the dreaded assassin, as Quentin Ford IV has instructed him to do, he pins a dollar bill to his race number and visually searches the other runners but, other than giving him strange glances, no one comes forward.
The race begins. In a human tide, the runners cross the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac, pass the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. The weather turns colder, the clouds thicken, the wind blows and the rain comes. Running toward the finish line, Stuart slips on the pink cherry blossoms that now cover the asphalt pavement. Helping him up is a lithe female runner, who says she is Angela. She instructs Stuart to ascend the steps of the Lincoln Memorial beyond the finish line where a runner named Booth, holding a trophy, will contact him.
Amidst the tourists, race finishers and the pelting rain, Stuart climbs the stairs and waits at the foot of Abraham Lincoln. A runner with a winning trophy approaches him. Stuart raises his rain and sweat-soaked t-shirt and, grimacing, peels off his thick envelope and hands it to Booth.
Booth says he is sorry to have to be the one who does in the train project for, being deathly afraid of flying, he was looking forward to riding the fast train to Los Angeles.
Stuart comments that he is sorry Worthington Rhodes is to be killed for he, too, was beginning to admire the man’s courage and imagination.
Booth laughs and tells Stuart that Worthington will live; it’s his character that he and Angela will be assassinating. He explains to a surprised Stuart that in Washington today character assassination is the “in” way to do people in. No bullets to buy. No guns to register. And if there is no real scandal, they’ll go scandal mongering.
Scene Seventeen:
Anna, back home again in her Southwest, finds her affinity with the area hasn’t changed, but she wonders, has she changed? Worthington Rhodes was the first man she ever let penetrate her very soul. But maybe the decision hadn’t been hers to make. What omnipotent force is directing her life?
Entering her Santa Fe-style adobe house, she plays her answering machine tape. A message from Alexander Parish tells her he is arriving early and pleads with her to give him a personal preview of how her computer software will chart their dig site. She feels his appearance on the scene will help her forget Worthington Rhodes.
Anna meets Alex at the trailhead. She leads him through juniper and piñon pine forests, across mesas and through canyons to the remote ILMA excavation site, which has the official name of Noah’s Ark. There, in the plaza of an ancient Anasazi settlement, surrounded by the rubble of rock walls, she professionally maps the area on her computer, establishing random one-meter squares in which each of her seminarists will dig.
It soon becomes apparent that Alex is more interested in Anna than in the technical aspects of an archaeological dig. He suggests they explore an Anasazi “bedroom.” They climb up to a natural cave, using handholds and toeholds carved centuries ago into the cliff side. Inside is a seven-hundred-year-old rock art drawing of the legendary Kokopelli playing a flute and displaying a large erection, and the two of them begin to playfully seduce each other.
But when Alex interrupts their foreplay to uncork a bottle of wine from his backpack, Anna’s thoughts flash back to her Maine candlelight dinner with Worthington. She rebels against her promiscuous behavior, her sea level eroticism and against all men at this juncture in her life. Deserting a stunned Alex, Anna flees the cave.
Scene Eighteen:
On a nearby mesa, standing next to his surveyor’s transit and 4-wheel drive vehicle, Clarence Short, his dog Willie and his assistant Dillon are engrossed in the mechanics of surveying The Windjammer route. Their comments confirm that the right-of-way will dissect the exact point where the four western states touch, an area over which the Navajo Nation has sovereignty.
Personifying the devastation to be ravaged upon the Four Corners, Clarence guffaws that the “damn Injuns” are in the way again, but he tells Dillon not to worry for The Windjammer has the right of eminent domain, so nothing can stop it on its straight link to Los Angeles.
Curious, Dillon asks where the new Four Corners city will be located. In confidence Clarence tells him it is to be built on the 50,000-acre ranch owned by Henry DeCamp. He brags that DeCamp has asked him to survey the new city and that he’ll be working closely with Congressman Roybal, who is coloring in the overall city plan.
Peering again through his binoculars, Clarence is surprised to see a woman climbing down the cliffside. He watches with fascination and comments lecherously to Dillon about her anatomy.
Scene Nineteen:
While the one-hundred-fifty year old log building known as the Cross Cultural Trading Post has been expanded to include a cantina, it continues to greet visitors as the historic relic it once was in a time long ago when it served fur traders, mountain men and Indians. Today the trading post attracts collectors of Indian art, tourists and archaeologists.
Inside, Anna and her group of eight seminarists, some of whom we met at the Washington reception, gather for breakfast in the cantina’s nonsmoking section before setting off on their trek to the ILMA dig site: George (bolo tie in the design of an oil well) and Martha from Houston; Greta, a school teacher; Margaret, a banker; Alex Parish; Daisy in short shorts (right out of Dogpatch); Paul, an economist from Wall Street; and Dusty Rhodes.
Clarence and Dillon are eating breakfast in the smoking section.
“Tony—Your Llama Man” pulls his trailer loaded with llamas into the parking lot, tires bubbling in the gravel. Dressed in black hat, jeans, flannel shirt with a red bandana, he bursts through the carved wooden door of the trading post, shouting, “Who’s got the dog in here. My llamas won’t unload until the dog’s gone.”
Clarence, tipping his hat to Anna, leaves with Dillon and Willie in tow.
Before Anna and her seminarists go outside to load their belongings onto the pack animals, Dusty’s cell phone rings. Granddaughter Emily is calling him from Washington to make certain her going-away gift to her grandfather is working. Not accustomed to cell phones and embarrassed by the ring, Dusty answers sheepishly and then, in a patronizing voice, tells Emily he will unearth a Toltec wheel for her.
Outside, amidst the llamas, everyone joshes with each other until Anna takes the reigns of the lead animal, Paco, and steps out resolutely down the trail.
Scene Twenty:
Back East, in the magnificently restored train station-turned-hotel in Scranton, Pennsylvania, we see a fumbling Worthington pacing the lobby, oblivious to the decorative displays of miniature 19th and early 20th century trains, trying to prepare for his first public appearance of his cross-country tour promoting The Windjammer. He is unable to concentrate because his thoughts are on Anna. Suddenly he realizes he has forgotten his visual aid equipment, and he must phone his assistant Charlene in Washington to drop everything and come to his rescue. But he can’t focus on making the telephone call and must re-dial several times.
Later, interrupting the evening’s presentation, Booth’s media mercenaries begin their attack. Barbara Waters from the All-Gossip TV Network confronts a surprised Worthington, demanding to know the details about the unexplained death of “one William Rhodes.”
Scene Twenty-One:
The next morning Charlene arrives with a stack of newspapers, which headline Worthington’s alleged involvement in the cover-up of the Maine tragedy.
In addition, The Washington Post states that he may have had something to do with missing funds from a federal grant received years ago by a non-profit organization set up to improve the facilities of New England fishing harbors.
Worthington assures a concerned Charlene there is nothing to any of these stories, and they’ll all soon fade away.
Scene Twenty-Two:
At a press conference in Pittsburgh, a wary Worthington stands behind a protective picket fence of microphones, delivering a pitch for The Windjammer.
Johnny Redgrave, a reporter with The All-Gossip TV Network, shouts, “Can you explain why the non-profit in Maine, of which you were an officer, never filed income tax returns for the years 1985 and 1986? Also, can you tell us where you got the money to buy that seaside home in Maine and that new Cadillac after your uncle’s death while you were still a kid in high school?”
Worthington has all he can do to control his anger. In the privacy of his hotel room, he shouts into the telephone at Henry DeCamp, telling him to get control of his damned media.
Scene Twenty-Three:
Under a brilliant Four Corners blue sky, Henry DeCamp collapses the antenna on his cell phone, as he and Brenda Turner resume their hike across his vast cattle ranch where, as Brenda narrates prehistory to the media mogul, the Anasazi civilization takes on new meaning. Henry stops short and asks incredulously, does she mean there were people living on his ranch before real people arrived?
Brenda nods and picks up a potshard. Henry says he’ll find a beautiful pot that hasn’t been broken and display it in his Washington office, but Brenda warns, “The pot belongs to the people.” Miffed, Henry says this is his land and he’ll do with it what he wants, and anything and everything on it belongs to him. “Have I bought the Four Corners Daily Worker instead of the Weekly Tablet?” he asks. But then his demeanor changes as he invites her to come and play in the jacuzzi back at his ranch house.
Scene Twenty-Four:
Having traveled on to Indianapolis, Worthington takes time out from his agenda and stops by the Eiteljorg Museum of The Southwest to purchase postcard art at Emily’s request. Captivated by the works of artists of the Taos School, he visualizes murals depicting historic Southwest scenes that could be painted on the walls of his new Four Corners City station.
Looking for a pay phone to call Anna to tell her his idea, he encounters Quentin Ford IV in the “Plains Indians” Gallery, where the ILMA chairman is dedicating his gift of Native American Indian ceremonial masks. Their puzzling conversation baffles Worthington, but he just can’t put his finger on why.
Scene Twenty-Five:
Driving back to his hotel, Worthington summons the courage to call Anna. Dusty answers and, in his usual gruff manner, deflects Worthington’s purpose, telling him a story about some old archaeologist in Greece. Worthington is disgusted with himself for his inability to follow through with his idea of telling Anna about his proposed murals.
He forces a smile when he sees Edward and Zoe in the lobby—the 20-something spin doctors Henry DeCamp has dispatched to the scene to replace a redundant and miffed Charlene.
Edward says their new game plan is for Worthington to connect with the MTV crowd, and he’s booked him into a singing engagement at the local Club Nostalgia. National television coverage for the evening’s gig has been arranged.
Zoe explains that with Generation X support he might be able to counteract the sexual harassment lawsuit Charlene has just filed against him. Seeing Worthington’s bewilderment, Zoe tells him that Charlene needs his understanding and a compassionate explanation as to why he sent her back to Washington. “She may be simply getting even for being left out of all this fun.”
Reeling with these out-of-the-blue developments, Worthington quips he doesn’t know whether to exercise his vocal chords or to strangle Charlene’s.
Scene Twenty-Six:
Meanwhile, out on their isolated dig, the seminarists are suffering from telephone withdrawal. Gathered around their evening campfire, they clamor to use Dusty’s cell phone.
When it’s Anna’s turn, she leaves the group, entering the solitude of the Anasazi stone signal tower. There she tries to reach Quentin Ford IV. He is traveling, so she punches the number for Stuart Wales. In a halting, dread-filled voice she asks if Worthington’s assassination has taken place yet.
Stuart explains that he and Quentin, along with Booth and Angela, are engaged in character assassination, not murder. Finally understanding—difficult when one’s mind has been fixed on an opposite concept for so long—Anna sobs with relief that she is not to be a party to murder.
As the sun is setting over the Sleeping Ute Mountain, a mollified Anna returns to her seminarists gathered around the campfire. They look questioningly at each other as she calmly and methodically narrates for them a mystical legend that ends with: someday, the spermatozoa from the Sleeping Ute will propagate a brave new chief who will lead his people to rise up and reclaim these lands that, since the beginning of time, have rightfully been theirs.
Scene Twenty-Seven:
In the 1940’s-decorated Club Nostalgia, Worthington croons Hit Parade songs à la Tony Bennett. He is an instant success among the Generation X patrons.
Having enjoyed his media moment, Worthington and Edward get into Zoe’s Mitsubishi convertible and head to the Indianapolis Airport. She tells Worthington he is now scheduled for a little R & R back in Washington, allowing for photo-ops with his family, which will counteract the media attacks on his character. A mellowed-out Worthington says it will be wonderful to embrace Sara and see little Emily again.
Scene Twenty-Eight:
But events don’t work out as Edward and Zoe planned for, walking off the jetramp at Reagan National, Worthington is confronted by Barbara Waters and her cameraman from The All-Gossip TV Network. Worthington sees Sara waiting, but the reporter and cameraman stand in his way of getting to her. Waters batters him with question after question about Charlene’s sexual harassment lawsuit. Annoyed, Worthington tries to elbow his way through Waters and the cameraman. The cameraman loses his grip on the camera, and it crashes to the floor, exploding bomb-like, petrifying everyone including Sara, who rebuffs him with, “Don’t come near me! I never want to see you again.”
Scene Twenty-Nine:
The next morning, in Zoe’s pre-arranged meeting, a joyless Worthington joins C. C. Trinket and Charlene for coffee at their fitness club in the Watergate Complex. Both women are wearing exercise leotards.
C. C. relates a tale of how Charlene was duped into filing the bogus sexual harassment lawsuit by a woman named Angela, who persuaded her that not only would she be getting a lot of money, but more importantly she would be doing the right thing for all of sisterhood by focusing attention on the sexual abuses of Washington’s powerful men.
A crying Charlene jumps up and throws her arms around Worthington, telling him how sorry she is for causing him all this trouble and saying she will withdraw the charges.
With the shapely Charlene clinging to Worthington, a flash camera goes off. Blinded by the light, Worthington tips over his ice cream chair and, as he grabs one of the legs and lifts the chair up, both women scream out for him not to attack the cameraman.
Gently he sets the chair down, dumbfounded they would think he was going ballistic.
Scene Thirty:
Returning to his cross-country tour, a dejected Worthington slouches in his first-class seat on board a 747.
Flashback to Sara looking at the photograph on the front page of The Washington Post of Charlene in leotards embracing him. She immediately threw him out of the house.
Flashback to Worthington re-living his Marian-Anderson-like performance at his summer solstice singing engagement in front of the Lincoln Memorial, as arranged by Edward. He sees Silver-Bell-in-the-Night lead her disruptive demonstration protesting The Windjammer. The hecklers were the only part the media covered. End flashbacks.
On the in-flight telephone, Worthington calls Henry DeCamp, hoping for words of encouragement, and asks the media mogul whatever became of the truth. A sarcastic Henry tells him to look under “T” in Obsolete Words in the back of Webster’s new dictionary.
It is a downcast Worthington who exists the jetramp in St. Louis.
Scene Thirty-One:
On summer solstice eve, in search of solitude, Anna climbs the nearby mesa where she unrolls her sleeping bag. In the clear night sky illuminated by the now-rising full orange moon, we see the dark red spires of Monument Valley off to the west and the snow-capped Colorado Rockies to the northeast. A shooting star darts across the night sky, and distant coyotes howl.
In the middle of the night Anna awakens to a surreal scene of half-dream, half-reality. A circle of Anasazi elders surround her, pointing—not to the ruins she is excavating—but to, now, a vibrating, pulsating 12th-century pueblo populated with prehistoric people, prehistoric sounds and, in the plaza, prehistoric dancers enacting a fertility ritual.
The elders lead her into the torchlighted plaza where she is engulfed by virile Anasazi male dancers, their bodies colored with ochre, their legs rattling animal bones as they dance to the hypnotic chants of the singers and the throbbing beats of their drums. One dancer, the tall blue-eyed one, comes forward to copulate with her as the others whip up the frenzy of the dance.
Scene Thirty-Two:
In the morning Anna awakens to see, in fast-forward photography, frame after frame of the eons of time passing in view. Beginning with the formation of the earth and flashing through the period of dinosaurs, the ice age, to early prehistory man arriving from across the Siberian land bridge, the centuries pass. She watches the Anasazi build their magnificent stone cities, sees them abandon their pueblos en masse in 1285 A.D., and is brought up short to the morning at hand.
A doe appears. The deer and Anna exchange knowing female glances, and Anna knows—for certain—that she is pregnant with the spirit of the Anasazi. As ethereal mother, her role is to give life to their tenets of truth, love and family. Preservation of the Anasazi heritage now becomes of paramount importance.
Descending the trail, she encounters a gnarled and sun-bleached centuries-old juniper tree. It whispers to her to create an Anasazi wheel. Anna realizes she must forsake the truth in order for truth to prevail.
She returns to her seminarists, enlisting them in the conspiracy and swearing each of them to secrecy. She rationalizes to them that since less than one percent of Anasazi settlements have been excavated, it is reasonable that some archaeologist, someday, will find a wheel. After all, her ancient people constructed miles of wide roads leading to and from Chaco Canyon, so surely they must have had the wheel.
Consequently, she tells them, the government will not permit bulldozers to destroy these sites because they will have proved that valuable artifacts remain buried, yet to be unearthed, providing enlightenment on the mysteries of these ancient Native Americans. World wide, environmentalists, archaeologists and the public will champion her cause, and Congress will back off construction of The Windjammer.
She shows George how, using stone tools, he can smooth the edges and grind a hole through the middle of the round, flat rock they found in the bottom of the kiva that served as a base for one of the poles supporting the roof. She instructs Dusty to retrieve a juniper viga from one of the house blocks and to shape it into an axle. She tells them she’s going to bash in the skull that Alex found.
Anna looks around for Alex, and George explains that Alex and Daisy have run off and eloped.
Anna says she will telephone Brenda Turner, authorizing her to break the news to the world of their startling discovery.
Scene Thirty-Three:
Sitting on the edge of the excavated kiva in Noah’s Ark, an excited Brenda Turner composes her news story about Anna’s archaeological find of the century. After a lot of kibitzing over word usage by the seminarists, Brenda finishes her story and transmits it over Dusty’s cell phone to Henry DeCamp’s media headquarters in Washington for worldwide dissemination.
Series of shots: We see various television anchors broadcasting the breaking news in several different languages. Newspaper headlines flash across the screen. And we observe the individual reactions of our players: Quentin Ford IV praises Anna to Stuart Wales, saying she is quite a woman and that her find will do a lot more for their cause of preservation than Stuart’s assassins.
Silver-Bell-in-the-Night plunks the front page of The Washington Post down on top of Congressman Roybal’s desk, covering his crayons, and tells him he must change his mind and oppose The Windjammer.
On the beach at Waikiki, honeymooning Alex and Daisy comment disappointingly that they left too soon.
A furious Henry DeCamp telephones Brenda and informs her she is fired for having run the story. Brenda replies that, under the terms of Henry’s purchase agreement, if he fires her she can re-purchase her newspaper at one-fourth the price.
Scene Thirty-Four:
Undaunted, Worthington continues westward on his cross-country promotional tour. In the 1890’s depot in Antonito, Colorado, he talks to a handful of train buffs, comparing the Cumbres and Toltec Narrow Gauge Railroad they have just ridden at five miles an hour to the three hundred mile an hour-plus maglev speed of The Windjammer.
Again his presentation is interrupted by Johnny Redgrave of The All-Gossip TV Network. Surveyor Clarence Short comes to Worthington’s rescue by verbally bashing Redgrave, then grabs Worthington and, accompanied by his dog Willie, they dash out the “Baggage Room” door to Clarence’s Range Rover. They speed off down a dirt road in a cloud of dust, followed in hot pursuit by Redgrave and his camera crew.
Clarence passes his flask to Worthington and tells him all work and no play makes Worthington a dull boy. Assuring him they’ve lost the media meddlers, he churns gravel into the parking lot of Klub Kokopelli in Chama. It is a strip joint, and the by-now intoxicated Worthington climbs on stage and, arm in arm with two dancers in high heels and engineer caps, conducts a sing-along.
Clarence introduces Worthington as the head man of The Windjammer—the new train that’ll provide jobs for everyone. Emiliano and his combo strike up Happy Days Are Here Again. Cowboy hats fly in the air along with cheers. Someone shouts, “We don’t give a damn about some stupid wheel.”
Redgrave comes rushing in and, seeing Worthington cavorting with the two showgirls, has his cameraman shoot frame after frame.
Clarence pulls Worthington off the stage and out the back door. Together they speed off to Clarence’s converted Denver & Rio Grande RR boxcar home.
Inside the unkempt boxcar, Clarence fixes two boilermakers, and the two men become even more intoxicated as Willie hides under an old cot. “Where’s this freight of yours headed?” Worthington asks as the old boxcar seems to be swaying from side to side.
Clarence proclaims that Worthington needs a good piece of ass, not one of those dance hall girls, but one “who’ll treat ya right.” Without identifying Anna, Clarence tells him about this broad he’s seen out on a dig, saying Worthington needn’t worry about getting her pregnant because he learned a few days ago while surveying through that she’s already “been knocked up.”
Suddenly Worthington stands up, his abrupt movement frightening Willie, and demands to know the name of this woman. Clarence stammers out with, “Anna...Anna something or other....”
Worthington belts Clarence in the stomach and then delivers a knockout blow to his jaw. The surveyor slumps to the floor. Willie whines.
A sobering Worthington leaves, climbing down the iron ladder on the outside of the boxcar, and heads back down the dirt road. He visualizes Anna, concludes he is the father, and resolves he must do the “right thing” by her.
As he walks on in the moonlight, amidst the night animal sounds and the soft breezes blowing through cottonwoods, Worthington rounds a bend and is confronted by a bull. He begins to fit the pieces together, concluding that he has been the victim of a planned media attack orchestrated by Quentin Ford IV, and that this bull is really the ILMA chairman. He stares down the bull, and the animal slowly moves out of his path.
Walking on, Worthington comes upon a grotto set in the ruins of an abandoned adobe church. Candles have been lit in the grotto. Their flickering light reflects off the remaining overhead beams. He feels comfortable in the ruins and now sees himself helping Anna save her ruins.
As morning breaks, Worthington walks into Chama to the Gandy Dancer Diner for his breakfast meeting with Edward and Zoe, who tell him that they all need a picnic timeout.
Scene Thirty-Five:
Outside Farmington, in a restored Anasazi pueblo turned into a commercial tourist attraction, Worthington, Edward and Zoe, along with visitors and townsfolk, gather to hear the Farmington Community Band in its musical celebration of Greek-American Friendship Day. Girl Scouts waving little Greek flags march through the picnickers as the band plays Greek music.
Worthington suddenly jumps up and announces to Edward and Zoe that he has the solution to their dilemma, and that he must find a telephone quickly. “Here, use mine,” Zoe says as she extracts a cell phone from her backpack.
To get away from the loud music, Worthington goes into the ruins and finds himself in a series of stone rooms connected by small, square openings, each room larger than the previous one. He phones his father, who once again belittles him.
Moving into the second chamber where he can stand upright, Worthington overcomes his animosity toward his father. He asks about Dusty’s friend in Greece. Dusty tells him about Angelo Angelopolous, the archaeologist with a transportation engineering degree who, being sensitive to preservation of archaeological sites, has built the Mexico City and the Athens subway systems.
Moving into the third room, brightly lit by sunshine coming through a clerestory window, Worthington tells his father he will hire Angelo to oversee the construction of The Windjammer so that Anna’s ruins will be preserved for all time. And, in her honor, Worthington decides to change the name of The Windjammer to The Anasazi Spirit.
Scene Thirty-Six:
Worthington enters the Hotel Bretagne on Constitution Square in Athens, Greece. In the lobby he greets a man carrying a railroad spike and an archaeologist’s trowel.
Angelo takes Worthington on an underground subway tour of Athens, showing him how some of the ancient Greek ruins have been preserved behind viewing glass. The two men hit it off. Worthington’s manner suggests a man who has been put through the wringer but who now sees the light at the end of the tunnel.
Worthington holds a news conference on the Acropolis with the Parthenon as a backdrop to announce the new name for his bullet train. He introduces Angelo to the worldwide media as the Director of Routes and Preserver of the American Legacy, or DR. PAL, for short.
A little Greek girl—Emily’s age—asks Worthington if they build temples to goddesses in America like the ancient Greeks did. “We mere mortals idolize our goddesses in private ways,” he tells her.
Returning to his hotel, Worthington finds Sara waiting for him in his room. Astonished, he hears Sara explain that his photograph in The Washington Post dancing with the two provocative women at Klub Kokopelli showed him as being so vulnerable that she just had to come to his side. In their loving reconciliation she tells him she will stand by him, come what may.
Quentin Ford IV telephones, assuring Worthington how pleased he is with the new name and the hiring of Angelo Angelopolous. He announces he is now supporting The Anasazi Spirit, and that Worthington is to bring Angelo back to Washington so he can stage the social event of the year. All his benefactor friends won’t dare miss this opportunity to contribute to the preservation of America’s Anasazi heritage.
Worthington and Sara embrace. They know now that Quentin’s media mercenaries will be called off, and their family life can rise to a new plateau.
Scene Thirty-Seven:
Fall has transformed the Four Corners, bringing brilliant gold color to the mountain aspen.
Anna Ardmore has transformed, too, from a scientific archaeologist into an Anasazi prospective mother-in-waiting. She has painted her face with red ochre in bizarre markings and, like a Hopi woman, wrapped her hair into large pinwheels on each side of her head. She wears a maternity frock woven with strands of llama wool and decorated with turquoise beads.
Her seminarists are reluctant to say anything to her about her appearance, but they do urge her to leave the ruins and go to the Four Corners Hospital in Farmington. Anna refuses, mystically telling them that on top of the nearby sacred mesa is where she is to give birth. She will summon her midwife, Silver-Bell-in-the-Night, to help bring her baby—who shall be called Popé—into the world.
Scene Thirty-Eight:
The world’s press corps, reporters and television camera crews, gather at the Cross Cultural Trading Post, equipping themselves for the hike into the Noah’s Ark site for a first-hand view of Anna’s Anasazi wheel.
In the Navajo rug section, we see Tony greet Silver-Bell-in-the-Night with a warning that the mother of all storms is coming in from the Rockies. But Silver Bell insists that, for Anna’s sake, they must set off down the trail. “Babies don’t wait for storms,” Silver Bell tells the llama man. Tony explains that he had to house his frightened llamas in the barn, so what supplies Silver Bell needs must be carried in their backpacks.
The two set off down the trail, and the rains begin as the sky darkens. They hike on, and the storm worsens. “It looks like forty days and forty nights of rain,” Tony predicts.
Up ahead, where the trail crosses a normally dry arroyo, a reporter is almost swept away by surging waters. Tony lassos the reporter and pulls him to safety. The reporter turns tail and runs back toward the Cross Cultural Trading Post.
Tony says they, too, should turn back, but Silver Bell insists they continue on. Tony ties his rope around her waist and plunges into the rising stream. As they reach the opposite bank, they see an uprooted cottonwood tree being swept along in the torrential waters.
“One more canyon to cross,” Tony advises as they approach the edge. Lightning strikes a tall ponderosa pine behind them and Tony yells “Look out!” as the pine falls toward them. He pulls Silver Bell beneath the protection of a rock ledge as the tree smashes down in a whoosh, bridging the canyon. “A bridge from heaven,” Tony announces, and they start across.
Looking up the canyon, Silver Bell sees a thirty-foot wall of water careening toward them. She screams that they’ll never make it to the other side. The wave hits, and the ponderosa bucks like a bronco but, straddling the trunk, Silver Bell and Tony hang on. She calls out, “Tony, we rode out the eight-second bell.”
As Silver Bell and Tony’s trail passes above the flooded Noah’s Ark ruins, they watch in horror as reporters float face down in the bubbling waters, and a satellite transmission dish, adrift, points toward heaven. An All-Gossip TV Network camera sinks into the depths.
Silver Bell and Tony reach the mesa top where the seminarists have set up a tent for Anna. Silver Bell rushes inside to find Anna, her head propped up, her belly large. A concerned Martha kneels by her side, comforting.
Acting as midwife, Silver Bell takes charge, leading Anna tenderly through what becomes a prolonged and difficult childbirth. A weakened Anna, whispering dire premonitions to Silver Bell, implores her to make sure that Worthington Rhodes raises her baby because he possesses the true Anasazi spirit with a pure love of family.
Outside, the rain continues to pummel the tent as the seminarists put up a shelter for themselves and await the birth.
With Silver Bell’s adept guidance, the baby is finally born—a boy. Silver Bell wraps the child in a rabbit fur and turns to present the baby to Anna.
Anna’s face is ashen.
Silver Bell wails, “Anna, Anna, come back.”
Outside, the rain has stopped; the sun is rising on the Four Corners as a saddened Silver Bell emerges from the tent, holding the baby.
As the sun’s first rays strike the distant Sleeping Ute Mountain, we see the mountain stir.
Scene Thirty-Nine, The Epilogue:
With Worthington and Sara by her side, Emily opens her storybook for the little baby cuddled on her lap. She points to the handwritten inscription and reads, “‘Dear Emily, May the spirit of the past be the prologue to your future. As you go through life, protect and nurture this spirit. But you must also welcome the sunrise into your life. With love, Anna.’”
Emily tells the baby that his new family will all love him.
Popé nods.
###
About the Authors:
Jon Foyt and Lois Foyt, graduates of Stanford University, have collaborated in writing eight published novels, a film treatment and two screenplays. They began writing together a decade ago, following Jon’s careers in international banking, radio broadcasting and real estate development, and Lois’ career with Fieldcrest Fine Arts. The couple lives in Jack London’s Valley of the Moon in Northern California, where they organized the Oakmont Algonquin Roundtable, a writers’ forum. They are enthusiastic contributors to Smashwords, which they see as the 21st-century medium for literary expression.
Discover these full-length novels by Lois Foyt and Jon Foyt at Smashwords.com
Contact the Authors Online:
Lois and Jon’s Website: http://www.loisjonfoyt.com
Lois and Jon’s Blog: http://writerlygifts.wordpress.com