Sarah Blizzard Lines

Timothy: My babies always

(All) They all mine coal

?

(All) Far from here

(Ensemble) Coal that fuels trains

(All) Going far from here

(Ensemble) Coal that lines pockets

Very far from here

(Emilia) And they all know that a better life

Is far from here

Ensemble: But down the mine, down the mine, down the mine we go. (Bill picks up mining tool and heads toward the tunnel entrance)

Bill—

Ensemble: But to the altar, to the altar, to the altar we go. (Lana marries a miner, Sarah and Timothy try to hold him back)

+Timothy: Lana—

Ensemble: Dyingwomen too often, when they bring too-often stillborn children into this world.

+Ensemble: This is a land of death.

Ensemble: Before the mountain ground away their faces.

I cannot let this happen to my son.

Wife: Please—Please, Mr. Morton—

I cannot let this happen to my daughter.

Courage: And Sarah Blizzard knows. She knows one thing about herself. That no matter how scared she is:

I can’t just lie down in front of that train.

Courage: She knows that she could lead her family to demand better.

I do?

Courage: She knows that someone has to demand more than death from the train…

But how? How do you fight a train?

Courage: Sarah has to step forward.

STOP.

Quinn: And who do you think you are? Mother Jones?

No one so important.

Ensemble: So the miners are scared. Even as they think about fighting, they’re scared.

I’m scared too. Deathly, deathly scared of what fighting might mean. But what does not fighting mean? I see my children heading down, down, down into dusty and bloody lives. And I ask myself,

Courage: Sarah knows what she has to say. She knows what they need to hear. She knows she can be the one to say it.

Do I?

Courage: Sarah knows she can be the one to say it:

I’d rather we die quick fighting for our freedom than die slow accepting our chains.

Nessa: Finally, someone says the word.

We have to.

Della: Just because your boy is old enough to go down the mine?

Because all our boys are going down the mine. Because in a world where we can be shot for looking sideways at a company man, we might as well be shot demanding better.

Della: There will be no money.

There’s no money now. Not when our men are paid less and less per ton.

Antonetta: Okay, Mother Jones

That’s not an insult.

Nessa: I guess we’ll call you Mother Blizzard.

We can’t just lie down in front of the train.

Della: I h-heard there might be a strike.

+Della: Will you strike?

Ensemble: And Sarah says: (In the small square of her house with Timothy and Bill)

Timothy—Bill—

Bill: Ma?

I don’t know how to say this.

Courage: She does. She knows how. She’s working up to it. You can do it, Sarah—

The women and I—

Courage: Own it, Sarah—

I think we should strike. Well. There’s going to be a strike. And you should put your picks down, too.

Bill: Of what happened to Tom? (Ensemble takes bullet)

Yes. But i’m more scared of what will happen (to Timothy)

to your son,

to your father, if we stand by and watch him die slow for lower wages. What are we telling them our lives are worth? This company thinks they can just tell us we’re worth less, and we accept it?

Courage: Sarah has never been the one to push trouble before. But she remembers her dream, and she pushes, because:

The Blizzards will not lie down in front of that train.

Ensemble: And Sarah looks at her friends kicked out of their houses, and she looks at her son, ten years old and now without a job or a roof, and she looks across town at her daughter, newly married and now on the street, and she looks at the dreaded Baldwin-Felts men with guns on every corner, and she weeps.

I know I couldn’t do it. Why did I listen to that voice in my head? I knew it was a fool’s errand. And now all that fear, it’s come true. That train ran us over. Why didn’t I listen to the fear? Why did I listen to that damn voice?

Courage: The story isn’t over, Sarah.

Well enough for you to say. You’re a voice in my head! Your fingers won’t freeze off! Your children won’t starve! You don’t have a private militia camping on your doorstep!

Courage: The story isn’t over.

Maybe it is. We have nothing. We have less than nothing. We ARE less than nothing.

Courage: Then it sounds like we have nothing to lose.

(an idea dawning) We have nothing to lose.

Harold: Except our lives.

But we don’t need to fight.

Nessa: Sarah, don’t you roll over too—

No, we don’t need to fight because we can outlast them. Are we miners or not?

Cosmo: But what do we do?

We find a piece of land the Company doesn’t want.

Antonella: What good is that?

If they don’t own it, they can’t kick us off it. They can’t send their stooge detectives there to taunt us.

Nessa: On our own land, we can live.

We can outlast them. Their mines empty without us, we can LIVE.

Ensemble: And Sarah and Nessa put ‘round a collection, and Sarah takes every last penny out from under the sole of her left shoe, and they find a piece of land the company hasn’t claimed. Right on the tracks of the C&O Railroad, a stony, ugly piece of land that you couldn’t mine if you wanted to.

That’s right. We’ll take what’s worthless, and show them we’re anything but. (We build a shantytown around the tracks)

Quinn: You won’t last. You fools. How could you?

Wait and see.

(to herself) Wait and see and pray I’m right. I already hurt my family once. I can’t do it again. I must make this home for us.

Quinn: Back, back! That devil woman tore my shirt! Get me out of here!

(train leaves)

Antonetta! They could’ve shot you!

Antonetta: And why does that matter?

For one, you’re pregnant!

With a baby without a father.

(Cosmo is dead. Antonetta drops shotgun and wails.)

Cosmo-

Ensemble: Who a machine gun felled as he stepped in front of his pregnant wife.

I failed them again. (Sarah backs away, tears blurring her eyes, panicking)

Cosmo is dead—on my land—on the home I built—I told them they would be safe—a train of death? My dream… it was a warning, not a call to courage. It was a warning, not a metaphor. It was a warning that I should have listened to… Every time I try to fight, they invent some new horror. I never thought—the tracks were supposed to be safe. We would have seen them coming on foot, we would have seen them coming and we were ready, we could have defended ourselves, but a train? A train that burns on the same coal we mine for them? A train that runs on our blood, come to bleed us again?

(Sarah wanders in grief and rage at herself)

Timothy: Sarah, come home.

What is home but a grave?

Nessa: Sarah, we need to rebuild.

So they can tear us down again?

Jack: What else, except to give in? And I will not give in. I’ve not lived what I’ve lived to roll over.

We are TIED TO THE TRACKS, don’t you see? We can’t win!

Nessa: Sarah, WAKE UP. That train could come back. (This snaps Sarah back to reality)

The Death Special could come back.

Antonetta: Stop sniveling and honor my Cosmo.

You’re right. Yes. Let’s—Timothy.

Timothy: Sarah?

Grab your gun. Jack?

Ensemble: Has made a hero.

They care.

Ensemble: When they’ve put so much money and hatred into breaking it.

When they’ve put so much money and hatred into breaking us… when that train could come back.

Harold: I don’t need anything, woman. Hush your mouth.

And I know that this is a moment where I can sway the course of history. And I shudder at it. Because I’ve tried twice, and failed. I tried, and failed, and tried, and failed, and if I fail a third time, I think I will lay down and die. But I can’t just lay down and die. But I can’t just lay down and die in front of that train, in front of the train of the Company, this industrial beast that makes faraway people so much money off of our blood and sweat and tears. I won’t lay down and die in front of that train. And so I—

Courage: Go on. You don’t need me to say it. You know you can do this.

Boys, take your guns. Go to Mucklow and face the Baldwin-Felts men.

Antonetta: Are you sure?

The men will be a distraction. While we—

Ensemble: While we—

They never think women can do anything, but we can.

Nessa: (catching on) We’ll have crowbars in our skirts.

Exactly.

Della: What?

To pry up the death train’s tracks.

Jack: (to Harold) You’d better not step toward my sister.

We’ll tear up these here tracks. The women of us, while the men draw the Baldwin-Felts thugs away. No one will suspect until it’s too late. And them we’ll see them coming on foot, instead of on that damn train.

Ensemble: There is an awful sound— (Train whistle blows—the headlights blast into view—the women scatter—Sarah faces out as time slows down)

It’s happening again. My failure. I can see it coming toward me, the train, the train that will shoot into the tents where our unguarded children sleep, the train that will kill us all, and it’s the whole beast, it’s Quinn Morton and the Baldwin-Felts and the bosses who live up north, it’s the rich getting richer off the back of the poor, it’s the amounts of money no one could ever spend, it’s the coal that never sees the inside of our cold cold shacks, it’s a force that can’t stop, and I’m too late, I’m always too late, this force inside me that tells me to stand up and fight, it’s wrong, the voice in my head is wrong, I keep trying to tell the story of my courage and the story keeps getting ridden over by the TRAIN, but then I remember

Antonetta + Ensemble: There is power in a story.

I remember

Ensemble: The world watched when Cosmo died

I remember

Nessa: Fight. Because if you lead, the men will walk behind you.

And instead of running,

Ensemble: Instead of diving out of the way like a sane person,

Instead of letting my fear win,

I stand my ground on those train tracks and I stare that devil train in the face and I bet that this story will stop them.

I shout,

WILL YOU RUN OVER A WOMAN?

(train gets louder)

AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—

(Brakes squeal and the train noise stops, headlights shining on me)

Ensemble: And the train stops.

And our children sleep in torn tents behind me, and so, I spread my skirt and I sit on these damned tracks,

I lie down in front of that train

and I dare these cowardly men to do something about it.

Because there is power. In. A. Story.

And I will never forget the power of mine.

The power of OURS.

Ensemble: We keep fighting for the right to heat our homes with a scrap of the black gold we haul for the company men.

But this is the day I stop fighting myself.

Courage: And I, the little voice in Sarah’s head, am proud.

+Courage: I told the story of my courage, of OUR courage,

Our line

And today is the day that it came true.