Pentecost

There are three characters in Pentecost, Egg Rooks, 29, Jack Pentecost, 33, and Dorry Shay, 19.  We hear the sounds of wind and rain and a creaking old windmill as lights come up on Jack sitting before the flickering light of an invisible downstage fire in a deserted windmill.  Egg comes in with an old brown rucksack saying he doesn’t know where he is.  He knows who Jack is and says he is glad he started a fire.  Egg says he remembers going with an unusual sort of girl to hear Jack preach.  From the upstage shadows, from another time and place, barefoot, in an old wedding dress, Dorry enters, saying that in her dream she was riding a train and reading the Bible when she felt two strong hands reaching around her neck from behind.  She puts her hands on Jack’s shoulders near his neck and he covers her hands with his as Egg talks about being raised in the dump by his aunt and uncle after his father broke his neck.  Egg talks about a “fey” girl with eyes like a blue-eyed snake who worked as a waitress at the bowling alley.  In counterpoint, Dorry speaks of how she came to the town by train and then she pulls her hands away from Jack’s and sits between the two men in front of the fire.  Dorry says her mother went berserk, fell on the railroad track, and was cut into three pieces by a locomotive.  All she left Dorry was her wedding dress.  Egg says he came every night to eat at the bowling alley and then took Dorry to see Jack speak in tongues.  Jack and Dorry speak gibberish to each other and Egg suggests that Jack has known a lot of women and can give Egg some spiritual guidance about the girl.  The three speak of different but related experiences and Egg says he saw Jack violating Dorry against the piano above the bowling alley.  Egg says he told Dorry he would marry her even after he saw her sin but he didn’t say it very well and she told him not to touch her.  But he says he brought his uncle’s hand ax that he used to cut off the heads of the chickens and a voice told him what to do.  He says he is glad he found Jack because he has brought him in his rucksack a real pretty present that he can talk to when he gets lonesome, but it ain’t no bowling ball.  Light fades and goes out as we hear the sounds of wind, rain, and the creaking windmill.