I grew up in East Walpole, Massachusetts near route US One. Then many years later my husband, son, and I found ourselves in Miami, Florida staying in a motel on US One, called the Dixie Highway. Certain forces came together in my imagination and I wrote a play called, “Just Off The Dixie Highway”. In this play the four women characters are called, Vern, Erva, Mary, and Angel. Often I want to write plays and poems that honor women. Today I want to share with you a speech Erva makes when she enters the first scene in this play. The play takes place in Green’s Cafe. Erva lives on the beach in a beach shack and her husband’s name is Helms. Also when Erva starts talking it is difficult for anyone else to get a word in edgewise! I have tried to create a character who lives in a strong but rather private world. Also she is like a Town Crier, some times she is announcing things and other times she is talking about the special powers she feels she has.
ERVA: Tides out. Lagoons exposed, shivering without water. Black dries to gray after the water runs out, it blushes, sun beats on it, and it blushes. Then up out of the hermit holes, hermit crabs peek and scurry across graying black marsh sand. Yesterday’s shell fishin was bountiful, bountiful. Door to my habitat, last night’s full moon, I tell you full moon lined itself up last night, moved right through the door. Fishin togs drying by the fire and Helms coming up the beach road. Fair weather, fair weather about him. He rode on a path of light. He had yards of line, yards of line, two pulleys made his load heavy and huge. Helms and I we had a meal steamed in seaweed and salt water. Moonlight filled the shack. The bountiful steamin in sea water. We pulled up the hidden wine bottles stuck down in the cool sand. Helms had these tickets. He’d been with a group of French sailors. They showed him this new type of rigging. Not a gaff rig exactly but similar to it but you tie things off different than Helms is used to. He laid the tickets on my table. And they were different colors and stained from so many sailor fingers. I put my eyes down close to these colored patches of paper and saw the print of each man’s finger and smell of this man’s and that man’s flesh, colors covered my table. And you know the old dory, deep and high sided and oval so it rolls and smacks into high rough water? Well, the logo on each ticket is this dory with a harpoon across it. Prints of French sailors and on Decker’s dory all the way across the Atlantic the tickets were in a wood slot in the old oak desk. My room like a wood cupboard, such talk, a drum of a room, everything echos there. I’ve been workin at Whitacher’s Boat Yard. This season boats need caulking. I’m workin in the cradle under the red belly of some scooner. It’s slow work, scrape and patch, scrape and patch creepin from prow to stern and back again. I can read the life of the waters she’s crossed from her barnacled belly. You know in the top drawer of his desk Whitacher’s got a revolver. A pearl handled revolver. Whitacher’s cat followed me home, spent the night. Next morning I opened the door. Cat stood in the door, just stood there. Then turned so slow, tail swingin from side to side. He walked across the planked floor to the corner, across the planked floor to the center, around and around gettin a sniff of things there, gettin a feel of me. That cat knows where it’s worth stayin. He saw that revolver. He’s put a door between himself and that revolver. He’s put sea grass and five flying sea gulls and stone pebble beach between himself and that Whitacher fire arm. He’s up on the counter so fast. Two aluminum pots were in the dark green drainer. Silver and green now that’s an attractive combination and………………………………..
