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Transcript of the Final Scene

Will You Miss Me? A Dossier on The Hinterlands

The last lines of “Circle Be Unbroken” echo in the air. Preacher and Faith survey the landscape of the now-corpseless funeral hall, littered with the detritus of the objects that once filled Blaine’s life: old TV Guides, a piece of Astroturf, parts of a vacuum cleaner,  a microwave cookbook, a telephone, a chair leg, a garden hose and trowel, a roll of plastic wrap, scissors, etc. There is a long silence, and then they catch each other’s eye.

Faith: What do we do now?

Preacher: We could get jobs.

Faith: (Excitedly readies herself) Okay! What kind of jobs?

Preacher: I’ve always wanted to make shoes.

Faith: Do you know how to make shoes?

Preacher: No.

Long pause. Faith turns to the now-empty bier.

Faith: Who will we eulogize, now that he’s gone?

Preacher: We could eulogize ourselves! I’ll start.

Faith: Okay.

Preacher sits on the bier, grabs the mic. Faith sits on her suitcase as she did during the previous eulogies.

Preacher: We are gathered here today to mourn a loss. The loss of this man. People called him Preacher, but his name was Richard. And he grew up down south but he was ashamed of where he came from, for a lot of good reasons. He was also ashamed of his family, and some of those reasons were good, but others were just vanity. He didn’t inherit his father’s love of photography or his mother’s love of geology, but he did inherit his father’s love of food and his mother’s love of books, among many other things. He tried to live a full life and surround himself with people who would make him better. And for the most part they did.

When he was a boy, he’d often dream of space, the vastness of it. Or else he’d dream of the ocean although he never spent much time by the sea. In that dream, he’s alone on a ship, the wind and mist whipping all around him as his hands run a flapping tarp up a rope. Metal clanks against metal and water thunders in hidden compartments. It felt like an ancestral dream; a reminder of the forces we contend with if we choose to live. When it was time to die, he resigned himself to one by one turn off the motors of his organs. The last to shut down was the brain, which sent one final wave of thought into the universe, like a satellite sending a message of peace heard by unknown civilizations, billion and billions of years from now.

As Preacher speaks, he lays himself down on the bier, and Faith covers him with the funeral cloth as he reaches his final thoughts. As she covers him, she ages—five years, ten years, fifty years, seventy years. She sits in silence for a moment, and then, first to Preacher, and as she continues, directly to the audience:

Faith: I am old now, my love. I have one path left, and that path leads to death. In fact, it was always that way, only now I have no more distractions this way or that. Oh, my love, I’m not sad, not sad at all.

At night, I go out and wait for the international space station to pass. When I see its lights, I wave and shout: Hello, you fools! Come back to earth where the food is hot and your blanket won’t float away from you!

I wonder if they’re lonely like I am.

A robin peeks out of the woods. To the robin:

Can I tell you my stories?

Half to the audience, half to the robin:

Do you know, when I was a girl, I used to swim every day in the coldest lake in the world? I did! I baptized myself in its frozen waters: Eternal life! Eternal life! Eternal life. The pathway down to the water was a holy procession. The pine trees overhead formed the cathedral, and we kicked up an incense of pine needles and sand, my little girlfriend and I—did I tell you about her? She was a priestess in her own secret religion that she let me tag along to ...

That I won’t tell anyone about: our secret ceremonies naked on ancient rocks. But I wrote it all down—although when I die, the state will take all my notebooks and put ’em in garbage bags and the trash man will take them away and our magic will be lost forever and I’m not sad about it, not sad at all.

To the audience:

Will you say my name after I’m dead and gone, the way I say the name of my great uncle, the stowaway? “Faith!”

The deer appears, walking towards Faith.

There is a deer that watches me through my bedroom window, a pretty doe with big eyes and two little babies who have stuck by her side since last year. Mama Doe looks at me the way that I look at that space station: Hello, you fool!

The deer ambles along the edge of the forest. Holding her suitcase, Faith steps towards her, following at a distance. She looks back once at the body of Preacher on the bier, but looks back again at the deer and walks off in pursuit.

THE END



Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan's twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.