Baby Doll & Tiger Tail Read Free

him
.]
    Or let’s drive over to the Flaming Pig and have some barbecue ribs and a little cold beer.
    BABY DOLL : That’s our stuff. . .!
    [
Archie Lee looks the other way
.]
    I said that’s our stuff. . .!! I wanta go home. HOME. NOW. If you don’t drive me home now, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll—Mr. Hanna. Mr. Gus Hanna. You live on Tiger Tail Road. . . .
    ARCHIE : I’ll drive you home.
    [
He spins the car around and they start home
.]
    23] EXTERIOR. MEIGHAN HOUSE. DAY.
    Meighan’s car turns in the drive. The van we saw is backed up to the house, and furniture is being removed from the house. Baby Doll runs among them and starts to beat the movers. They go right on with their work, paying no attention. After a time Aunt Rose puts her arms around Baby Doll and leads her into the house
.
    24] CLOSE SHOT. ARCHIE LEE.
    He really is on a spot. Again he hears the sound of the Syndicate Cotton Gin. He makes the same sound, imitating it, he made earlier. He looks in its direction and spits. Then he gets out of the car and walks towards his empty home
.
    25] INTERIOR. MEIGHAN HOUSE. THE PARLOR.
    Baby Doll is sobbing by the window. The screen door creaks to admit the hulking figure of Archie Lee
.
    ARCHIE [
approaching
]: Baby Doll. . .
    BABY DOLL : Leave me alone in here. I don’t want to sit in the same room with a man that would make me live in a house with no furniture.
    ARCHIE : Honey, the old furniture we got left just needs to be spread out a little. . . .
    BABY DOLL : My daddy would turn in his grave if he knew, he’d turn in his grave.
    ARCHIE : Baby Doll, if your daddy turned in his grave as often as you say he’d turn in his grave, that old man would plow up the graveyard.
    [
Somewhere outside Aunt Rose is heard singing: “Rock of Ages
.”]
    ARCHIE : She’s out there pickin’ roses in the yard just as if nothing at all had happened here. . . .
    BABY DOLL : I’m going to move to the Kotton King Hotel. I’m going to move to the Kotton King Hotel. . . .
    ARCHIE : No, you ain’t, Baby Doll.
    BABY DOLL : And I’m going to get me a job. The manager of the Kotton King Hotel carried my daddy’s coffin, he’ll give me work.
    ARCHIE : What sort of work do you think you could do, Baby Doll?
    BABY DOLL : I could curl hair in a beauty parlor or polish nails in a barbershop, I reckon, or I could be a hostess and smile at customers coming into a place.
    ARCHIE : What place?
    BABY DOLL : Any place! I could be a cashier.
    ARCHIE : You can’t count change.
    BABY DOLL : I could pass out menus or programs or something and say hello to people coming in! [
Rises
.] I’ll phone now.
    [
She exits
.]
    26] HALL.
    Baby Doll crosses to the telephone. She is making herself attractive as if preparing for an interview
.
    BABY DOLL : Kotton King? This is Mrs. Meighan, I want to reserve a room for tomorrow mornin’ and I want to register under my maiden name, which is Baby Doll McCorkle. My daddy was T.C. McCorkle who died last summer when I got married and he is a very close personal friend of the manager of the Kotton King Hotel—you know—what’s his name. . . .
    27] EXTERIOR OF HOUSE.
    Archie comes out the door and wanders into the yard, passing Aunt Rose, who holds a bunch of roses
.
    AUNT ROSE : Archie Lee, look at these roses! Aren’t they poems of nature?
    ARCHIE : Uh-huh, poems of nature.
    [
He goes past her, through the front gate and over to his Chevy
.
    [
The front seat on the driver’s side has been removed and a broken-down commodious armchair put in its place
.
    [
Sound of the Syndicate Gin, throbbing. Archie Lee reaches under the chair and fishes out a pint bottle. He takes a slug, listens to the Syndicate, takes another. Then he throws the bottle out of the car, turns the ignition key of the car and
. . . .]
    28] THE CHEVY ROCKS OUT OF THE YARD. DISSOLVE.
    29] THE INTERIOR. BRITE SPOT CAFE.
    A habitually crowded place. Tonight it is empty. In the corner a customer or two. Behind the bar, the man