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wouldn’t want to see what it looks like now.

    LINOGE stands, looking down at the TV, where a forest is going up in flames.

LINOGE
    (sings)
    “I’m a little teapot, short and stout. . . .
    Here is my handle, here is my spout.”

    He sits down in MARTHA’S chair. Grasps her teacup with a gory hand that smears the handle. Drinks. Then takes a cookie with his bloody hand and gobbles it down.

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    LINOGE settles back to watch JUDD and MAURA talk disaster on the Weather Network.

    13 EXTERIOR: MIKE ANDERSON’S STORE--DAY.

    This is an old-fashioned general store with a long front porch. If it were summer, there would be rockers lined up out here and lots of old-timers to fill them. As it is, there is a line of snowblowers and snow shovels, marked with a neat handmade sign: SUPERSTORM SPECIAL! LET’S TALK PRICE!

    The steps are flanked by a couple of lobster traps, and more hang from the underside of the porch roof. We may also see a whimsical display of clamming gear. By the door stands a mannequin wearing galoshes, a yellow rain slicker, goggle eyes on springs, and a beanie with a propeller (the propeller now still) on his head. Someone has stuffed a pillow under the slicker, creating a fairly prominent potbelly. In one plastic hand is a blue University of Maine pennant. In the other is a can of beer. Around the dummy’s neck is a sign: GENUINE “ROBBIE BEALS BRAND” LOBSTERIN’ GEAH SOLD HEAH, DEAH.

    In the windows are signs for meat specials, fish specials, videotape rentals (WE RENT OLD ‘UNS
    THREE FOR $1), church suppers, a volunteer

    fire department blood drive. The biggest sign is on the door. It reads: STORM EMERGENCY
    POSSIBLE NEXT 3 DAYS! “TAKE SHELTER” SIGNAL IS 2 SHORTS, 1 LONG. Above the display windows, now rolled up, are slatted wooden STORM SHUTTERS. Above the door is a lovely old-fashioned sign, black with gold gilt letters: ANDERSON’s MARKET * ISLAND POST OFFICE *
    ISLAND CONSTABLE’S OFFICE.

    There are several WOMEN going in, and a couple more--OCTAVIA GODSOE and JOANNA STANHOPE--coming out. TAVIA (forty-five-ish) and JOANNA (late forties or early fifties) are clutching full grocery bags and chatting animatedly. TAVIA looks at the ROBBIE BEALS dummy and elbows JOANNA. They both laugh as they go down the steps.

    14 INTERIOR: ANDERSON’S MARKET--DAY.

    This is a very well equipped grocery store, and in many ways a charming throwback to the groceries of the 1950s. The floors are wood and creak comfortably underfoot. The lights are globes hanging on chains. There’s a tin ceiling. Yet there are signs of our modern age; two new cash registers with digital Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    price-readers beside them, a radio scanner on a shelf behind the checkout counter, a wall of rental videos, and security cameras mounted high in the corners.

    At the rear is a meat cooler running nearly the length of the store. To its left, below a convex mirror, is a door marked simply TOWN CONSTABLE.

    The store is very crowded. Everybody is stocking up for the oncoming storm.

    15 INTERIOR: MEAT COUNTER.

    MIKE ANDERSON COMES out of the door leading to the meat locker (it is at the other end of the rear from the constable’s office). He is a good-looking man of about thirty-five. Right now he also looks harried half to death . . . although the little smile never leaves his eyes and the corners of his mouth. This guy likes life, likes it a lot, and usually finds something in it to amuse him.

    He’s wearing butcher’s whites right now and pushing a shopping cart filled with wrapped cuts of meat. Three WOMEN and one MAN converge on him almost at once. The MAN, dressed in a red sport coat and black shirt with turned-around collar, is first to reach him.

    REV. BOB RIGGINS
    Don’t forget the bean supper next Wednesday-week, Michael--I’m going to need every deacon I can lay my hands