Storm of the Century

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3A EXTERIOR: THE SIDE OF A FIRE TRUCK.

A HAND polishes the gleaming red hide with a rag, then pulls away. LLOYD WISHMAN looks at his own face, pleased.

FERD ANDREWS (off-screen) Radio says it's gonna snow a bitch.

LLOYD turns, and THE CAMERA HINGES to show us FERD, leaning in the door. His hands are plugged into the tops of half a dozen boots, which he begins to arrange by pairs below hooks holding slickers and helmets.

FERD ANDREWS

If we get in trouble . . . we're in trouble.

LLOYD grins at the younger man, then turns back to his polishing.

LLOYD

Easy, Ferd. It's just a cap of snow. Trouble don't cross the reach . . . ain't that why we live out here?

FERD isn't so sure. He goes to the door and looks up at: 4 EXTERIOR: APPROACHING STORM CLOUDS DAY.

We HOLD a moment, then PAN DOWN to a TRIM WHITE NEW ENGLAND HOME. This house is about halfway up Atlantic Street Hill that is, between the docks and the center of town. There's a picket fence surrounding a winter-dead lawn (but there's no snow at all, not out here on the island), and a gate that stands open, offering the concrete path to anyone who cares make the trip from the sidewalk to the steep porch steps and the front door. To one side of the gate is a mailbox, amusingly painted and accessorized to turn it into a pink cow. Written on the side is CLARENDON.

MIKE (voice-over)

The first person on Little Tall to see Andre Linoge was Martha Clarendon.

In the extreme foreground of the shot, there now appears a SNARLING SILVER WOLF. It is the head of a cane.

5 EXTERIOR: LINOGE, FROM BEHIND DAY.

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Standing on the sidewalk, back to us and before the open CLARENDON gate, is a tall man dressed in jeans, boots, a pea jacket, and a black watch cap snugged down over his ears. And gloves yellow leather as bright as a sneer. One hand grips the head of his cane, which is black walnut below the silver wolf's head. LINOGE'S own head is lowered between his bulking shoulders. It is a thinking posture. There is something brooding about it, as well.

He raises the cane and taps one side of the gate with it. He pauses, then taps the other side of the gate. This has the feel of a ritual.

MIKE (voice-over)

(continues) He was the last person she ever saw.

LINOGE begins to walk slowly up the concrete path to the porch steps, idly swinging his cane as he goes. He whistles a tune: "I'm a little teapot."

6 INTERIOR: MARTHA CLARENDON'S LIVING ROOM.

It's neat in the cluttery way only fastidious folks who've lived their whole lives in one place can manage. The furniture is old and nice, not quite antique. The walls are crammed with pictures, most going back to the twenties. There's a piano with yellowing sheet music open on the stand. Seated in the room's most comfortable chair (perhaps its only comfortable chair) is MARTHA CLARENDON, a lady of perhaps eighty years. She has lovely white beauty-shop hair and is wearing a neat housedress. On the table beside her is a cup of tea and a plate of cookies. On her other side is a walker with bicycle-grip handholds jutting out of one side and a carry-tray jutting out from the other.

The only modern items in the room are the large color TV and the cable box on top of it. MARTHA is watching the Weather Network avidly and taking little birdie-sips of tea as she does. Onscreen is a pretty

WEATHER LADY. Behind the WEATHER LADY is a map with two large red L's planted in the middle of two large storm systems. One of these is over Pennsylvania; the other is just off the coast of New York. The WEATHER LADY starts with the western storm.

WEATHER LADY

This is the storm that's caused so much misery and fifteen deaths as it crossed the Great Plains and the Midwest. It's regathered all its original punch and more in crossing the Great Lakes, and you see its track

The track appears in BRIGHT YELLOW (the same color as LINOGE'S gloves), showing a future course that will carry it straight across New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

WEATHER LADY

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(continues)

before you in all its glory. Now look down here, because here comes trouble.

She focuses her attention on the coastal storm.

WEATHER LADY

(continues)

This is a very atypical storm, almost a winter hurricane the sort of knuckle-duster that paralyzed most of the East Coast and buried Boston back in 1976. We haven't seen one of comparable power since then . . . until now. Will it give us a break and stay out to sea, as these storms sometimes do?

Unfortunately, the Weather Network's Storm-Trak computer says no. So the states east of the Big Indian Waters are getting pounded from one direction She taps the first storm.

WEATHER LADY (continues)

the mid-Atlantic coast is going to get pounded from another direction She goes back to the coastal storm.

WEATHER LADY

(continues)

and northern New England, if none of this changes, tonight you're going to win the booby prize.

Look ... at ... this.

A second BRIGHT YELLOW STORM TRACK appears, this one hooking north from the blob of storm off New York. This track makes landfall around Cape Cod, then heads up the coast, where it intersects the first storm track. At the point of intersection, some Weather Network computer genius with too much time on his hands has added a bright red blotch, like an explosion graphic on a news broadcast.

WEATHER LADY

(continues)

If neither of these two systems veer, they are going to collide and merge over the state of Maine.

That's bad news for our friends in Yankee land, but not the worst news. The worst news is that they may temporarily cancel each other out.

MARTHA (sipping tea) Oh, dear.

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WEATHER LADY

The result? A once-in-a-lifetime supersystem which may stall over central and coastal Maine for at least twenty-four hours and perhaps as long as forty-eight. We're talking hurricane-force winds and phenomenal amounts of snow, combining to create the sort of drifting you normally only see on the Arctic tundra. To this you can add region-wide blackouts.

MARTHA Oh, dear!

WEATHER LADY

No one wants to scare viewers, least of all me, but folks in the New England area, especially those on the Maine coast and the offshore islands, need to take this situation very seriously. You've had an almost completely brown winter up your way, but over the next two to three days, you're apt to be getting a whole winter's worth of snow.