STUDY: Jackalope Wives

SCENE ONE: (423)

Jackalope wives dance sexy in the night. They take their skin off and they turn into these pretty human ladies and they dance. Men want to capture them but can’t. So when they came through town, they had a dance to keep the boy distracted on human girls.

SCENE TWO: (548)

There’s this guy who has a touch of magic about him. He broods and is gloomy and girls swoon over him wanting to heal him. The smart ones get out of this phase, but right now, they aren’t. So he’s at the dance and people dislike him. All he wants is a jackalope wife. He even has one picked out that dances further away from the others.

SCENE THREE: (1291)

The boy caught a jackalope wife, but didn’t burn the skin fully because she screamed. He brings it to Grandma, and Grandma chastised him for not doing it right. Be kind or be cruel, but you can’t be both. Now the woman is between/betwixt human and jackalope. She’s all fucked up. Grandma tells the boy to go get his mother and make a poultice. He asks if she can fix her. She says she can’t. You just have to pick up the pieces now.

SCENE FOUR: (521)

The Jackalope wife is messed up. Half human, half jackalope. Eva (the boy’s mother) comes around to help out. They talk about her. It’s a messed up thing. Can’t talk. barely walks. Eva says she could’ve finished her (killed her like a chicken). But she can’t.

SCENE FIVE: (2165)

Grandma wakes up the Jackalope and takes her out to the desert. She’s taking her somewhere. They see coyotes, they see a watering hole and a javalina. Ravens are croaking and snickering. She says she doesn’t have time for riddles. They go to a stone place and lay out the cigarettes, dead mouse and scrap of burnt fur. The Father of Rabbits shows up. He wasn’t the person she was waiting for. They talk about the half-jackalope. Grandma is waiting for the “patterned people”. he tells her they might want a life. The patterned person shows up. Grandma tells the jackalope what the patterned person is going to do. It might kill her. She nods consent. he bites her. Grandma offers herself up to the patterned person. The patterned person doesn’t want it and leaves. The tired jackalope is healing now. Grandma sits. The Father of Rabbits tells her that she doesn’t have to stay human. He tells her to give her your skin (REVEAL: Grandma was a jackalope wife). She tells him she burned it when she got married and had a kid. It was responsible. Father of Rabbits pulls out skin that he kept for forty years. It was Grandmas. He had kept it. She refuses it and puts it on the jackalope. She goes dancing.