Jonesberry

Jonesberry is a kaleidoscope of sailing, surfing, shooting, Central and South American jungles, a generations-old South Carolina family, a beach house in a cow pasture, Spanish radio, Good Guys, Bad Guys, and a Led Zeppelin greatest hits cassette tape.

The Opening Shot

FADE IN to a sea gull perched on a fence post. Behind it: A field of sunflowers. The wind stirs, reminding the camera to move. It PANS across more sunflowers until finally we see a collapsed barn. Near the barn, the camera studies the big sailboat propped up on jacks (rust weeps down from fittings and portholes stare back worldly yet blank). Something large and dark nudges into the shot, blocking most of it. In the temporary darkness caused by the blob, we notice music: The Willie Nelson/Ray Charles rendition of “Georgia.” The large dark thing steps away to reveal itself:  A big dumb cow. The camera follows the cow as it meanders across the shot. As the cow moves out of the scene, we home in on a beach house, up on stilts in the middle of the pasture. (Beach towels hang from the porch rails, drying. Surfboards are propped up against the stilts and others lean against a tractor.) More big dumb cows dot the pasture surrounding the beach house. At last, we’ve come full circle …back to the sea gull on the fencepost. The wind stirs again and now the sea gull flies away. We follow the gull as it flies into the sun, blinding the lens into complete white out.

Cut to the GULL’s POV: As it flies up and away, we see the vast acres of the pasture with its black cows and its white and black spotted cows standing in the grass, chewing. We see the collapsed barn and the sailboat. We see the beach house – quirky and defiant — with enormous sails stretched out on the ground, drying. We see the surfboards and the tractor. As the gull flies further out, we notice a large black sedan parked, idling, on a side road overlooking the property. Inside are two men dressed in the dark suits and dark glasses of government-types. One holds a surveillance camera with a very large zoom lens out the window. He’s studying the beach house. The other is eating a HoneyBun, licking the sticky glaze off his fingers while trying not to spill coffee from a styro cup. Even the gull knows these two are bad news (in an inept, dull, bureaucratic, waste-of-your-tax-dollars way).

The Willie Nelson/Ray Charles rendition of “Georgia” has continued as the gull flies over to the dark sedan. It becomes louder as we follow the gull and as our camera zooms in closer on the car.

CUT to a closer shot of the two losers. The guy eating the sticky bun adjusts the volume on the recording device. In addition to Willie Nelson/Ray Charles singing “Georgia”, we now hear eggs and bacon frying in the background and other sounds of someone making breakfast. StickyBun guy has gooed up the volume setting button with StickyBun goo –and is enough of an idiot to lick it off!

Next, we hear a man humming and singing along a little with Willie/Ray/“Georgia”. He’s a bit off key at times but happy with himself. We hear more sounds of breakfast being made.

CUT TO the back porch of the beach house. There’s a table with bench seats. The table obviously removed from the sailboat –it has  raised, rounded “fiddle” edges.  A boom box on the table plays “Georgia.” Next to it are a large nautical chart, plotting tools for navigating at sea, and a Micro Uzi machine pistol with 50-round clip. A handful of loose bullets are scattered on the table. A big white cat with large black spots is poking at one of the rounds. The camera gives us a CLOSE UP on the cat: someone has scrawled  “DAIRY CAT” in red dye along its sides …weird.

The cat sniffs one of the loose rounds, a 9mm, then bats it against the tabletop fiddles. The bullet sails off the table and hits the floor with a metallic clitter-clatter.

The camera is so close on the table now and on the cat now it sees only a hand (but little else) as a person comes into the shot,  sweeps the cat off the table muttering “flippn dairy cats!” and we watch a plate of eggs, bacon and grits fill the shot where the cat had been, followed by a Bloody Mary, loaded with a ridiculous garnishing of celery and olives. A hand reaches across the eggs to turnoff the radio, switching from “Georgia” to a relaxation CD that plays nothing but sounds from the sea shore: waves washing in along a beach and nothing more.

CUT TO inside the dark sedan and the sound of static.  StickyBuns Man jiggles the tuning button and screws it up even worse, the statis fainter now. Binoculars Man swears under his breath, pulls the big camera back into the car and takes his turn at the knob. At first there is only static, static and squelch …but then he finds the spot, loses the static and the two of them listen to the sounds of waves washing in.

CUT TO a wider shot of the back porch of the beach house. The Dairy Cat is batting the bullet across the floor. Our Hero (yours truly) is seated at the yacht table eating breakfast, watching the cows, listening to the waves. He wears a straw cowboy hat with an obscenely bright blue/green and orange Hawaiian shirt. He wears the red swim trunks a life guard wears. And brown sandals. He’s in his late forties but looks younger than that. He has a very dark tan, close beard and sandy brown hair. Handsome sucker. He closes his eyes to savor the smell of bacon and eggs, the taste of a spicy cold Bloody Mary and gentle, easy familiar sounds of the ocean.

We notice the sunglasses propped on his head are identical to those of Binoculars Man and Sticky Buns Man. We notice they are Government issue.

CUT TO an exterior shot of the dark sedan. We hear only the wind blowing across the lamnd. We’re about thirty feet away, framing our shot of the car between barbed wire and fence posts.  StickyBuns Man absent-mindedly dangles expensive binoculars out the window as Binoculars Man fidgets with the radio/recorder dials.  “You’ve got it crudded up,” he complains in a spitting whisper through his teeth. StickyBuns Man shrugs, pivots up on one butock and loudly passes gas.

Just then, a cow wanders into the shot and the scene becomes a blurry black blob.

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Entries are added on Tuesdays and Thursdays –when I’m around.

The next entry in the story line is called The Colonel and The Albino and it has buttons to move forward or backward.

Once you’ve caught up, read the latest/additional entries by choosing the Dispatches page (where entries are presented with the newest on the top and oldest at the bottom).

Thanks for taking a look.