(The evening of the Easter Picnic: Elise approaches Aileen, who is crying.)
ELISE: May I join you, Aileen?
AILEEN: I reckon.
ELISE: I noticed you were upset.
AILEEN: Thank you Ms. Elise, I'll be fine.
ELISE: You haven't seemed fine for quite a while now.
AILEEN: I am I swear it.
ELISE: I've been telling people the same thing.
(Pause.)
AILEEN: This church is the only place I have ever called home.
ELISE: We're blessed to have—
AILEEN: All I want anymore is to just run away from home...
ELISE: (Beat.) I understand.
(Lights up on Chorus.)
VIRGINIA: That hurricane knocked the power right out.
BRUCE: It really made the girl's body look a lot more dead.
VIRGINIA: Bruce that is indecent.
MARK: But it did.
SHARONS: The candles made her blood look black.
ISAAC: She looked peaceful.
STEVE: She looked tormented.
AILEEN: I always wondered why I still came here all these years. My parents haven't stepped foot in a church since I was a kid and they're the ones who started making me come in the first place.
ELISE: This is where all your friends were.
AILEEN: I only had two friends my whole life.
ELISE: Isaac and Jon were special enough to keep you coming back.
AILEEN: Even though everybody else hates me.
ELISE: Nobody hates you, Honey, that is—
AILEEN: Don't lie to me when I know you feel the same way too.
(Silence.)
AILEEN: I'm sorry Dr. Fudge.
(Silence.)
ELISE: I have been alive a long time and I will never understand how people can be so unaware. And they can be the most cruel while inside those sacred walls.
(Lights up separately on CHORUS.)
JANNA: The pastor made us all go back to the sanctuary while Mark kept trying the phones.
SHARON: I don't know what he expected to happen, those telephone lines were down like attendance on Super Bowl Sunday, the dumb bastard.
ISAAC: Pop slammed the door and I could hear him pacing and crying and—
JANNA: He was in there alone with Aileen for several minutes.
JON: Just in there alone with her dead body, shouting at it and God.
MARK: He was real shaken up.
SHARON: We all were.
VIRGINIA: The man had just almost died.
BRUCE: He was so busy preaching he hardly noticed.
SHARON: We almost lost our beloved pastor.
(The lights come up on a restored tree, once again falling on the pastor as Steve saves him. The sounds of thunder swirl around the chorus.)
ISAAC: My daddy almost died. And my mama's tree—
BRUCE: Ripped most of the way out of the ground.
MARK: Couldn't help but make you wonder if God sent the hurricane as a visual aid for the revival or if he was trying to destroy us all.
JANNA: One of the branches went flying right towards Pastor Mike.
JON: He didn't even see it coming.
VIRGINIA: He was busy carrying on with his sermon like nothing was even the matter.
BRUCE: The man was crazy.
MARK: Is crazy.
VIRGINIA: He's a little bit brilliant—in a mad scientist kind of way bless his heart.
SHARON: Good Lord Almighty that tree branch nearly took him right out. But Pastor Steve jumped in the way and tackled him.
BRUCE: You'da thought they was skirmishing over the old pig skin.
JON: What is this, the forties?
JANNA: I've never seen Pastor Steve move so quickly.
MARK: He was just doing his job.
SHARON: His job most certainly does not entail ensuring the pastor's safety. He is a true hero.
JON: Pastor Mike didn't even have time to process what had just happened. Everybody was already yelling and scrambling around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off.
MARK: And then everything happened with finding Aileen.
VIRGINIA: That poor girl.
BRUCE: Just lying there.
JON: All bloody and grotesque-like.
JANNA: But still somehow finding a way to look peaceful—she still looked pretty.
