Adapted Short Story Script

Ambrose Bierce, A Baby Tramp







PAGE 1

PANEL 1
little Jo standing on a street corner
CAPTION
Blackburg, 1908

PANEL 2
shower of frogs, same street corner
CAPTION
ten or twelve years previous

PANEL 3
crimson snow melting into blood like substance, ditto

PANEL 4
plague hits town, signs warning of, plague doctors, carts of dead bodies, still same street corner

PAGE 2

PANEL 1
picture of Hetty Parlow
CAPTION
And then was the incident of Hetty Parlow's ghost. Hetty Parlow's maiden name had been Brownon, and in Blackburg that meant more than one would think.

PANEL 2
picture of a war
CAPTION
The Brownons had from time immemorial -- from the very earliest of the old colonial days -- been the leading family of the town. It was the richest and it was the best, and Blackburg would have shed the last drop of its plebeian blood in defense of the Brownon fair fame.

PANEL 3
Hetty entertaining guests
CAPTION
The men held most of the public offices, and the women were foremost in all good works. Of these latter, Hetty was most beloved. She married in Boston a young scapegrace named Parlow, and made a man and a town councilor of him.
PANEL 4
Hetty and husband standing next to cradle
CAPTION
They had a child which they named Joseph and dearly loved. Then they died of the plague, and at the age of one whole year Joseph set up as an orphan.

PAGE 3

PANEL 1
Brownon family tree eaten away
CAPTION
Unfortunately for Joseph the disease did not stop at that; it went on and extirpated nearly the whole Brownon contingent. The only Brownons remaining in that place were underground in Oak Hill Cemetery. But about the ghost:

PANEL 2
jolly people going past the cemetery in a wagon, hung with flower chains and possibly drunk.

PANEL 3
Hetty's ghost appears on the road side

PANEL 4
points to near the evening star

"JOEY, JOEY!"

PAGE 4

PANEL 1
joey toddling around the desert
CAPTION
Now, at that moment, Joey was wandering about in the sagebrush in the State of Nevada. He had been adopted by some good persons distantly related to his dead father. But on that evening the poor child had strayed from home and was lost in the desert.

PANEL 2
Native Americans pick him up

PANEL 3
joey slightly longer hair toddling around the Native American village

PANEL 4
Native American giving a white woman joey and receiving money

PAGE 5

PANEL 1
nice picket fence house with the woman who bought joey in the window (possibly baking a pie) and joey toddling out the front door

PANEL 2
police man walking past

"WHAT YOU DOING BOY?"

"A DOIN' HOME"

PANEL 3
joey out side a train station and completely filthy
CAPTION
He must have traveled by rail, somehow, for three days later he was in the town of Whiteville, which, as you know, is a long way from Blackburg.

PANEL 4
joey in a metal tub with suds everywhere while many other children run and play behind him
CAPTION
Unable to give any account of himself he was arrested as a vagrant and sentenced to imprisonment in the Infants' Sheltering Home.

PAGE 6

PANEL 1
Joey toddling into the woods
CAPTION
Jo ran away from the Infants' Sheltering Home at Whiteville -- just took to the woods one day, and the Home knew him no more for ever.

PANEL 2
same as panel 1 page 1; also raining

PANEL 3
joey looks down the street

PANEL 4
limps down the street

PAGE 7

PANEL 1
limps up to a very nice and warm looking house.

PANEL 2
large dog stop him a the gate

PANEL 3
limps away down the street through a gray meadow
CAPTION
Inexpressibly frightened, and believing, no doubt (with some reason, too), that brutes without meant brutality within, he hobbled away from all the houses.

PANEL 4
approaching a cemetery
CAPTION
He held his way along the road that leads to Greenton. That is to say, the road leads those to Greenton who succeed in passing the Oak Hill Cemetery. A considerable number every year do not.

PAGE 8

PANEL 1
joey lying on the grave of Hetty Parlow.
CAPTION
Jo did not.