Character Sketches
Irene: Irene is her twenties or thirties. After her mother's death, Irene finds
an unlabelled shoebox containing some postcards and photographs that
provide Irene's first glimpse at the family that preceded her mother's
generation. Most of the things in the box point to a great-grandmother,
Mary Harrington, who lived in Butte Montana in the early years of the
century.
Irene is from a city. She encounters the world in part through
electronic video and audio. She carries with her at all times a small
video camera and a headphone stereo. She uses the camera to help her
understand the world around her and uses the headphones to enforce her
privacy. She uses the camera and what she hears from the radio through
her headphones to put together a picture of the place where her
great-grandmother lived, and the life that her great grandmother may
have lived.
Irene is not quick to action or to temper. She moves slowly through
life, and the world moves slowly around her in deference to that. She
feels like she needs someone, someone to guide her or someone to at
least show off to or live for, and she is so desperate for that person
that whether they are alive or dead is not really an issue. She is in
search of the story of herself, and perhaps she believes that her search
for her great-grandmother will lead her back to Irene.
Emily: Emily has lived her entire life in Butte. When her mother died she was left with a house and a collection of Madonna statues. Perhaps it was because of these Madonna statues that Emily began to have dreams about the Our Lady of the Rockies, a giant Madonna statue on the mountain above the city of Butte. In Emily's dreams the giant Madonna is always at risk, at risk of a strong wind or lightning strike that will wrest it from its base and send it falling down to the Berkeley Pit below.
Most of Emily's wardrobe is out of date, as if she were wearing clothes left behind by her mother and grandmother, which is probably the case. She has worked some waitress jobs and also made some money by renting out rooms in her house. She has no close friends in Butte presently. Years ago her best friend from early childhood moved from town for economic reasons and Emily was crushed. The shock of that made it difficult if not impossible for Emily to reach out to new people. She has a strong premonition that any such companionship will only lead to separation in the future, and that frightens her deeply. Instead of a close friend she has her Madonna statues, which she attends to with great care, dusting and rearranging them constantly.
Emily is nervous and filled with a quick energy. Some of her movements come with birdlike speed, though she is also quick to reversing herself because of a lack of confidence. Many scenes with her are slightly under-cranked so that she moves slightly faster than normal. She moves so quickly that she often loses touch with her surroundings, and though her housemate Frank has been stealing bits of copper wire out of appliances and copper items from her for a long time, she has never really noticed it.
Frank: Frank may have lived in Butte all his life or may have stopped and stayed once on a cross-country trip. His earliest memories are of rocks, of picking up rocks in the shade and holding them to cool his cheek on a hot day, or of picking up rocks in the sun on a cool day and feeling their warmth on his face. He feels that he has heard rocks talking to him. He studied geology briefly -- he studied it long enough to decide that the geologists really know very little.
Frank is not a particularly social person. He will talk long and in great detail about his interests if questioned, but rarely questions back the person who asks him. He is obsessed with his theories about the important and neglected connections between human beings and the ground on which they walk.
His second obsession is to single-handedly return to the earth some of the things that we have taken from it. He fashioned for himself an outfit like a miner's and carries a shovel around his neck like a bandito carries a gun so that he can return copper to the Butte earth from which it was taken. He does this in a business-like fashion, going to work each day with a level of industriousness that would certainly take him far if it was applied to the world of conventional business. He has also deeply studied Butte history, and knows much about the different mines there and the men who worked them. He often appears to be instructing himself, making notes in the air and giving himself subvocal reminders and advice in gestures.
