his innocence, innocent Harmon is seeing guilt. It makes me angry. For the first time watching this play, I am squarely on the side of those girls who found their retribution where they could. Only when John Proctor is led away do I remember that this is what could happen to Rudy.
There’s a drumroll that signals the execution and then the gallows appear. The five girls who started the accusations stand in front of it. They’re wearing placards around their necks that read WITCH. This was not in the original play but it is powerful; I suppose it signifies that we are what we accuse others of being.
Samantha Grimes steps forward and turns her placard around. The name Priscilla Barnes is written on it.
“I’m Priscilla Barnes,” Samantha says. “I was born in 1937 and remanded to the Haywood Refuge for Wayward Girls in 1952. I gave birth to a baby girl ten months later. My baby was taken from me and put up for adoption. I disappeared from Haywood in November of 1954. The records say I was a runaway but no trace of me has ever been found.”
She steps back and Paola Fernandez steps forward, turning her placard around to reveal the name Barbara Hampton. “I was sent to Haywood in 1955 because my stepfather raped me. I didn’t give birth until I’d been here a year and a half, though. My baby died in childbirth and I disappeared two weeks later. No one ever saw me again.”
“This wasn’t in the first night’s version,” Jean says under her breath. “Did you know about this?”
I shake my head, wondering if Luther fed this idea to Jill.
The third girl steps forward. Her placard reads SHIRLEY EAMES. “I got sent here in 1958 by a judge in Boston because she didn’t know where else to send me. I’m black, you see”—there’s a ripple of giggles because the girl playing the part, Sophie Watanabe, is not black—“and Protestant and all the good orphanages in New York are for Catholics and Jews. I had a baby here who was taken from me and then I vanished. My record says ‘Suicide’ but if that’s so, where’s my body?”
Dakota Wyatt steps up next, holding out her placard: NOREEN BAGLEY. “By the time they found my body on Kennebec Beach my eyes had been eaten out by crabs. ‘Accidental death,’ it says in my record, but isn’t it funny that I’d had a list of these girls”—she points to the three girls on her right—“in my room and that the man who found my body was Woody Hull.” She points down into the audience and a spotlight appears on Woody’s bald head. The murmur in the audience grows and I notice now that it’s accompanied by a low drumbeat.
Rachel Lazar steps forward, but she doesn’t turn her placard. “I noticed that all three of the missing girls were part of a hiking group that Woody Hull led,” she says. “Woody Hull also was in charge of the search for Noreen Bagley. Cora Rockwell, the headmistress at the time, records in her diary that Woody Hull knew there was a list of the missing girls in Noreen’s room even though Cora had taken it down before she showed him the room. I took my suspicions to Woody Hull and then”—she turns the placard around to reveal Lila’s name—“I was found dead beneath the Point.”
“I was at home in bed!” Woody yells, struggling to his feet. “The police have exonerated me!” He shakes his cane at the stage, blinking in the spotlight.
“Who the hell is manning the lights?” Jean mutters, getting to her feet.
“This is a witch hunt!” Woody yells, turning to face the audience. He looks like he’s playing the part of Angry Old Man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. Jean reaches for his arm and he swings the cane at her, catching her on the cheek. Someone screams. Harmon is pushing past me, trying to get to Woody, who is now lumbering up the aisle, head down, like a bull charging. The spotlight stays on him—who the hell is manning it?—turning his bald skull an angry red.
Harmon is right behind Woody, reaching for him as he stumbles and goes down. There’s a loud thump that I think is the sound of Woody’s body hitting the floor but then realize is the drum. Who the hell is still drumming? I push past Jean and through the now-crowded aisle. Harmon is kneeling beside Woody, pushing his