The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek

"The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek" is a stage play written by Naomi Wallace.

The play is published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc.

Set in a generic 'town outside a city. Somewhere in the Unites States' in 1936, the play focuses around two teenagers, Dalton Chance and Pace Creagan. They have no hopes for the future - Pace says, "You're not going to college. None of us are going to college." The only thing these teens can pits their wits against in their dead-end town hit hard by the depression is the seven-ten train that crosses the Trestle at Pope Lick Creek. You have to run across the trestle - towards the oncoming train. If you don't make it before the train hits the trestle, there are no safety sides, and you're a hundred feet above a dry creek.

The back of the script summarises the play thus: cquote|Dalton Chance, fifteen years old and an open book. Pace Creagan, seventeen, brimful of adventure, fearless and feared. To Dalton, she's irresitible. To Pace, he's a challenge. 'The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek' is a beautiful and haunting play. A coming-of-age story with a wicked twist, it reaches into the depths of a nation and asks what lies beneath.

Incomplete Plot outline

The play begins with Dalton in a prison cell, making shadow puppets by the light of a single candle. He is haunted by the vision of Pace Creagan, a girl he is supposed to have murdered.

We skip back to months earlier - the first time Dalton and Pace met under the trestle. Pace explains to Dalton what they're going to do, boasting she's run the trestle before, although Dalton is sceptical as there were no witnesses. He also knows that a boy died running the trestle a while back - Brett Weaver, who he believes was drunk - though Pace protests fiercely. Dalton decides he doesn't want to run the trestle, and backs out, saying "Only a drunk or an idiot'd play that game." Pace pulls a switchblade on him, and he tells her she is 'warped'. Eventually she agrees that they'll just watch the train tonight - "Take her measure. Check her steam." But she assures him one day he'll run the trestle.

We are now back in the present. Dalton sits silently in his cell, and Chas, his jailer, comes in on his break to talk to him. He discusses the man in the opposite cell - "Thinks he's a moose" - before asking Dalton how many years he thinks he'll get. "Or will they hang you?" Dalton doesn't respond.

Back in the past. Dalton is tending to his mother, Gin, after she comes back exhausted from her work in the factory. Dalton mentions he's been up at the trestle with Pace a few times, but when Gin asks if he kissed her, he says, "She's not the kissing kind. Not pretty either." As they are talking, Dray, Dalton's father, comes in and sits in the corner. Dalton lights a candle for his father, and Dray starts making shadow puppets on the wall. Dalton leaves, and Gin asks Dray to touch her. He looks at her but says nothing.

Pace and Dalton are at the trestle a few days later.