The Gardener's Son(4)

Interior. Inside door of Robert McEvoy's room. The door opens and the doctor enters, leaving his assistant Willis framed in the doorway. The assistant is a huge and solemn black. They begin setting up their equipment, the black fitting the pump for the carbolic spray. Mrs Gregg comes to the door. The doctor and his man are donning butchers aprons. Robert McEvoy turns his face to the wall. The doctor's assistant approaches him with a bottle of chloroform arid a pad. He dampens the pad and claps it over the boys mouth and nose. The boy struggles and flails. The doctor helps to hold him and after a while he is still. Mrs Gregg's face is a curious expression of concern touched with a morbid if not salacious curiosity. The doctor lays out his surgical instruments and they glitter in the lamplight as he places them in an enameled pan of dilute carbolic acid.

Interior. Martha McEvoy is standing in the kitchen door at the end of the hall. The door to Robert's room opens and the black emerges and goes down the hall with the boy's leg wrapped in a sheet under his arm. Mrs Gregg comes from the room and sees the girl standing there. They stare at each other.

Exterior. Day. A church bell tolling. Mrs Gregg in mourning is helped into her carriage by her son James and they set out behind the horsedrawn hearse up the dirt street through the middle of the town. The way is lined with townspeople. They pass the McEvoy house where Robert watches from a window. He looks pale and wasted and he watches the funeral with no expression at all.

Exterior. The Graniteville cemetery. The body of William Gregg lies in its casket beside a new dug grave. Flowers surround. People are taking their places and whispering and a large man in a black suit is standing by with his hands crossed at his waist waiting to begin. When all are settled he addresses the crowd:

SPEAKER Friends. Neighbors. We are gathered together here today at a most solemn and sad occasion. The man whose earthly remains lie here, and whose spirit we commend to a just God, has been a guiding force in the lives of nearly every one of us.

William Gregg was all his life an example of the virtue of hard work. He was himself born in indigent circumstances and was thrown upon his own resources at an early age. By force of his own character, by the habits of energy and industry and perseverance, he acquired for himself a fair share of the world’s wealth and some of its honors. But the crowning glory of his life and the true benefactors of his labors are here in the community which he established.

There are many among us today who can remember what life held in the way of promise before this man came among us. Too many of us were raised in hunger and poverty to ever forget. To see what he has wrought, the neat homes, the churches and schools, the gardens and the lovely grounds and last but not least the massive factory structure with its beautiful and perfect machinery, these things seem created almost by magic.

Mr Gregg was not the millionaire that common rumor made him. He was too good a citizen not to have lost heavily in the great disaster which has befallen our land. When a man works as he did for the common good the results of his labor will not be found in hoarded wealth, but in that increased prosperity and usefulness of those among whom he lived, which shall continue to bear fruit for generations after the first laborer himself has passed away.

Exterior. Dawn. The town, row of houses coming to life, lamps being lit, the windows projected onto the near dark in yellow squares, roosters crowing. A dog yaps. Doors open and shut. People's voices. The mill bell tolls. People are moving through the streets. Young girls, small children.

Interior. The mill. A man goes along the aisles of machinery lighting lamps with a long torch. The great wheel that turns the spindles stirs sluggishly, the belts slither and turn, the overhead shafts begin to revolve, the spindles turn. Young girls and children are taking their place at their machines. Close up of Martha McEvoy. Two young boys roughhouse at their tasks. Robert McEvoy comes down the long row through pools of lamplight and enters the office door at the end of the mill. He has a crude crutch and he moves with great grace and agility. He shuts the door and goes through into the office of the timekeeper who sits at his desk with a green eye shade and gaitered sleeves and sorts papers and sips coffee from a huge porcelain mug. When he sees McEvoy he swivels about in his chair and regards him. McEvoy leans on his crutch and looks at the timekeeper with a sort of disinterested malignity, something other than disdain.

TIMEKEEPER Well I reckon you’re the boy.

Robert McEvoy doesnt answer.

TIMEKEEPER McEvoy. That it? McEvoy?

ROBERT That’s it.

The timekeeper raises an eyebrow.

TIMEKEEPER That’s it?

McEvoy doesnt answer.

TIMEKEEPER Did they not learn you to sir at your home?