The Gardener's Son(7)

Giles looks about the greenhouse. McEvoy continues at his work.

GILES You got a good warm place to work in.

MR MCEVOY When the sun shines.

GILES I just stopped by on the way to the house. I wanted to ask ye about Bobby.

McEvoy does not look up.

GILES Is he quit his job?

MR MCEVOY I reckon he is.

GILES Did he give any reason?

MR MCEVOY No sir. He never explained hisself to me.

GILES Well, I just wanted to tell ye we got to take on another boy.

MR MCEVOY If you do you do.

GILES You know he aint supposed to stay on at company house if he aint employed by the company. Old as he is.

Silence.

GILES I mean its company policy.

MR MCEVOY Yessir.

GILES He can do what he wants. Aint nobody goin to put a gun to his head to make him work. But them that choose to toil not neither do they spin has got to berth elsewhere.

MR MCEVOY Well, you dont need to bother yourself about Bobby.

GILES Well he’s been somethin’ of a bother to us.

MR MCEVOY I said you dont need to bother yourself about him.

GILES Why is that?

MR MCEVOY He's gone is why.

GILES Where’s he gone to?

MR MCEVOY He never said.

Exterior. Two years later. Evening. Train arriving at the outskirts of Graniteville. A solitary figure riding the last boxcar.

The train slows. Robert McEvoy sits atop the boxcar with his crutch and a tattered carpetbag. He surveys the countryside. He is chewing tobacco and he squints and leans and spits over the edge of the car roof. He is older and harder looking and he wears a scar. As the train grinds to a halt he takes up his bag and moves along the roof to the ladder and lowers himself down to the ground and sets off along a narrow road through the winter woods. In the distance the mill bell tolls.

At the top of a hill he meets two blacks seated by the side of the road taking their dinner from pails. They are dressed in rags of overalls. McEvoy stands before them and looks down at them. Behind them is a lane leading into the graveyard and the tombstones rise out of the winter grass and weeds. They look up at McEvoy.

1ST BLACK You wants to take dinner with us you gots to ast. I aint goin to ast you. You liable to shoot me.

MCEVOY What are you all doin up here?

2ND BLACK We takin our dinner. When that bell ring down there for folks to quit and take they dinner it ring for us too.

The first black waits for him to finish, then answers McEvoy's question.

1ST BLACK We diggin a grave. I dont like to eat my dinner in there. He dont care. But I does.

2ND BLACK Them folks in there dont care. No more’n you would.

1ST BLACK Everbody that aint got a say so, dont mean they dont care. In this life or out of it.

He looks up at McEvoy.

1ST BLACK Is you new to these parts?

MCEVOY Whose grave you diggin?

2ND BLACK Some old woman that died.

1ST BLACK A lady in the town. Dont know her name. She aint got no kinfolk buried here.

A wind blows dead leaves over the road. McEvoy raises up and looks past the seated blacks toward the stones.

2ND BLACK Her husband give us two dollar. We supposed to get paid from Mr Evans but he said not to take his money and he give us two dollar.

MCEVOY You dont know her name?

1ST BLACK No suh.

2ND BLACK He was up here most of the mornin . . .

1st black looks at the second nervously, and at McEvoy.

2ND BLACK Went all around takin up the old dead flowers off folks’ graves . . .

1ST BLACK Odell . ..

2ND BLACK Said folks ought not to bring flowers if they wasnt fixin to come back.

McEvoy stares down at the blacks. They look nervous. He hobbles past them down the little lane into the graveyard. They watch him go with wide eyes. In a few minutes he returns. He has their pick and shovel under his arm and he drops these in the road in front of them.

MCEVOY You all eat your dinner and get back on down to wherever you started from. That woman’s not to be buried up here. She dont belong to the mill.

2ND BLACK We gots to work to suit the man what pays us. You dont want that grave dug you see him.

1ST BLACK Hush Odell.

McEvoy leans toward the second black.

MCEVOY You get your shit and get gone. I see you up here again diggin I’ll blow a hole in your black ass.

2ND BLACK Yessuh. I didnt mean nothin by it. I was just doin like I was told . . .

1ST BLACK Will you hush now, Odell? Will you?

McEvoy steps back and the two gather up their pails and their half eaten dinners and scrabble up the picks and shovels and start off down the road half sideways, nervously watching McEvoy.

1ST BLACK I knowed when I seen you you was trouble.

They turn and go on down the road, arguing among themselves. McEvoy watches them go.

Interior. Afternoon. The McEvoy house. The mirrors in the house are covered with cloths and in the front room is a dark wood coffin trestled up on sawhorses wrapped in black crepe. The coffin is open and there is a lighted candle on a table and there are three old ladies in black mourning. Two are sitting in chairs and the third is arranging flowers in a vase. Robert McEvoy appears in the door and they all turn to look at him. He ignores them and comes into the parlor and goes to the coffin and looks down at his dead mother. The woman arranging the flowers has stopped and watches him. The other two turn and whisper and the first one looks at McEvoy with disapproval and rises and goes to the door and shuts it. At the sound of the door shutting McEvoy turns and looks at the old woman.