The Stonemason(13)

When I showed Papaw photographs of Mayan stonework he only shook his head. Stretchers and headers and quoins are the very soul of stonemasonry and of these they had none. Perhaps their mortar was mixed with human blood as in the old ballads. Papaw knows these tales too. He says the only blood you'll ever need is the blood of your redeemer.

He closes the stove door and returns to the table.

BEN And the secrecy. Always the secrecy. "Whatsoever thou hearest or seeist him do, tell it no man, wheresoever thou go." That from Guild rales of the fourteenth century. But it wasn't just to protect the guild. The reason the stonemason's trade remains esoteric above all others is that the foundation and the hearth are the soul of human society and it is that soul that the false mason threatens.

So. It's not the mortar that holds the work together. What holds the stone trues the wall as well and I've seen him check his four foot wooden level with a plumb bob and then break the level over the wall and call for a new one. Not in anger, but only to safeguard the true. To safeguard it everywhere. He says that to a man who's never laid a stone there's nothing you can tell him. Even the truth would be wrong. The calculations necessary to the right placement of stone are not performed in the mind but in the blood. Or they are like those vestibular reckonings performed in the inner ear for standing upright. I see him standing there over his plumb bob which never lies and never lies and the plumb bob is pointing motionless to the unimaginable center of the earth four thousand miles beneath his feet. Pointing to a blackness unknown and unknowable both in truth and in principle where God and matter are locked in a collaboration that is silent nowhere in the universe and it is this that guides him as he places his stone one over two and two over one as did his fathers before him and his sons to follow and let the rain carve them if it can.





SCENE II

The kitchen, morning. The family has just finished breakfast and Mama is clearing away the table. Big Ben is reading the paper and Carlotta is smoking a cigarette. Ben gets up from the table. He is wearing sport clothes, not dressed for work. He goes to the sink and rinses out his cup and takes his leather jacket and puts it on. Big Ben lowers the paper and looks at him.

BIG BEN I don't know what use it be you drivin up and down the roads.

BEN I'm not going to drive up and down the roads.

Big Ben regards him over the top of his paper.Ben turns up his coat collar.

BIG BEN What did the police say?

BEN I told you what the police said.

BIG BEN You ain't told me nothin.

BEN I told Mama.

BIG BEN I ain't Mama.

BEN They didn't say anything. They just take down the information. They fill out a report. They don't even list them as missing until they've been gone forty eight hours. Then they put the report in a filing cabinet along with about a thousand others, kids that are missing. Missing or misplaced or lost or people just couldn't remember where they'd left them or maybe no one even noticed they were gone or maybe they had no place to be missing from in the first place.

BIG BEN Carlotta say the truant officer callin up here wantin to know why he ain't in school.

BEN Sure. You think the left hand knows what the right is doing? Five years ago they were putting us in jail for sending our kids to school, now they want to jail us for not sending them. I've got to go. I'll be over there after dinner. Tell Osreau to be carrying it up on the back side and we'll set the lintels in the morning. Mama, Bye.

Ben exits.

MAMA (To the closed door) Bye honey.

BIG BEN Cain't tell him nothin. Drive around. Where he goin to look for the boy at? Police ain't got no sense. Teachers ain't got no sense. Ain't nobody got any sense but him.

MAMA Well at least he tryin to do somethin.

BIG BEN What that suppose to mean?

MAMA Don't mean nothin. Mean he tryin, that's all.

BIG BEN He just showin out. What's he goin do? The boy's run off, that's all. He'll be back.

MAMA Well, you waitin on me to peck holes in Benny you better make yourself comfortable, that's all I got to say.

BIG BEN You don't need to tell me that. Nooo. You sure don't need to tell me that.

He fluffs up his paper and turns to read, quietly indignant. Carlotta stubs out her cigarette.

CARLOTTA Why are you so sure he's just run away, Daddy?

BIG BEN He's just that age. Lot of boys his age run off from home. It's just their nature. Young boy like that. . .

CARLOTTA Did you?

BIG BEN No. But I thought about it. Course back when I was comin up young boys was kept busy and out of trouble. It wasn't like now. Nooo. Sure wasn't like now. I was Soldier's age I's workin a sixty hour week just like a man.

CARLOTTA Uncle Dyson ran away.

BIG BEN He was a lot older than me. I never did even know him till I was grown.

CARLOTTA How long did he stay gone?

BIG BEN That was different.