BEN Did his father dying have anything to do with it?
MARY I believe it did. But not the way you might think.
Ben looks at her. She lights another cigarette.
MARY I think maybe when his daddy died that give him leave to go on and do what he done.
BEN You don't think he could of done it with his father alive.
She blows out smoke and shakes her head.
MARY No. No way.
BEN But not his wife and children.
MARY Not his wife and children. Maybe it ought to be the same thing, but it ain't. You ought to know about that. That's why you here ain't it? Cause you cain't get around that daddy? Cain't get around that daddy.
SCENE III
BEN Because I thought of my father in death more than I ever did in life. And think of him yet. The weight of the dead makes a great burden in this world. And I know all of him that I will ever know. Why could he not see the worth of that which he had put aside and the poverty of all he hungered for? Why could he not see that he too was blest? At times I think I came to the life of the laborer as the anchorite to his cell and pallet. The work devours the man and devours his life and I thought that in the end he must be somehow justified thereby. That if enough of the world's weight only pass through his hands he must become inaugurated into the reality of that world in a way to withstand all scrutiny. A way not easily dissolved or set aside. Perhaps in his final avatar he might even come to sit holding his hat at a wooden folding table borrowed from a church basement watching the wind cross the world, already beyond wind or world or anything which they might propagate or anything at all.
I lost my way. I'd thought by my labors to stand outside that true bend of gravity which is the world's pain. I lost my way and if I could tell you the hour of it or the day or how it came about I should not have lost it at all. Soldier did come back. He came back and we met secretly and I gave him money and sent him away again. Yet even before any of this I had a dream and this dream was a cautionary dream and a dream I did not heed.
In my dream I had died or the world had ended and I stood waiting before the door of some ultimate justice which I knew would open for me. I stood with my job book beneath my arm in which were logged the hours and the days and the years and wherein was ledgered down each sack of mortar and each perch of stone and I stood alone in that whitened forecourt beyond which waited the God of all being and I stood in the full folly of my own righteousness and I took the book from under my arm and I thumbed it through a final time as if to reassure myself and when I did I saw that the pages were yellowed and crumbling and the ink faded and the accounts no longer clear and suddenly I thought to myself fool, fool do you not see what will be asked of you? How He will lean down perhaps the better to see you, regarding perhaps with something akin to wonder that which is his own handiwork, He whom the firmament itself has not power to puzzle. Gazing into your soul beyond bone or flesh to its uttermost nativity in stone and star and in the unformed magma at the core of creation. And ask as you stand there alone with your book—perhaps not even unkindly—this single question: Where are the others? Where are the others. Oh I've had time in great abundance to reflect upon that terrible question. Because we cannot save ourselves unless we save all ourselves. I had this dream but did not heed it. And so I lost my way.
The dining room at the farmhouse. There is a long dining room table and chairs, an antique sideboard. The table is partly cleared and Mama enters and takes up more plates and carries them out to the kitchen. Ben is sitting at the head of the table and Maven and Mason are sitting at the table and Carlotta enters and takes up some dishes to carry them to the kitchen. She is about seven months pregnant. The telephone rings and Maven starts to get up but Ben motions to her to sit down.
BEN I'll get it, Babe.
He comes to the telephone and picks it up and says hello and then listens.
BEN (To telephone) No. No. You stay where you are. I'll be down there in twenty minutes.
He pauses and listens.
BEN Listen to me. Stay where you are. I'll be there in twenty minutes.
He hangs up the phone and returns to the table. He bends and kisses Maven.
MAVEN What is it, Ben?
BEN Got to go, Babe. I'll be back in a couple of hours.
MAVEN Oh Ben...
BEN (Holding up his hand to Mason, his other hand on Maven's shoulder) Mason.
MAVEN (Turning) What is it?
BEN Just something that's come up. Somebody in trouble. It's nothing really. But I have to go.
MAVEN Are they in jail?
BEN Not yet. (He smiles) I'll call you if I need your services.
He exits.
SCENE IV
A cheap hotel room in the central city at stage right. A nineteen year old black youth is lying on an old fashioned bed with an iron bedstead. He is dressed in cheap flashy clothes. He has a thin moustache and he is smoking a cigarette. Street sounds from below. There is a knock at the door and he gets up and goes to the door and opens it. Ben is standing at the door.