The Stonemason(24)

He waits. He looks at Maven.

BEN Yes. Black male. Nineteen. Yes. He was nineteen. He was my nephew. Telfair. His name. Benjamin. His name was Benjamin.





SCENE IX

At stage right, the family cemetery with the stone farmhouse in the background. There are a number of stone markers and part of an iron paling fence. All the family are present and dressed in mourning and the minister is reading the service over the casket.

MINISTER Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me. And horror hath overwhelmed me. And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away and be at rest. Lo then would I wander far off. I would lodge in the wilderness. I would hast me to a shelter from the stormy wind and tempest.

A wind is blowing across the little cemetery and Carlotta who is standing next to her husband turns away and goes stage left a few steps and stands looking out away from the service. She takes off her hat and veil and shakes out her hair. Her mouth is set and her face is hard.

MINISTER Destroy, O Lord, and divide their tongue: For I have seen violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof. Iniquity also and mischief are in the midst of it

He breaks off and looks up.

MINISTER For it was not an enemy that reproached me. Then I could have borne it.





SCENE X

Night, the farmhouse dining room. Ben is sitting alone with his elbows on the table and his forehead against his fists. A light comes on in the kitchen behind him and Carlotta enters the room. She comes forward and stands looking down at him. She is still dressed in black. Ben raises his head. Then he turns and looks up at her.

CARLOTTA We're leaving tomorrow. As soon as we've found a place we'll send out for the furniture and things. I'm going to let you and Mason make whatever sort of agreement he thinks is fair about the house. I'm sorry it's on your land. We can't move it.

BEN I'm sorry, Carly.

CARLOTTA I don't think you are.

BEN I know. But I am. I don't know what else to say.

He looks away. She is standing looking down at him. She shakes her head. He turns and looks at her again.

BEN What about Mama?

CARLOTTA Mama's not going anywhere.

He looks away again.

CARLOTTA Tell me one thing.

BEN Anything.

CARLOTTA Did he mean to do it? Ben looks at her.

BEN No. I don't think he did.

CARLOTTA But I'll never know. Will I?

He looks away.

BEN No.

CARLOTTA I thought you were different, Ben.

BEN So did I.

CARLOTTA Well.

She half turns to go.

BEN I can't undo it Carly. I was wrong and I'll be sorry for it the rest of my life.

CARLOTTA So will I, Ben.

She exits.





SCENE XI

The little cemetery, stage right. It is evening and Ben is standing among the stones. The light comes on at the podium where Ben speaks.

BEN In the fall of that year when the weather had begun to turn I thought of him more and more. I remembered his pipe. I remembered a fox we saw on the hill behind the house in the snow and I remembered small things about him. His gloves. The knees in his trousers. The way he turned the pages of his bible. I saw him here twice in the evening just at dusk and I tried small tricks to make him appear again. I'd turn my head aside and then look back quickly. Or I'd close my eyes. Or maybe it was a dream. I saw him with a great stone that he carried with much labor and I thought it was like a boundary stone and I looked for some mark or inscription on the stone but there was none. It was just a stone. Nothing is finally understood. Nothing is finally arrived at.

Grace I know is much like love and you cannot deserve it. It is freely given, without reason or equity. What could you do to deserve it? What?

I've questioned the tightness of loving that old man beyond all other souls.

What I need most is to learn charity. That most of all.

I know that small acts of valor may be all that is visible of great movements of courage within.

For we are all the elect, each one of us, and we are embarked upon a journey to something unimaginable. We do not know what will be required of us, and we have nothing to sustain us but the counsel of our fathers.

It has grown darker in the little cemetery. A wind has sprung up.

BEN Then one night when I was thinking of nothing at all he was suddenly there before me so plain I could have touched him.

Papaw materializes out of the fog upstage just at the edge of the headstones. He is naked.

BEN He came out of the darkness and at that moment everything seemed revealed to me and I could almost touch him I could almost touch his old black head and he was naked and I could see the corded muscles in his shoulders that the stone had put there and the sinews and the veins in his forearms and his small belly and his thin old man's shanks and his slender polished shins and he was so very beautiful. He was just a man, naked and alone in the universe, and he was not afraid and I wept with a joy and a sadness I'd never known and I stood there with the tears pouring down my face and he smiled at me and he held out both his hands. Hands from which all those blessings had flowed. Hands I never tired to look at. Shaped in the image of God. To make the world. To make it again and again. To make it in the very maelstrom of its undoing. Then as he began to fade I knelt in the grass and I prayed for the first time in my life. I prayed as men must have prayed ten thousand years ago to their dead kin for guidance and I knew that he would guide me all my days and that he would not fail me, not fail me, not ever fail me.