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The Stonemason(9)

By:Cormac McCarthy


CARLOTTA Well, it wasn't the good Lord's plan that I ever heard of for men to be gone all hours of the day and night.

MAMA You watch yourself girl. You hear? You just watch yourself.

CARLOTTA That's what it's about.

MAMA I ain't goin to tell you again.

CARLOTTA I'll tell you what you told me. The truth's the truth.

Mama gets up from the table and busies herself at the sideboard.

CARLOTTA You're right. It's none of my business.

Mama has come back to the table and is picking up Melissa.

MAMA Honey, you ready to put on your jammies? You ready to go nigh—night?





SCENE III

The kitchen, Sunday morning. The family are coming in from outside, returning from church. They disperse through the kitchen and exit, steps on the stairs both up and down, leaving Papaw and Ben in the kitchen. Ben is putting the kettle on. Papaw has taken off his overcoat and hat and laid the coat across the back of a kitchen chair. He has on an old fashioned dark suit, white shirt with tie, high top black kid dress shoes. He sits at the kitchen table and puts his hat on the table. Ben is fixing tea.

BEN Papaw, what did you think of the new minister?

PAPAW Well I liked him just fine. Liked him just fine. I didn't catch his name

BEN Erickson. His name is Erickson.

PAPAW Erickson. I worked one time for a man named Erickson. He sure wasn't no minister.

BEN (Smiling) I thought you might think he was a bit young for the job.

PAPAW Well he is young. But he seemed to have good sense. Bein old don't shelter people from ignorance. Ought to, but it don't.

Ben pours the cups and brings them to the table.

PAPAW Thank you Benny. Thank you. A lot of the old time preachers used to preach all kinds of foolishness. Or it was to my ears. I heard any number of times how when colored folks got to heaven they'd be white. Well that don't make no more sense than a goose wearin gaiters. God didn't make the colored man colored just to see how he'd look. There ain't nothin triflin about God. He made everbody the color He wanted em to be and He meant for em to stay that way. And if that suits Him it’s got to suit me too, else I's just a damn fool.

BEN Did you always feel that way?

PAPAW I think so. I know some coloreds don't, but I always did. It was the way I was raised.

BEN Do you think it was easier growing up black back then?

PAPAW Many ways it was. Course in many ways it was easier don't matter what color you was. We lived out at the farm and we didn't have a whole lot of experience of the world. Our families, Telfair families, colored and white, we'd been together over a hundred year and we didn't encounter all that much meanness. They was good people and so was we. The first time I ever understood that the white man I was six year old and they was a circus show come to Louisville and Harris, he's the oldest, he made it up for all of us to go and he got extra work for everbody and we saved them pennies, saved them pennies. I think it costed a dime to get in but we raised it. And he carried us all over there, him and Aaron and Charles and me and sister Emmanuelle she come too. We got over there and Harris had heard about the monkeys and he wanted to see em awful bad and we tried to locate where they was at and after awhile he went up to this white man was sellin lemonade, soda pop, ever what it was, and he asked him, said Mister, can you tell us where the monkey cage is at? Well, course it is funny now. The man he looked down at all us little colored children and we was all barefooted and as raggedy as a stump full of grandaddies and he said: If you couldn't find your way back, what did you leave for?

Ben laughs. Papaw smiles.

PAPAW We didn't know nothin about the world. Didn't know nothin. We was babes in the woods. (he stirs his tea). I went to work when I was twelve and it wasn't long fore I learned that a lot of what the good book said was ever bit as true as it was claimed. Stone ain't so heavy as the wrath of a fool and I worked for white men and I was subjugated to that wrath many a time and I become very dissatisfied about my lot in this world. The peculiar thing was that the very thing that brought me to that pass was what led me out of it and since that time I've come to see that more often than not that's how the Lord works.

He sips his tea. They sit.

BEN What was it? That brought you to that pass and led you out of it.

PAPAW Just the work. Just the trade. That was all they was to it. All they ever was to it. I've wondered all my life what people outside of the trade do. I wonder it yet.

He sips his tea.

PAPAW I made it a study to put up with foolishness and not to be made party to it. I liked the work from the first time I ever turned to it and I was determined that they wasn't goin to run me off no matter how crazy they got and they didn't. You had black and white masons work side by side on them big jobs but you was never paid the same and you was never acknowledged the same. But I knowed Uncle Selman could lay stone to beat any man on that job didn't make no difference what color he was and anybody that didn't know it was just too ignorant to count. So I seen that he was acknowledged if he was colored and that made me think again. I seen they was some things that folks couldn't lie about. The facts was too plain. And what a man was worth at his work was one of them things. It was just knowed to everbody from the lowest to the highest and they wasn't no several opinions about it. When I seen that I seen the way my path had to go if I was ever to become the type of man I had it in my heart to be. I was twelve year old and I never looked back. Never looked back.