The Stonemason (3 page)

B
EN
Why did you quit?

S
OLDIER
I don't need the aggravation.

B
EN
Was it because you didn't make the A team? You would of made it next year.

S
OLDIER
I don't need to play on no B team.

B
EN
Everybody starts on the B team. Don't they?

S
OLDIER
Not everbody.

B
EN
But most.

S
OLDIER
That's them, this is me. Ben studies him. He shakes his head.

B
EN
Your mother's right you know. You're going to get in trouble running around with that bunch of trash.

S
OLDIER
It ain't nothin to you.

B
EN
Yes it is.

Ben studies him.

B
EN
You want to work for me Saturday?

S
OLDIER
I got other business to tend to.

B
EN
All right. You want to go out and start the truck?

S
OLDIER
Where's the keys at?

B
EN
They're in it.

Soldier gets up and goes back into the kitchen and out the back door. Ben watches him go, then gets up and exits offstage. We hear him go down the steps. In the kitchen Mama is clearing the table. Papaw gets up and goes to his room.

B
EN
(
Offstage
) Babe, I'm gone.

Is Melissa awake?

Are you okay?

All right.

I love you.

Ben returns to the living room and enters the kitchen. Soldier comes in the back door stomping the snow off his shoes. Ben goes to the back door and takes his coat down off a peg. He looks outside. Papaw is dressed in his coat and gloves and is standing by the woodstove holding his hat.

B
EN
Soldier.

S
OLDIER
What.

B
EN
I thought you were going to start the truck.

S
OLDIER
Cain't start it without no keys.

B
EN
The keys are in it.

S
OLDIER
No they ain't.

B
IG
B
EN
(
Without looking up from his paper
) The keys is in it.

S
OLDIER
(
Looking from Ben to Big Ben and back again
) What truck you talkin bout?

Ben buttons up his coat and pulls his gloves out of his coat pocket and puts on his hat.

S
OLDIER
I thought you meant the pickup.

B
EN
You sat right there and heard us talk about Grandad's truck.

S
OLDIER
You said truck I thought you meant your truck.

B
EN
(
To his grandfather
) You ready?

Papaw claps his gloved hands together. Ben gets the thermos of coffee off the sideboard that his mother has put there and returns to the door. The dog looks after him.

B
IG
B
EN
You better get you some sand.

M
AMA
Don't you keep him out in this all day. You hear?

Ben opens the door.

M
AMA
And let Bossy out.

B
EN
(
To the dog
) Let's go.

The dog looks at him.

B
EN
Let's go, I said.

The dog climbs slowly out of the box and goes to the door and looks out.

B
EN
Hit it.

The dog goes out. Ben and Papaw turn up their collars and pull on their caps and let down the earflaps. Ben watches the dog out in the snow.

B
EN
Mama, what are you going to do about this dog?

M
AMA
Ain't nothin wrong with that dog.

B
EN
He raises his leg to take a pee and then falls over in it.

M
AMA
You don't need to be worryin bout that dog. That dog's just fine.

SCENE III

The exterior of the old stone farmhouse. Ben and Papaw bring stones from offstage and pile them among the stones in front of the house. The light comes on at the podium and Ben speaks from there.

B
EN
To get stone for the house we also pull down old walls that are about to be bulldozed. Often we are given the stone just to haul it away. My grandfather says that you might learn how a watch is made by taking one apart or you might even be able to learn how to build a house by tearing one down. But tearing down stonework tells you nothing. The old masons would quit work if you stopped to watch them, but I don't think you could learn by watching. You couldn't learn it out of a book if there were any and there are not. Not one. We were taught. Generation by generation. For ten thousand years. Now in the memory of a single man it's been set aside as if it never existed. As if it had no value at all. He knows this and yet it seems not to bother him.

Maven is right to be jealous of him. I know that he's going to die and I despise every hour not spent in his company.

The podium light dims to black. At the house Ben goes offstage to bring a stone from the truck. The old man pauses to relight his pipe.

P
APAW
I didn't see no school busses out.

B
EN
(
Returning with a stone
) Soldier was probably trying to stay out of a school that wasn't going to run anyway. I don't know what to do about him.

P
APAW
(
Sucking at his pipe and throwing the match aside
) Well. They was a boy killed at that school. Maybe he shows pretty good sense.

B
EN
Maybe you're right. I knew that school was just a drug exchange center so I don't know why I should be surprised now that the murders have started. I know he's making Carlotta crazy.

P
APAW
Well, the boy's daddy ain't around.

B
EN
I think it's his daddy that's most of his problem now.

P
APAW
Well. Landry ain't much shakes. But it take a pretty sorry daddy to be worse than no daddy at all.

B
EN
I take it you don't rate him that sorry.

P
APAW
A man that will work they's always hope for him. He can always change his ways.

B
EN
Well, he does work. What about a man that won't work?

P
APAW
(
Shaking his head
) I don't believe they's nothin you can do for him. If they is I never saw it. (
He looks offstage
) That's the last one ain't it?

B
EN
That's the last one. You want some tea?

P
APAW
Well that would be all right. Too early to eat dinner.

Ben exits briefly offstage. Sound of the truck door opening and slamming and he returns with the thermos and cups and they sit down on the stones and Ben pours the tea.

B
EN
So tell me what happened about the man's house.

P
APAW
Oh well. They done had it made up to go out there. They wasn't no use to consult with me.

B
EN
Is that what they call a crowbar lien?

P
APAW
Well. I've heard it called that.

B
EN
But they did it anyway.

P
APAW
Oh yes. They went out there and pulled it down. They had some big bars and they pried the stones out of the lower courses till it give way. They was lucky it didn't fall on em.

B
EN
Did you think they were wrong?

P
APAW
I thought the man ought to of paid us what he owed us. Tearin it down didn't get nobody paid though. It didn't benefit nobody.

B
EN
Maybe it made them feel better.

P
APAW
Maybe. I expect it depend on how you feel in the first place. Stonework ain't like somethin you sell to a man and he don't pay you you can take it back. Even a house, you could tear it down and get the lumber. Get the brick. But the mason fits the stones for the place where they're to go and that's where they're at. They ain't nothin to take back. You just has to destroy it. You destroy you own work you ain't got much use for it to start with, paid or not paid.

B
EN
Might it not keep somebody else from not paying you?

P
APAW
It might. It might keep some from hirin you too. They's lots of work in this world that ain't never paid for. But the accounts gets balanced anyway. In the long run. A man that contracts for work and then don't pay for it, the world will reckon with him fore it's out. With the worker too. You live long enough and you'll see it. They's a ledger kept that the pages don't never get old nor crumbly nor the ink don't never fade. If it don't balance then they ain't no right in this world and if they ain't then where did I hear of it at? Where did you? Only way it won't is you start retribution on you own. You start retribution on you own you'll be on you own. That man up there ain't goin to help you. Ain't no use even to ask.

B
EN
Is that why you wouldn't go out there with them?

P
APAW
No. The reason I wouldn't go out there was just a plain everday reason. No man can lay stone and be thinkin bout whether he goin to have to tear it back down again. Ain't no use to get in no such habits as that. You know that man up there ain't goin to let nothin stand forever noway. Not in this world he ain't. And it's against that judgment that you got to lay stone. If you goin to lay it at all.

B
EN
So who owns the stonework that's not paid for?

P
APAW
Well, under the law you can get a lien on the work. You can claim it, but you cain't take possession of it. The man you built it for, he can take possession of it, but he cain't claim it. The law don't have no answer. Where men don't have right intentions the law cain't supply em. You just at a dead end.

B
EN
Then no one owns the work?

P
APAW
The man's labor that did the work is in the work. You cain't make it go away. Even if it's paid for it's still there. If ownership lies in the benefit to a man then the mason owns all the work he does in this world and you cain't put that claim aside nor quit it and it don't make no difference whose name is on the paper.

SCENE IV

The basement. Ben at his small table. The light comes on at the podium.

B
EN
Whose work is it? I know that there are stones in that house that his uncle Selman kid up. There's no stone for Selman. He's buried behind the house. Somewhere on the hill. My grandfather's views must incorporate the life of Selman. All Selmans. These views appear to be some labor theory of value. But there's a further agenda. Because the world is made of stone the mason is prey to a great conceit and to whatever extent the look and the shape of the world is the work of the mason then that work exists outside of the claims of workers and landholders alike. Reading Marx in my last year of school only sent me to Hegel and there I found his paradigm of servant and master in which the master comes to suffer the inner impoverishment of the idle while the servant by his labors grows daily in skill and wisdom.