William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

(LOOKING AT LETTER AGAIN, WAVING IT)

'The eminent Pennsylvania political leader,' shabbier than I was with his tarnished buttons, and a coat gone green at the seams. And not for want, mind. He was proud of it, of saving the cost of a coat. Do you know where he'd got it? Off his coachman's back, when even the coachman was ashamed to be seen in it. And even at that, would he part with the five hundred dollars? Three hundred, take it or leave it, he said, and a deed to oblivion, the deed to this place he'd been stuck with on a bad debt.

(CHUCKLING WITH RELISH)

What a fine pair of tramps we must have made, and this fortune between us, when he sent me off to see his man Bagby. This same one, his General Manager, the same Bagby that's written this letter. 'Bagby takes care of such things,' he said when he sent me off. Seven years ago, this same one, this same Bagby.

(PACING THE ROOM, MUTTERING WITH RELISH)

Sitting up stark naked in the middle of his bed gaping at a comic print, a bag of jawbreakers beside him and a hard hat on his head. 'Come in,' he says to me, into his dingy furnished room. 'There's your money on the chiffonier, I've no doubt you'll want to count it.' 'Here? The devil it is,' I told him, without even touching the envelope. 'My uncle said gold, and where's the deed that he talked about?' 'Suit yourself,' says Bagby, cracking a jawbreaker in his teeth, 'in the top drawer,' and back he went to his comic. There it was, three hundred dollars counted out in the drawer, and the deed to this place with it. And now…!

(TURNING HALF TOWARD HER)

'Bagby takes care of such things…' By God, and he does!

HIS MOTHER

Thomas!… Language fit for the battlefield, you're not in camp now among strangers and animals.

THOMAS

(APPROACHING HER)

A battlefield, that's what it's been all our lives! And now? Isn't it a time for… 'language,' as you say? To owe no one, after… all this. The years of all this, and of talking poormouth at Quantness…

HIS MOTHER

You've earned your keep up at Quantness.

THOMAS

And to never be forced into any man's debt again!

HIS MOTHER

Do they know?

THOMAS

Know? Up at Quantness? Of course. And the first thing the Major said, when I told him about it last night, was 'Get up there and claim it.' Do you think he wants the mines, the coal, all of it seized by the Federal government? Confiscated, if I don't claim it? Do you know how much we need coal?

HIS MOTHER

(LOOKING PAST HIM TO WINDOW)

I do know, Thomas.

THOMAS

When I rode in there last night, on furlough, and found this news waiting, why I… I was a hero, home from the war, as though I'd lived there all my life and not just these three years since I married.

HIS MOTHER

(RUEFULLY)

They've needed you more than you did them, Thomas. The work you put in on Quantness cotton while this place ran to ruin…

Standing over her, THOMAS gestures imploringly, then turns and crosses to the window, where he stands staring out.

THOMAS

By heaven, what a day!

HIS MOTHER

(AFTER PAUSE)

They've stopped the pension, Thomas.

THOMAS

(TURNING)

Pension?

(STARES AT HER FOR A MOMENT, THEN BREAKS INTO LAUGHTER)

My father's pension? That… how-much-was-it-a-month?

(ADVANCING TOWARD HER AGAIN)

Listen, don't you understand? This, what we have now, it's worth all the pensions they ever paid?

(HALF TURNING FROM HER DOWNSTAGE CENTER)

It was an insult, that pension, coming year after year to remind us what injustice was, in case we'd forgotten. In case I'd been able to forget all the plans that he had for me, for a great career in public life, bringing me up to read Rousseau, believing the 'natural goodness of man…'

Turning to her impulsively, THOMAS goes down to one knee beside her chair, and she throws up a hand to save the lamp from falling.

Listen, we can wait our lives out, Mother! Waiting for something like this… Waiting for something to happen, isn't that what people do? What keeps them alive, this waiting? What… even my father, wasn't he? Waiting for something to happen? to come out of nowhere and change things… and then?

As his enthusiasm fails to kindle her, THOMAS regains his feet slowly, turning away pensively toward the window.

Why, they die that way, waiting.

Letting himself down slowly half seated against the window-sill, THOMAS opens his coat and takes out a tobacco case and a cigar.

(HALF TO HIMSELF)

Free to be something, all the things… things we've talked about, to make choices. Yes, free to make choices, instead of being driven to them, will you get ready Mother, please? They're waiting for us, up at Quantness.

As though regretting this show of impatience, THOMAS seats himself back against the sill, and picks up a strip of rag he finds there.

They're expecting you…

HIS MOTHER

Is that the same uniform you went off in? Yes, it looks like it, now I can see.

Restraining himself, THOMAS crosses a boot over his knee and begins to rub it clean with the rag.

I remember when it was new, before you went off, you'd lay a handkerchief over your knee when you crossed your leg up that way, with your soiled boot…

THOMAS

(WITH EFFORT, NOT LOOKING UP, CONTINUES RUBBING)

They've done things, at Quantness, getting ready. A room…

HIS MOTHER

That cloth, Thomas.

THOMAS

(HOLDING UP THE RAG, PERPLEXED)

What?

HIS MOTHER

Please don't use it, for that. We've kept it for lampwick.

THOMAS

(STANDING, BARELY ABLE TO CONTROL EXASPERATION)

Listen, will you get ready? They expect you. They're waiting. They expect you up there to stay while I'm gone.

HIS MOTHER

(QUIETLY)

I've kept well here this whole year you've been away Thomas, and the chance that you mightn't come back at all. I can't leave here now.

THOMAS

(BURSTING OUT AT LAST)

Can't leave? Here? Look at it! The gate off, the fence fallen, corn dead on the stalk and tobacco rotted on the ground. The door latch was broken when I came in. I'm not blaming, I know it's been hard, I'm not blaming anyone. You or old Ambers, or John Israel, no, I know it's been hard. But now? You can leave it! Leave all this behind, things broken and worn out and saving precious rags, the cold and… all this.

THOMAS flings the rag to the floor between them and stands confronting her.

HIS MOTHER

(WITH A SORROWING CALM)

I was proud of you here, Thomas.

THOMAS

Proud!

HIS MOTHER

(AS THOUGH TRYING TO REACH HIM)

Of your work, your courage, that you'd found a place, your… you loved this land, Thomas. The life, things growing, even your new tobacco, your new bright leaf, you called it? It's still down in the barn where you hanged it to cure. I gave orders no one to disturb it. I've thought I've heard you down there at night sometimes, Thomas. The way you used to go down and grind corn? Do you remember?

THOMAS

(BROODINGLY)

Remember…!

HIS MOTHER

And the way you went off, when the war came…

THOMAS

(WITH BROODING INTENSITY)

Yes, and who do you think I've been fighting up there, but my uncle and all his damned Bagbys? Fighting, for this? For the right to lie down at night counting the minutes, the years, the days that can't be told one from another? And a red stripe in that flag of theirs for every year of… humiliation, straining side by side in the mud with old Ambers and John Israel, two black wretches who can't call their souls their own, planting and putting in fence. Yes, four years of that, and then three talking poormouth at Quantness, and you ask me to hesitate? With these seven stripes across my back, and now this on my face to remember?