William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

Mother… devil him? Why, John Israel, he was our 'noble savage,' and Will wasn't more than twelve years old. Did you know that the Major wanted to buy him? that he offered me six hundred dollars for John Israel once? And that it was Will that talked me out of it? giving me back all my own ideas, that I'd brought back here from France?

HIS MOTHER

You took him to build that fine staircase at Quantness when our barn roofs needed mending right here.

THOMAS

(IMITATIVE)

'A niggra like that that can turn wood and read,' the Major said…

HIS MOTHER

(IN A SUDDEN OUTBURST OF BITTER AND DESPERATE ACCUSATION)

I taught him to read in the Bible, Thomas! John Israel was given into my keeping, Providence gave him into my keeping and I taught him where to seek the Lord's grace, to find his duty in the Lord's will… to submit to the Lord's everlasting mercy… to fight the temptation to… harden his heart…!

THOMAS

(BURSTS OUT AS DESPERATELY)

The Lord's grace! And… is it my heart that's hardened? Mine? You ask me if I remember those nights, when I used to go down to the barn and grind corn? Remember? I went out and worked in the darkness because I was trapped, because I was baffled, because I was through but I couldn't end it, I… I died too, but I couldn't lie down. I still had strength that was left from the day, I still had anger that I hadn't spent pulling stumps, or putting in fence, and there was nothing to do with my anger and strength but to stand in the dark and grind corn. To stand, like a blind horse chained to a millstone, and accept it, as though it were mine… but knowing it… couldn't be! You… you talk of laying up treasures in heaven? I… I want order here. And the way, Mother the way you cling to this place, to that pension, and even the way John Israel ran off, it's as though you… cherish injustice. When I left John Israel to keep things up here, I gave up a commission, if I'd taken a servant I would have accepted an officer's commission, but I… left him here safe, for you… for you, that pension? When my father died in an embassy post where they gave him nothing, no promotions, they let him rot there until it was over and every idea he had was dead, and we had to come back and beg from his brother what was his? what was ours? And then to be put off with this?

(HE MOTIONS ROUND HIM INDICATING THE HOUSE)

As HIS MOTHER sits, deadly motionless, THOMAS stands away in a monumental effort to gain control, and snaps his watch open in his trembling hand.

Without John Is… with only Ambers to help you, I'll send a wagon down with a boy. I'll send Will's boy Henry down with a rig, from Quantness.

HIS MOTHER

(IN A VAGUE, DISTANT TONE AS THOUGH LOOKING FAR AWAY)

He will come back, when it is time. He will come back here, if he is able… hunted down to earth somewhere he has never been… Alone, deviled, and what will he know, what will he know then but what he learned at night to read here, when no angels' hands are offered… Yes, 'Thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God' when no angels' hands are given, to bear him up.

THOMAS

(STUPIDLY, IMPULSIVE)

Mother… will you… come north with me, then?

HIS MOTHER

(TURNING, SLOWLY, VACANTLY, STARING AT HIM AFTER A PAUSE AS OVER A GREAT DISTANCE)

Is that a rent in your trousers, Thomas?

(PAUSE AS HE STARES AT HER HELPLESSLY)

There, by the pocket…?

THOMAS

(HOPELESSLY)

There's a… house there.

HIS MOTHER

You can't go north dressed like that, Thomas.

THOMAS

(BACKING SLOWLY AWAY FROM HER TOWARD THE DOOR)

Mother, will you…

HIS MOTHER

Will you… want to take that coat, Thomas? I've mended it up.

THOMAS

(NEARING THE DOOR, WATCHING HER AS THOUGH ESCAPING HER)

I… won't need mended coats, mended anything… Clothes pulled from the casket, no… I'll have coats, everything… as it should be…

The gauze curtain of the Prologue lowers as THOMAS exits backing through the door. HIS MOTHER remains rigidly still until a horse is heard outside, at which she rises and hurries to the window, staring out until silence falls, and then, turning and recrossing the room slowly, is stooping in a shaft of sunlight to pick up the rag as the scene fades out behind lights up on the gauze curtain scene. There is the morning sound of birds, and the trot of a horse rising and falling away.

— Did you write this all by yourself Oscar?

— Of course I wrote it.

— It's spooky.

— It's not spooky! It's a serious play that I, what are you doing.

— What does it look like? buttoning her blouse as she stood up out of reach, — I have to go Oscar, I only came over to bring you that thing about your accident and I haven't even got money for gas.

— There's some on the kitchen table but listen, that was only the beginning, the prologue we haven't even read act one and…

— You better read it to somebody else Oscar, she said from the door there turning for the kitchen, — I don't even know what it's supposed to be about.

ACT ONE

Scene One

From stage right to left, the parlour, front hall, veranda and lawn path of Quantness. White columns rise on the veranda, running from downstage left to upstage left center; and at the extreme right of the stage another column, obviously one of four, supports the corner of an unfinished pediment, all in the Greek Revival style. The parlour carries through the stark elegance of the house, with plain chairs flanking a sideboard upstage right center, a fireplace with long straight mantel at right, and the corner of a spinet showing at downstage right. From the parlour a door opens upon the hall at stage center, plain but lofty, with an exit at rear hidden by the gentle sweep of a curved staircase.

THE MAJOR, a man in his sixties, is turned out to a fault in military uniform which lends authority to his patronizing manner, his apparent satisfaction with all that is familiar and mistrust for what is not, his forthright lack of imagination or sympathy for all he does not understand, and his distress at anything that threatens to disturb established order.

MR KANE is shorter, somewhat stout and balding, his loose beard, prominent nose and carelessness of dress giving him an unwieldy appearance which he belies with his attitude of shrewd appraisal for everything he meets and a presence of lively, attentive dignity.

Because the play, wasn't that what this was all about? Waving Mister Basic to the chair where his father'd used to sit reading the paper there in the library, change spilling from his pocket down the cleft of the cushion, just take the opening scene here, after the prologue between Thomas and his mother, where the Major's showing his guest around Quantness (with a sweeping gesture to offstage left).

THE MAJOR

All that out there was cotton, growing up now in rabbit tobacco and Queen Anne's laces. That cotton that's down at Wilmington now piled on the dock there waiting to be shipped, that's all the Quantness cotton that's left after what we lost at Beaufort.

KANE

(POLITELY)

They tell me Quantness is the biggest plantation in the county.

THE MAJOR

In some ways, Mister Kane, you might say it is the county. You stand right here, sir, any way you look, Quantness runs as far as you can see.

(TURNING TO LEAD WAY INTO HOUSE)

It was a good piece of the next county, until my own father, he seceded it. He took and joined it onto this county here, the same way we seceded the county from the state three months before they got the state seceded from the Union. I figured he would have done that, my father. He wasn't one to wait on other people making up their mind.

As THE MAJOR and KANE enter hall crossing toward the parlour, right, WILLIAM, hearing their approach, retires to a corner upstage center with a hitch to his trousers and smoothing back his hair. He walks with a marked limp.