(MORE DISTANTLY, STANDING AS THOUGH DAZED)
She was a child, Giulielma then, come up behind me demanding to know what I was doing on their property. And it was as though I’d strayed into a kingdom, a fool from nowhere with blood on my hands and that bird dropping blood on the ground between us. I gave her father the bird when I met him, as though I’d been out and shot it for sport. ‘I never knew anyone to hunt without dogs,’ was what she said when she took me in . . .
(SHUDDERING, HE CLUTCHES A HAND OVER HIS EYES)
And I never climb that rise today without seeing them wheel up before me, without a tearing ache in my stomach. I was hunting because we were hungry.
HIS MOTHER half rises from her chair, her arms tendering an embrace which she drops slowly as he stares without seeing her.
HIS MOTHER
(SINKING BACK IN CHAIR, QUAVERINGLY DIRECT)
And you married her . . . for Quantness and, you’re going there? now?
THOMAS
(SPEAKING WITH EFFORT, NOT LOOKING AT HER)
Out to wake John Israel and Ambers, to pack up your things.
HIS MOTHER
(COLDLY)
John Israel’s gone.
THOMAS
(STOPPING SHARPLY IN THE DOOR)
Gone?
HIS MOTHER
John Israel’s gone, Thomas. He ran off.
THOMAS
(AMAZED, STEPPING BACK INTO THE ROOM)
But . . . why didn’t you tell me? Or write?
HIS MOTHER
(WITH RUEFUL SATISFACTION)
What could you have done, so far away?
THOMAS
When? When did he go?
HIS MOTHER
In dead of winter. We worried sick, if he was running away up north, where it’s colder.
THOMAS
But . . . him run off, and you worried for him?
(HE COMES SLOWLY TO REST AGAINST THE DOORFRAME)
And after I left him safe behind, instead of taking him up to the war . . .
HIS MOTHER
(DISTANTLY RESENTFUL)
The way you used to take him to work up at Quantness, and you and her brother used to devil him up there.
THOMAS
(WITH EFFORT AT WEARY INDULGENT LAUGH, AS THOUGH THIS IS AN OLD ARGUMENT)
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 shalt 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 p
arlour 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 Basie 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.
(IN THE HALL)
You’re a history teacher you said, Mister Kane? Up in Virginia?
KANE
(ANXIOUSLY SELF-DEPRECATING)
No, no, I was a fellow. A resident fellow in philosophy.
THE MAJOR
(LEADING WAY TO THE PARLOUR)
Yes, there’s some books in here that would probably interest you, the set of books my father left that he was building the house here from. The Antiquities of Athens is what they’re called. I took up in these books myself right after we buried him, everything that he had marked, every line right down to the inch. The oak beams were hewed and morticed right here where they’re laid, and the floor is the heart grain of pine.
(ENTERING THE PARLOUR)
It’s still not all finished, all my father had planned.
Noticing WILLIAM immediately, KANE has stopped, and THE MAJOR, as though forced to do so by KANE’s attention, turns to introduce WILLIAM with the almost apologetic manner he reserves for his son, as one whose presence seems to dismay him as does anything he does not understand, and for this reason almost fears.
Ah . . . Mister Kane, my son William . . .
(AS THOUGH FORCED TO EXPLAIN WILLIAM’S PRESENCE, AS KANE AND WILLIAM SHAKE HANDS)
William’s kept things up here the whole time I’ve been gone. This whole year since the war started.
(THIS ACCOMPLISHED, HE TAKES UP HIS EARLIER TONE; TO KANE)
You might notice the tilt to this mantel shelf? It killed him, this mantel shelf did. It killed my own father. It’s solid Maryland marble, the whole thing. There wasn’t a floorboard laid when it arrived here, just the oak beams to climb on, but he couldn’t wait. My father wanted that mantel shelf up, and he wanted it just so. They had it swung into place, and he stepped in there to set it right. He was like that, stepping right in like that to move it just that much of an inch, the hair breadth between it being perfect and not, and it crushed him. It slipped and crushed him right down on the beam.
(PATTING THE MANTEL WITH APPARENT SATISFACTION)
It’s still not finished, all my father had planned here. Wrought iron running in a balcony up there inside the el of the house, that never got here from Pennsylvania. And the mirror for over the mantel shelf here . . .
—Excuse me there Mister Crease, maybe . . .
—And the mirror for over the mantel shelf here, it got broke on the way. Just to give you the feel of it Mister Basie, would you like some tea? Tea? No, no, just some coffee if it wasn’t that much trouble, already had one hell of a morning just getting out here and finding the place, got lost two or three times looking for the gates with that STRANGERS REQUESTED NOT TO ENTER sign and finally must have come in the back door, the service entrance there with that woman barring the way in the kitchen, planting those splendid thighs that could have swallowed him whole and the toot of this horn, it was tooting right now, threatening the crippling rush of a four year old on a three wheeler down the long hall where no one’s expecting you, make you feel like a thief in broad daylight, nobody expecting Harold Basie wasn’t that about it? —No well you see Mister Basie they didn’t ah, oh Ilse? with stabbing motions toward his guest, —you bring coffee? She doesn’t speak much English.
—That great big not, requested NOT to enter, what you’d call xenophobia isn’t that about it? Not too friendly, walk down Worth Avenue after sunset they pull right up beside you, who you work for boy? Not too friendly.
—No well that’s just ah, they don’t mean anything by it it’s just ah, when I talked to Mister Lepidus on the phone, Sam Lepidus, I didn’t mean . . .
—Don’t mean anything by it yes, that’s good to know Mister Crease. They don’t ordinarily send people out like this but they said you came recommended by your cousin Harry Lutz?
—Not my cousin no, he’s my brother in law. You don’t, do you know him?
—Know of him. He’s on this big Pop and Glow case.
—Pop and what?
—You get these Episcopals tangling assholes with Pepsico you’re really in the big time.
—Yes I, I see. The big time I mean. That’s why Harry thought your firm could handle this case of mine, a ninety million dollar movie it could be a landmark.
—Could be if you won it.
—Well of course that’s why you’re here isn’t it, why I want to give you some feel for the thing before we get down to cases on this Kiester person. He should be drawn and quartered.
—Probably will be, you see him in the paper this morning?
—It’s on that pile right there beside you no, no I don’t read that kind of rubbish, these movies they’re making are all of them rubbish, you saw that review? the most widely discussed mass rape scene in screen history? That Uburuwhatever it was, people throwing up in the aisles?
—You didn’t see it?
—The notorious sledgehammer scene the papers talked about, whatever that may be. I certainly did not see it.
From a flurry of the newspaper, —what this is about, here. Charges of malfeasance and deceptive practices surfaced today involving the producer director of the recent motion picture Uruburu, an extravaganza set in Africa promoted as ‘not for the squeamish’ which made his overnight reputation as ‘king of special effects’ and led to the multimillion dollar backing for his current gory Civil War blockbuster, The Blood in the Red White and Blue. The producer, Constantine Kiester, is charged with using actual film footage of the gruesome sequences which made Uruburu an overnight sensation and broke box office records throughout the country. The c
harges involving Mister Kiester emerged from an analysis by a second year film student at UCLA, Barry Gench, isolating one widely discussed sequence purporting to show in extreme slow motion close up a man’s face being smashed by a sledgehammer. Mister Gench contends that the notorious sledgehammer sequence, cited by reviewers and critics as a grisly triumph of the latest in special effects technology, actually took place and was filmed with an ultra high speed sixteen millimeter camera at up to two hundred forty frames per second, requiring from four to ten times the lighting employed in routine production shots. The sequence was later slowed and blown up to the thirty five millimeter format as evidenced, according to Mister Gench, by the rough edges and difference in grain structure of the continuous shot in which no cutaways occur and where microscopic examination reveals the contrast between the more intense colour values characteristic of sixteen millimeter Ektachrome and the Kodachrome reversal negative reduced to the common stock. If substantiated, the charges could provoke severe restrictions on a film industry which is already, in the words of one critic, saturated with blood and guts, and will at the least open the way for a variety of lawsuits. Efforts to reach Mister Kiester were unavailing, and his office disclaimed any knowledge of his whereabouts. How about that.