The Stonemason

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  In Order of Appearance

  BEN TELFAIR

  PAPAW his grandfather

  MAMA his mother

  SOLDIER his nephew

  BIG BEN his father

  CARLOTTA his sister

  MAVEN his wife

  MELISSA his daughter

  MRS RAYMOND a neighbor

  OSREAU a worker

  JEFFREY a neighbor boy

  MASON FERGUSON Carlotta's suitor

  GUESTS

  CHILDREN

  PHOTOGRAPHER

  REPORTER

  RELATIVES

  WORKER

  MINISTER

  MARY WEAVER Big Ben's mistress

  ACT I

  SCENE I

  An old Victorian house in the black section of Louisville Kentucky in February of 1971. The inhabitants are four generations of a black family named Telfair. It is midnight. At curtain rise then is a single light burning stage right where BEN TELFAIR sits at a small table. He is a thirty two year old black stonemason. Behind him and to the right is a high basement window and the soft blue light from a streetlamp. Outside in this light a softly falling snow. At far stage left is a podium or lectern at which Ben will speak his monologues throughout the play. It is important to note that the Ben we see onstage during the monologues is a double and to note that this double does not speak, but is only a figure designed to complete the scene. The purpose, as we shall see, is to give distance to the events and to place them in a completed past. The onstage double should nevertheless be as close to Ben in appearance as is practicable and the two should at all times be dressed identically. What must be kept in mind is that the performance consists of two separate presentations. One is the staged drama. The other is the monologue—or chautauqua—which Ben delivers from the podium. And while it is true that Ben at his podium is at times speaking for—or through—his silent double on stage, it is nevertheless a crucial feature of the play that there be no suggestion of communication between these worlds. In this sense it would not even be incorrect to assume that Ben is unaware of the staged drama. Above all we must resist the temptation to see the drama as something being presented by the speaker at his lectern, for to do so is to defraud the drama of its right autonomy. One could say that the play is an artifact of history to which the audience is made privy, yet if the speaker at his podium apostrophizes the figures in that history it is only as they reside in his memory. It is this which dictates the use of the podium. It locates Ben in a separate space and isolates that space from the world of the drama on stage. The speaker has an agenda which centers upon his own exoneration, his own salvation. The events which unfold upon the stage will not at all times support him. The audience may perhaps be also a jury. And now we can begin. As the mathematician Gauss said to his contemporaries: ''Go forward and faith will come to you''. The podium is lit. Ben comes forward to take his place there. As he begins to speak, his double seated at the table onstage begins to write.

  BEN I always wanted to be like him. Even as a child. I was twelve when my grandmother died and then he came to this house and I began to see him every day and my mother would laugh at me because I had even begun to walk like him. And he was eighty five years old.

  Lights come on in the kitchen of the house at stage center. Ben looks up from his desk toward the kitchen—which is upstairs. The kitchen represents the principal set of the play. It is an old fashioned kitchen from the early 1900's with a wainscotting of narrow tongue-and-groove boards, a long kitchen table with chairs, a range, a sink, a refrigerator. An old fashioned wood burning stove. At the rear are two doors, one leading outside and the other giving onto the bedroom of Ben's grandfather, PAPAW. This door now opens and Papaw comes into the kitchen.

  He is 101 years old, small and wiry and fit. He goes to the sink and fills the kettle and puts it on the stove and goes to the woodstove and pokes up the fire.

  BEN He's come into the kitchen to fix his tea. Sometimes I go up and we have tea together. Three o'clock in the morning. Nothing surprises him. He has no schedule. Sometimes we talk and sometimes not. Sometimes we talk straight through till breakfast and Mama comes down and she looks at us but she doesn't say anything. He does not need much sleep and I am like him in this also.

  Papaw comes back to the stove and fixes his tea and takes it to the table and sits down. On the table is an old leather bound bible.

  BEN He was an old man before I was born and I have loved him all my life and love him now.

  Papaw sips his tea and takes out his little wire framed glasses and puts them on and opens the bible.

  BEN People believe that the stonemasons of his time were all like him but that was never so. Anything excellent is always rare. He's been a stonemason for ninety years, starting as a boy, mixing the old lime mortar with a hoe, fitting spalls. He has thought deeply about his trade and in this he's much out of the ordinary. His entire life's work lies in five counties in this state and two across the river in Indiana. I've spent a lot of time looking at it. Maybe ten percent survives. I can look at a wall or the foundation of a barn and tell his work from the work of other masons even in the same structure. If we're out in the truck and I point out his work to him he merely nods. The work he's done is no monument. The stonework out there at night in the snow and the man who laid that stone are each a form of each and forever joined. For I believe that to be so. But the monument is upstairs. Having his tea.

  Ben sits back in his chair and looks out the high window. Sound of a car going up the street in the muffled snow, chains clinking. He bends to his desk again.

  BEN For the past two years he's been helping me build my house. Or rebuild it. It's the house that he grew up in. We go out there on weekends.

  The kitchen and basement lights dim to black.

  BEN Sometimes Maven and Melissa come and we have a picnic. Sometimes Mama too. The house is stone and it is laid up in the old style with lime mortar. It was built long before the introduction of Portland cement made it possible to build with stone and yet know nothing of masonry.

  Lights come on downstage right revealing the exterior of the two storey stone farmhouse partly in ruins. At the front is a low partial wall of actual stone and here Ben and Papaw are at work together laying stone, chipping it with hammer and chisel, passing their trowels over the work and setting the stone in place.

  BEN For true masonry is not held together by cement but by gravity. That is to say, by the warp of the world. By the stuff of creation itself. The keystone that locks the arch is pressed in place by the thumb of God. When the weather is good we gather the stone ourselves out of the fields. What he likes best is what I like. To take the stone out of the ground and dress it and put it in place. We split the stones out along their seams. The chisels clink. The black earth smells good. He talks to me about stone in a different way from my father. Always as a thing of consequence. As if the mason were a custodian of sorts. He speaks of sap in the stone. And fire. Of course he's right. You can smell it in the broken rock. He always watched my eyes to see if I understood. Or to see if I cared. I cared very much. I do now. According to the gospel of the true mason God has laid the stones in the earth for men to use and he has laid them in their bedding planes to show the mason how his own work must go. A wall is made the same way the world is made. A house, a temple. This gospel must accommodate every inquiry. The structure of the world is such as to favor the prosperity of men. Without this belief nothing is possible. What we are at arms against are those philosophies that claim the fortuitous in mens' inventions. For we invent nothing but what God has put to hand.

  The lights illuminating the stone house and the workers have dimmed to black.

  BEN Were it not for him I'd have become a
teacher. I nearly did. I nearly did.

  The lights come up at the basement desk and window. In the kitchen. Ben sits at his desk. Papaw sits at the kitchen table reading his bible.

  BEN He never suggested that it would not be a good trade for me. He even encouraged me, although I knew that when I told him I was studying psychology he had little notion of what that meant. Fair enough. Psychology has little notion of what he means. Never did he smile at my pretensions. It was only when I came home after my first year of graduate school that I realized my grandfather knew things that other people did not and I began to clear my head of some of the debris that had accumulated there and I did not go back to school that fall and I did not go back that winter and by then I had already begun to learn the trade that anyone would have said I already knew since I'd worked at it for ten years and paid for my schooling with it. A trade at which I thought myself a master and of which I stood in darkest ignorance. And as I came to know him... As I came to know him. . . Oh I could hardly believe my good fortune. I swore then I'd cleave to that old man like a bride. I swore he'd take nothing to his grave.

  SCENE II

  Early the following morning. The lights are on in the kitchen and outside it is just graying with daylight. Papaw is sitting in his chair by the stove as Ben enters.

  BEN Morning Papaw. [Pap-paw]

  PAPAW Mornin Ben. Mornin.

  Ben goes to the window and looks out at the yard. There is a small dog sleeping by the stove and it looks up.

  BEN What do you think?

  PAPAW Well. Be a mite slick out I expect.

  MAMA, Ben's mother enters the kitchen. A bustling and somewhat harried looking woman in her fifties. She eyes them suspiciously and goes on to the stove and gets the coffee percolator and goes to the sink with it.

  BEN You want to go out to the farm?

  MAMA (Speaking loudly over the sound of the faucet) He ain't goin nowhere with you in this.

  Ben smiles at his grandfather. Mama turns off the faucet and takes the percolator to the stove.

  MAMA So don't you even start.

  PAPAW You reckon we get out there?

  MAMA Papaw don't you pay no attention to him he ain't got no sense.

  She puts coffee in the percolator and she takes down a large black skillet and spoons lard into it.

  SOLDIER enters the kitchen. He is Ben's sister's son, aged fifteen.

  MAMA You just the man I want to see. Get them plates and set the table.

  SOLDIER I just come in to see if they's any school today.

  MAMA No, you just come in to set the table.

  Soldier drags himself to the cupboard and takes down the plates.

  MAMA And when you get done with that holler upstairs at Big Ben.

  PAPAW Everything be covered up.

  MAMA Benny, I done told you all now.

  PAPAW Too cold to mix mud and that's for sure.

  BEN I'm not going to do any work out there. I'm just going to haul a load of stone out.

  MAMA You ain't takin him no place in Old Blue. That thing ain't got no heater in it.

  There are heavy footsteps on the stairs overhead, BIG BEN, Ben's father, enters the kitchen. He is wearing slippers and a pair of tan gabardine slacks with suspenders over a long sleeved winter undershirt. He has on three or four very expensive rings that he wears when not working. He weighs over two hundred and fifty pounds and he goes to the stove with the rolling gait of heavy people and takes his cup and pours coffee from the percolator.

  MAMA That ain't done perkin.

  He continues to pour and then takes up his cup and takes his watch out of his pocket although there is an electric clock on the stove and another clock on the wall. He puts the watch back in his pocket and shuffles back across the kitchen and out the door.

  BEN (To Papaw) You want some coffee?

  PAPAW Might have just a little coffee this mornin.

  Ben goes to the stove and takes two cups and pours coffee. Mama is busy cooking at the stove. In the front room offstage the door slams.

  BIG BEN (Offstage) Who got the paper?

  MAMA Ain't nobody got the paper. He ain't run yet.

  Ben takes the cups to the woodstove and gives one to his grandfather. Mama takes a platter of sausage to the table.

  MAMA You all come on now.

  Ben and Papaw start towards the table. Soldier reaches and takes a patty of sausage from the platter and it is on the way to his mouth with it when she intercepts it and puts it back on the platter and slaps him on the back of the head with her open hand and sets the platter down all in one motion as if she'd had practice at it.

  MAMA Get the chair boy, get the chair. You all come on now. Carlotta! Benny where's Maven? I ain't cookin no two breakfasts.

  Ben's sister CARLOTTA enters on her high heels dressed for work. Soldier brings the extra chair from its place against the wall and Ben goes to the door and calls downstairs for Maven. Big Ben appears and takes his place at the head of the table and begins to help his plate to eggs. Ben comes to the table and Mama brings the percolator from the stove and sets it on the table.

  MAMA Carlotta, did you want to say grace?

  CARLOTTA Bless O Lord this food to our nourishment and us to thy service. Amen.

  FAMILY Amen.

  BIG BEN Where's Maven?

  Ben pushes his chair back and rises.

  MAMA Set still. Soldier you run downstairs and see if she comin to breakfast this mornin.

  BEN I'll go.

  MAMA Maybe she sick.

  SOLDIER What she got?

  MAMA Just eat, boy.

  Ben exits. The family continues to eat, to pass plates. A radio on the sideboard is giving local news, the volume comes up slowly.

  CARLOTTA What do they say about school?

  SOLDIER Ain't said nothin yet that I heard.

  MAMA Well you better be for findin out.

  SOLDIER Well let me call Jeffrey.

  MAMA How he supposed to know?

  SOLDIER Cause he the man that knows, that's how.

  CARLOTTA Don't smart mouth your grandmama.

  SOLDIER Ain't smart mouthin nobody. She ast me and I told her.

  CARLOTTA And don't smart mouth me either. And you better stay away from that boy. If he's not on his way to the penitentiary there's no use in having one.

  SOLDIER Shoot.

  Big Ben casts a suspicious glance at Soldier. Soldier crams a last forkful of food into his mouth and rises from the table. He makes his way around the table and goes to the telephone on the sideboard and dials a number. He stands with his back to the table and puts his thumb down on the receiver. He talks a little too loud. The family continues to eat.

  BIG BEN Pass the preserves yonder, Carlotta.

  SOLDIER Yeah. Soldier. You heard anything bout school? Mm hm. Ain't goin be none. Called your mama? Yeah. On the radio too? Naw we didn't hear it. Bout half a hour ago?

  The telephone rings. Soldier freezes. The family at the table stop eating and look at Soldier. The telephone rings again. Carlotta and Mama rise at the same moment. Soldier holds the telephone away from his ear and looks at it and puts it to his ear again.

  SOLDIER Hello? Hello?

  Ben enters the kitchen. The phone rings again. Carlotta reaches Soldier first.

  MAMA Fool. If I don't put a knot on your head.

  SOLDIER There's somethin wrong with this phone.

  Carlotta snatches the phone from him and raps him on the top of the head with it.

  SOLDIER Ow!

  CARLOTTA (Putting the receiver to her ear) Hello. Yes. Hi Jenny.

  Soldier goes wide around Mama, who is taking her place at the table again. He is holding the top of his head.

  SOLDIER Shit.

  BIG BEN What did you say?

  Soldier mutters something that no one can hear. Big Ben reaches down the table and takes a swipe at him. Soldier ducks and falls backward and the chair goes to the floor. Big Ben stands up to deal with him further and Mama stands up an
d takes Big Ben by the arm.

  MAMA Don't hit him on the ear you'll make him deaf like they done Edison in the movie.

  Across the table Papaw is eating peaceably.

  CARLOTTA (Holding one hand over the receiver) Mama make them quit.

  Ben shakes his head and goes back out. Soldier gets up and rights the chair and stands there and Big Ben subsides and Mama sits back down and Ben comes back into the room with the paper and gives it to his father who glares up at him and takes it. Ben sits at the table and helps his plate to eggs and sausage and begins to eat.

  MAMA (To Soldier) You set down over there. You ain't excused. Benny is she goin to school today?

  BEN Yes. She says she is.

  MAMA You ask her if she looked outside?

  BEN Yep.

  MAMA She sick?

  BEN (Smiling) She's sick. She's looked outside. She's going to school.

  MAMA Why don't you take her a cup of coffee down there?

  BEN I offered to but she said she didn't want any. (To Big Ben) I want to use your truck today.

  BIG BEN (Reading the paper) Where you goin?

  BEN Haul a load of rock out to the farm.

  BIG BEN Don't call on me when you get stuck.

  BEN I won't.

  MAMA That thing ain't got no heater in it and it ain't got no floorboard.

  Big Ben does not look up from his paper. He takes a sip of coffee and continues to read.

  BIG BEN You better see if they any sand in the bed. I don't know where you get any at today.

  MAMA You hear that? Twenty two degrees.

  Ben finishes his breakfast and wipes his mouth and pushes back his chair and rises and takes his plate to the sink and then goes to the door.

  BEN Soldier.

  SOLDIER What.

  BEN Come out here a minute.

  SOLDIER What for?

  BEN Just come out here.

  SOLDIER I ain't excused.

  BEN You're excused.

  Soldier gets up wearily and follows Ben out of the kitchen. They come to stage left where a light illuminates a white sofa and a white chair and a coffee table.

  BEN Sit down.

  SOLDIER I ain't tired.

  BEN Just sit down.