The Stonemason

by Cormac McCarthy

  CARLOTTA You closer to the door than me.

  BIG BEN (To telephone) All right.

  He hangs up the phone. Osreau enters the kitchen. He is a black mason in his early forties, dressed in work clothes.

  OSREAU Mornin. Mornin.

  Big Ben crosses the kitchen on his way to the front door for the paper.

  BIG BEN We havin any breakfast this mornin?

  MAMA Osreau, you had your breakfast?

  OSREAU Yes mam.

  MAMA Well set down anyway. You all come on now. Carlotta get the chair. And call Papaw. Where's Benny at?

  Mama carries platters to the table. Carlotta gets the extra chair and goes to Papaw's door and calls him. Ben enters in his work clothes and sits down. Big Ben enters with the paper and sits at the bead of the table and Papaw comes out and takes his place.

  MAMA Carlotta did you want to say grace?

  CARLOTTA You say it Mama.

  MAMA Bless oh Lord this food to our nourishment and us to thy service. And please Lord send that boy back to his family safe and sound. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen,

  FAMILY Amen.

  They raise their heads and begin to pass the platters. They eat in silence. Mama looks sideways at Carlotta who is eating woodenly. The phone rings. They freeze. They look at Carlotta. The phone rings again and she pushes back her chair and rises and goes to answer it.

  CARLOTTA Hello. Hi Jenny. No. I don't know. Ben went down yesterday and filled out a report. Yes. I know you will. I'll call you. Thanks Jenny. Bye.

  She hangs up the phone and turns back to the table. The rest of the family continues eating. Carlotta suddenly hurries past the table and out of the kitchen. They listen to her footsteps going up the stairs. They continue to eat. Ben wipes his mouth and gets up from the table and leaves the kitchen and goes upstairs. The lights dim in the kitchen. The lights come on stage right in Carlotta's bedroom. There is a window with white curtains and a simple bed with a ruffled white counterpane and Carlotta is sitting on the bed with her head in her hands. Ben knocks on the door.

  CARLOTTA Just a minute.

  She wipes her eyes and gets up and goes to the door and opens it and then turns back and begins to collect her purse and her things to go to work, keeping her eyes averted. Ben stands just inside the door watching her. Outside it is just daylight and there are early morning street sounds.

  BEN We'll find him Carly. He's just pulled some dumb stunt. Chances are he'll be at school today...

  CARLOTTA (Turning and facing Ben) Well if he's not in jail and not in any of the hospitals I'd like to know where you think he is.

  BEN Well. I think there's a good chance he might be on his way to see Landry.

  CARLOTTA Oh yeah. Fifteen year old boy on his way to Detroit in the dead of winter with maybe forty cents in his pocket.

  BEN He could be.

  She gives up looking through her purse and sits down on the bed and begins to cry, putting her hands to her face. Ben comes to the bed.

  BEN Hey.

  He sits down and puts his arms around her and she turns and puts her face on his shoulder, crying quietly.

  BEN Come on Baby.

  CARLOTTA Oh Ben I don't know what I'm going to do. He just won't do a thing I tell him anymore and he's in trouble at school all the time and I'm so tired of this damn job and tired of living in this damn house and I want to be on my own and I can't and it's just getting worse everything's getting worse and Landry damn, damn, damn him he's going to get married again and I still love him and he's just a son of a bitch, Ben, and now this . . .

  BEN I know Baby.

  He pats her and she stops crying and sits up.

  CARLOTTA I've got to go. I'm going to be late.

  BEN Did he tell you he's getting married?

  CARLOTTA No. He doesn't have the guts. But I know he is.

  BEN Is he still sending the checks?

  CARLOTTA Yes. Yes.

  She gets up and collects her things. She dabs at her makeup.

  BEN Why don't you go back to school?

  CARLOTTA I can't afford to go to school.

  BEN I told you I'd send you.

  CARLOTTA I can't do that. God, you work night and day as it is.

  BEN So?

  CARLOTTA You've got your own family.

  BEN Yes. It includes you.

  CARLOTTA Besides school's not the answer to everything.

  BEN No. But I know you want to go.

  CARLOTTA I don't see that it's done you all that much good.

  BEN Why? Because I work as a mason instead of teaching? I make three times what a teacher does.

  CARLOTTA Yes, and I know how you make it too. You're killing yourself. And it's not the money anyway. I've got to go.

  She puts on her coat. He gets up from the bed.

  CARLOTTA Ben if anything has happened to him I don't know what I'll do. I really don't.

  BEN Nothing's happened. I promise.

  CARLOTTA You cant promise. You think you can fix everything. You cant.

  She goes past him to the door. In the doorway she stops and looks at herself in her compact mirror. She closes the compact and puts it in her purse. She looks at him.

  CARLOTTA I look awful. Ben, thank you.

  She exits.

  — CURTAIN —

  ACT III

  SCENE I

  The kitchen at night. It is late and the house is asleep. Ben is sitting at the table with his tea and his notebook. The light comes on at the podium. Ben speaks from there.

  BEN He's not always asleep when I hear him talking in his room at night. I know his mind is sound but sometimes he forgets and I know sometimes he's half awake or even sitting on the edge of the bed talking to his brother Charles whom he loved and who fell to his death from the scaffolding at the construction of the Seelbach Hotel in the fall of 1902.

  He (Ben's double) picks up Papaw's bible from the table and smells the old leather.

  BEN When they were breaking ground to build the bank out on the Bardstown road there was a piece in the paper about his one hundredth birthday and his letter from President Nixon and they called him and talked to him on the phone trying to get him to lay the cornerstone at their ceremony or whatever it was and he would not and they sent the vice president over here to talk to him thinking there was some misunderstanding and he and Papaw sat in the front room while Mama served them coffee and Papaw was as polite as he could be and told him no about nine times and showed him to the door and Mama was furious with him and wanted to know why he wouldn't do it and he wouldn't answer and wouldn't answer and finally he said: I ain't never laid a block of hewn stone in my life and I never will. You go against scripture you on you own. That man up there ain't goin to help you. Ain't no need to even ask.

  He sips his tea and thumbs the bible open. He turns the pages.

  BEN It took me a while to find that one.

  He leans forward at the kitchen table, reading.

  BEN And if thou make me an altar of stone thou shalt not build it of hewn stone, for if thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it.

  He turns the pages.

  BEN There's another place too. Somewhere here. And all the proscribing of graven images. Why? Deuteronomy. His ribbon here. Pharaoh. We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

  He turns the pages.

  BEN And Exodus. That there may be darkness over the land of Egypt. Egypt and the darkness of Egypt. According to the old charges of the Masonic order the children of Israel learned masonry in Egypt. Which I was astonished to read, having heard it from him, and he knows nothing of freemasonry. He says all honors are empty and none more than honorary masonry. Because there is nothing that will separate from the work itself. The work is everything, and whatever is learned is learned in the doing. The freemasons were right in their suspicion that in the mysteries of stonemasonry were contained other mysteries. Speculatives, they were called. Noblemen who were made honorary maso
ns. And if it is true that laying stone can teach you reverence of God and tolerance of your neighbor and love for your family it is also true that this knowledge is instilled in you through the work and not through any contemplation of the work.

  He rises and goes to the woodstove and adds a chunk of wood to the fire and shuts the door and stands looking at the flames through the grate.

  BEN But not ashlar. Not cut stone. All trades have their origin in the domestic and their corruption in the state. Freestone masonry is the work of free men while sawing stone is the work of slaves and of course it is just those works of antiquity most admired in the history books that require nothing but time and slavery for their completion. It is a priest ridden stone craft, whether in Egypt or Peru. Or Louisville Kentucky. I'd read a great deal in the Old Testament before it occurred to me that it was among other things a handbook for revolutionaries. That what it extols above all else is freedom. There is no historian and no archaeologist who has any conception of what stonework means. The Semitic God was a god of the common man and that is why he'll have no hewn stones to his altar. He'll have no hewing of stone because he'll have no slavery.

  When I showed Papaw photographs of Mayan stonework he only shook his head. Stretchers and headers and quoins are the very soul of stonemasonry and of these they had none. Perhaps their mortar was mixed with human blood as in the old ballads. Papaw knows these tales too. He says the only blood you'll ever need is the blood of your redeemer.

  He closes the stove door and returns to the table.

  BEN And the secrecy. Always the secrecy. "Whatsoever thou hearest or seeist him do, tell it no man, wheresoever thou go." That from Guild rales of the fourteenth century. But it wasn't just to protect the guild. The reason the stonemason's trade remains esoteric above all others is that the foundation and the hearth are the soul of human society and it is that soul that the false mason threatens.

  So. It's not the mortar that holds the work together. What holds the stone trues the wall as well and I've seen him check his four foot wooden level with a plumb bob and then break the level over the wall and call for a new one. Not in anger, but only to safeguard the true. To safeguard it everywhere. He says that to a man who's never laid a stone there's nothing you can tell him. Even the truth would be wrong. The calculations necessary to the right placement of stone are not performed in the mind but in the blood. Or they are like those vestibular reckonings performed in the inner ear for standing upright. I see him standing there over his plumb bob which never lies and never lies and the plumb bob is pointing motionless to the unimaginable center of the earth four thousand miles beneath his feet. Pointing to a blackness unknown and unknowable both in truth and in principle where God and matter are locked in a collaboration that is silent nowhere in the universe and it is this that guides him as he places his stone one over two and two over one as did his fathers before him and his sons to follow and let the rain carve them if it can.

  SCENE II

  The kitchen, morning. The family has just finished breakfast and Mama is clearing away the table. Big Ben is reading the paper and Carlotta is smoking a cigarette. Ben gets up from the table. He is wearing sport clothes, not dressed for work. He goes to the sink and rinses out his cup and takes his leather jacket and puts it on. Big Ben lowers the paper and looks at him.

  BIG BEN I don't know what use it be you drivin up and down the roads.

  BEN I'm not going to drive up and down the roads.

  Big Ben regards him over the top of his paper.Ben turns up his coat collar.

  BIG BEN What did the police say?

  BEN I told you what the police said.

  BIG BEN You ain't told me nothin.

  BEN I told Mama.

  BIG BEN I ain't Mama.

  BEN They didn't say anything. They just take down the information. They fill out a report. They don't even list them as missing until they've been gone forty eight hours. Then they put the report in a filing cabinet along with about a thousand others, kids that are missing. Missing or misplaced or lost or people just couldn't remember where they'd left them or maybe no one even noticed they were gone or maybe they had no place to be missing from in the first place.

  BIG BEN Carlotta say the truant officer callin up here wantin to know why he ain't in school.

  BEN Sure. You think the left hand knows what the right is doing? Five years ago they were putting us in jail for sending our kids to school, now they want to jail us for not sending them. I've got to go. I'll be over there after dinner. Tell Osreau to be carrying it up on the back side and we'll set the lintels in the morning. Mama, Bye.

  Ben exits.

  MAMA (To the closed door) Bye honey.

  BIG BEN Cain't tell him nothin. Drive around. Where he goin to look for the boy at? Police ain't got no sense. Teachers ain't got no sense. Ain't nobody got any sense but him.

  MAMA Well at least he tryin to do somethin.

  BIG BEN What that suppose to mean?

  MAMA Don't mean nothin. Mean he tryin, that's all.

  BIG BEN He just showin out. What's he goin do? The boy's run off, that's all. He'll be back.

  MAMA Well, you waitin on me to peck holes in Benny you better make yourself comfortable, that's all I got to say.

  BIG BEN You don't need to tell me that. Nooo. You sure don't need to tell me that.

  He fluffs up his paper and turns to read, quietly indignant. Carlotta stubs out her cigarette.

  CARLOTTA Why are you so sure he's just run away, Daddy?

  BIG BEN He's just that age. Lot of boys his age run off from home. It's just their nature. Young boy like that. . .

  CARLOTTA Did you?

  BIG BEN No. But I thought about it. Course back when I was comin up young boys was kept busy and out of trouble. It wasn't like now. Nooo. Sure wasn't like now. I was Soldier's age I's workin a sixty hour week just like a man.

  CARLOTTA Uncle Dyson ran away.

  BIG BEN He was a lot older than me. I never did even know him till I was grown.

  CARLOTTA How long did he stay gone?

  BIG BEN That was different.

  CARLOTTA How long did he stay gone?

  BIG BEN I don't know. Twenty some odd years, I reckon. But that was a whole different thing.

  MAMA I don't know what you have to go and bring up Dyson for. Worry that girl more than what she is already.

  BIG BEN Me? I never made the first mention of Dyson.

  CARLOTTA Mama. Mama. Let it go. He's right anyway. He never made the first mention of him. I didn't even know there was such an uncle till I was in high school. Everybody in this family thinks if you don't mention something then it doesn't exist. There must be some huge skeleton left that I still don't know about. What was it? Was somebody a whore or a horse thief or vote Republican?

  MAMA Now girl don't you start with that mouth.

  CARLOTTA I don't know where you all get it from. Papaw's not like that.

  MAMA Some things is better left unsaid. That's just common knowledge. Papaw don't tell everthing he knows.

  CARLOTTA No, but he'll tell you anything you ask him.

  MAMA Everbody has things they'd rather to not talk about.

  CARLOTTA Well if he does I never heard it. Or maybe he'll talk about it anyway, rather or not.

  MAMA Well they ain't never been no criminals in this family like what you said. Not that I ever heard of. I don't know what use it be tellin everbody if they was though.

  CARLOTTA Well there's a first time for everything. Right?

  BIG BEN What's that supposed to mean?

  Carlotta gets up from the table. She looks as if she's about to cry.

  MAMA Honey it ain't no crime to run off from home. You just gettin yourself all worked up now. He'll be back. You'll see. I bet Benny brings him back today.

  CARLOTTA Benny this, Benny that.

  She leaves the room crying. Big Ben puts down his paper and looks after her and then looks at Mama.

  BIG BEN Well, that ought to satisfy you I re
ckon.

  MAMA (Shaking her head sadly) No. It don't give me no satisfaction. Trouble comes to a house it comes to visit everbody. It make me cry too, Daddy. Cry for her. Cry for that boy. Cry for everbody. They sure ain't no satisfaction in it.

  SCENE III

  Offstage sounds of running and hard breathing. The footsteps slow and then subside, the breathing continues. The lights come up on a scene stage right set with a metal slat park bench and a streetlamp. Sounds of traffic in the distance. JEFFREY, a young black about sixteen years of age and dressed in jeans and sneakers, is sitting on the bench gasping for breath. Ben is leaning against the lamp post, not quite so winded as Jeffrey.

  JEFFREY What you want with me man? (He leans forward, breathing) I ain't done nothin to you.

  BEN You didn't have to. I don't like you anyway.

  JEFFREY (Leaning back, turning up his eyes) Shit.

  BEN You know what I'm going to do to you?

  JEFFREY Yeah.

  He sits breathing.

  JEFFREY What you want, man.

  BEN Mr Telfair.

  JEFFREY (Looking at Ben) Say what?

  BEN What do you want Mr Telfair.

  JEFFREY (Leaning forward again) Shit.

  BEN Jeffrey.

  JEFFREY What?

  BEN I want to know what's happened to Soldier.

  JEFFREY I don't know nothin bout Soldier.

  BEN What did you run for?

  JEFFREY What you chase me for?

  BEN I want to know where he is.

  JEFFREY I look like I got him?

  Ben shakes his head. He looks away. He looks at Jeffrey again.

  BEN Jeffrey. Jeffrey. Jeffrey this boy's mother is my sister. My only sister. If you know anything at all about where Soldier is or what's happened to him I want you to tell me. I don't care how bad it is.

  JEFFREY I don't know where he is and that's the truth.

  BEN What happened to the Newman boy?

  JEFFREY (Looking down, shaking his head) Aw man. I got to listen to this again?

  BEN What happened to him?

  JEFFREY I don't know what happened to the boy. He died.

  BEN He died?

  JEFFREY The boy got his ticket punched. That's all I know. What would I know about it? Shit man. He's a fourteen year old kid. I didn't even know who he was till this shit started.