The Gardener's Son

by Cormac McCarthy

  MARTHA She was a bit what?

  YOUNG MAN Eccentric. She was a bit peculiar.

  MARTHA No she wasnt.

  YOUNG MAN Well, she . . .

  MARTHA Peculiar. She wasnt peculiar. She used to make gingerbread horses and she’d have all the young’ns up there and she’d give us lemonade of a summer. She took a lot of pains about that cemetery. She had my daddy up there all the time to see about first one thing and then anothern. They used to be a stone up there it just said “the little boy” and she would have flowers on it all the time. Just some little boy that they had took off the train down there and he’d died they wasnt nobody knowed who he was nor nothin. I wonder if God has names for people. He never give em none. People done that. I wonder if people are not all the same to him. Just souls up there and no names. Or if he cares what all they done. I dont know why Bobby done what he done. Once people are dead they’re not good nor bad. They’re just dead.

  YOUNG MAN Mr Bolinger spoke highly of your father.

  MARTHA He always said we’d save up and go back to Greenville. I say Greenville but it was really Pickens. Pickens South Carolina. But we never done it. I reckon he’d made a start but them lawyers got it all. We’d had a farm up there—what we called it—it wadnt nothin. I’d never seen a whole dollar fore we come to Graniteville. After Bobby . . . Daddy just never did come out of it. Never after did he ever hold his head up on this earth. I remember bein glad that Mama was dead. I never thought I’d ever be glad anybody was dead, least of all my Mama, but I remember bein glad that she was dead and that was the only thing I could think of. I wanted to get her pitcher took but Daddy wouldnt have it. He said he didnt want to remember her dead. I have a pitcher of Bobby.

  She fumbles an old purse from among the folds of her skirts and opens it and takes out an old yellow tintype.

  MARTHA Me and Mama went back up to Pickens about a year fore she died. I was just a young girl. Went up on the train. We’d had this horse and his name was Captain and I used to ride him just everwheres and he’d foller me around like a dog and I remember whenever we got ready to leave from up there why they sent me over to Mamaw’s because the feller was fixing to come and get him. They had done sold him, you see. But me and Mama went up there. We went up there and we was in Greenville that Saturday afternoon and I looked and there in the street was old Captain. He was harnessed up in an express wagon standin there in front of a store and whenever I seen him I just run across the street and throwed my arms around his neck and kissed him and I reckon everbody thought I was crazy standin there in the middle of the street and me about growed, huggin and kissin an old horse and just a bawlin to beat the band.

  She looks down at the picture in her hand.

  MARTHA Sometimes I wish I’d not even kept it. That lawyer said that the image of God was blotted out of his face. That’s what he said about Bobby. I ort not even to of kept it. I think a person’s memory serves better. Sometimes I can almost talk to him. I caint see him no more. In my mind. I just see this old pitcher.