The Gardener's Son (2 page)

T
HE
O
RDERLY

O
LD
M
ARTHA
M
C
E
VOY
A thin white-haired and ghostlike old lady whose eyes suggest a liveliness that is childlike but not quite mad.

Notes

The Gardener's Son

Interior. Old office of the Graniteville cotton mill. Daylight through dusty windows. An old desk. Boxes and crates standing about on the floor.

T
IMEKEEPER
(os)
God knows what all is in here. I’d watch where I put my hands. That was the ... I don’t know what that was.

Sounds of footsteps. A door opening.

T
IMEKEEPER
(os)
Old papers and stuff. What aint eat up.

Sounds of boxes or papers. The old man coughs.

T
IMEKEEPER
(os)
In yonder is where it happened.

Sounds of footsteps. The old man enters the room. A young man is behind him, only partly visible beyond the door.

T
IMEKEEPER
(os)
That was his desk yonder.

The old man carries a ring of keys and he jingles these against his leg. He turns to look back at the young man, who has apparently asked him a question.

T
IMEKEEPER
Oh yes. I remember him. I was just a kid. My daddy was supervisor and we went to the funeral over in Augusta. The wind blowed my brother Earl’s hat in the street and a horse stepped in it.

The voices fade out as the credits come on.

T
IMEKEEPER
...Come to the door right where you’re standin.

The young man enters the room. He looks about and crosses to the window. The old man jingles the keys in the palm of his hand.

T
IMEKEEPER
Used to be wells in the streets. You went out in the street and drawed your water. They’d burn sulphur in the streets of a summer gainst malaria.

The young man turns at the window toward the timekeeper.

T
IMEKEEPER
Some people claim that James Gregg had run over the boy with his buggy and caused him to lose his leg, but that was never so. He broke it fallin off the gravel train. It was James’s Daddy founded the mill. The old man they say was just a pistol. James was a different cut. He was all right, but the blood runs thin.

The boy turns at the window and looks at the old man.

T
IMEKEEPER
I’d better mind what I say. No offense.

The boy comes from the window and thumbs through dusty papers in a box.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
I guess if you hire these people you have to take the consequences.

T
IMEKEEPER
(smiling)
No offense.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
No.

T
IMEKEEPER
You wont find it here.

Y
OUNG
M
AN
What wont I find?

T
IMEKEEPER
They’re just boxes of records. There’s some old pitcher albums here somewheres. Mill used to keep.

The young man shuffles through a box, idly looking at papers that turn up.

T
IMEKEEPER
They aint the thing. Old papers or pitchers. Once you copy something down you dont have it any more. You just have the record. Times past are fugitive. They caint be kept in no box.

End Credits

Series of old still shots of the town of Graniteville and of the people. These are to have the look of old sepia photographs and may look stiff or posed. 'They comprise an overture to the story to follow, being shots of the characters in the film in situations from the film itself so that they sketch the story out in miniature to the last shot of an old wooden coffin being loaded into a mule-drawn wagon and a shot of the town.

Freeze frame of the town, the rows of houses. Animate into action. A wagon comes up a street through the mud. Seated in three sets of spring seats are seven or eight stockholders of the Graniteville Company Mill and the son of the mill’s founder who is named James Gregg.

James Gregg is pointing out various features of the mill village. The stockholders nod solemnly.

They pass a young girl standing in the mud waiting for the wagon to pass. James Gregg tips his hat to her. He turns and winks at the stockholder next to him. The girl looks away shyly. She crosses the street behind them. Coming along in the distance is a buggy and she waits to see who it is. As it passes she sees the arriving Dr Perceval driven by his black man. She watches them pass and then turns and runs up the street. She comes to the last of a row of houses and enters.

Interior. The house, a front room, very dark. She goes through to the kitchen where her mother is at the stove and a younger sister, Maryellen, is sitting at the kitchen table with her spelling book.

M
ARTHA
I seen him. The doctor. He’s here.

M
RS
M
C
E
VOY
Lord save us, he aint to the house is he?

M
ARTHA
No. He was headin towards Kalmia.

Mrs McEvoy is flustered. She looks around at the state of her house. She pats at her hair distractedly.

M
RS
M
C
E
VOY
He might could be here any time. Was it just now you seen him?

M
ARTHA
Yes mam. You reckon he’s gone to the Greggs?

M
RS
M
C
E
VOY
Yes. Run out back and tell your daddy.

M
ARYELLEN
You want me to go in and tell Bobby?

M
RS
M
C
E
VOY
No I dont want no such thing.

Martha goes out back door into a vegetable garden where Mr McEvoy is pulling up the dead stalks of corn and stacking them. She calls across the garden.

M
ARTHA
That there doctor is a comin. Mama said to tell you.

M
R
M
C
E
VOY
He aint here is he?

M
ARTHA
He’s gone on towards Greggs. He might could be here any time.

M
R
M
C
E
VOY
Well dont get everbody stirred up.

M
ARTHA
Mama said not to tell Bobby.

M
R
M
C
E
VOY
Well maybe his leg is caused him to go deaf and he aint heard yet.

Exterior. Evening. The doctor's carriage arriving at the house of William Gregg. A boy comes to take the horses in hand.

Interior. The doctor in the hallway of the house handing off his coat and hat to the servant Daphne. His bag sits on the floor. Mrs Gregg comes down the stairway and greets him.

M
RS
G
REGG
Good evening Dr Perceval. Thank you for coming.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
Not at all. How is your husband?

M
RS
G
REGG
I’m afraid he’s much the same.

The doctor frowns and mutters.

M
RS
G
REGG
You didnt come by yourself?

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
Yes. That is, my man is with me.

M
RS
G
REGG
(to Daphne)
Tell Cleitus to go and take the doctor’s man to the kitchen.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
Thank you.

The servant takes the doctor's things away. The doctor takes up his satchel and nods toward the stairs.

They ascend the stairs.

Interior. Door opening in the bedroom of William Gregg. The old man is lying on his back and he appears to be all but dead. Mrs Gregg enters followed by the doctor. She lights a lamp. The doctor sets his bag on the bed and takes the lamp and holds it up and lifts the old man's eyelids each and peers at his eyes. He sets the lamp down and takes a stethoscope from his bag and pulls back the counterpane and listens to the old mans chest.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
Does he know you?

M
RS
G
REGG
Sometimes.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
Yes.

M
RS
G
REGG
I’m afraid they grow less frequent.

Dr Perceval folds the covers back and takes the stethoscope from his ears.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
He always had the constitution of an ox.

M
RS
G
REGG
I always ask you and you always say no. But is there any chance ... of a reversal?

The doctor turns and looks at her.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
I’m sorry, Mrs Gregg.

Mrs Gregg nods her head.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
He’s beyond my or any man’s practice.

M
RS
G
REGG
I prayed to God to take him. Is that wrong?

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
No. That’s not wrong.

M
RS
G
REGG
He hated sickness.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
I guess he despised any kind of idleness.

M
RS
G
REGG
Yes. Wouldnt tolerate it.

The doctor folds his stethoscope into his hag.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
What about that boy in the village?

M
RS
G
REGG
Did you want to see him this evening?

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
Your note said it was urgent.

M
RS
G
REGG
That is what was relayed to me. I havent seen the boy myself.

D
R
P
ERCEVAL
Then I’ll not stay upon the order of my going.

M
RS
G
REGG
Let me get my things.