is an old leather bound bible.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
B EN 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.
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