Gardener's Son Read online

  YOUNG MAN I believe he’s about your age. I cant remember . . .

  MARTHA Harvey.

  YOUNG MAN Yes. That was it.

  MARTHA He has a son that’s a district court judge. He had five children and they wasnt a one of em ever worked the first day in that mill. He’s got a slew of grandchildren. I dont have no kin. I had a nephew . . . My sister had a boy but he got gone from here years ago I couldnt tell ye where to. She and her husband is both dead.

  YOUNG MAN I see.

  MARTHA She was lots different from me. She didnt hardly remember Mama at all and she was . . . I dont know. She must of been ten or eleven when Mama died. She died in the dead of winter and I remember they had her laid out—back then ye had your services at the house, they wasnt no funeral homes—had her laid out and they brought Maryellen in there and she looked at Mama and she said: What’s Mama doin in bed with her clothes on? I mean she was big enough to understand . . . Years later she told me, said she didnt hardly even remember Mama. I was five year older. I know. But I remember her from when I was just teeninecy.

  YOUNG MAN Did your sister remember Bobby?

  She looks up at him. She looks at him very quietly for several minutes and then she looks down. She picks at the hem of her gown.

  YOUNG MAN I didnt mean to . . .

  She looks up again.

  YOUNG MAN Mr Bolinger told me . . . I never knew very much about it. Miss McEvoy. My mother has the old Bible and it’s about the last thing in it. My grandmother moved to Charleston right after the . . . She even took the monument. When Mr Bolinger told me that you were . . . that you were here I just . . . It was just a family story. It was like something in a book. It didnt seem like real people.

  MARTHA I know you now.

  YOUNG MAN I didnt come here to make you feel bad.

  MARTHA I dont feel bad.

  YOUNG MAN I just wanted to talk to you. You’re the only one who knows what happened.

  MARTHA I dont even know where he’s buried at. Daddy never told us. He never put up no marker. Just a nameless grave somewheres. He was afraid they’d come and dig him up. Them doctors. They’d come and dig up anybody like that and get they head. They’d take it and study it. Daddy said that God would know where to hunt him. Mrs Gregg moved all her dead from Graniteville Cemetery. She took em over to Charleston.

  YOUNG MAN She was a bit eccentric. Toward her old age.

  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 youngerns 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 a 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 huggin and kissin a 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. Sometimes I can almost talk to him. I caint see him no more. In my mind. I just see this old pitcher.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CORMAC MCCARTHY is the author of numerous novels, including Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. He has won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. His plays include The Stonemason and The Sunset Limited, which was originally performed by Steppenwolf Theatre Company. His screenplay The Counselor was made into a film directed by Ridley Scott and released in 2013.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  ALSO BY CORMAC MCCARTHY

  The Orchard Keeper

  Outer Dark

  Child of God

  Suttree

  Blood Meridian

  The Stonemason: A Play in Five Acts

  All the Pretty Horses

  The Crossing

  Cities of the Plain

  No Country for Old Men

  The Road

  The Sunset Limited: A Novel in Dramatic Form

  The Counselor: A Screenplay

  CREDITS

  Cover photograph © by plainpicture

  COPYRIGHT

  THE GARDENER’S SON. Copyright © 1996 by M-71, Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST ECCO PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2015

  Woodcut by John Mandeville from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

  * * *

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

  McCarthy, Cormac, 1933–

  The gardener’s son : a screenplay / Cormac McCarthy—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-88001-481-4 (hardcover)

  I. Gardener’s son (Motion picture) II. Title.

  PN1997.G3194 1996

  791.43'72—DC20 96-13611

  * * *

  ISBN 978-0-06-228754-0

  EPub Edition November 2014 ISBN 9780062387264

  14 15 16 17 18 IND/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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