The Stonemason Read Online Free PDF

at? Well, course it is funny now. The man he looked down at all us little colored children and we was all barefooted and as raggedy as a stump full of grandaddies and he said: If you couldn't find your way back, what did you leave for?
    Ben laughs. Papaw smiles.
    P APAW We didn't know nothin about the world. Didn't know nothin. We was babes in the woods. ( he stirs his tea ). I went to work when I was twelve and it wasn't long fore I learned that a lot of what the good book said was ever bit as true as it was claimed. Stone ain't so heavy as the wrath of a fool and I worked for white men and I was subjugated to that wrath many a time and I become very dissatisfied about my lot in this world. The peculiar thing was that the very thing that brought me to that pass was what led me out of it and since that time I've come to see that more often than not that's how the Lord works.
    He sips his tea. They sit.
    B EN What was it? That brought you to that pass and led you out of it.
    P APAW Just the work. Just the trade. That was all they was to it. All they ever was to it. I've wondered all my life what people outside of the trade do. I wonder it yet.
    He sips his tea.
    P APAW I made it a study to put up with foolishness and not to be made party to it. I liked the work from the first time I ever turned to it and I was determined that they wasn't goin to run me off no matter how crazy they got and they didn't. You had black and white masons work side by side on them big jobs but you was never paid the same and you was never acknowledged the same. But I knowed Uncle Selman could lay stone to beat any man on that job didn't make no difference what color he was and anybody that didn't know it was just too ignorant to count. So I seen that he was acknowledged if he was colored and that made me think again. I seen they was some things that folks couldn't lie about. The facts was too plain. And what a man was worth at his work was one of them things. It was just knowed to everbody from the lowest to the highest and they wasn't no several opinions about it. When I seen that I seen the way my path had to go if I was ever to become the type of man I had it in my heart to be. I was twelve year old and I never looked back. Never looked back.
    B EN What about when Uncle Selman was killed. Did that change your feelings?
    P APAW No. It didn't. I was older then and I seen it for what it was. A man that's killed by a fool that ain't never had the first thought in his head it ain't no different from if a rock fell on him. It's just a sad thing to happen and they ain't no help for it.
    B EN You weren't set crazy over it?
    P APAW Pret near. But they wasn't no point in me goin crazy. That man was not a mason. He was in charge of settin timbers and he picked Selman out because he was a small man and Selman was a big one. It was just a dispute that they wasn't no sense to it. Cept I knowed Selman was not disputatious and you couldn't get him to argue didn't make no difference how wrong you was and I reckon that made that white man crazier than what he already was. It was a dispute over a water bucket and that's about as sorry as you can get, I reckon. Ever crew had they own buckets and they was marked and had stripes on em for to mark the white ones from the colored's. I don't know what the particulars was but it was over them buckets and I know Uncle Selman was in the right for he never would allow no misrepresentation of nothin. You couldn't put a gun to his head and get him to lie and I don't care what kind of lie it was. He always said they was not no such a thing as a small lie. And that white man was all lie. And he killed him. He killed Uncle Selman with a timber maul, hit him blind side with it and laid him out graveyard dead. They come and got me. Oh I was a heart broke boy. A heart broke boy. We picked him up out of the dirt and carried him out under a shade tree and he was bloody as a hog and I just set there under that tree with him and I cried