Fences Page #11

lyons:
Come on, Pop . . . here go your ten dollars.

Lyons tries again to hand the money to

Troy.

rose:
Why don’t you go on and let the boy pay you

back, Troy?

lyons:
Here you go, Rose. If you don’t take it I’m

gonna have to hear about it for the next six

months.

He hands her the money.

rose:
You can hand yours over here too, Troy.

troy:
You see this Bono, you see how they do me?

bono:
Yeah, Lucille do me the same way.

Gabriel is heard singing . . .

gabriel:
Better get ready for the judgement!

Better get ready for ...

Hey! . . . Hey! There’s Troy’s boy!

lyons:
How you doing, Uncle Gabe?

gabriel:
Lyons . . . The King of the Jungle!

He surveys the backyard, finding Rose,

who’s come to greet him.

gabriel:
Rose . . . hey, Rose. Got a flower for you.

Gabe rummages in his basket till he

finds a torn-off branch of a rose vine.

He hands it to Rose.

gabriel:
Picked it myself. That’s the same rose like

you is!

rose:
That’s right nice of you, Gabe. That’s right nice of you, Gabe.

lyons:
What you been doing, Uncle Gabe?

gabriel:
Oh, I been chasing hellhounds and waiting on

the time to tell Saint Peter to open the Gates.

lyons:
You been chasing hellhounds, huh? Well . . .

you doing the right thing, Uncle Gabe. Somebody

got to chase them.

gabriel:
Oh, yeah . . . I know it. The devil’s strong.

The devil ain’t no pushover. Hellhounds snipping

at everybody’s heels. But I got my trumpet waiting

on the Judgment time.

lyons:
Waiting on the Battle of Armageddon, huh?

gabriel:
Ain’t gonna be too much of a battle when God

get to waving that Judgment sword. But the people’s

gonna have a hell of a time trying to get

into Heaven if them Gates ain’t open.

lyons (putting his arms around gabriel): You hear this, Pop?

Uncle Gabe, you all right!

gabriel (laughing with lyons): Lyons! King of the Jungle.

rose:
You gonna stay for supper, Gabe? Want me to fix

you a plate?

gabriel:
I’ll just take a sandwich, Rose. Don’t want

no plate. Just wanna eat with my hands. I’ll take

a sandwich.

rose:
How about you, Lyons? You staying? Got some

short ribs cooking.

lyons:
Naw, I won’t eat nothing till after we finished

playing.

Naw, I won’t eat nothing till after we finished

playing.

(pause)

You ought to come down and listen to me play,

Pop.

troy:
I don’t like that Chinese music. All that noise.

rose:
Go on in the house and wash up, Gabe . . . I’ll

fix you a sandwich.

gabriel (to lyons as he goes inside): Troy’s mad at me.

lyons:
What you mad at Uncle Gabe for, Pop.

rose:
He thinks Troy’s mad at him ’cause he moved over

to Miss Pearl’s.

troy:
I ain’t mad at the man. He can live where he

want to live at.

lyons:
What he move over there for? Miss Pearl don’t

like nobody.

rose:
She don’t mind him none. She treats him real

nice. She just don’t allow all that singing.

troy:
She don’t mind that rent he be paying . . .

that’s what she don’t mind.

rose:
Troy, I ain’t going through that with you no

more. He’s over there ’cause he want to have his

own place. He can come and go as he please.

troy:
Hell, he could come and go as he please here. I

wasn’t stopping him. I ain’t put no rules on him.

rose:
It ain’t the same thing, Troy. And you know it.

Now, that’s the last I wanna hear about that. I

don’t wanna hear nothing else about Gabe and Miss

Pearl. And next week . . .

It ain’t the same thing, Troy. And you know it.

Now, that’s the last I wanna hear about that. I

don’t wanna hear nothing else about Gabe and Miss

Pearl. And next week . . .

(Gabe calls from the kitchen)

gabriel (o.s.):
I’m ready for my sandwich, Rose.

rose:
And next week . . . when that recruiter come

from that school . . . I want you to sign that

paper and go on and let Cory play football. Then

that’ll be the last I have to hear about that.

troy (to rose as she goes into the kitchen): I ain’t thinking

about Cory nothing.

lyons:
What . . . Cory got recruited? What school he

going to?

troy:
That boy walking around here smelling his

piss . . . thinking he’s grown. Thinking he’s

gonna do what he want, irrespective of what I

say. Look here, Bono . . . I left the commissioner’s

office and went down to the A&P . . . that

boy ain’t working down there. He lying to me.

Telling me he got his job back . . . telling me

he working weekends . . . telling me he working

after school . . . Mr. Stawicki tell me he ain’t

working down there at all!

lyons:
Cory just growing up. He’s just busting at the

seams trying to fill out your shoes.

troy:
I don’t care what he’s doing. When he get to the

point where he wanna disobey me . . . then it’s

time for him to move on. Bono’ll tell you that. I

bet he ain’t never disobeyed his daddy without

paying the consequences.

Troy offers Bono the bottle. Bono

takes it.

bono:
I ain’t never had a chance. My daddy came on

through . . . But I ain’t never knew him to see

him . . . or what he had on his mind or where he

went. Just moving on through. Searching out the

New Land. That’s what the old folks used to call

it. See a fellow moving around from place to

place . . . woman to woman . . . called it

Searching out the New Land. I can’t say if he ever

found it. I come along, didn’t want no kids.

Didn’t know if I was gonna be in one place long

enough to fix on them right as their daddy. I figured

I was going searching too.

Bono sips, hands the bottle to Lyons,

who takes a big swig.

bono:
As it turned out I been hooked up with Lucille

near about as long as your daddy been with Rose.

Going on sixteen years.

troy:
Sometimes I wish I hadn’t known my daddy. He

ain’t cared nothing about no kids. A kid to him

wasn’t nothing. All he wanted was for you to

learn how to walk so he could start you to working.

When it come time for eating . . . he ate

first. If there was anything left over, that’s

what you got. Man would sit down and eat two

chickens and give you the wing.

lyons:
You ought to stop that, Pop. Everybody feed

their kids. No matter how hard times is . . . everybody

care about their kids. Make sure they

have something to eat.

troy:
The only thing my daddy cared about was getting

them bales of cotton in to Mr. Lubin. That’s the

only thing that mattered to him. Sometimes I used

to wonder why he was living. Wonder why the devil

hadn’t come and got him. “Get them bales of cotton

in to Mr. Lubin” and find out he owe him

money . . .

lyons:
He should have just went on and left when he

saw he couldn’t get nowhere. That’s what I would

have done.

troy:
How he gonna leave with eleven kids? And where

he gonna go? He ain’t knew how to do nothing but

farm. No, he was trapped and I think he knew it.

But I’ll say this for him . . . he felt a responsibility

toward us. Maybe he ain’t treated us the

way I felt he should have . . . but without that

responsibility he could have walked off and left

us...made his own way.

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