Manderlay Page #6

there are winners and there are losers.

But the community has spoken.

And now Grace embarked on

a protracted explanation

of Flora's difficulties

raking without a rake,

and that owning things together

could have its advantages.

To make sure that everyone

understood the democratic principle,

the meeting carried out

another ballot at Jim's suggestion.

I wanna talk about the fact

that Sammy be laughin' so loud

at his own jokes,

and they ain't funny.

And I'm tryin' to get some sleep,

and I can't get no sleep,

'cause he laughs so loud.

Mmmm.

Maybe perhaps there can be a time

when he can stop his jokes

and stop laughin',

so we can get some sleep.

You can't vote

on a man's laughter.

You can't vote on

a man's laughter, surely.

I'm hearing that it's at sundown.

At sundown.

That's what I'm hearing.

So let's do a vote.

All right, so that's settled.

Yeah, it is.

- It is.

That's democracy.

Finally Wilhelm proposed

that it would be practical

if somebody was responsible

for winding up the clock

with its small but penetrating chimes.

And for mysterious reasons,

the probing though fairly passive artist

Jim was appointed,

despite the song and dance

his mother kicked up.

He can't do it!

Grace wound up the lesson

by announcing that the topic

for the next day would be:

Our anger

and how to communicate it.

Maybe somebody would

at least tell me what the time is.

Ask Timothy.

He always know what time it is.

He tell by the sun.

He always do that.

Or we can always ask Wilhelm.

He's so old, he's from

before the clock ever got here.

So Wilhelm and Timothy

each made his own suggestion

as to what the time was,

and they were

astonishingly close.

Wilhelm thought

it was eight minutes to.

Timothy thought

it was five minutes to.

Grace rejoiced quietly at this natural

ability they found so straightforward.

But rapidly two factions emerged,

one which insisted

it was eight minutes to,

and the other would not

hear of anything but five minutes to.

They were thus able to draw on

the day's learning and put it to the vote.

The result was five minutes to,

by a small majority.

And so it was decided:

The official time at Manderlay

was five minutes to 2:00...

Five...

Grace's first lesson of the day

took place in relative good humor.

But the second one...the one that

had unfortunately proved unavoidable... -

was severer in character.

Read.

" Daily ration of food

for slaves from Category..."

Oh. Oh, no. "1... is..."

"Six ounces of solid food."

And they've always

been given just that,

no matter how little

there was in the stores.

That's a lot less

than Category 7, for example.

Why should a "Proudy N*gger"

have less to eat

than an "Eye-Pleasin'" one?

How can the way

your head seems to be arranged

have anything to do whatsoever with

the amount people are given to eat?

I really don't know, either.

Not precisely.

Do you, Mr. Mays?

It could be just to punish them

for their pride.

No, I just did what it said.

It mattered a lot to my mother

that we follow these rules.

I know of many places where everybody

got quite a bit less than six ounces,

and where

they began to eat dirt.

It's a kind of custom coloreds have

when food's scarce 'round here.

But it was forbidden

under Mam's Law.

That's not

what we're discussing here.

Don't you see what an affront it is,

to divide people up like that?

Folks is different.

Oxen and rabbits don't need

equal shares of fodder neither.

Both parties

would come down with bellyaches.

Stop it! I'm not at all satisfied

with what I've heard here today.

You're all speaking up

for this foolishness.

I'm going

to have to penalize you,

because so little effort

has been made in these lessons.

That evening,

Grace thought that her idea

of making

the whites make up their faces,

which had seemed

so just and edifying

in her flash of anger that afternoon,

was perhaps a tad too much

in the wrong direction.

Even though Philomena herself

in her own childhood

would not have dreamt

of going to the toilet

without the entertainment

of her black nanny.

Look at your Uncle Jim.

He's in the bathtub,

learning how to swim.

Can we clean our faces now?

Yes. Yes, of course.

Well...

Here comes the dust.

Then none of this

will matter anymore.

What do you mean?

There's gonna be a dust storm.

The plants

have only just begun to grow.

It couldn't be worse.

But Manderlay's fields have never

been harmed by a dust storm.

'Cause the windbreak

was still in place.

Grace was not inclined to go into

what the former overseer meant

by these mysterious words.

Soon she had convinced herself

they had no meaning at all

apart from spreading

disquiet and despondency.

The next day's lesson

on the importance

of unleashing one's anger

met little understanding

from the assembly.

It was when they wound up

with a series of ballots

and the community

had rapidly decided

to use Wilma's potatoes for seed

as she was so old

and did not have to eat that much,

that they heard the wind.

Jack, where you goin'

He goin' to get Lucifer.

The dust had come at this time for

as long as anybody could remember.

But every year

from time immemorial,

it had spared

the newly planted cotton

as the plantation had been cleverly

shielded by a narrow band of trees

known in common parlance

as "The Old Lady's Garden."

In the midst of the almost biblical

darkness that descended on Manderlay,

Grace knew all too well

that even hand in hand

with all the races of the world,

no army of gangsters

could counter this:

Nature's extravagant

demonstration of power.

All she could do was watch

as row upon row

of the seedlings she had so welcomed

disappeared

beneath the devastating dust.

Nobody could do a thing.

But apparently it did not mean

that no one would try,

for now Grace

discerned a rider out there.

He was riding like crazy.

As he progressed

across the fields,

wherever he spotted

a pile of dust beginning to grow,

he would break it up

with his horse's hooves.

Whether it would make the slightest

dent in the grand scale of things

was hard to tell,

but it was a battle,

no matter how senseless

it might be...

heroic and dangerous.

Timothy...

Come back!

Come back! Timothy!

- Timothy!

- Timothy's gonna be all right!

He knows these storms.

Miss Grace,

you's head over heels for him.

You's a fool, Miss Grace.

- Where'd you find him?

- He was behind the house.

Is he alive?

I do believe I know

what you mean by that question.

- But what does it mean, to be alive?

- It means, is he breathing?

Forget it.

Is he dead?

We colored folks can be awfully

hard to kill if we want it that way.

That very afternoon,

strong Timothy was back on his feet

surveying the buildings

for damage caused by the storm.

The dust had struck

a devastating blow.

Unfortunately, hardest hit

were the food stores

in the dilapidated Peach House

which had lost its roof.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes