Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet

Selections from the People Pieces

Jo Carson

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 1993
• ISBN:
  9781559366793
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

Fifty-four monologues and dialogues, a remarkable distillation of rhythms and nuances from the region of the heart.

NEIGHBORS AND KIN

2

It’s gettin’ to where
you can’t give a person nothin’ anymore
and it’s too damn bad.

Now, my neighbor
could look the devil in the eye
and say no thanks he didn’t want to go to hell,
while at the same time
tryin’ to slip Jesus Christ a couple of dollar bills
for the free gift of salvation.

He’s a hard man
and he’s about to drive me crazy.
Fifty cents he puts in my mailbox,
or a dollar or somethin’,
and all I did was give his wife
a couple of tomatoes
and a mess of old string beans.

And they ain’t rich.

Then, yesterday, I picked a half a bushel
of them little ol’ zucchini squash
and I carried over five or six
and put them on his porch
with a note that said,
“These are a present. ”
Present was underlined.
And today,
there’s a dollar in my mailbox.

The man don’t understand
he’s doin’ a favor
when he takes and eats them damn zucchini,
and when he pays me for ’em,
when he pays me for ’em
it’s me ends up beholden to him.

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3

I spent the first years of my life
sittin’ on what we called splinter benches
’cause we were too poor for store-bought furniture.
You scooted, you got splinters.
My mama used to cry
’cause she wanted a bed with a real mattress
for Grandma Lynn to die on.
Turned out Grandma Lynn didn’t need it.
She died mid-sentence at the women’s circle.
But the first money I ever earned
I got Mama a store-bought mattress.
Daddy bought her two straight-back chairs
so she and him could sit proper at the table.
It was her birthday.
I never seen anybody since
made so happy by a gift.

When Daddy finally found regular work
first thing they did was ride down to McEnniss’s
and choose a houseful of fancy stuffed furniture.
Bought it on time, had it delivered, and paid for years.
The day it came, Mama and I stood out back
bustin’ the old stuff with an ax.
Mama said if they couldn’t pay for their bed
she’d rather sleep on the floor than have that one back.
We burnt furniture for kindling all that winter.
Mama’d say, “Here goes the table, Charlie!”
and she and Daddy’d laugh and raise their coffee cups
to toast their new prosperity.

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Turns out we burnt what could have been
my fortune in antiques. My wife collects ’em.
She likes what she calls primitive;
it’s the very stuff my mama didn’t like,
and now I’m supposed to fix it so it don’t ruin clothes
instead of bust it up.
I don’t mind, might as well be this as something else,
but if I do get to heaven, if I do get to meet my mama
again,
I don’t know how in this world or that one
I’m gonna explain why I still got splinters in my seat.

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4

Now, George is sick,
there ain’t no question,
an’ I’ve mentioned
for a year or so
about goin’ to a doctor
an’ he’d say
“Nooo, no, no.”
But I’m gonna make ’im find one now.
It’s really bad.
I mean,
George has got so sick
he don’t even like
goin’ to funerals anymore.

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5

There was a story about my daddy’s daddy
who bought a horse, a long-legged red mare
come from kin at Nashville who owed a favor,
and he worked and trained that horse to run.

Daddy tells of bets going up at the sight of that mare
and then money already changing hands
as Grandaddy come out of the saddle after a race
and give the mare to him to cool her off.
And tells about the two of ’em riding home,
a paper sack stuffed with winnings
when there wasn’t room for it all in their pockets.

Daddy tells this story too:
the afternoon the red mare ran and won again
and Grandaddy climbed off her back and sold her
and they walked the six miles home to dinner
weeping, both of them, my daddy begging to know why.

The old man said horse-racing was the devil’s work.
Said it had to be. Said they’d been having too much fun.

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6

It was a Saturday and my mother was cooking.
She always cooked on Saturday
for us and for her bachelor brother
who came by on Sunday afternoon
and got his casseroles for the week.
None of them used tuna fish, mushrooms, peas . . .
there was a list of things he wouldn’t eat.
We were not allowed to be so picky.

By Sunday they’d be frozen.
All he had to do was keep them frozen
and put them in the oven one at a time.
His were labeled, he knew what he was going to eat.
For herself, she looked into the frozen layers
and tried to remember.
I don’t know why she did it.
He was perfectly capable of doing
anything else he set his mind to.
He could have learned to cook.

This Saturday
she was up to her elbows again in family and food.
I heard her in the kitchen. “No,” she said.
After a moment: “I’m honored, but no thanks.”
Another moment: “No, thank you, no, no, no.”
I asked who she was talking to. She said,
“I’m practicing my speech for the circle,
they are planning to ask me to be president.”

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