Act 2 (Jane&Ben Sewing Scene)

Question 1

(Jane starting onstage)
Ben: “Well, I fixed Old Nellie up. Just got her in time. Thought she was gone for a minute, but she’s going to be all right.”

Answer 1

That’s good.

Question 2

Ben: “She knew what I was doing for her too; you could tell by the way she looked at me! She’ll be all right, poor old critter. I remember her when she was a colt, year before I went to high school.”

Answer 2

You like animals, don’t you Ben?

Question 3

Ben: “I don’t know. I don’t like to see em suffer.”

Answer 3

Why?

Question 4

Ben: “I guess it’s mostly because they ain’t to blame for it. I mean what comes to em ain’t their fault. If a man gets drunk, or eats like a hog, he’s got to pay for it, and he ought to. Animals live cleaner than we do anyhow–and when you do anything for em, they’ve got gratitude. Folks haven’t.”

Answer 4

Hand me that sewing basket, Ben.

Question 5

Ben: “It’s funny, but except for a dog or two, I don’t remember caring nothing for any of the living things, when I lived here I mean.”

Answer 5

I guess that’s because you didn’t do much for them.

Question 6

Ben: “I guess so–Sometimes I kind of think I’d like to be here when spring comes–and see all the young critters coming into the world–I should think there’d be a lot a feller could do, to make it easier for em.”

Answer 6

Yes.

Question 7

Ben: …there’d be a lot a feller could do, to make it easier for em.”
Jane: “Yes.”
Ben: “I know it–Yes, sometimes I sort of wish I could be here, in the spring.”

Answer 7

You’ll be a big help.

Question 8

Jane: “You’ll be a big help.”
Ben: “I’ll be in prison. You forgot that, didn’t you?”

Answer 8

Yes.

Question 9

Ben: “What’s the difference? A prison ain’t just a place; it’s being somewheres you don’t want to be, and that’s where I’ve always been.”

Answer 9

You liked the army?

Question 10

Jane: “You liked the army?”
Ben: “I suppose so.”

Answer 10

Why?

Question 11

Jane: “You liked the army?
Ben: “I suppose so.”
Jane: “Why?”
Ben: “I don’t know, there was things to do, and you did em.”

Answer 11

And someone to tell you what to do?

Question 12

Ben: “Maybe that’s it, somebody that knew better’n I did. It galled me at first, but pretty soon we got over in France, and I saw we was really doing something, that I didn’t mind. I just got to doing what I was told, and it worked out all right.”

Answer 12

You liked France, too?

Question 13

Jane: “You liked France, too?”
Ben: “Yes.”

Answer 13

I’d like to hear you talk about it.

Question 14

Ben: “Maybe I’ll go back there some time. I don’t know if I’d mind farming a place over there. Most of their farms are awful little, but I don’t know I’d mind it.”

Answer 14

Farming is farming. Why not try it here?

Question 15

Ben: “Look out there! It’s like that half the year, froze up, everything, most of the time the people. Just a family by itself, maybe. Just a few folks, good and bad, month after month, with nothing to think about but the mean little things, that don’t really amount to nothing, but get to be bigger than all the world outside.”

Answer 15

Somebody must do the farming, Ben.

Question 16

Ben: “Somebody like the Jordans, that’s been doing it for generation after generation. Well, look at us. I heard a feller, in a YMCA hut, telling how nature brought animals into the world, able to face what they had to face…”

Answer 16

Yes Ben?

Question 17

Ben: “That’s what nature’s done for us Jordans, brought us into the world and half froze before we was born. Brought us into the world mean, and hard, so we could live the hard, mean life we have to live.”

Answer 17

I don’t know, Ben, but you could live it different.

Question 18

Ben: “They laugh over there, and sing, and God knows when I was there they didn’t have much to sing about. I was at a rest camp, near Nancy, after I got wounded. I told you about the french lady with all those children I got billeted with.”

Answer 18

Yes.

Question 19

Ben: “They used to sing, right at the table, and laugh! God! It brought a lump into my throat more than once, looking at them, and remembering the Jordans!”

Answer 19

I guess there wasn’t much laughing at your family table..

Question 20

Ben: “Summers nobody had much time for it, and winters, well, I guess you know.”

Answer 20

Yes.

Question 21

Ben: “…Sometimes somebody sort of laughs and it scares you; seems like laughter needs the sun, same as flowers do. Icebound, that’s what we are all of us, inside and out.”

Answer 21

Not all. I laughed a lot before I came to here to live.

Question 22

Jane: “Not all. I laughed a lot before I came here to live.”
Ben: I remember, when we were younger.”

Answer 22

I was fourteen. See if there’s a spool of black sewing cotton in there.

Question 23

Ben: “You mean thread?”

Answer 23

Yes.

Question 24

Ben: “This it?” (Holds up wrong colored thread)

Answer 24

Would you call that black?

Question 25

Ben: “No, it ain’t black. Maybe this is it!”

Answer 25

Maybe it is! You were with that French family quite a while, weren’t you?

Question 26

Jane: “…with that French family quite a while, weren’t you?”
Ben: “Most a month; they was well off, you know; I mean, they was, before the war. It was a nice house.”

Answer 26

How nice?

Question 27

Ben: “I don’t know, things, well, useful, you know, but nice, not like this.”

Answer 27

It’s not very pretty, but it could be. I could make it.

Question 28

Jane: “It’s not very pretty, but it could be. I could make it.”
Ben: “If you did, folks would be saying you wasn’t respectable.”

Answer 28

Tell me about the dinner they gave you the night before you went back to your company.

Question 29

Jane: “Tell me about the dinner they gave you the night before you went back to your company.”
Ben: I told you.”

Answer 29

Tell me again.

Question 30

Ben: “They was all dressed up, the whole family, and there I was just with my dirty old uniform.”

Answer 30

Yes.

Question 31

Ben: “It was a fine dinner, but it wasn’t that. It was their doing so much for me, folks like that–I’ve sort of pictured em lots of times since then.”

Answer 31

Go on.

Question 32

Ben: “All of the young ones laughing and happy, and the mother too, laughing and trying to talk to me, and neither one of us knowing much about what the other was saying.”

Answer 32

And the oldest daughter? The one that was the most grown up?

Question 33

Ben: “She was scared of me, somehow, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a girl like her, before or since.”

Answer 33

Maybe twas that dress you told me about; seems to me you don’t remember much else about her; not so much as what color her hair was, only just that that dress was blue.

Question 34

Jane: “…only just that that dress was blue.”
Ben: “Yes.”

Answer 34

Sometimes you say dark blue!

Question 35

Jane: “Sometimes you say dark blue!”
Ben: “I guess so.”

Answer 35

And then I say, dark as something I point out to you, that isn’t dark at all, and you say, “No, lighter than that!”

Question 36

Ben: “Just, sort of blue.”

Answer 36

Yes, sort of blue. It had lace on it, too, didn’t it?

Question 37

Ben: “Lace? Maybe, yes, lace.”

Answer 37

There’s more than one blue dress in the world.

Question 38

Ben: “Alike enough. Maybe there’s more than one family like that lady’s, but I’ll be damned if they live in Veazie. I might as well run out and see how the old mare is getting on.”

Answer 38

And you’ve got to shovel those paths for the clothes lines yet.

Question 39

Jane: “And you’ve got to shovel those paths for the clothes lines yet.”
Ben: “I know.”

Answer 39

Well, don’t forget.