The Gifts of the Spirit

The Gifts of the Spirit by Belinda Mason The play is set in the present in a rural eastern Kentucky funeral home. The characters are members of a closely-knit mountain community who have gathered for the evening wake of a young man who has died in a car wreck As it does so many times in this setting, the characters ' thoughts and their talk turns away from death to life. Enoch, this speaker, talks offaith. He is about 70, wears khaki work clothes and wing-tip shoes. He is easy going and has a special kind of humor . A man's born without a thing and he dies the self-same way. So he's got to make the most of what's in the middle. Now they's plenty of 'em that would fault me on this, but if the good Lord hadn't a meant for us to enjoy life He'd a took us straight to heaven when we was born and skipped over it. And look a here at what all He's give us: Children. Fishin. Dogwood trees. Pie. Them might not be your picks, but they's mine. They's plenty other fine things. Just git ye head out of ye hindend for a minute and think about it. Music. Buddies. Biscuit. Now I'm not what you'd call a religious man. For I believe religion ain't necessarily limited to the church house. Don't git me wrong though, the church house is good for a lot. When I was a young man I did a sight of courtin at meetings. And in the middle of my years, sometimes there wasn't a thing in the world that was any better than cleanin up, walkin down the creek with Virgie and the younguns and listenin to some Ereachin. Set of them satiny-smooth enches, spring of the year comin in the winders and the smell of them talcum powders when Virgie'd git that fan goin. Brother Felix Ison would git wound up. They used to say he preached starvation, instead of salvation. I'd listen to him awhile. Then take note of everbody. My neighbors, I'd think to myself. My 99 family. My friends. Lord, it was sweet. A good feelin. Then maybe I'd put my arm round Virgie and squeeze that soft part of her between the shoulder and the elbow. My hands is old now, but they remember yet holdin that woman's skin. I've studied on it and I believe now what I loved so good about them times in church is how all of us fit together. As tight and true as a dovetail joint. Must have been somethin to it, for they was certain days in church I even loved my mother-in-law. Now the truth is that Mag Muncy was a bitch. She worked her husband to death and then set in on her younguns. Cold as ice, that woman. Virgie was her oldest and Mag done her like a pack horse. Course she never could forgive me for takin her. But here I'd set, in back of Mag, filled with somethin that could have been the Holy Ghost for all I know about such matters and they'd be ten minutes spaces of time when I loved Mag. Loved how straight she sat, like she had a poker up her rear. Loved them stringy little plaits around her head. Not seein her old mouth, nothin but a line across her face, and lovin that, too. But what I meant to say is that they's a lot of 'em that wouldn't pick me for a religious man. I handle Dad talk. I'll take a drink. And I ain't never been baptized. Virgie's accused me, more than once, of blasphemin. Years ago I had Frank Fulton helpin me clear a spot of ground up in the Sandlick Gap. Wadn't nothin up there but a wilderness . We'd worked our tails off, cuttin trees, burnin brush, grubbin roots. People thought I'd gone crazy and some said as much. But I knowed underneath all them...