The Displaced Person (1977) - full transcript
A conscientious but driven Polish refugee disrupts the hierarchy of power on a Georgia farm in the 1940s.
[music playing]
[music playing]
--[inaudible] is going to be impossible [inaudible].
-Goodness.
-They'll be going to school pretty soon. [inaudible].
[door opening]
-Oh, there's Ms. Shortley.
Mr. Shortley is my dairy man.
The children are called Rudolph and Sledgewig.
Where is Mr. Shortley?
I want him to meet the Guicazs.
-Chancey's in the barn.
He don't have to rest hisself in the bushes
like them niggers over there.
[peacock cooing]
-Ah, what a New beautiful bird.
[giggle]
-Another mouth to feed.
-But he rears his splendid tail.
-Just when it suits him.
There used to be 20 or 30 of these things on the place
when my first husband, Judge McIntyre, was alive.
But I let em die off.
I don't want to hear them scream in the middle of the night.
-So beautiful.
Tail full of suns.
-Nothing but a pea chicken.
-Father Flynn, we must show the Guizacs their new home.
-Yes, uh.
[peacock cooing]
[car engine starting]
-Well, you all have looked long enough.
What you thinking about?
-We has been watching.
Who they now?
[cat meowing]
-They come from over the water.
Only one of them seems like they speak English.
They're what is called displace persons.
-Displaced persons.
Well, now I declare.
What do that mean?
-It means they ain't where they were born at.
And there's nowhere for 'em to go.
Like if you was run out of here and would nobody have you.
-Seems they had though.
If they had, they're somewhere.
-Sho is.
They here.
-You all better look out now.
There about 10 billion more just like 'em.
And I know what Miss McIntyre said.
-Say what?
-Places are not easy to get nowadays for white or black.
But I reckon I know she stated to me.
-You liable to hear most anything.
-I heard her say this goin' put the fear of the Lord
into those shiftless niggers.
-She bees like that now and then.
[chuckle]
-Yes, indeed.
[peacock cooing]
-You better get back in that barn and help Mr. Shortley.
What you reckon she pays you for?
-He the one sent me out.
He the one give me something else to do.
-Well, you better get to doing it, then.
[peacock cooing]
[music playing]
I have come to take your place.
You'll have to find another.
Go on now.
I warned you.
-You girls, you get in that house, you hear?
-Chancey, if she see or heard of you smoking in this barn,
she'd blow a fuse.
-You going be the one to tell her?
-Got a nose of her own.
[laughter]
-Well, the guy looked surprised.
She wants you to meet 'em.
Says, where's Mr. Shortley.
And I said.
-Do up them weights.
-She don't call them the gobble gooks no longer.
-What does she call them?
-Whatever their last name is.
She can say it just as plain as that priest can.
The boy's Rudolph and the girl's Sledgewig.
I'd just as soon name a child of mine boll weevil as Sledgewig.
You reckon he can drive a tractor
when he don't know English?
She ain't no better off than if she had no niggers.
-I'd rather have niggers if it's me.
-She says there's 10 million more just
like 'em, displaced persons.
She says that their priest can get her all she wants.
-You better quit messing with that there priest.
-Yeah, looks smart.
Trying to prove it.
-I ain't going to have no boat [inaudible]
tell me how to run no dairy.
-Well, they ain't Italian.
They're Pole, from Poland, where all them bodies was stacked up
at, like we seen at the news reel at the picture show.
Remember all them bodies?
-I give 'em three weeks.
-I want to see that cut I just bought in action.
For the first time, I have somebody can operate it.
Mr. Guizac's a wonder He can drive a tractor,
use the rotary hay baler, the combine, the mill,
or any other machine I've got around the place.
-Well, I hope they don't all break down.
-I don't worry about that.
He's an expert mechanic, carpenter, a mason.
He's thrifty and he's energetic.
He will save me $20 a month in repair bills alone.
He can work milking machines.
He's the cleanest thing I ever saw.
And he doesn't smoke.
[birds chirping]
-[inaudible].
-Look there.
Nobody's picking up on that niggers make him nervous.
At last I've got somebody I can depend on.
For years, I've been fooling the sorry people.
-Sorry people?
-Well, white trash and niggers.
They drain me dry.
Before you all came, I had Ringfields and Collinses
and Gerald and Perkins and Pinkings and Herrings
and God knows what all else.
-Well, I don't approve of trash neither.
Never have.
-I've been running this place for 30 years
and always just barely making it.
People think you're made of money.
Well, the taxes to pay.
I have insurance to keep up.
I have the repair bills I have the feed bills.
Ever since the judge died, I've barely been making ends meet.
And they all take something when they leave.
Niggers don't leave.
They stay and steal.
Niggers think anybody's rich he can steal from.
And white trash thinks anybody's rich
who can afford to hire people as sorry as they are.
And all I've got is the dirt under my feet.
But at last I'm saved.
One fellow's misery is another fellow's gain.
That man there, he has to work.
He wants to work.
That man is my salvation.
-I would suspicion salvation got from the devil.
-Now what do you mean by that?
-I know what that girl told Annie Maude.
Said they wouldn't be able to live long, the four of them,
on $70 a month.
-He's worth raising.
He saves me money.
-Is Mr. Shortley better today?
-No.
No, he ain't.
Doctor says he was suffering from over exhaustion.
-If Mr. Shortley is over exhausted,
then he must have a second job on the side.
-And what is furthermore, Sledgewig
said when her papa saved the money,
he was going to buy them a used car.
-I can't pay him enough to save money.
I won't be worrying about that.
Of course, if Mr. Shortley should get incapacitated,
of course, I'd have to pay him more.
He doesn't smoke.
-It's no man who works as hard as Chancey
or is as easy with a cow, or is more of a Christian.
-Think of how long that would've taken with many mules to do it.
He gets the whole bottom cut in two days.
--[inaudible] got not terrible accident occurred.
-What'd you say?
-I said, I don't trust machines like that myself.
Never did.
[chuckle]
-Chancey, that displaced person prowls.
Prowls!
Now who's to say what he knows and don't know.
Who is to say if he found your still,
he wouldn't go right to her and tell her about it?
Maybe he wants that still for hisself.
Answer me.
-Don't worry me now.
I'm a dead man.
-It's them little eyes that he has that's foreign.
-If everybody was as dead as I am,
nobody would have no trouble.
-In Europe, they're full of crooked ways,
with fighting amongst each other, disputin'.
Then they get us into it.
Ain't they got us into it twice already,
and we ain't got no more sense but to go over there
and set in the forum.
Chancey, do you hear me?
-No.
-I tell you another thing.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if he don't know everything
you say, whether it be in English or some other language.
-I don't speak no other language.
-I expect that fore long, there won't
be no more niggers on the place.
And I tell you what, I'd rather have niggers than them Poles.
Tell you another thing, I got a heap out of Sledgewig.
Sledgewig said in Poland, they lived in a brick house.
And one night a man come and told them to get out of it
fore daylight.
You believe they lived in a brick house?
As, that's just as
I hate to see niggers run out and mistreated.
When the time comes, I'll stand up for the niggers.
And that's that.
I ain't going see the priest drive out all the niggers.
-He did that yesterday.
Ah.
Been done beautifully.
-I still say he ain't going to work forever for $70 a month.
-Well, I may have to get rid of some of the other help
so I can pay him more.
I ain't saying the niggers didn't have it coming to 'em.
But they do the best they know how.
You can always tell a nigger what
to do and stand by him til he does it.
[chuckle] That's what the judge always said.
Devil you know better than the devil you don't.
Judge always said that too.
When the hands were here, choose to come out here all the time
and look at the angel on the judge's grave.
She thought it was pretty, she said.
When they left, the angel left with them.
They stole it right off the judge's grave.
-How come they left the toes?
-I guess the axe old man Heron used to break it off with
struck too high.
I've never been able to afford to have it replaced.
[music playing]
-I wouldn't want nobody but you to hear this.
I know what that displaced person's really up to.
Astor told me.
-Shut your mouth.
-Yeah.
-No!
-Oh, yes.
-Wow.
-The Pole don't know any better.
I reckon the priest is putting him up to it.
I blame the priest.
First he's going to get her into the church.
Then he's going to get his hand inside her pocketbook.
Then he's going to try and get her to fire the niggers
and bring another Polish family on the place.
You watch.
When you get two of them families on this place,
there won't be nothing spoken but Polish.
Then they'll all gang up on the Shortleys.
That's why I'm really studying my Bible these days.
I believe the Lord God Almighty created us strong people
to do what has to be done.
And I know I'll be ready when he calls me.
And the word of the Lord came into me saying, son of man,
set thy face toward the mountains
of Israel and prophesy against 'em.
Prophesy.
The children of wicked nations shall
be butchered, legs where arms should be, foot to face,
ear in the palm of hand.
Who will remain whole?
Who will remain whole?
Who?
[music playing]
[animal noises]
Here again, come to destroy.
[distant voices]
[peacock cooing]
-Look at the little biddies.
-Do you think the Guizacs will leave me?
Do you think they'll go to Chicago or someplace like that?
-Well, why would they want to do that now?
-Money.
-Give them some more then.
They have to get along.
-So do I. Means I'm going to have
to get rid of some of these others.
-And are the Shortleys satisfactory?
-Five times in the last month I have
found Mr. Shortley smoking in the barn.
Five times.
-Are the Negroes any better?
-They lie and steal and have to be watched all the time.
-So which will you discharge?
-I'm going to give Mr. Shortley his month notice tomorrow.
[music playing]
-Annie Maude, Sarah Mae, get busy helping me pack.
[music playing]
Help me.
And you, start emptying out that closet.
You ain't waiting to be fired.
Bring the car around.
[music playing]
-Grab that bed.
We'll build it over yonder.
[music playing]
-Nice.
Certainly I'm going to take a switch to you.
[music playing]
-Give me that book.
[music playing]
-Where are we going?
-Hm?
-Where are we going?
[car tires screeching]
-[inaudible].
-Good God Almighty, woman.
What are you trying to do, kill us?
-Let go.
Quit it!
Let go!
Quit it, Ma.
Let go, Ma.
Quit it.
-Come on now.
-Let go, Ma.
-Come on!
-Where we going, Ma?
-Where we going, Ma?
Where we going?
[voices fade]
-Well, we can get along without them.
We've seen them come and we've seen them go, black and white.
Miss Shortley was a good woman.
And I'll miss her But as the judge used to say,
you can't have your pie and eat it, too.
I'm glad the [inaudible] owner called
so I didn't have to fire him.
People I hire always leave.
These are those kind of people.
Now, we've seen them come and go.
-Me and you, we still here.
-I spent half my life fooling with trashy people.
But now I'm through.
I don't have to put with foolishness anymore.
I have somebody now who has to work.
-We've seen them come and we've seen them go.
-However, those Shortleys were not the worst by far.
I will remember those Garretts.
-It was before them Collinses.
-No, before the Ringfields.
[laughter]
-Sweet Lord, them Ringfields.
-Or the Herons.
Even robbed the judge's grave.
None of that kind were born to work.
-We've seen 'em come and we seen 'em go.
But we never had one before like what we got now.
-He can wash out the dairy in the time
it took Mr. Shortley to make up his mind he had to do it.
-He's from Pole.
-From Poland.
-In Pole, it don't be like it bes here.
They've got different ways of doing.
And, and I don't, I--
-What are you saying?
If you have anything to say against him,
say it and say it aloud.
If you know anything he's done he shouldn't, I
expect you to report it to me.
-It wasn't like what he should ought or oughtn't.
It's like what nobody else don't do.
-You don't have anything to say against him.
He's here to stay.
-We just ain't never had nobody like him before, that's all.
-Well, things are changing.
Don't you know what's happening to the world?
It's smelling up.
It's getting so full of people that only the smart, thrifty,
and energetic ones are going to survive.
-How come there's so many extra?
-Because they're selfish.
They have too many children.
There's no sense to it anymore.
What you colored people don't realize
is that I'm the one around here who holds all strings together.
If you don't work, I don't make any money and I can't pay you.
You're all dependent on me.
But you, each and every one, act like the shoe
was on my other foot.
-The judge say the devil he know are better than the devil he
don't.
-The judge has long since ceased to pay the bills around here.
[cat meow]
I'm sorry that poor man has been chased out of Poland
and run across Europe and come to live in a tenant
shack in a strange country.
But I'm not responsible for any of it.
I know what it is to struggle.
People ought to struggle.
I've had a hard time myself.
But I've survived.
[distant voices]
[car starting]
-Why aren't you in the field?
What's that?
-It ain't nothing.
-Who is this child?
-She his cousin.
-Well, what are you doing with it?
-She going marry me.
-Marry you?
-I pays half to get her over here.
I pays him $3 a week.
She bigger now.
She his cousin.
She don't care who she marries, she's
so glad to get away from there.
I don't reckon she going come no how.
-I'll see you get every cent of your money back.
[music playing]
[gasping]
-They're all the same.
It's always been like this.
20 years I've been beaten and done in.
They even robbed his grave.
[crying]
[music playing]
[sounds of tractor]
-I want to talk to you.
Mr. Guizac, you would bring this poor, innocent child over here
and try to marry her to a half witted black fever nigger?
What kind of a monster are you?
-My cousin, she 12 here, first communion, 16 now.
-Mr. Guizac, that nigger cannot have a white wife from Europe.
You can't talk to a nigger that way.
You'll excite him.
And besides, it can't be done.
Maybe it can be done in Poland, but it can't be done here.
And you'll have to stop.
It's all foolishness.
That nigger don't have a grain of sense.
And you'll excite him.
-She'll come three year.
-Your cousin cannot come over and marry one of my Negroes.
-She's 16 year, for Poland.
Mama die.
Papa die.
She waiting come, three come.
She mama, she die in two come.
-Mr. Guizac, I will not have my niggers upset.
I cannot run this place without my niggers.
I can run it without you.
But I cannot run it without them.
And if you mention the girl to Sulk again,
you won't have a job with me.
Understand?
I cannot understand how a man who calls himself a Christian
could bring a poor, innocent girl over here,
marry her to something like that.
I cannot understand it.
-She no care black.
She come three year.
-Mr. Guizac, I don't want to have to speak to you about this
again.
If I do, you'll have to find another place yourself.
Do you understand?
This is my place.
I say who will come here and who won't.
-Ya.
-I'm not responsible for the world's misery.
-Ya.
-You have a good job.
You should be grateful to be here.
But I'm not sure you are.
-Ya.
[birds chirping]
[tractor starting]
-They're all the same, whether they
come from Poland or Tennessee.
I've handled Herrings and Ringfields and Shortleys.
And I can handle a Guizac.
All my life I've been fighting the world's overflow.
And now I have it in the form of a Pole.
You're just like all the rest, only smart, and thrifty,
and energetic.
But so am I. And this is my place.
[music playing]
-I'm under no moral obligation to keep him.
I'm under no moral obligation to keep him.
-We were talking about purgatory,
the souls in purgatory.
Thank you.
-I'm under no obligation to keep him.
-What did you say?
Dear lady, have any questions about all this,
the souls in purgatory?
-Lester, I'm not theological.
I'm practical.
I'm going to talk to you about something practical.
Mr. Guizac's not satisfactory.
He's extra.
He doesn't fit in.
I have to have somebody who fits in.
-Give him time.
He'll learn to fit in.
Where is that beautiful bird of yours?
Ah, I see it.
-Mr. Guizac's very efficient.
I'll admit that.
But he doesn't understand how to get on with my niggers.
And they don't like him.
I can't have the niggers run off.
And I don't like his attitude.
He's not in the least grateful for being here.
-I have to be off now.
-I tell you, if I had a white man who understood the niggers,
I'd have to let Mr. Guizac go.
-He has no place to go.
I know you well enough, dear lady, to know you
wouldn't turn him out for a trifle.
-I didn't create this situation, of course.
-Christ will come like that.
-It's not my responsibility that Mr. Guizac has no place to go.
I don't find myself responsible for all the extra people
in the world.
-Transfiguration.
-Mr. Guizac didn't have to come here in the first place.
He didn't have to come in the first place.
-He came to redeem us.
I have to go, dear lady.
Goodbye.
[peacock cooing]
[sound of car]
-Well, where's Miss Shortley.
She was God's own angel.
She was the sweetest woman in the world.
-Where is she?
-Dead.
-No.
-She had herself a stroke on the day she left out of here.
-You don't say so.
-I figure that Pole killed her.
She seen through him from the first.
She known he come from the devil.
She told me so.
-Get another place now?
-No.
-Want your job back?
-Is the Pole still here?
-Yes.
But I'm going to fire him on the first of the month.
I'll give him his 30 days notice.
And then you can have your old job back in the dairy.
In the meantime, you can do farm work.
-I just as soon have my job back in the dairy right off.
But uh I'll be willing to wait a month.
It will give me satisfaction to see the Pole leave the place.
-It will give me a great deal of satisfaction.
I made a mistake bringing him here.
I should have been content with the help I had in first place
and not been reaching into other parts of the world.
-I never cared for foreigners since I was in the war
and seen what they were like.
I recall the face of one man who throwed a hand grenade at me.
That man had round little eyes exactly like Mr. "Gwee-zacks."
-Mr. Guizac is a Pole.
He's not a German.
-It ain't a great deal of difference in them two kinds.
[birds chirping]
[tractor sounds]
-Hand me that there.
-Where?
-Right there.
-Oh.
-Why don't you go back to Africa?
That's your country, ain't it.
-I ain't going there.
They might eat me up.
-Well, if you behave yourself, ain't
no reason you can't stay here.
Cause you didn't run away from nowhere.
Your grandaddy was bought.
He didn't have a thing to do with coming.
It's the people run off from where
they come from I ain't got no use for.
But I never felt no need to travel.
Well, if I was going to travel again,
it'd either be China or Africa.
You go to either of them two places,
and you can tell right away what the difference is
between you and them.
You go to those other places and the only way you can tell
is if they say something.
Then you can't always tell because about half of them
knows the English language.
That's where we made our mistake,
letting all them people learn the English.
There'd be a heap less trouble if everybody only
knew their own language.
My wife said knowing two languages
was like having two eyes in the back of your head.
Shoot.
You couldn't put nothing over on her.
-Sho couldn't.
She was fine.
She was sure fine.
I never known a finer white woman than her.
[music playing]
-I've had a hard time getting over Miss Shortley's death.
[chuckle] Anyone would think she was kin to me.
I've been tricked by that priest.
When I agreed to bring the Guizac's here,
he said there was no legal obligation
to keep them here if they weren't satisfactory.
But [inaudible] yesterday with a moral obligation.
My moral obligation as I see it is
to Mr. Shortley who fought in the war for his country,
not for Mr. Guizac, who's only come
over here to take advantage of whatever he can.
But I'm going to have to have it out with that priest
before I can fire him.
[sigh]
[footsteps]
-The first has come and gone.
-I know.
But the priest hasn't called again.
-Well, I still ain't got my dairy job back.
I should have known all along no woman was
going to do what she said she was when she said she was.
I don't know how long I can afford
to put up with her shilly-shally.
Come on in here and give me a hand, will you?
[mooing]
-When God sent his only begotten son,
Jesus Christ our Lord as a redeemer
to mankind, as a redeemer to all.
-Father Flynn, I want to talk to you about something serious.
As far as I'm concerned, Christ was just another DP.
I'm going to let this man go.
I don't have any obligation to him.
My obligation is to the people who
have done something for the country,
not to the ones who just came over
to take advantage of what they can get.
I've been hanging on to this place for 30 years
ever since the judge died, always just
barely making making it against the people who
came from nowhere, and were going nowhere,
and didn't want anything but an automobile.
And I found out that they are the same
whether they come from Poland or Tennessee.
When the Guizacs get ready, they won't hesitate to leave me.
The people who look rich are the poorest
of all, because they have the most to keep up.
How do you I pay my feed bills?
I'd like to have my house done over, but I can't afford it.
I can't even afford to restore the monument
on my husband's grave.
Would you like to guess what my insurance amounts to in a year?
Do you think I'm made of money?
[chuckling]
[clanging noises]
[distant voices]
-Mr. Shortley.
-Up.
-I decided to give Mr. Guizac his 30 days notice
the first of next month.
You notice that the Pole and his family are getting fat?
The hollows have all come out of their cheeks.
And they save every cent they make.
-Yes'm.
And one of these days, he'll be able to buy and sell you out.
-I'm just waiting for the first.
-There's nothing for me to do but to wait too.
But I ain't going wait with my mouth shut.
-I'm worried to death about all the bills I've got facing me.
I want help.
I don't sleep at night, and when I do,
I dream about that displaced person.
One night I dreamed Mr. Guizac and his family
were moving into the house.
And I was moving in with Mr. Shortley.
I didn't sleep for several nights after that.
And one night I dreamed that the priest came to call.
And he said to me, dear lady, I know that your tender heart
won't suffer you to turn the poor man out.
Think of the ovens, and the box cars, and the camps,
and the sick children, and Christ the Lord.
But I said to him, he's extra.
He upsets the balance around here.
And I'm a logical, practical woman.
And there are no ovens here, and no camps,
and no Christ our Lord.
And when he leaves, he'll make more money.
Just one too many, I said.
[peacock cooing]
-Ya good?
-Mr. Guizac, I can hardly my obligations now.
I have bills to pay.
-I too, much bills, little money.
-This is my place.
All of you are extra, each and every one of you are extra.
-Ya.
-Sometimes a man who's fought, and bled,
and died in the service of his native land
don't get the consideration of one of them
like he was fighting.
I ask, is that right?
I gone over there.
And I fought and bled and died.
And I come back over here and find out who's got my job,
just exactly who I've been fighting.
It was come that near to killing me.
And I seen who throwed it.
It was a little man with eyeglasses exactly like his.
He might have bought them in the same store.
Small world.
I been telling my story to one and all who will listen.
And everybody, black and white, thinks I'm in the right.
[music playing]
-I've never had to discharge anyone before.
They all left me.
[clanging metal]
-Screw.
[clanging metal]
[birds chirping]
[tractor noises]
[birds chirping]
[background voices and wailing]
[music playing]
[footsteps]
-Has she had any visitors?
-No, sir.
You about the only one ever comes to see the poor thing.
-Now, where did we leave off last week?
Purgatory?
Yes, I think by now we have a clearer idea of that.
Do you know I'm 80 years old?
I've been a priest for 55 years.
How many prayers I've said for the souls in purgatory?
Yes, I think we have a clearer idea now
about the souls in purgatory.
Although, I wish I could question you sometimes
and see what you know and don't know.
Still, we were speaking of purgatory,
a temporary state which can go on for centuries,
and souls which have not yet been cleansed by hell
or doomed to hell.
Souls have not yet attained a non-corporeal state.
Therefore, purgatory must be a place where one thinks clearer.
And purgatory may be souls that have benefitted
from the prayers of the living.
[voice fading]
[music playing]
[music playing]
--[inaudible] is going to be impossible [inaudible].
-Goodness.
-They'll be going to school pretty soon. [inaudible].
[door opening]
-Oh, there's Ms. Shortley.
Mr. Shortley is my dairy man.
The children are called Rudolph and Sledgewig.
Where is Mr. Shortley?
I want him to meet the Guicazs.
-Chancey's in the barn.
He don't have to rest hisself in the bushes
like them niggers over there.
[peacock cooing]
-Ah, what a New beautiful bird.
[giggle]
-Another mouth to feed.
-But he rears his splendid tail.
-Just when it suits him.
There used to be 20 or 30 of these things on the place
when my first husband, Judge McIntyre, was alive.
But I let em die off.
I don't want to hear them scream in the middle of the night.
-So beautiful.
Tail full of suns.
-Nothing but a pea chicken.
-Father Flynn, we must show the Guizacs their new home.
-Yes, uh.
[peacock cooing]
[car engine starting]
-Well, you all have looked long enough.
What you thinking about?
-We has been watching.
Who they now?
[cat meowing]
-They come from over the water.
Only one of them seems like they speak English.
They're what is called displace persons.
-Displaced persons.
Well, now I declare.
What do that mean?
-It means they ain't where they were born at.
And there's nowhere for 'em to go.
Like if you was run out of here and would nobody have you.
-Seems they had though.
If they had, they're somewhere.
-Sho is.
They here.
-You all better look out now.
There about 10 billion more just like 'em.
And I know what Miss McIntyre said.
-Say what?
-Places are not easy to get nowadays for white or black.
But I reckon I know she stated to me.
-You liable to hear most anything.
-I heard her say this goin' put the fear of the Lord
into those shiftless niggers.
-She bees like that now and then.
[chuckle]
-Yes, indeed.
[peacock cooing]
-You better get back in that barn and help Mr. Shortley.
What you reckon she pays you for?
-He the one sent me out.
He the one give me something else to do.
-Well, you better get to doing it, then.
[peacock cooing]
[music playing]
I have come to take your place.
You'll have to find another.
Go on now.
I warned you.
-You girls, you get in that house, you hear?
-Chancey, if she see or heard of you smoking in this barn,
she'd blow a fuse.
-You going be the one to tell her?
-Got a nose of her own.
[laughter]
-Well, the guy looked surprised.
She wants you to meet 'em.
Says, where's Mr. Shortley.
And I said.
-Do up them weights.
-She don't call them the gobble gooks no longer.
-What does she call them?
-Whatever their last name is.
She can say it just as plain as that priest can.
The boy's Rudolph and the girl's Sledgewig.
I'd just as soon name a child of mine boll weevil as Sledgewig.
You reckon he can drive a tractor
when he don't know English?
She ain't no better off than if she had no niggers.
-I'd rather have niggers if it's me.
-She says there's 10 million more just
like 'em, displaced persons.
She says that their priest can get her all she wants.
-You better quit messing with that there priest.
-Yeah, looks smart.
Trying to prove it.
-I ain't going to have no boat [inaudible]
tell me how to run no dairy.
-Well, they ain't Italian.
They're Pole, from Poland, where all them bodies was stacked up
at, like we seen at the news reel at the picture show.
Remember all them bodies?
-I give 'em three weeks.
-I want to see that cut I just bought in action.
For the first time, I have somebody can operate it.
Mr. Guizac's a wonder He can drive a tractor,
use the rotary hay baler, the combine, the mill,
or any other machine I've got around the place.
-Well, I hope they don't all break down.
-I don't worry about that.
He's an expert mechanic, carpenter, a mason.
He's thrifty and he's energetic.
He will save me $20 a month in repair bills alone.
He can work milking machines.
He's the cleanest thing I ever saw.
And he doesn't smoke.
[birds chirping]
-[inaudible].
-Look there.
Nobody's picking up on that niggers make him nervous.
At last I've got somebody I can depend on.
For years, I've been fooling the sorry people.
-Sorry people?
-Well, white trash and niggers.
They drain me dry.
Before you all came, I had Ringfields and Collinses
and Gerald and Perkins and Pinkings and Herrings
and God knows what all else.
-Well, I don't approve of trash neither.
Never have.
-I've been running this place for 30 years
and always just barely making it.
People think you're made of money.
Well, the taxes to pay.
I have insurance to keep up.
I have the repair bills I have the feed bills.
Ever since the judge died, I've barely been making ends meet.
And they all take something when they leave.
Niggers don't leave.
They stay and steal.
Niggers think anybody's rich he can steal from.
And white trash thinks anybody's rich
who can afford to hire people as sorry as they are.
And all I've got is the dirt under my feet.
But at last I'm saved.
One fellow's misery is another fellow's gain.
That man there, he has to work.
He wants to work.
That man is my salvation.
-I would suspicion salvation got from the devil.
-Now what do you mean by that?
-I know what that girl told Annie Maude.
Said they wouldn't be able to live long, the four of them,
on $70 a month.
-He's worth raising.
He saves me money.
-Is Mr. Shortley better today?
-No.
No, he ain't.
Doctor says he was suffering from over exhaustion.
-If Mr. Shortley is over exhausted,
then he must have a second job on the side.
-And what is furthermore, Sledgewig
said when her papa saved the money,
he was going to buy them a used car.
-I can't pay him enough to save money.
I won't be worrying about that.
Of course, if Mr. Shortley should get incapacitated,
of course, I'd have to pay him more.
He doesn't smoke.
-It's no man who works as hard as Chancey
or is as easy with a cow, or is more of a Christian.
-Think of how long that would've taken with many mules to do it.
He gets the whole bottom cut in two days.
--[inaudible] got not terrible accident occurred.
-What'd you say?
-I said, I don't trust machines like that myself.
Never did.
[chuckle]
-Chancey, that displaced person prowls.
Prowls!
Now who's to say what he knows and don't know.
Who is to say if he found your still,
he wouldn't go right to her and tell her about it?
Maybe he wants that still for hisself.
Answer me.
-Don't worry me now.
I'm a dead man.
-It's them little eyes that he has that's foreign.
-If everybody was as dead as I am,
nobody would have no trouble.
-In Europe, they're full of crooked ways,
with fighting amongst each other, disputin'.
Then they get us into it.
Ain't they got us into it twice already,
and we ain't got no more sense but to go over there
and set in the forum.
Chancey, do you hear me?
-No.
-I tell you another thing.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if he don't know everything
you say, whether it be in English or some other language.
-I don't speak no other language.
-I expect that fore long, there won't
be no more niggers on the place.
And I tell you what, I'd rather have niggers than them Poles.
Tell you another thing, I got a heap out of Sledgewig.
Sledgewig said in Poland, they lived in a brick house.
And one night a man come and told them to get out of it
fore daylight.
You believe they lived in a brick house?
As, that's just as
I hate to see niggers run out and mistreated.
When the time comes, I'll stand up for the niggers.
And that's that.
I ain't going see the priest drive out all the niggers.
-He did that yesterday.
Ah.
Been done beautifully.
-I still say he ain't going to work forever for $70 a month.
-Well, I may have to get rid of some of the other help
so I can pay him more.
I ain't saying the niggers didn't have it coming to 'em.
But they do the best they know how.
You can always tell a nigger what
to do and stand by him til he does it.
[chuckle] That's what the judge always said.
Devil you know better than the devil you don't.
Judge always said that too.
When the hands were here, choose to come out here all the time
and look at the angel on the judge's grave.
She thought it was pretty, she said.
When they left, the angel left with them.
They stole it right off the judge's grave.
-How come they left the toes?
-I guess the axe old man Heron used to break it off with
struck too high.
I've never been able to afford to have it replaced.
[music playing]
-I wouldn't want nobody but you to hear this.
I know what that displaced person's really up to.
Astor told me.
-Shut your mouth.
-Yeah.
-No!
-Oh, yes.
-Wow.
-The Pole don't know any better.
I reckon the priest is putting him up to it.
I blame the priest.
First he's going to get her into the church.
Then he's going to get his hand inside her pocketbook.
Then he's going to try and get her to fire the niggers
and bring another Polish family on the place.
You watch.
When you get two of them families on this place,
there won't be nothing spoken but Polish.
Then they'll all gang up on the Shortleys.
That's why I'm really studying my Bible these days.
I believe the Lord God Almighty created us strong people
to do what has to be done.
And I know I'll be ready when he calls me.
And the word of the Lord came into me saying, son of man,
set thy face toward the mountains
of Israel and prophesy against 'em.
Prophesy.
The children of wicked nations shall
be butchered, legs where arms should be, foot to face,
ear in the palm of hand.
Who will remain whole?
Who will remain whole?
Who?
[music playing]
[animal noises]
Here again, come to destroy.
[distant voices]
[peacock cooing]
-Look at the little biddies.
-Do you think the Guizacs will leave me?
Do you think they'll go to Chicago or someplace like that?
-Well, why would they want to do that now?
-Money.
-Give them some more then.
They have to get along.
-So do I. Means I'm going to have
to get rid of some of these others.
-And are the Shortleys satisfactory?
-Five times in the last month I have
found Mr. Shortley smoking in the barn.
Five times.
-Are the Negroes any better?
-They lie and steal and have to be watched all the time.
-So which will you discharge?
-I'm going to give Mr. Shortley his month notice tomorrow.
[music playing]
-Annie Maude, Sarah Mae, get busy helping me pack.
[music playing]
Help me.
And you, start emptying out that closet.
You ain't waiting to be fired.
Bring the car around.
[music playing]
-Grab that bed.
We'll build it over yonder.
[music playing]
-Nice.
Certainly I'm going to take a switch to you.
[music playing]
-Give me that book.
[music playing]
-Where are we going?
-Hm?
-Where are we going?
[car tires screeching]
-[inaudible].
-Good God Almighty, woman.
What are you trying to do, kill us?
-Let go.
Quit it!
Let go!
Quit it, Ma.
Let go, Ma.
Quit it.
-Come on now.
-Let go, Ma.
-Come on!
-Where we going, Ma?
-Where we going, Ma?
Where we going?
[voices fade]
-Well, we can get along without them.
We've seen them come and we've seen them go, black and white.
Miss Shortley was a good woman.
And I'll miss her But as the judge used to say,
you can't have your pie and eat it, too.
I'm glad the [inaudible] owner called
so I didn't have to fire him.
People I hire always leave.
These are those kind of people.
Now, we've seen them come and go.
-Me and you, we still here.
-I spent half my life fooling with trashy people.
But now I'm through.
I don't have to put with foolishness anymore.
I have somebody now who has to work.
-We've seen them come and we've seen them go.
-However, those Shortleys were not the worst by far.
I will remember those Garretts.
-It was before them Collinses.
-No, before the Ringfields.
[laughter]
-Sweet Lord, them Ringfields.
-Or the Herons.
Even robbed the judge's grave.
None of that kind were born to work.
-We've seen 'em come and we seen 'em go.
But we never had one before like what we got now.
-He can wash out the dairy in the time
it took Mr. Shortley to make up his mind he had to do it.
-He's from Pole.
-From Poland.
-In Pole, it don't be like it bes here.
They've got different ways of doing.
And, and I don't, I--
-What are you saying?
If you have anything to say against him,
say it and say it aloud.
If you know anything he's done he shouldn't, I
expect you to report it to me.
-It wasn't like what he should ought or oughtn't.
It's like what nobody else don't do.
-You don't have anything to say against him.
He's here to stay.
-We just ain't never had nobody like him before, that's all.
-Well, things are changing.
Don't you know what's happening to the world?
It's smelling up.
It's getting so full of people that only the smart, thrifty,
and energetic ones are going to survive.
-How come there's so many extra?
-Because they're selfish.
They have too many children.
There's no sense to it anymore.
What you colored people don't realize
is that I'm the one around here who holds all strings together.
If you don't work, I don't make any money and I can't pay you.
You're all dependent on me.
But you, each and every one, act like the shoe
was on my other foot.
-The judge say the devil he know are better than the devil he
don't.
-The judge has long since ceased to pay the bills around here.
[cat meow]
I'm sorry that poor man has been chased out of Poland
and run across Europe and come to live in a tenant
shack in a strange country.
But I'm not responsible for any of it.
I know what it is to struggle.
People ought to struggle.
I've had a hard time myself.
But I've survived.
[distant voices]
[car starting]
-Why aren't you in the field?
What's that?
-It ain't nothing.
-Who is this child?
-She his cousin.
-Well, what are you doing with it?
-She going marry me.
-Marry you?
-I pays half to get her over here.
I pays him $3 a week.
She bigger now.
She his cousin.
She don't care who she marries, she's
so glad to get away from there.
I don't reckon she going come no how.
-I'll see you get every cent of your money back.
[music playing]
[gasping]
-They're all the same.
It's always been like this.
20 years I've been beaten and done in.
They even robbed his grave.
[crying]
[music playing]
[sounds of tractor]
-I want to talk to you.
Mr. Guizac, you would bring this poor, innocent child over here
and try to marry her to a half witted black fever nigger?
What kind of a monster are you?
-My cousin, she 12 here, first communion, 16 now.
-Mr. Guizac, that nigger cannot have a white wife from Europe.
You can't talk to a nigger that way.
You'll excite him.
And besides, it can't be done.
Maybe it can be done in Poland, but it can't be done here.
And you'll have to stop.
It's all foolishness.
That nigger don't have a grain of sense.
And you'll excite him.
-She'll come three year.
-Your cousin cannot come over and marry one of my Negroes.
-She's 16 year, for Poland.
Mama die.
Papa die.
She waiting come, three come.
She mama, she die in two come.
-Mr. Guizac, I will not have my niggers upset.
I cannot run this place without my niggers.
I can run it without you.
But I cannot run it without them.
And if you mention the girl to Sulk again,
you won't have a job with me.
Understand?
I cannot understand how a man who calls himself a Christian
could bring a poor, innocent girl over here,
marry her to something like that.
I cannot understand it.
-She no care black.
She come three year.
-Mr. Guizac, I don't want to have to speak to you about this
again.
If I do, you'll have to find another place yourself.
Do you understand?
This is my place.
I say who will come here and who won't.
-Ya.
-I'm not responsible for the world's misery.
-Ya.
-You have a good job.
You should be grateful to be here.
But I'm not sure you are.
-Ya.
[birds chirping]
[tractor starting]
-They're all the same, whether they
come from Poland or Tennessee.
I've handled Herrings and Ringfields and Shortleys.
And I can handle a Guizac.
All my life I've been fighting the world's overflow.
And now I have it in the form of a Pole.
You're just like all the rest, only smart, and thrifty,
and energetic.
But so am I. And this is my place.
[music playing]
-I'm under no moral obligation to keep him.
I'm under no moral obligation to keep him.
-We were talking about purgatory,
the souls in purgatory.
Thank you.
-I'm under no obligation to keep him.
-What did you say?
Dear lady, have any questions about all this,
the souls in purgatory?
-Lester, I'm not theological.
I'm practical.
I'm going to talk to you about something practical.
Mr. Guizac's not satisfactory.
He's extra.
He doesn't fit in.
I have to have somebody who fits in.
-Give him time.
He'll learn to fit in.
Where is that beautiful bird of yours?
Ah, I see it.
-Mr. Guizac's very efficient.
I'll admit that.
But he doesn't understand how to get on with my niggers.
And they don't like him.
I can't have the niggers run off.
And I don't like his attitude.
He's not in the least grateful for being here.
-I have to be off now.
-I tell you, if I had a white man who understood the niggers,
I'd have to let Mr. Guizac go.
-He has no place to go.
I know you well enough, dear lady, to know you
wouldn't turn him out for a trifle.
-I didn't create this situation, of course.
-Christ will come like that.
-It's not my responsibility that Mr. Guizac has no place to go.
I don't find myself responsible for all the extra people
in the world.
-Transfiguration.
-Mr. Guizac didn't have to come here in the first place.
He didn't have to come in the first place.
-He came to redeem us.
I have to go, dear lady.
Goodbye.
[peacock cooing]
[sound of car]
-Well, where's Miss Shortley.
She was God's own angel.
She was the sweetest woman in the world.
-Where is she?
-Dead.
-No.
-She had herself a stroke on the day she left out of here.
-You don't say so.
-I figure that Pole killed her.
She seen through him from the first.
She known he come from the devil.
She told me so.
-Get another place now?
-No.
-Want your job back?
-Is the Pole still here?
-Yes.
But I'm going to fire him on the first of the month.
I'll give him his 30 days notice.
And then you can have your old job back in the dairy.
In the meantime, you can do farm work.
-I just as soon have my job back in the dairy right off.
But uh I'll be willing to wait a month.
It will give me satisfaction to see the Pole leave the place.
-It will give me a great deal of satisfaction.
I made a mistake bringing him here.
I should have been content with the help I had in first place
and not been reaching into other parts of the world.
-I never cared for foreigners since I was in the war
and seen what they were like.
I recall the face of one man who throwed a hand grenade at me.
That man had round little eyes exactly like Mr. "Gwee-zacks."
-Mr. Guizac is a Pole.
He's not a German.
-It ain't a great deal of difference in them two kinds.
[birds chirping]
[tractor sounds]
-Hand me that there.
-Where?
-Right there.
-Oh.
-Why don't you go back to Africa?
That's your country, ain't it.
-I ain't going there.
They might eat me up.
-Well, if you behave yourself, ain't
no reason you can't stay here.
Cause you didn't run away from nowhere.
Your grandaddy was bought.
He didn't have a thing to do with coming.
It's the people run off from where
they come from I ain't got no use for.
But I never felt no need to travel.
Well, if I was going to travel again,
it'd either be China or Africa.
You go to either of them two places,
and you can tell right away what the difference is
between you and them.
You go to those other places and the only way you can tell
is if they say something.
Then you can't always tell because about half of them
knows the English language.
That's where we made our mistake,
letting all them people learn the English.
There'd be a heap less trouble if everybody only
knew their own language.
My wife said knowing two languages
was like having two eyes in the back of your head.
Shoot.
You couldn't put nothing over on her.
-Sho couldn't.
She was fine.
She was sure fine.
I never known a finer white woman than her.
[music playing]
-I've had a hard time getting over Miss Shortley's death.
[chuckle] Anyone would think she was kin to me.
I've been tricked by that priest.
When I agreed to bring the Guizac's here,
he said there was no legal obligation
to keep them here if they weren't satisfactory.
But [inaudible] yesterday with a moral obligation.
My moral obligation as I see it is
to Mr. Shortley who fought in the war for his country,
not for Mr. Guizac, who's only come
over here to take advantage of whatever he can.
But I'm going to have to have it out with that priest
before I can fire him.
[sigh]
[footsteps]
-The first has come and gone.
-I know.
But the priest hasn't called again.
-Well, I still ain't got my dairy job back.
I should have known all along no woman was
going to do what she said she was when she said she was.
I don't know how long I can afford
to put up with her shilly-shally.
Come on in here and give me a hand, will you?
[mooing]
-When God sent his only begotten son,
Jesus Christ our Lord as a redeemer
to mankind, as a redeemer to all.
-Father Flynn, I want to talk to you about something serious.
As far as I'm concerned, Christ was just another DP.
I'm going to let this man go.
I don't have any obligation to him.
My obligation is to the people who
have done something for the country,
not to the ones who just came over
to take advantage of what they can get.
I've been hanging on to this place for 30 years
ever since the judge died, always just
barely making making it against the people who
came from nowhere, and were going nowhere,
and didn't want anything but an automobile.
And I found out that they are the same
whether they come from Poland or Tennessee.
When the Guizacs get ready, they won't hesitate to leave me.
The people who look rich are the poorest
of all, because they have the most to keep up.
How do you I pay my feed bills?
I'd like to have my house done over, but I can't afford it.
I can't even afford to restore the monument
on my husband's grave.
Would you like to guess what my insurance amounts to in a year?
Do you think I'm made of money?
[chuckling]
[clanging noises]
[distant voices]
-Mr. Shortley.
-Up.
-I decided to give Mr. Guizac his 30 days notice
the first of next month.
You notice that the Pole and his family are getting fat?
The hollows have all come out of their cheeks.
And they save every cent they make.
-Yes'm.
And one of these days, he'll be able to buy and sell you out.
-I'm just waiting for the first.
-There's nothing for me to do but to wait too.
But I ain't going wait with my mouth shut.
-I'm worried to death about all the bills I've got facing me.
I want help.
I don't sleep at night, and when I do,
I dream about that displaced person.
One night I dreamed Mr. Guizac and his family
were moving into the house.
And I was moving in with Mr. Shortley.
I didn't sleep for several nights after that.
And one night I dreamed that the priest came to call.
And he said to me, dear lady, I know that your tender heart
won't suffer you to turn the poor man out.
Think of the ovens, and the box cars, and the camps,
and the sick children, and Christ the Lord.
But I said to him, he's extra.
He upsets the balance around here.
And I'm a logical, practical woman.
And there are no ovens here, and no camps,
and no Christ our Lord.
And when he leaves, he'll make more money.
Just one too many, I said.
[peacock cooing]
-Ya good?
-Mr. Guizac, I can hardly my obligations now.
I have bills to pay.
-I too, much bills, little money.
-This is my place.
All of you are extra, each and every one of you are extra.
-Ya.
-Sometimes a man who's fought, and bled,
and died in the service of his native land
don't get the consideration of one of them
like he was fighting.
I ask, is that right?
I gone over there.
And I fought and bled and died.
And I come back over here and find out who's got my job,
just exactly who I've been fighting.
It was come that near to killing me.
And I seen who throwed it.
It was a little man with eyeglasses exactly like his.
He might have bought them in the same store.
Small world.
I been telling my story to one and all who will listen.
And everybody, black and white, thinks I'm in the right.
[music playing]
-I've never had to discharge anyone before.
They all left me.
[clanging metal]
-Screw.
[clanging metal]
[birds chirping]
[tractor noises]
[birds chirping]
[background voices and wailing]
[music playing]
[footsteps]
-Has she had any visitors?
-No, sir.
You about the only one ever comes to see the poor thing.
-Now, where did we leave off last week?
Purgatory?
Yes, I think by now we have a clearer idea of that.
Do you know I'm 80 years old?
I've been a priest for 55 years.
How many prayers I've said for the souls in purgatory?
Yes, I think we have a clearer idea now
about the souls in purgatory.
Although, I wish I could question you sometimes
and see what you know and don't know.
Still, we were speaking of purgatory,
a temporary state which can go on for centuries,
and souls which have not yet been cleansed by hell
or doomed to hell.
Souls have not yet attained a non-corporeal state.
Therefore, purgatory must be a place where one thinks clearer.
And purgatory may be souls that have benefitted
from the prayers of the living.
[voice fading]
[music playing]