Mudbound Page #3

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Help your mother, now.

-All right?

-[Ruel] We will.

Keep them no 'count boys off Lilly May.

Don't let her get old so fast.

[all chuckle]

-You just come back.

-I will.

You come all the way back. You hear?

[mutters]

-I love you, Mama.

-I love you, too, baby.

Thank you.

[engine starting]

[Florence] I can't look back.

I didn't look back.

They say it's bad luck

to watch somebody leave.

I held his heartbeat in my hand.

I remember every beat.

He was warm and alive.

I know every place in him...

and it was all I could do

to not look back.

No, I don't have favorites.

I love them all equally.

Every mother does.

[all singing gospel]

[Florence]

But during all those four years...

all that time he was gone...

I only prayed for him.

God will forgive me.

[Hap] Come on, now.

Dig that hole in there.

[grunting]

[panting]

Come on, Ruel. Let's go. Come on.

Keep going.

Supper's gonna be ready when we get in.

[Hap] What good is a deed?

My grandfathers and great uncles,

grandmothers and great aunts,

father and mother,

broke, tilled, thawed,

planted, plucked, raised,

burned, broke again.

Worked this land all their life,

this land that never would be theirs.

They worked until they sweated.

They sweated until they bled.

They bled until they died.

Died with the dirt of this same 200 acres

under their fingernails.

Died clawing at the hard, brown back

that would never be theirs.

All their deeds undone.

Yet this man, this place, this law...

say you need a deed. Not deeds.

Calvin Augustus got his land here...

and then Bud Leo bought land here.

Now I figure

there's a couple acres right here.

If only fences can be put up with lead.

They get taken down with lead

all the time.

Won't be too much longer, Papa, will it?

Around this time next year,

I'm gonna have me

about 50 acres of cotton,

50 acres of oats, 50 acres of rice.

Fool, rice don't grow here.

[Hap] Never call your brother a fool.

[Ruel] I'm gonna grow some anyway.

That's why I'm not gonna be no farmer.

I'm gonna be a stenographer.

-A ste... what?

-It's kind of like a typist.

-They don't allow no colored typists.

-Your sister will be the first.

[Henry grunting]

[Laura sighs]

[Henry panting]

Honey, by the way...

I bought a farm in Mississippi.

And we'll be moving there

in three weeks' time.

It's 40 miles south of Greenville.

Big old...

porch, fig tree...

Girls are gonna love the four bedrooms.

But we love this house.

But now they get their own room each

and Pappy gets his own space.

Pappy?

Honey, now Mama's gone,

we gotta look after him.

We got 200 acres of fertile land.

Imagine that.

-You're mighty quiet.

-I'm mighty surprised.

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