Free Alfred Uhry - Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry Page B

speaks into an intercom.
    BOOLIE: Okay, Miss McClatchey. Send him on in.
    Boolie continues working at his desk. Hoke Coleburn enters, a black man of about sixty, dressed in a somewhat shiny suit and carrying a fedora, a man clearly down on his luck but anxious to keep up appearances.
     
     
    Yes, Hoke isn’t it?
    HOKE: Yassuh. Hoke Coleburn.
    BOOLIE: Have a seat there. I’ve got to sign these letters. I don’t want Miss McClatchey fussing at me.
    HOKE: Keep right on with it. I got all the time in the worl’.
    BOOLIE: I see. How long you been out of work?
    HOKE: Since back befo’ las’ November.
    BOOLIE: Long time.
    HOKE: Well, Mist’ Werthan, you try bein’ me and looking for work. They hirin’ young if they hirin’ colored, an’ they ain’ even hirin’ much young, seems like. (Boolie is involved with his paperwork) Mist’ Werthan? Y’ll people Jewish, ain’ you?
    BOOLIE: Yes we are. Why do you ask?
    HOKE: I’d druther drive for Jews. People always talkin’’bout they stingy and they cheap, but doan’ say none of that roun’ me.
    BOOLIE: Good to know you feel that way. Now, tell me where you worked before.
    HOKE: Yassuh. That what I’m gettin’ at. One time I workin’ for this woman over near Little Five Points. What was that woman’s name? I forget. Anyway, she president of the Ladies Auxiliary over yonder to the Ponce De Leon Baptist Church and seem like she always bringing up God and Jesus and do unto others. You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout?
    BOOLIE: I’m not sure. Go on.
    HOKE: Well, one day, Mist’ Werthan, one day that woman say to me, she say “Hoke, come on back in the back wid me. I got something for you.” And we go on back yonder and, Lawd have mercy, she have all these old shirts and collars be on the bed, yellow, you know, and nasty like they been stuck off in a chifferobe and forgot about. Thass right. And she say “Ain’ they nice? They b’long to my daddy befo’ he pass and we fixin’ to sell ’em to you for twenty-five cent apiece.”
    BOOLIE: What was her name?
    HOKE: Thass what I’m thinkin’. What was that woman’s name? Anyway, as I was goin’ on to say, any fool see the whole bunch of them collars and shirts together ain’ worth a nickel! Them’s the people das callin’ Jews cheap! So I say “Yassum, I think about it” and I get me another job fas’ as I can.
    BOOLIE: Where was that?
    HOKE: Mist’ Harold Stone, Jewish gentleman jes’ like you. Judge, live over yonder on Lullwater Road.
    BOOLIE: I knew Judge Stone.
    HOKE: You doan’ say! He done give me this suit when he finish wid it. An’ this necktie too.
    BOOLIE: You drove for Judge Stone?
    HOKE: Seven years to the day nearabout. An’ I be there still if he din’ die, and Miz Stone decide to close up the house and move to her people in Savannah. And she say “Come on down to Savannah wid me, Hoke.” ‘Cause my wife dead by then and I say “No thank you.” I didn’t want to leave my grandbabies and I doan’ get along with that Geechee trash they got down there.
    BOOLIE: Judge Stone was a friend of my father’s.
    HOKE: You doan’ mean! Oscar say you need a driver for yo’ family. What I be doin’? Runnin’ yo’ children to school and yo’ wife to the beauty parlor and like dat?
    BOOLIE: I don’t have any children. But tell me—
    HOKE: Thass a shame! My daughter bes’ thing ever happen to me. But you young yet. I wouldn’t worry none.
    BOOLIE: I won’t. Thank you. Did you have a job after Judge Stone?
    HOKE: I drove a milk truck for the Avondale Dairy through the whole war—the one jes’ was.
    BOOLIE: Hoke, what I’m looking for is somebody to drive my mother around.
    HOKE: Excuse me for askin’, but how come she ain’ hire fo’ herseff?
    BOOLIE: Well, it’s a delicate situation.
    HOKE: Mmmm-hmm. She done gone roun’ the bend a little? That’ll happen when they get on.
    BOOLIE: Oh no. Nothing like that. She’s all there. Too much there is the problem. It just isn’t