Keys to the Archive: A Gathering of Old MenMain MenuAboutIntroductionKeyword EntriesTracesCreative responses to the archival collectionsThe CollectionsBibliographyDavid Squiresc613f45970ae89ef70516076df94370392b06674
Candace Sarah Marshall
12020-11-19T22:42:03+00:00Delaney McLemore6fa42f53723babc39bb65b66c4123dfea38fc89a51Ernest J. Gaines Center, 9-21plain2020-11-19T22:42:03+00:00Delaney McLemore6fa42f53723babc39bb65b66c4123dfea38fc89a
My poem is an erasure of something erased, taken from pages not found in the published novel. This manuscript draft, part of the Gaines Center collections on A Gathering of Old Men, is a chapter from Candy's perspective that did not make it into later drafts. Candy Marshall might own the Marshall Plantation, but she does not own this story or the stories shared between these men. Candy doesn't narrate a chapter in the final edition of A Gathering of Old Men, nor should she, so my goal in playing with these pages was to make something that erases Candy from even this collection of words told mainly in her voice. I think the speaker of this poem isn't present in this novel, but the speaker of the poem, really, could be any of the men. This might be why Candy doesn't get to have a narrative chapter of her own: she's the only person who thinks the way she does and it doesn't help to tell the stories of the old men.
Erasing Candy
The Quarters, the inside of a chimney where I was all over the place, proud of it.
"Go away from here."
We didn't answer him.
"Parrain, please."
He gets blue in the face. I stand here, a grown man, an old man, proud of it. I will get my day's work. I christened this dog a thousand times, the son of a bitch.
Don't y'all tell him where I was. Yes, I did it. Maybe now I've succeeded, sweating and begging.