MY WRITERS SITE: 2019-05-19

Flannery O’Connor knew that not everyone would or could understand her work. She once received a letter from someone who told her that her book left a bad taste in her mouth. O’Connor wrote back, “You weren’t supposed to eat it.”

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

THE GRANDMOTHER didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her

connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change

Bailey’s mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on

the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the

Journal. “Now look here, Bailey,” she said, “see here, read this,” and she stood

with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head.

“Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and

headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just

you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that

aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.”

Bailey didn’t look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced

the children’s mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and

innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had

two points on the top like a rabbit’s ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the

baby his apricots out of a jar. “The children have been to Florida before,” the old

lady said. “You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would

see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east

Tennessee.”

The children’s mother didn’t seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John

Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, “If you don’t want to go to Florida, why

dontcha stay at home?” He and the little girl, June Star, were reading the funny

papers on the floor.

“She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day,” June Star said without

raising her yellow head.

“Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?” the

grandmother asked.

“I’d smack his face,” John Wesley said.

“She wouldn’t stay at home for a million bucks,” June Star said. “Afraid she’d

miss something. She has to go everywhere we go.”

“All right, Miss,” the grandmother said. “Just remember that the next time you

want me to curl your hair.”

June Star said her hair was naturally curly.

The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She

had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner,

and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn’t

intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would

miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of the gas

burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn’t like to arrive

at a motel with a cat.

She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either

side of her. Bailey and the children’s mother and the baby sat in front and they left

Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother

wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many

miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the

outskirts of the city.

The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves

and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The

children’s mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green

kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of

white violets on the brimand a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print.

Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline

she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an

accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was

a lady.

She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot

nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an

hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of

trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed

out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some

places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly

streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on

the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them

sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their mother had gone

back to sleep.

“Let’s go through Georgia fast so we won’t have to look at it much,” John

Wesley said.

“If I were a little boy,” said the grandmother, “I wouldn’t talk about my native

state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills.”

“Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground,” John Wesley said, “and

Georgia is a lousy state too.”

“You said it,” June Star said.

“In my time,” said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, “children

were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else.

People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” she said and pointed

to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. “Wouldn’t that make a picture,

now?” she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back

window. He waved.

“He didn’t have any britches on,” June Star said.

“He probably didn’t have any,” the grandmother explained. “Little niggers in

the country don’t have things like we do. If I could paint, I’d paint that picture,”

she said.

The children exchanged comic books.

The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children’s mother passed

him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told

him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwe

When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened

the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive

and would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the

window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a

cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took

one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an

automobile, and June Star said he didn’t play fair, and they began to slap each

other over the grandmother.

The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet.

When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very

dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a

Mr. Edgar Atkins Tea-garden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very goodlooking man and a gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Saturday

afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday, she said, Mr.

Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it on

the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the

watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A.

T.! This story tickled John Wesley’s funny bone and he giggled and giggled but

June Star didn’t think it was any good. She said she wouldn’t marry a man that just

brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have

done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentleman and had bought

Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago,

a very wealthy man.

They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sandwiches. The Tower was a part

stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of

Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here

and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY

RED SAMMY’S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED

SAMMY’S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH! A

VETERAN! RED SAMMY’S YOUR MAN!

Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head

under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry

tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest

limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run toward him.

Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables

at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table

next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam’s wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair

and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children’s mother

put a dime in the machine and played “The Tennessee Waltz,” and the

grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he

would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn’t have a naturally sunny

disposition like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother’s brown

eyes were very bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she

was dancing in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the

children’s mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star

stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap routine.

“Ain’t she cute?” Red Sam’s wife said, leaning over the counter. “Would you

like to come be my little girl?”

“No I certainly wouldn’t,” June Star said. “I wouldn’t live in a broken-down

place like this for a million bucks!” and she ran back to the table.

“Ain’t she cute?” the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” hissed the grandmother.

Red Samcame in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up

with these people’s order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his

stomach hung over themlike a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over

and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. “You

can’t win,” he said. “You can’t win,” and he wiped his sweating red face off with

a gray handkerchief. “These days you don’t know who to trust,” he said. “Ain’t

that the truth?”

“People are certainly not nice like they used to be,” said the grandmother.

“Two fellers come in here last week,” Red Sammy said, “driving a Chrysler.

It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to

me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the

“Because you’re a good man!” the grandmother said at once.

“Yes’m, I suppose so,” Red Samsaid as if he were struck with this answer.

His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray,

two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. “It isn’t a soul in this green world

of God’s that you can trust,” she said. “And I don’t count nobody out of that, not

nobody,” she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.

“Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that’s escaped?” asked the

grandmother.

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he didn’t attact this place right here,” said the

woman. “If he hears about it being here, I wouldn’t be none surprised to see him.

If he hears it’s two cent in the cash register, I wouldn’t be a tall surprised if he…”

“That’ll do,” Red Sam said. “Go bring these people their Co’-Colas,” and the

woman went off to get the rest of the order.

“A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Everything is getting terrible.

I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no

more.”

He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her

opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the

way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it

was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the

white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy china-berry tree. He was busy

catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it

were a delicacy.

They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and

woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she

woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood

once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across

the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little

wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor

after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it.

She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old

house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again

and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. “There was a secret panel

in this house,” she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were,

“and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came

through but it was never found…”

“Hey!” John Wesley said. “Let’s go see it! We’ll find it! We’ll poke all the

woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can’t

we turn off there?”

“We never have seen a house with a secret panel!” June Star shrieked. “Let’s

go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can’t we go see the house with the

secret panel!”

“It’s not far from here, I know,” the grandmother said. “It wouldn’t take over

twenty minutes.”

Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. “No,”

he said.

The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with

the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung

over her mother’s shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never

had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to

do. The baby began to screamand John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard

that his father could feel the blows in his kidney.

“All right!” he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. “Will

you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don’t shut up, we

won’t go anywhere.”

“It would be very educational for them,” the grandmother murmured.

“All right,” Bailey said, “but get this: this is the only time we’re going to stop

for anything like this. This is the one and only time.”

“The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a mile back,” the

grandmother directed. “I marked it when we passed.”

“A dirt road,” Bailey groaned.

After they had turned around and were headed toward the dirt road, the

grandmother recalled other points about the house, the beautiful glass over the

front doorway and the candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret

panel was probably in the fireplace.

“You can’t go inside this house,” Bailey said. “You don’t know who lives

there.”

“While you all talk to the people in front, I’ll run around behind and get in a

window,” John Wesley suggested.

“We’ll all stay in the car,” his mother said.

They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of

pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads

and thirty miles was a day’s journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were

sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they

would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then

the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees

looking down on them.

“This place had better turn up in a minute,” Bailey said, “or I’m going to turn

around.”

The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months.

“It’s not much farther,” the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible

thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the

face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the

corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket

under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey’s shoulder.

The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby,

was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front

seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of

the road. Bailey remained in the driver’s seat with the cat—gray-striped with a

broad white face and an orange nose—clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.

As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they

scrambled out of the car, shouting, “We’ve had anACCIDENT!” The grandmother

was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey’s wrath

would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before

the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia

but in Tennessee.

Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both hands and flung it out the

window against the side of a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started

looking for the children’s mother. She was sitting against the side of the red gutted

ditch, holding the screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face and a

broken shoulder. “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” the children screamed in a frenzy

of delight.

“But nobody’s killed,” June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother

limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim

standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side. They all sat

down in the ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock. They were all

shaking.

“Maybe a car will come along,” said the children’s mother hoarsely.

“I believe I have injured an organ,” said the grandmother, pressing her side,

but no one answered her. Bailey’s teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport

shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt.

The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in

Tennessee.

The road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees

on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more

woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance

away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The

grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention.

The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared

again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big

black battered hearse-like automobile. There were three men in it.

It came to a stop just over them and for some minutes, the driver looked down

with a steady expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn’t speak.

Then he turned his head and muttered something to the other two and they got out.

One was a fat boy in black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion

embossed on the front of it. He moved around on the right side of them and stood

staring, his mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. The other had on khaki pants

and a blue striped coat and a gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his

face. He came around slowly on the left side. Neither spoke.

The driver got out of the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at them.

He was an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and

he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long

creased face and didn’t have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that

were too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also

had guns.

“We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” the children screamed.

The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was

someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known himall her

life but she could not recall who he was. He moved away from the car and began

to come down the embankment, placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn’t slip.

He had on tan and white shoes and no socks, and his ankles were red and thin.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I see you all had you a little spill.”

“We turned over twice!” said the grandmother.

“Oncet,” he corrected. “We seen it happen. Try their car and see will it run,

Hiram,” he said quietly to the boy with the gray hat.

“What you got that gun for?” John Wesley asked. “Whatcha gonna do with that

gun?”

“Lady,” the man said to the children’s mother, “would you mind calling them

children to sit down by you? Children make me nervous. I want all you all to sit

Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked

even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.

“Lady,” he said, “don’t you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don’t

mean. I don’t reckon he meant to talk to you thataway.”

“You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” the grandmother said and removed a

clean handkerchief fromher cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it.

The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole

and then covered it up again. “I would hate to have to,” he said.

“Listen,” the grandmother almost screamed, “I know you’re a good man. You

don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice

people!”

“Yes mam,” he said, “finest people in the world.” When he smiled he showed

a row of strong white teeth. “God never made a finer woman than my mother and

my daddy’s heart was pure gold,” he said. The boy with the red sweat shirt had

come around behind them and was standing with his gun at his hip. The Misfit

squatted down on the ground. “Watch them children, Bobby Lee,” he said. “You

know they make me nervous.” He looked at the six of them huddled together in

front of him and he seemed to be embarrassed as if he couldn’t think of anything to

say. “Ain’t a cloud in the sky,” he remarked, looking up at it. “Don’t see no sun

but don’t see no cloud neither.”

“Yes, it’s a beautiful day,” said the grandmother. “Listen,” she said, “you

shouldn’t call yourself The Misfit because I know you’re a good man at heart. I

can just look at you and tell.”

“Hush!” Bailey yelled. “Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!” He

was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn’t

move.

“I pre-chate that, lady,” The Misfit said and drew a little circle in the ground

with the butt of his gun.

“It’ll take a half a hour to fix this here car,” Hiram called, looking over the

raised hood of it.

“Well, first you and Bobby Lee get him and that little boy to step over yonder

with you,” The Misfit said, pointing to Bailey and John Wesley. “The boys want

to ast you something,” he said to Bailey. “Would you mind stepping back in them

woods there with them?”

“Listen,” Bailey began, “we’re in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes

what this is,” and his voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as the

parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.

The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the

woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a

second she let it fall on the ground. Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he

were assisting an old man. John Wesley caught hold of his father’s hand and

Bobby Lee followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached the

dark edge, Bailey turned and supporting himself against a gray naked pine trunk,

he shouted, “I’ll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me!”

“Come back this instant!” his mother shrilled but they all disappeared into the

woods.

“Bailey Boy!” the grandmother called in a tragic voice but she found she was

looking at The Misfit squatting on the ground in front of her. “I just know you’re a

good man,” she said desperately. “You’re not a bit common!”

“Nome, I ain’t a good man,” The Misfit said after a second as if he had

considered her statement carefully, “but I ain’t the worst in the world neither. My

daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. ‘You

know,’ Daddy said, ‘it’s some that can live their whole life out without asking

about it and it’s others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters.

He’s going to be into everything!’” He put on his black hat and looked up suddenly

and then away deep into the woods as if he were embarrassed again. “I’m sorry I

don’t have on a shirt before you ladies,” he said, hunching his shoulders slightly.

“We buried our clothes that we had on when we escaped and we’re just making

do until we can get better. We borrowed these from some folks we met,” he

explained.

“That’s perfectly all right,” the grandmother said. “Maybe Bailey has an extra

shirt in his suitcase.”

“I’ll look and see terrectly,” The Misfit said.

“Where are they taking him?” the children’s mother screamed.

“Daddy was a card himself,” The Misfit said. “You couldn’t put anything over

on him. He never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had the knack of

handling them.”

“You could be honest too if you’d only try,” said the grandmother. “Think how

wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to

think about somebody chasing you all the time.”

The Misfit kept scratching in the ground with the butt of his gun as if he were

thinking about it. “Yes’m, somebody is always after you,” he murmured.

The grandmother noticed how thin his shoulder blades were just behind his hat

because she was standing up looking down on him. “Do you ever pray?” she

asked.

He shook his head. All she saw was the black hat wiggle between his shoulder

blades. “Nome,” he said.

There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then

silence. The old lady’s head jerked around. She could hear the wind move through

the tree tops like a long satisfied insuck of breath. “Bailey Boy!” she called.

“I was a gospel singer for a while,” The Misfit said. “I been most everything.

Been in the arm service, both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict

married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been

in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet,” and looked up at the children’s mother

and the little girl who were sitting close together, their faces white and their eyes

glassy; “I even seen a woman flogged,” he said.

“Pray, pray,” the grandmother began, “pray, pray…”

“I never was a bad boy that I remember of,” The Misfit said in an almost

dreamy voice, “but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got

sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive,” and he looked up and held her

attention to himby a steady stare.

“That’s when you should have started to pray,” she said. “What did you do to

get sent to the penitentiary that first time?”

“Turn to the right, it was a wall,” The Misfit said, looking up again at the

cloudless sky. “Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down

it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to

remember what it was I done and I ain’t recalled it to this day. Oncet in a while, I

would think it was coming to me, but it never come.”

“Maybe they put you in by mistake,” the old lady said vaguely.

“Nome,” he said. “It wasn’t no mistake. They had the papers on me.”

“You must have stolen something,” she said.

The Misfit sneered slightly. “Nobody had nothing I wanted,” he said. “It was a

head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I

known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu

and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount Hopewell

Baptist churchyard and you can go there and see for yourself.”

“If you would pray,” the old lady said, “Jesus would help you.”

“That’s right,” The Misfit said.

“Well then, why don’t you pray?” she asked trembling with delight suddenly.

“I don’t want no hep,” he said. “I’mdoing all right by myself.”

Bobby Lee and Hiram came ambling back from the woods. Bobby Lee was

dragging a yellow shirt with bright blue parrots in it.

“Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee,” The Misfit said. The shirt came flying at him

and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. The grandmother couldn’t name what

the shirt reminded her of. “No, lady,” The Misfit said while he was buttoning it

up, “I found out the crime don’t matter. You can do one thing or you can do

another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going

to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.”

The children’s mother had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn’t get

her breath. “Lady,” he asked, “would you and that little girl like to step off yonder

with Bobby Lee and Hiramand join your husband?”

“Yes, thank you,” the mother said faintly. Her left arm dangled helplessly and

she was holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. “Hep that lady up,

Hiram,” The Misfit said as she struggled to climb out of the ditch, “and Bobby

Lee, you hold onto that little girl’s hand.”

“I don’t want to hold hands with him,” June Star said. “He reminds me of a

pig.”

The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off

into the woods after Hiramand her mother.

Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice.

There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but

woods. She wanted to tell himthat he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth

several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, “Jesus,

Jesus,” meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as

if she might be cursing.

“Yes’m,” The Misfit said as if he agreed. “Jesus thown everything off balance.

It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn’t committed any crime

and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of

course,” he said, “they never shown me my papers. That’s why I sign myself now.

I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a

copy of it. Then you’ll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the

punishment and see do they match and in the end you’ll have something to prove

you ain’t been treated right. I call myself The Misfit,” he said, “because I can’t

make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.”

There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol

report. “Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another

ain’t punished at all?”

“Jesus!” the old lady cried. “You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t

shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to

shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!”

“Lady,” The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, “there never

was a body that give the undertaker a tip.”

There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a

parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, “Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!” as

if her heart would break.

“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead.” The Misfit continued, “and

He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He

said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him,

and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got

left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or

doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,” he said and his

voice had become almost a snarl.

“Maybe He didn’t raise the dead,” the old lady mumbled, not knowing what

she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs

twisted under her.

“I wasn’t there so I can’t say He didn’t,” The Misfit said. “I wisht I had of

been there,” he said, hitting the ground with his fist. “It ain’t right I wasn’t there

because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady,” he said in a high

voice, “if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn’t be like I am now.”

His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an

instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry

and she murmured, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own

children!” She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang

back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then

he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean

them.

Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch,

looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood

with her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling up at the

cloudless sky.

Without his glasses, The Misfit’s eyes were red-rimmed and pale and

defenseless-looking. “Take her off and throw her where you thrown the others,”

he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.

“She was a talker, wasn’t she?” Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a

yodel.

“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been

somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

“Some fun!” Bobby Lee said.

“Shut up, Bobby Lee,” The Misfit said. “It’s no real pleasure in life.”

MY WRITERS SITE

Quote by Thomas Merton on writing

Quote by John Steinbeck

Quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The love and passion for writing of Gloria Emerson

A quote and a poem by Alexander Pope

A short story about Flannery O'Connor plus her short story "A good man is hard to find"