Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
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 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 brim and 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 screwed up her
mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally
he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or six
graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look at the
graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old
family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation."
"Where's
the plantation?" John Wesley asked.
"Gone
With the Wind," said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha."
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
Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking 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 minion bucks!" and she ran back to the
table.
"Ain't
she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.
"Arn't
you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.
Red Sam
came 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 them like 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
gas they bought? Now why did I do that?"
"Because
you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once.
"Yes'm,
I suppose so," Red Sam said 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. "Every- thing 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 chinaberry 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 grand- mother 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 scream and 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 an ACCIDENT!" 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 l 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 him au 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.
"Once","
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 down right together there where you're at."
"What
are you telling US what to do for?" June Star asked.
Behind
them the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth. "Come here,"
said their mother.
"Look
here now," Bailey began suddenly, "we're in a predicament! We're in .
. ."
The
grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. "You're
The Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once!"
"Yes'm,"
the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be
known, "but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't
of reckernized me."
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 from her 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 com- mon 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
prechate 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 some- thing," 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 every- thing!'" 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 some- body 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 he 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 him by 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'm doing 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 Hiram and 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 Hiram and 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 him that 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 shown 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 shown everything off balance. If He did
what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow 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 thow her where you shown 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."
Writing is finally about one thing:
“Writing is finally about one
thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have
never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by
yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge
of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility
of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing
in your brain, on paper they are earthbound.” William Goldman, Adventures in
the Screen Trade
In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day by XJ Kennedy
In a prominent bar in Secaucus one day
Rose a lady in skunk with a topheavy
sway,
Raised a knobby red finger–all turned
from their beer–
While with eyes bright as snowcrust she
sang high and clear:
‘Now who of you'd think from an eyeload
of me
That I once was a lady as proud as could
be?
Oh I'd never sit down by a tumbledown
drunk
If it wasn't, my dears, for the high cost
of junk.
‘All the gents used to swear that the
white of my calf
Beat the down of the swan by a length and
a half.
In the kerchief of linen I caught to my
nose
Ah, there never fell snot, but a little
gold rose.
‘I had seven gold teeth and a toothpick
of gold,
My Virginia cheroot was a leaf of it
rolled
And I'd light it each time with a
thousand in cash–
Why the bums used to fight if I flicked
them an ash.
‘Once the toast of the Biltmore, the
belle of the Taft,
I would drink bottle beer at the Drake,
never draught,
And dine at the Astor on Salisbury steak
With a clean tablecloth for each bite I
did take.
‘In a car like the Roxy I'd roll to the
track,
A steel-guitar trio, a bar in the back,
And the wheels made no noise, they turned
ever so fast,
Still it took you ten minutes to see me
go past.
‘When the horses bowed down to me that I
might choose,
I bet on them all, for I hated to lose.
Now I'm saddled each night for my butter
and eggs
And the broken threads race down the
backs of my legs.
‘Let you hold in mind, girls, that your
beauty must pass
Like a lovely white clover that rusts
with its grass.
Keep your bottoms off barstools and marry
you young
Or be left–an old barrel with many a
bung.
‘For when time takes you out for a spin
in his car
You'll be hard-pressed to stop him from
going too far
And be left by the roadside, for all your
good deeds,
Two toadstools for tits and a face full
of weeds.'
All the house raised a cheer, but the man
at the bar
Made a phone call and up pulled a red
patrol car
And she blew us a kiss as they copped her
away
From that prominent bar in Secaucus, N.J.
The Difficult November
She broke it off and it put him in a mood. He usually liked
Georgetown in late November. He liked the feel of the cold, the freshness of
it. In one of the hundreds of imagining that trampled happily through his
generally contented mind, was that if people and seasons could be friends, he
and winter would get along swimmingly.
His six years living in Georgetown made him, in his view, a local.
He could now sniff at the suburbanites and the tourists, all gone
now, gone with the summer. The students and the rich walked the
narrow long streets again as the last grasps of red and amber foliage turned
its color to a relaxing, comfortable winter grey.
He pulled up the woolen collar of his plaid jacket and braced
himself against the night air. He had put on two undershirts, both of which
showed, strategically, from under his blue Oxford. One Tee-shirt, standard
white of course and the other dark purple.
He didn’t know where his winter coat was. Storage maybe. In the
summer she placed his winter clothes in storage, but he didn’t know where. A
dry cleaner someplace in town. She had told him, several times in fact, but he
missed it. Its not that he didn’t listen to her, it’s that sometimes, he
reckoned, he just didn’t hear her and she complained about that to him.
She wanted to move ahead, to go onto the next step and he didn’t.
Well, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to move along, he just didn’t want to move
along now and also because he had no idea what consisted of moving along. To
move in with her? Was it an engagement?
The chill turned his long, slim hands red with cold. He knew that
would happen and he had considered placing a pair of socks in his pockets and
using them as gloves, black socks of course. No one would see them as long as
he walked in the dark and kept his hands in his pant pockets.
He’d almost done it but the thought that if he was struck and
killed by a car, The Post would run a story about the Georgetown guy who was
killed wearing socks on his hands. They wouldn’t even have the good grace to
mention that they were black socks, evening socks.
Of course, they would run the story with a snarky headline
“Pedestrian socked crossing street in Gtown.” That’s what it would say too, the
bastards.
She knew where his gloves were. She put them someplace because he
recalled her standing in his apartment saying something about gloves.
God. No gloves and no winter coat. It was enough to make his break
with winter and go summer like everyone else. So he wore the socks.
It had all seemed so easy back then, a scant month before when she
had cast him out of her life, telling him everything would be better for the
both of them. His mother said the same thing. The picture she painted was
of grand multi-colored horizons opening with every new day, opportunities
for new love would be everywhere. Girls would fall from trees at his feet.
His father, Gtown 82, waddled into the situation, uninvited. He
promised him it was all for the best. He would be a different man, a better man
now, new and improved, smarter, taller, better looking, and most importantly of
all, he would be more desirable to women, whom, he promised, would fall out of trees and land at
his feet.
His sister, Loyola pre-med, told the truth. “I never liked her”
she said. It was her twisted way of supporting him in his time of sadness. His
Aunts, grandparent, and several Uncles also had some input if he wanted it.
The faster he walked the faster his pants slipped from his narrow
skinny hips. His belt was at her place. He forgot to take it. He resolved then
and there to always own two belts.
Girls. They were out there, those gorgeous beauties, the
ones who flirted with him on the Metro, filtering him with their comely smiles,
and then there were those ones he caught looking at him from across the tables
at Clyde’s. But he was with her, the her that held those gorgeous beauties at
bay and held him back from achieving true happiness, or at least more
happiness, he thought, editing himself as he so often did.
An insignificant but cold breeze blew down M street, past the
shops and restaurants, and found him, he was extraordinarily tall and difficult
to miss, hitting zero hour at the corner 35th and M. It said
hello by tossing a chill down his spine. He pressed his elbows to his boney rib
cage and lowered his head to warm himself and when the light changed he crossed
and walked up the slight incline that is 35th street and
stopped for a car to pass before crossing the street.
Gorgeous beauties, indeed, he huffed, who needs them? I need her
not a gorgeous beauty and recognizing the potential insult in the thought, he
reedited the sentence to himself.
He tried, in vain, once again, to thrust his long pale white hands
into the pockets of his sports coat only to find, once again, they were sewn
shut. He recalled the conversation he had with the salesman at the J. Press
store when he bought the God damn coat.
“This coat is defective”
“Why do you say that?” the salesman asked.
“The pockets are sewn shut”
“They are intended to be sewn shut” the salesman
whispered “A young gentleman does not carry goods and such in his
jacket pockets”
He was tempted to ask, “Why not?” but suppressed the question,
partially because he was intimidated and partially because the salesman was
old, and he seemed to know what he was talking about, so he just went with
it.
She was there that day. She had insisted he shop at that store,
part of her overall plan to convert him to her tribe, the tribe of the nice
people. The people she knew, the ones who knew why young a gentlemen does not
carry goods and such in his jacket pockets. The ones who would not have been
intimidated by a salesman. The people who didn’t know where Ohio was.
“Goddamn salesman,” he thought to himself over the roar of another
Jet inching its way to the airport. “Goddamn jet,” he added
But that’s how it had been during the three years they had been
together. There had been lots of goddamned salesmen who assisted her in her
transformation of him from an undergraduate Ohio import who needed a haircut to
one of the nice people of the Georgetown tribe.
He never really caught on to the whole Georgetown thing.
A large crow, black as night, landed on a phone wire
above him and settling in, casting a glance down at him and taking the bird's
gaze as a challenge he stared back but the shadowy creature refused to look away and so he did. And having
been soundly defeated in a staring contest with a common crow, his mood
darkened even more, and he realized he had been standing motionless at the same
corner on 35th street for at least five minutes or longer.
He crossed the street. The crow didn’t.
Why didn’t crows go to Florida in the winter like everybody else
in the bird world?
He filed the question away to ponder in happier days.
It was growing darker.
“Life is a battle,” he thought, trying to remember the entire
quote from his graduate days at Georgetown. He narrowed his eyebrows to recall
it “Life is a battle….fight it now….Life is….”
He gave up trying to recall the quote and thought that maybe it
was Charlotte Bronte who said it or maybe it was from Jane Eyre. Yeah, that’s
who it was, Jane Eyre.” And Old Jane was damn right. Life is a
battle and at the moment he was losing the battle.
He’d met her at Georgetown. She was already in her Junior year, an
English major with a concentration on 17th-century British writers. That
right there should have set off his alarm bells he told himself.
Was it too late to return home ad study accounting and management?
After he graduated he would carry on as a third-generation CPA.
He didn’t return to Cleveland after graduation like he said he was
going to do. He stayed on for a Master's Degree he didn’t need in a subject he
didn’t particularly care about and then drifted into politics. She landed the
job for him. She said that a Georgetown friend of hers she’d bumped into at a
fundraiser for the blind or the deaf or something like that, he couldn’t
remember there had been so many of the goddamn things for so many causes,
anyway, her friend had a friend who knew another friend and that connection
landed him a staff position on the Hill.
Then he learned that she had dated the chief of staff, his boss, “For about a semester” she said. She insisted
that it was all a big nothing, a fling she said, but she refused to answer when
he asked her, repeatedly, if she had slept with him. They fought about it,
constantly and it humiliated him and he resigned for the job.
There were three or four other jobs that he quit or was asked to
leave. He didn’t care. None of them mattered. His parents sent money. That
bothered her too.
He fumed that she was all about what others thought, about
everything. politics, style, and fashion and where they vacationed and how long
they vacationed, and mostly what she cared about was what they thought about
her and what they thought about him.
There was that time when, over Sunday brunch at 1789 over on 36th Street,
he mentioned that he had spent that Saturday out at the Battlefield in Manassas
with an older coworker and how impressed he was to learn that the Confederate
troops had retreated backward so that if they were shot they would not die with
a bullet in their back. The story brought a temporary silence to the table
until someone remarked “My God, what a redneck thing to do” and they all
laughed.
She chewed him out afterward. “You embarrassed me,” she said “You
embarrassed us”
But there were good times, great times. Lots of them mostly spread
out over millions of precious seconds that he had replayed continuously since
they had parted.
He reached her apartment house door and waited. She would be along
soon. He knew her schedule.
He heard her voice from a distance “Why are you wearing a sports
coat? My God you'll freeze to death. Where’s your winter coat?
He didn’t answer. He did that thing all men do when they get
caught doing something stupid, he looked down and then to the side.
“It looks nice” she lied “Very chic” but then she
realized he had absolutely no sense of style at all, whatsoever, and that he
might take her words to heart as the ultimate truth as he so often did, she
corrected herself and added “But I understand that next month nobody will be
wearing that color”
“I’ll remember that” he lied. He wouldn’t remember that.
She knew he didn’t know where his winter coat was.
“Where’s your winter coat?” she asked.
He lifted his hands from his pocket and shrugged.
“Are those socks on your hands?”
She waited and then said “Your winter clothes are stored at
Atlas Cleaners at the top of Wisconsin Ave. I’ll drop the ticket off tomorrow,
and you can collect everything.
“Why do you have the ticket?” he asked more out of a sense
of self-dignity than anything else. They both knew the answer. If he had the
ticket he would have lost it.
“Did you want something?” she asked.
She knew the answer. But she asked anyway, in that understanding
way, knowing full well that he wanted everything that could not be and
everything the way it was. He knew that she would understand that, that she
would understand what he wanted because she always understood what he wanted,
that was what she did for them when they were together, she
understood.
But this time he felt that it wasn’t there, that thing, that
feeling, that unique way she had of knowing and of letting him know she
understood. It was gone from her, it was gone between them and they both felt
it and they felt a weary sadness fall over them and they were silent for a
moment and let the moment past, that God awful, terrible moment that ended
everything that was them.
“I was wondering if you know where my winter clothes are,” he
asked “My coats, you know, it’s so cold”
“At the Valet, up on Wisconsin” she answered again, patiently.
“Do I need a ticket or something?” he asked never having been to
the cleaners in the five years she had stored his clothes there.
“I’ll go there tomorrow and take care of it, you just pick them
up, later in the afternoon.” she answered and then smiled and added, “They’re
nice people, very professional.” She said that to assure him that walking into
the Valet would not be as horrendous as she knew he thought it would be.
There was a long silence.
“Are you all right?” she asked in her small voice.
He just shrugged.
“I guess I’m okay” he answered to the sidewalk He lifted his eyes
to her and asked “You? You all right?”
She tilted her head to the side in that way that she did, the way
he liked, the ways girls tilt their heads and she answered “No” she said “But I
will be”
And because she was a kind person, and because her understanding
of love was that it was eternal she added “And so will you” and she smiled and
so did he and there was another silence, this one pleasant.
“I think, we’re just young,” he said.
So they said their goodbyes and promised to call one another, have
lunch, someday, to stay in touch
He left. She went inside and they were them no more and it
was sad because they were decent sorts, nice people, good people.
And they still were all of those things, but they were just those things were
alone now.
