Flannery O'Connor Complete Short Stories (20 page)

The child hurried back to the window. The large boy was stretched out in the hammock with his wrists crossed under his head and the cigarette stub in the center of his mouth. He spit it out in an arc just as Mrs. Cope came around the corner of the house with a plate of crackers. She stopped instantly as if a snake had been slung in her path. “Ashfield!” she said. “Please pick that up. I'm afraid of fires.”

“Gawfield!” the little boy shouted indignantly. “Gawfield!”

The large boy raised himself without a word and lumbered for the butt. He picked it up and put it in his pocket and stood with his back to her, examining a tattooed heart on his forearm. Mrs. Pritchard came up holding three Coca-Colas by the necks in one hand and gave one to each of them.

“I remember everything about this place,” Powell said, looking down the opening of his bottle.

“Where did you all go when you left here?” Mrs. Cope asked and put the plate of crackers on the arm of his chair.

He looked at it but didn't take one. He said, “I remember it was one name Gene and it was one name George. We gone to Florda and my daddy he, you know, died, and then we gone to my sister's and then my mother she, you know, mah'd, and we been there ever since.”

“There are some crackers,” Mrs. Cope said and sat down in the chair across from him.

“He don't like it in Atlanta,” the little boy said, sitting up and reaching indifferently for a cracker. “He ain't ever satisfied with where he's at except this place here. Lemme tell you what he'll do, lady. We'll be playing ball, see, on this here place in this development we got to play ball on, see, and he'll quit playing and say, ‘Goddam, it was a horse down there name Gene and if I had him here I'd bust this concrete to hell riding him!'”

“I'm sure Powell doesn't use words like that, do you, Powell?” Mrs. Cope said.

“No, mam,” Powell said. His head was turned completely to the side as if he were listening for the horses in the field.

“I don't like them kind of crackers,” the little boy said and returned his to the plate and got up.

Mrs. Cope shifted in her chair. “So you boys live in one of those nice new developments,” she said.

“The only way you can tell your own is by smell,” the small boy volunteered. “They're four stories high and there's ten of them, one behind the other. Let's go see them horses,” he said.

Powell turned his pinching look on Mrs. Cope. “We thought we would just spend the night in your barn,” he said. “My uncle brought us this far on his pick-up truck and he's going to stop for us again in the morning.”

There was a moment in which she didn't say a thing and the child in the window thought: she's going to fly out of that chair and hit the tree.

“Well, I'm afraid you can't do that,” she said, getting up suddenly. “The barn's full of hay and I'm afraid of fire from your cigarettes.”

“We won't smoke,” he said.

“I'm afraid you can't spend the night in there just the same,” she repeated as if she were talking politely to a gangster.

“Well, we can camp out in the woods then,” the little boy said. “We brought our own blankets anyways. That's what we got in theter suitcase. Come on.”

“In the woods!” she said. “Oh no! The woods are very dry now, I can't have people smoking in my woods. You'll have to camp out in the field, in this field here next to the house, where there aren't any trees.”

“Where she can keep her eye on you,” the child said under her breath.

“Her woods,” the large boy muttered and got out of the hammock.

“We'll sleep in the field,” Powell said but not particularly as if he were talking to her. “This afternoon I'm going to show them about this place.” The other two were already walking away and he got up and bounded after them and the two women sat with the black suitcase between them.

“Not no thank you, not no nothing,” Mrs. Pritchard remarked.

“They only played with what we gave them to eat,” Mrs. Cope said in a hurt voice.

Mrs. Pritchard suggested that they might not like
soft
drinks.

“They certainly
looked
hungry,” Mrs. Cope said.

About sunset they appeared out of the woods, dirty and sweating, and came to the back porch and asked for water. They did not ask for food but Mrs. Cope could tell that they wanted it. “All I have is some cold guinea,” she said. “Would you boys like some guinea and some sandwiches?”

“I wouldn't eat nothing bald-headed like a guinea,” the little boy said. “I would eat a chicken or a turkey but not no guinea.”

“Dog wouldn't eat one of them,” the large boy said. He had taken off his shirt and stuck it in the back of his trousers like a tail. Mrs. Cope carefully avoided looking at him. The little boy had a cut on his arm.

“You boys haven't been riding the horses when I asked you not to, have you?” she asked suspiciously and they all said, “No mam!” at once in loud enthusiastic voices like the Amens are said in country churches.

She went into the house and made them sandwiches and, while she did it, she held a conversation with them from inside the kitchen, asking what their fathers did and how many brothers and sisters they had and where they went to school. They answered in short explosive sentences, pushing each other's shoulders and doubling up with laughter as if the questions had meanings she didn't know about. “And do you have men teachers or lady teachers at your school?” she asked.

“Some of both and some you can't tell which,” the big boy hooted.

“And does your mother work, Powell?” she asked quickly.

“She ast you does your mother work!” the little boy yelled. “His mind's affected by them horses he only looked at,” he said. “His mother she works at a factory and leaves him to mind the rest of them only he don't mind them much. Lemme tell you, lady, one time he locked his little brother in a box and set it on fire.”

“I'm sure Powell wouldn't do a thing like that,” she said, coming out with the plate of sandwiches and setting it down on the step. They emptied the plate at once and she picked it up and stood holding it, looking at the sun which was going down in front of them, almost on top of the tree line. It was swollen and flame-colored and hung in a net of ragged cloud as if it might burn through any second and fall into the woods. From the upstairs window the child saw her shiver and catch both arms to her sides. “We have so much to be thankful for,” she said suddenly in a mournful marveling tone. “Do you boys thank God every night for all He's done for you? Do you thank Him for everything?”

This put an instant hush over them. They bit into the sandwiches as if they had lost all taste for food.

“Do you?” she persisted.

They were as silent as thieves hiding. They chewed without a sound.

“Well, I know I do,” she said at length and turned and went back to the house and the child watched their shoulders drop. The large one stretched his legs out as if he were releasing himself from a trap. The sun burned so fast that it seemed to be trying to set everything in sight on fire. The white water tower was glazed pink and the grass was an unnatural green as if it were turning to glass. The child suddenly stuck her head far out the window and said, “Ugggghhrhh,” in a loud voice, crossing her eyes and hanging her tongue out as far as possible as if she were going to vomit.

The large boy looked up and stared at her. “Jesus,” he growled, “another woman.”

She dropped back from the window and stood with her back against the wall, squinting fiercely as if she had been slapped in the face and couldn't see who had done it. As soon as they left the steps, she came down into the kitchen where Mrs. Cope was washing the dishes. “If I had that big boy down I'd beat the daylight out of him,” she said.

“You keep away from those boys,” Mrs. Cope said, turning sharply. “Ladies don't beat the daylight out of people. You keep out of their way. They'll be gone in the morning.”

But in the morning they were not gone.

When she went out on the porch after breakfast, they were standing around the back door, kicking the steps. They were smelling the bacon she had had for her breakfast. “Why boys!” she said. “I thought you were going to meet your uncle.” They had the same look of hardened hunger that had pained her yesterday but today she felt faintly provoked.

The big boy turned his back at once and the small one squatted down and began to scratch in the sand. “We ain't, though,” Powell said.

The big boy turned his head just enough to take in a small section of her and said, “We ain't bothering nothing of yours.”

He couldn't see the way her eyes enlarged but he could take note of the significant silence. After a minute she said in an altered voice, “Would you boys care for some breakfast?”

“We got plenty of our own food,” the big boy said. “We don't want nothing of yours.”

She kept her eyes on Powell. His thin white face seemed to confront but not actually to see her. “You boys know that I'm glad to have you,” she said, “but I expect you to behave. I expect you to act like gentlemen.”

They stood there, each looking in a different direction, as if they were waiting for her to leave. “After all,” she said in a suddenly high voice, “this is my place.”

The big boy made some ambiguous noise and they turned and walked off toward the barn, leaving her there with a shocked look as if she had had a searchlight thrown on her in the middle of the night.

In a little while Mrs. Pritchard came over and stood in the kitchen door with her cheek against the edge of it. “I reckon you know they rode them horses all yesterday afternoon,” she said. “Stole a bridle out the saddleroom and rode bareback because Hollis seen them. He runnum out the barn at nine o'clock last night and then he runnum out the milk room this morning and there was milk all over their mouths like they had been drinking out the cans.”

“I cannot have this,” Mrs. Cope said and stood at the sink with both fists knotted at her sides. “I cannot have this,” and her expression was the same as when she tore at the nut grass.

“There ain't a thing you can do about it,” Mrs. Pritchard said. “What I expect is you'll have them for a week or so until school begins. They just figure to have themselves a vacation in the country and there ain't nothing you can do but fold your hands.”

“I do not fold my hands,” Mrs. Cope said. “Tell Mr. Pritchard to put the horses up in the stalls.”

“He's already did that. You take a boy thirteen year old is equal in meanness to a man twict his age. It's no telling what he'll think up to do. You never know where he'll strike next. This morning Hollis seen them behind the bull pen and that big one ast if it wasn't some place they could wash at and Hollis said no it wasn't and that you didn't want no boys dropping cigarette butts in your woods and he said, ‘She don't own them woods,' and Hollis said, ‘Shes does too,' and that there little one he said, ‘Man, Gawd owns them woods and her too,' and that there one with the glasses said, ‘I reckon she owns the sky over this place too,' and that there littlest one says, ‘Owns the sky and can't no airplane go over here without she says so,' and then the big one says, ‘I never seen a place with so many damn women on it, how do you stand it here?' and Hollis said he had done had enough of their big talk by then and he turned and walked off without giving no reply one way or the other.”

“I'm going out there and tell those boys they can get a ride away from here on the milk truck,” Mrs. Cope said and she went out the back door, leaving Mrs. Pritchard and the child together in the kitchen.

“Listen,” the child said. “I could handle them quicker than that.”

“Yeah?” Mrs. Pritchard murmured, giving her a long leering look. “How'd you handle them?”

The child gripped both hands together and made a contorted face as if she were strangling someone.

“They'd handle you,” Mrs. Pritchard said with satisfaction.

The child retired to the upstairs window to get out of her way and looked down where her mother was walking off from the three boys who were squatting under the water tower, eating something out of a cracker box. She heard her come in the kitchen door and say, “They say they'll go on the milk truck, and no wonder they aren't hungry—they have that suitcase half full of food.”

“Likely stole every bit of it too,” Mrs. Pritchard said.

When the milk truck came, the three boys were nowhere in sight, but as soon as it left without them their three faces appeared, looking out of the opening in the top of the calf barn. “Can you beat this?” Mrs. Cope said, standing at one of the upstairs windows with her hands at her hips. “It's not that I wouldn't be glad to have them—it's their attitude.”

“You never like nobody's attitude,” the child said. “I'll go tell them they got five minutes to leave here in.”

“You are not to go anywhere near those boys, do you hear me?” Mrs. Cope said.

“Why?” the child asked.

“I'm going out there and give them a piece of my mind,” Mrs. Cope said.

The child took over the position in the window and in a few minutes she saw the stiff green hat catching the glint of the sun as her mother crossed the road toward the calf barn. The three faces immediately disappeared from the opening, and in a second the large boy dashed across the lot, followed an instant later by the other two. Mrs. Pritchard came out and the two women started for the grove of trees the boys had vanished into. Presently the two sunhats disappeared in the woods and the three boys came out at the left side of it and ambled across the field and into another patch of woods. By the time Mrs. Cope and Mrs. Pritchard reached the field, it was empty and there was nothing for them to do but come home again.