Good Country People

by Flannery O’Connor

Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs.

Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her

human dealings. Her forward expression was steady and driving like the

advance of a heavy truck. Her eyes never swerved to left or right but

turned as the story turned as if they followed a yellow line down the

center of it. She seldom used the other expression because it was not

often necessary for her to retract a statement, but when she did, her

face came to a complete stop, there was an almost imperceptible

movement of her black eyes, during which they seemed to be receding,

and then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she might

stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each

other, was no longer there in spirit. As for getting anything across

to her when this was the case, Mrs. Hopewell had given it up. She

might talk her head off. Mrs. Freeman could never be brought to admit

herself wrong to any point. She would stand there and if she could be

brought to say anything, it was something like, “Well, I wouldn’t of

said it was and I wouldn’t of said it wasn’t” or letting her gaze

range over the top kitchen shelf where there was an assortment of

dusty bottles, she might remark, “I see you ain’t ate many of them

figs you put up last summer.”

They carried on their most important business in the kitchen at

breakfast. Every morning Mrs. Hopewell got up at seven o’clock and lit

her gas heater and Joy’s. Joy was her daughter, a large blonds girl

who had an artificial leg. Mrs. Hopewell thought of her as a child

though she was thirty-two years old and highly educated. Joy would get

up while her mother was eating and lumber into the bathroom and slam

the door, and before long, Mrs. Freeman would arrive at the back door.

Joy would hear her mother call, “Come on in,” and then they would talk

for a while in low voices that were indistinguishable in the bathroom.

By the time Joy came in, they had usually finished the weather report

and were on one or the other of Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, Glynese or

Carramae. Joy called them Glycerin and Caramel. Glynese, a redhead,

was eighteen and had many admirers; Carramae, a blonde, was only

fifteen but already married and pregnant. She could not keep anything

on her stomach. Every morning Mrs. Freeman told Mrs. Hopewell how many

times she had vomited since the last report.

Mrs. Hopewell liked to tell people that Glynese and Carramae were two

of the finest girls she knew and that Mrs. Freeman was a lady and that

she was never ashamed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody

they might meet. Then she would tell how she had happened to hire the

Freemans in the first place and how they were a godsend to her and how

she had had them four years. The reason for her keeping them so long

was that they were not trash. They were good country people. She had

telephoned the man whose name they had given as reference and he had

told her that Mr. Freeman was a good farmer but that his wife was the

nosiest woman ever to walk the earth. “She’s got to be into

everything,” the man said. “If she don’t get there before the dust

settles, you can bet she’s dead, that’s all. She’ll want to know all

your business. I can stand him real good,” he had said, “but me nor my

wife neither could have stood that woman one more minute on this

place.” That had put Mrs. Hopewell off for a few days.

She had hired them in the end because there were no other applicants

but she had made up her mind beforehand exactly how she would handle

the woman. Since she was the type who had to be into everything, then,

Mrs. Hopewell had decided, she would not only let her be into

everything, she would see to it that she was into everything – she

would give her the responsibility of everything, she would put her in

charge. Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able

to use other people’s in such a constructive way that she had kept

them four years.

Nothing is perfect. This was one of Mrs. Hopewell’s favorite sayings.

Another was: that is life! And still another, the most important, was:

well, other people have their opinions too. She would make these

statements, usually at the table, in a tone of gentle insistence as if

no one held them but her, and the large hulking Joy, whose constant

outrage had obliterated every expression from her face, would stare

just a little to the side of her, her eyes icy blue, with the look of

someone who had achieved blindness by an act of will and means to keep

it.

When Mrs. Hopewell said to Mrs. Freeman that life was like that, Mrs.

Freeman would say, “I always said so myself.” Nothing had been arrived

at by anyone that had not first been arrived at by her. She was

quicker than Mr. Freeman. When Mrs. Hopewell said to her after they

had been on the place for a while, “You know, you’re the wheel behind

the wheel,” and winked, Mrs. Freeman had said, “I know it. I’ve always

been quick. It’s some that are quicker than others.”

“Everybody is different,” Mrs. Hopewell said.

“Yes, most people is,” Mrs. Freeman said.

“It takes all kinds to make the world.”

I always said it did myself.”

The girl was used to this kind of dialogue for breakfast and more of

it for dinner; sometimes they had it for supper too. When they had no

guest they ate in the kitchen because that was easier. Mrs. Freeman

always managed to arrive at some point during the meal and to watch

them finish it. She would stand in the doorway if it were summer but

in the winter she would stand with one elbow on top of the

refrigerator and look down at them, or she would stand by the gas

heater, lifting the back of her skirt slightly. Occasionally she would

stand against the wall and roll her head from side to side. At no time

was she in any hurry to leave. All this was very trying on Mrs.

Hopewell but she was a woman of great patience. She realized that

nothing is perfect and that in the Freemans she had good country

people and that if, in this day and age, you get good country people,

you had better hang onto them.

She had had plenty of experience with trash. Before the Freemans she

had averaged one tenant family a year. The wives of these farmers were

not the kind you would want to be around you for very long. Mrs.

Hopewell, who had divorced her husband long ago, needed someone to

walk over the fields with her; and when Joy had to be impressed for

these services, her remarks were usually so ugly and her face so glum

that Mrs. Hopewell would say, “If you can’t come pleasantly, I don’t

want you at all,” to which the girl, standing square and

rigid-shouldered with her neck thrust slightly forward, would reply,

“If you want me, here I am – LIKE I AM.”

Mrs. Hopewell excused this attitude because of the leg (which had been

shot off in a hunting accident when Joy was ten). It was hard for Mrs.

Hopewell to realize that her child was thirty-two now and that for

more than twenty years she had had only one leg. She thought of her

still as a child because it tore her heart to think instead of the

poor stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any

normal good times. Her name was really Joy but as soon as she was

twenty-one and away from home, she had had it legally changed. Mrs.

Hopewell was certain that she had thought and thought until she had

hit upon the ugliest name in any language. Then she had gone and had

the beautiful name, Joy, changed without telling her mother until

after she had done it. Her legal name was Hulga.

When Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad

blank hull of a battleship. She would not use it. She continued to

call her Joy to which the girl responded but in a purely mechanical

way.

Hulga had learned to tolerate Mrs. Freeman who saved her from taking

walks with her mother. Even Glynese and Carramae were useful when they

occupied attention that might otherwise have been directed at her. At

first she had thought she could not stand Mrs. Freeman for she had

found it was not possible to be rude to her. Mrs. Freeman would take

on strange resentments and for days together she would be sullen but

the source of her displeasure was always obscure; a direct attack, a

positive leer, blatant ugliness to her face – these never touched her.

And without warning one day, she began calling her Hulga.

She did not call her that in front of Mrs. Hopewell who would have

been incensed but when she and the girl happened to be out of the

house together, she would say something and add the name Hulga to the

end of it, and the big spectacled Joy-Hulga would scowl and redden as

if her privacy had been intruded upon. She considered the name her

personal affair. She had arrived at it first purely on the basis of

its ugly sound and then the full genius of its fitness had struck her.

She had a vision of the name working like the ugly sweating Vulcan who

stayed in the furnace and to whom, presumably, the goddess had to come

when called. She saw it as the name of her highest creative act. One

of her major triumphs was that her mother had not been able to turn

her dust into Joy, but the greater one was that she had been able to

turn it herself into Hulga. However, Mrs. Freeman’s relish for using

the name only irritated her. It was as if Mrs. Freeman’s beady

steel-pointed eyes had penetrated far enough behind her face to reach

some secret fact. Something about her seemed to fascinate Mrs. Freeman

and then one day Hulga realized that it was the artificial leg. Mrs.

Freeman had a special fondness for the details of secret infections,

hidden deformities, assaults upon children. Of diseases, she preferred

the lingering or incurable. Hulga had heard Mrs. Hopewell give her the

details of the hunting accident, how the leg had been literally

blasted off, how she had never lost consciousness. Mrs. Freeman could

listen to it any time as if it had happened an hour ago.

When Hulga stumped into the kitchen in the morning (she could walk

without making the awful noise but she made it – Mrs. Hopewell was

certain – because it was ugly-sounding), she glanced at them and did

not speak. Mrs. Hopewell would be in her red kimono with her hair tied

around her head in rags. She would be sitting at the table, finishing

her breakfast and Mrs. Freeman would be hanging by her elbow outward

from the refrigerator, looking down at the table. Hulga always put her

eggs on the stove to boil and then stood over them with her arms

folded, and Mrs. Hopewell would look at her – a kind of indirect gaze

divided between her and Mrs. Freeman – and would think that if she

would only keep herself up a little, she wouldn’t be so bad looking.

There was nothing wrong with her face that a pleasant expression

wouldn’t help. Mrs. Hopewell said that people who looked on the bright

side of things would be beautiful even if they were not.

Whenever she looked at Joy this way, she could not help but feel that

it would have been better if the child had not taken the Ph.D. It had

certainly not brought her out any and now that she had it, there was

no more excuse for her to go to school again. Mrs. Hopewell thought it

was nice for girls to go to school to have a good time but Joy had

“gone through.” Anyhow, she would not have been strong enough to go

again. The doctors had told Mrs. Hopewell that with the best of care,

Joy might see forty-five. She had a weak heart. Joy had made it plain

that if it had not been for this condition, she would be far from

these red hills and good country people. She would be in a university

lecturing to people who knew what she was talking about. And Mrs.

Hopewell could very well picture here there, looking like a scarecrow

and lecturing to more of the same. Here she went about all day in a

six-year-old skirt and a yellow sweat shirt with a faded cowboy on a

horse embossed on it. She thought this was funny; Mrs. Hopewell

thought it was idiotic and showed simply that she was still a child.

She was brilliant but she didn’t have a grain of sense. It seemed to

Mrs. Hopewell that every year she grew less like other people and more

like herself – bloated, rude, and squint-eyed. And she said such

strange things! To her own mother she had said – without warning,

without excuse, standing up in the middle of a meal with her face

purple and her mouth half full – “Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do

you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!” she had cried

sinking down again and staring at her plate, “Malebranche was right:

we are not our own light. We are not our own light!” Mrs. Hopewell had

no idea to this day what brought that on. She had only made the

remark, hoping Joy would take it in, that a smile never hurt anyone.

The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell

at a complete loss. You could say, “My daughter is a nurse,” or “My

daughter is a school teacher,” or even, “My daughter is a chemical

engineer.” You could not say, “My daughter is a philosopher.” That was

something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans. All day Joy sat

on her neck in a deep chair, reading. Sometimes she went for walks but

she didn’t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice

young men. She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their

stupidity.

One day Mrs. Hopewell had picked up one of the books the girl had just

put down and opening it at random, she read, “Science, on the other

hand, has to assert its soberness and seriousness afresh and declare

that it is concerned solely with what-is. Nothing – how can it be for

science anything but a horror and a phantasm? If science is right,

then one thing stands firm: science wishes to know nothing of nothing.

Such is after all the strictly scientific approach to Nothing. We know

it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing.” These words had been

underlined with a blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell like

some evil incantation in gibberish. She shut the book quickly and went

out of the room as if she were having a chill.

This morning when the girl came in, Mrs. Freeman was on Carramae. “She

thrown up four times after supper,” she said, “and was up twict in the

night after three o’clock. Yesterday she didn’t do nothing but ramble

in the bureau drawer. All she did. Stand up there and see what she

could run up on.”

“She’s got to eat,” Mrs. Hopewell muttered, sipping her coffee, while

she watched Joy’s back at the stove. She was wondering what the child

had said to the Bible salesman. She could not imagine what kind of a

conversation she could possibly have had with him.

He was a tall gaunt hatless youth who had called yesterday to sell

them a Bible. He had appeared at the door, carrying a large black

suitcase that weighted him so heavily on one side that he had to brace

himself against the door facing. He seemed on the point of collapse

but he said in a cheerful voice, “Good morning, Mrs. Cedars!” and set

the suitcase down on the mat. He was not a bad-looking young man

though he had on a bright blue suit and yellow socks that were not

pulled up far enough. He had prominent face bones and a streak of

sticky-looking brown hair falling across his forehead.

“I’m Mrs. Hopewell,” she said.

“Oh!” he said, pretending to look puzzled but with his eyes sparkling,

“I saw it said ‘The Cedars’ on the mailbox so I thought you was Mrs.

Cedars!” and he burst out in a pleasant laugh. He picked up the

satchel and under cover of a pant, he fell forward into her hall. It

was rather as if the suitcase had moved first, jerking him after it.

“Mrs. Hopewell!” he said and grabbed her hand. “I hope you are well!”

and he laughed again and then all at once his face sobered completely.

He paused and gave her a straight earnest look and said, “Lady, I’ve

come to speak of serious things.”

“Well, come in,” she muttered, none too pleased because her dinner was

almost ready. He came into the parlor and sat down on the edge of a

straight chair and put the suitcase between his feet and glanced

around the room as if he were sizing her up by it. Her silver gleamed

on the two sideboards; she decided he had never been in a room as

elegant as this.

“Mrs. Hopewell,” he began, using her name in a way that sounded almost

intimate, “I know you believe in Chrustian service.”

“Well, yes,” she murmured.

“I know,” he said and paused, looking very wise with his head cocked

on one side, “that you’re a good woman. Friends have told me.”

Mrs. Hopewell never liked to be taken for a fool. “What are you

selling?” she asked.

“Bibles,” the young man said and his eye raced around the room before

he added, “I see you have no family Bible in your parlor, I see that

is the one lack you got!”

Mrs. Hopewell could not say, “My daughter is an atheist and won’t let

me keep the Bible in the parlor.” She said, stiffening slightly, “I

keep my Bible by my bedside.” This was not the truth. It was in the

attic somewhere.

“Lady,” he said, “the word of God ought to be in the parlor.”

“Well, I think that’s a matter of taste,” she began, “I think…”

“Lady,” he said, “for a Chrustian, the word of God ought to be in

every room in the house besides in his heart. I know you’re a

Chrustian because I can see it in every line of your face.”

She stood up and said, “Well, young man, I don’t want to buy a Bible

and I smell my dinner burning.”

He didn’t get up. He began to twist his hands and looking down at

them, he said softly, “Well lady, I’ll tell you the truth – not many

people want to buy one nowadays and besides, I know I’m real simple. I

don’t know how to say a thing but to say it. I’m just a country boy.”

He glanced up into her unfriendly face. “People like you don’t like to

fool with country people like me!”

“Why!” she cried, “good country people are the salt of the earth!

Besides, we all have different ways of doing, it takes all kinds to

make the world go ‘round. That’s life!”

“You said a mouthful,” he said.

“Why, I think there aren’t enough good country people in the world!”

she said, stirred. “I think that’s what’s wrong with it!”

His face had brightened. “I didn’t intraduce myself,” he said. “I’m

Manley Pointer from out in the country around Willohobie, not even

from a place, just from near a place.”

“You wait a minute,” she said. “I have to see about my dinner.” She

went out to the kitchen and found Joy standing near the door where she

had been listening.

“Get rid of the salt of the earth,” she said, “and let’s eat.”

Mrs. Hopewell gave her a pained look and turned the heat down under

the vegetables. “I can’t be rude to anybody,” she murmured and went

back into the parlor.

He had opened the suitcase and was sitting with a Bible on each knee.

“I appreciate your honesty,” he said. “You don’t see any more real

honest people unless you go way out in the country.”

“I know,” she said, “real genuine folks!” Through the crack in the

door she heard a groan.

“I guess a lot of boys come telling you they’re working their way

through college,” he said, “but I’m not going to tell you that.

Somehow,” he said, “I don’t want to go to college. I want to devote my

life to Chrustian service. See,” he said, lowering his voice, “I got

this heart condition. I may not live long. When you know it’s

something wrong with you and you may not live long, well then, lady…”

He paused, with his mouth open, and stared at her.

He and Joy had the same condition! She knew that her eyes were filling

with tears but she collected herself quickly and murmured, “Won’t you

stay for dinner? We’d love to have you!” and was sorry the instant she

heard herself say it.

“Yes mam,” he said in an abashed voice. “I would sher love to do that!”

Joy had given him one look on being introduced to him and then

throughout the meal had not glanced at him again. He had addressed

several remarks to her, which she had pretended not to hear. Mrs.

Hopewell could not understand deliberate rudeness, although she lived

with it, and she felt she had always to overflow with hospitality to

make up for Joy’s lack of courtesy. She urged him to talk about

himself and he did. He said he was the seventh child of twelve and

that his father had been crushed under a tree when he himself was

eight years old. He had been crushed very badly, in fact, almost cut

in two and was practically not recognizable. His mother had got along

the best she could by hard working and she had always seen that her

children went to Sunday School and that they read the Bible every

evening. He was now nineteen years old and he had been selling Bibles

for four months. In that time he had sold seventy-seven Bibles and had

the promise of two more sales. He wanted to become a missionary

because he thought that was the way you could do most for people. “He

who losest his life shall find it,” he said simply and he was so

sincere, so genuine and earnest that Mrs. Hopewell would not for the

world have smiled. He prevented his peas from sliding onto the table

by blocking them with a piece of bread which he later cleaned his

plate with. She could see Joy observing sidewise how he handled his

knife and fork and she saw too that every few minutes, the boy would

dart a keen appraising glance at the girl as if he were trying to

attract her attention.

After dinner Joy cleared the dishes off the table and disappeared and

Mrs. Hopewell was left to talk with him. He told her again about his

childhood and his father’s accident and about various things that had

happened to him. Every five minutes or so she would stifle a yawn. He

sat for two hours until finally she told him she must go because she

had an appointment in town. He packed his Bibles and thanked her and

prepared to leave, but in the doorway he stopped and wring her hand

and said that not on any of his trips had he met a lady as nice as her

and he asked if he could come again. She had said she would always be

happy to see him.

Joy had been standing in the road, apparently looking at something in

the distance, when he came down the steps toward her, bent to the side

with his heavy valise. He stopped where she was standing and

confronted her directly. Mrs. Hopewell could not hear what he said but

she trembled to think what Joy would say to him. She could see that

after a minute Joy said something and that then the boy began to speak

again, making an excited gesture with his free hand. After a minute

Joy said something else at which the boy began to speak once more.

Then to her amazement, Mrs. Hopewell saw the two of them walk off

together, toward the gate. Joy had walked all the way to the gate with

him and Mrs. Hopewell could not imagine what they had said to each

other, and she had not yet dared to ask.

Mrs. Freeman was insisting upon her attention. She had moved from the

refrigerator to the heater so that Mrs. Hopewell had to turn and face

her in order to seem to be listening. “Glynese gone out with Harvey

Hill again last night,” she said. “She had this sty.”

“Hill,” Mrs. Hopewell said absently, “is that the one who works in the garage?”

“Nome, he’s the one that goes to chiropractor school,” Mrs. Freeman

said. “She had this sty. Been had it two days. So she says when he

brought her in the other night he says, ‘Lemme get rid of that sty for

you,’ and she says, ‘How?’ and he says, ‘You just lay yourself down

acrost the seat of that car and I’ll show you.’ So she done it and he

popped her neck. Kept on a-popping it several times until he made him

quit. This morning,” Mrs. Freeman said, “she ain’t got no sty. She

ain’t got no traces of a sty.”

“I never heard of that before,” Mrs. Hopewell said.

“He ast her to marry him before the Ordinary,” Mrs. Freeman went on,

“and she told him she wasn’t going to be married in no office.”

“Well, Glynese is a fine girl,” Mrs. Hopewell said. “Glynese and

Carramae are both fine girls.”

“Carramae said when her and Lyman was married Lyman said it sure felt

sacred to him. She said he said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars

for being married by a preacher.”

“How much would he take?” the girl asked from the stove.

“He said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars,” Mrs. Freeman repeated.

“Well we all have work to do,” Mrs. Hopewell said.

“Lyman said it just felt more sacred to him,” Mrs. Freeman said. “The

doctor wants Carramae to eat prunes. Says instead of medicine. Says

them cramps is coming from pressure. You know where I think it is?”

“She’ll be better in a few weeks,” Mrs. Hopewell said.

“In the tube,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Else she wouldn’t be as sick as she is.”

Hulga had cracked her two eggs into a saucer and was bringing them to

the table along with a cup of coffee that she had filled too full. She

sat down carefully and began to eat, meaning to keep Mrs. Freeman

there by questions if for any reason she showed an inclination to

leave. She could perceive her mother’s eye on her. The first

round-about question would be about the Bible salesman and she did not

wish to bring it on. “How did he pop her neck?” she asked.

Mrs. Freeman went into a description of how he had popped her neck.

She said he owned a ’55 Mercury but that Glynese said she would rather

marry a man with only a ’36 Plymouth who would be married by a

preacher. The girl asked what if he had a ’32 Plymouth and Mrs.

Freeman said what Glynese had said was a ’36 Plymouth.

Mrs. Hopewell said there were not many girls with Glynese’s common

sense. She said what she admired in those girls was their common

sense. She said that reminded her that they had had a nice visitor

yesterday, a young man selling Bibles. “Lord,” she said, “he bored me

to death but he was so sincere and genuine I couldn’t be rude to him.

He was just good country people, you know,” she said, “—just the salt

of the earth.”

“I seen him walk up,” Mrs. Freeman said, “and then later – I seen him

walk off,” and Hulga could feel the slight shift in her voice, the

slight insinuation, that he had not walked off alone, had he? Her face

remained expressionless but the color rose into her neck and she

seemed to swallow it down with the next spoonful of egg. Mrs. Freeman

was looking at her as if they had a secret together.

“Well, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go ‘round,” Mrs.

Hopewell said. “It’s very good we aren’t all alike.”

“Some people are more alike than others,” Mrs. Freeman said.

Hulga got up and stumped, with about twice the noise that was

necessary, into her room and locked the door. She was to meet the

Bible salesman at ten o’clock at the gate. She had thought about it

half the night. She had started thinking of it as a great joke and

then she had begun to see profound implications in it. She had lain in

bed imagining dialogues for them that were insane on the surface but

that reached below the depths that no Bible salesman would be aware

of. Their conversation yesterday had been of this kind.

He had stopped in front of her and had simply stood there. His face

was bony and sweaty and bright, with a little pointed nose in the

center of it, and his look was different from what it had been at the

dinner table. He was gazing at her with open curiosity, with

fascination, like a child watching a new fantastic animal at the zoo,

and he was breathing as if he had run a great distance to reach her.

His gaze seemed somehow familiar but she could not think where she had

been regarded with it before. For almost a minute he didn’t say

anything. Then on what seemed an insuck of breath, he whispered, “You

ever ate a chicken that was two days old?”

The girl looked at him stonily. He might have just put this question

up for consideration at the meeting of a philosophical association.

“Yes,” she presently replied as if she had considered it from all

angles.

“It must have been mighty small!” he said triumphantly and shook all

over with little nervous giggles, getting very red in the face, and

subsiding finally into his gaze of complete admiration, while the

girl’s expression remained exactly the same.

“How old are you?” he asked softly.

She waited some time before she answered. Then in a flat voice she

said, “Seventeen.”

His smiles came in succession like waves breaking on the surface of a

little lake. “I see you got a wooden leg,” he said. “I think you’re

real brave. I think you’re real sweet.”

The girl stood blank and solid and silent.

“Walk to the gate with me,” he said. “You’re a brave sweet little

thing and I liked you the minute I seen you walk in the door.”

Hulga began to move forward.

“What’s your name?” he asked, smiling down on the top of her head.

“Hulga,” she said.

“Hulga,” he murmured, “Hulga. Hulga. I never heard of anybody name

Hulga before. You’re shy, aren’t you, Hulga?” he asked.

She nodded, watching his large red hand on the handle of the giant valise.

“I like girls that wear glasses,” he said. “I think a lot. I’m not

like these people that a serious thought don’t ever enter their heads.

It’s because I may die.”

“I may die too,” she said suddenly and looked up at him. His eyes were

very small and brown, glittering feverishly.

“Listen,” he said, “don’t you think some people was meant to meet on

account of what all they got in common and all? Like they both think

serious thoughts and all?” He shifted the valise to his other hand so

that the hand nearest her was free. He caught hold of her elbow and

shook it a little. “I don’t work on Saturday,” he said. “I like to

walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing. O’er the

hills and far away. Picnics and things. Couldn’t we go on a picnic

tomorrow? Say yes, Hulga,” he said and gave her a dying look as if he

felt his insides about to drop out of him. He had even seemed to sway

slightly toward her.

During the night she had imagined that she seduced him. She imagined

that the two of them walked on the place until they came to the

storage barn beyond the two back fields and there, she imagined, that

things came to such a pass that she very easily seduced him and that

then, of course, she had to reckon with his remorse. True genius can

get an idea across even to an inferior mind. She imagined that she

took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper understanding of

life. She took all his shame away and turned it into something useful.

She set off for the gate at exactly ten o’clock, escaping without

drawing Mrs. Hopewell’s attention. She didn’t take anything to eat,

forgetting that food is usually taken on a picnic. She wore a pair of

slacks and a dirty white shirt, and as an afterthought, she had put

some Vapex on the collar of it since she did not own any perfume. When

she reached the gate no one was there.

She looked up and down the empty highway and had the furious feeling

that she had been tricked, that he only meant to make her walk to the

gate after the idea of him. Then suddenly he stood up, very tall, from

behind a bush on the opposite embankment. Smiling, he lifted his hat

which was new and wide-brimmed. He had not worn it yesterday and she

wondered if he had bought it for the occasion. It was toast-colored

with a red and white band around it and was slightly too large for

him. He stepped from behind the bush still carrying the black valise.

He had on the same suit and the same yellow socks sucked down in his

shoes from walking. He crossed the highway and said, “I knew you’d

come!”

The girl wondered acidly how he had known this. She pointed to the

valise and asked, “Why did you bring your Bibles?”

He took her elbow, smiling down on her as if he could not stop. “You

can never tell when you’ll need the word of God, Hulga,” he said. She

had a moment in which she doubted that this was actually happening and

then they began to climb the embankment. They went down into the

pasture toward the woods. The boy walked lightly by her side, bouncing

on his toes. The valise did not seem to be heavy today; he even swung

it. They crossed half the pasture without saying anything and then,

putting his hand easily on the small of her back, he asked softly,

“Where does your wooden leg join on?”

She turned an ugly red and glared at him and for an instant the boy

looked abashed. “I didn’t mean you no harm,” he said. “I only meant

you’re so brave and all. I guess God takes care of you.”

“No,” she said, looking forward and walking fast, “I don’t even believe in God.”

At this he stopped and whistled. “No!” he exclaimed as if he were too

astonished to say anything else.

She walked on and in a second he was bouncing at her side, fanning

with his hat. “That’s very unusual for a girl,” he remarked, watching

her out of the corner of his eye. When they reached the edge of the

wood, he put his hand on her back again and drew her against him

without a word and kissed her heavily.

The kiss, which had more pressure than feeling behind it, produced

that extra surge of adrenalin in the girl that enables one to carry a

packed trunk out of a burning house, but in her, the power went at

once to the brain. Even before he released her, her mind, clear and

detached and ironic anyway, was regarding him from a great distance,

with amusement but with pity. She had never been kissed before and she

was pleased to discover that it was an unexceptional experience and

all a matter of the mind’s control. Some people might enjoy drain

water if they were told it was vodka. When the boy, looking expectant

but uncertain, pushed her gently away, she turned and walked on,

saying nothing as if such business, for her, were common enough.

He came along panting at her side, trying to help her when he saw a

root that she might trip over. He caught and held back the long

swaying blades of thorn vine until she had passed beyond them. She led

the way and he came breathing heavily behind her. Then they came out

on a sunlit hillside, sloping softly into another one a little

smaller. Beyond, they could see the rusted top of the old barn where

the extra hay was stored.

The hill was sprinkled with small pink weeds. “Then you ain’t saved?”

he asked suddenly, stopping.

The girl smiled. It was the first time she had smiled at him at all.

“In my economy,” she said, “I’m saved and you are damned but I told

you I didn’t believe in God.”

Nothing seemed to destroy the boy’s look of admiration. He gazed at

her now as if the fantastic animal at the zoo had put its paw through

the bars and given him a loving poke. She thought he looked as if he

wanted to kiss her again and she walked on before he had the chance.

“Ain’t there somewheres we can sit down sometime?” he murmured, his

voice softening toward the end of the sentence.

“In that barn,” she said.

They made for it rapidly as if it might slide away like a train. It

was a large two-story barn, cook and dark inside. The boy pointed up

the ladder that led into the loft and said, “It’s too bad we can’t go

up there.”

“Why can’t we?” she asked.

“Yer leg,” he said reverently.

The girl gave him a contemptuous look and putting both hands on the

ladder, she climbed it while he stood below, apparently awestruck. She

pulled herself expertly through the opening and then looked down at

him and said, “Well, come on if your coming,” and he began to climb

the ladder, awkwardly bringing the suitcase with him.

“We won’t need the Bible,” she observed.

“You never can tell,” he said, panting. After he had got into the

loft, he was a few seconds catching his breath. She had sat down in a

pile of straw. A wide sheath of sunlight, filled with dust particles,

slanted over her. She lay back against a bale, her face turned away,

looking out the front opening of the barn where hay was thrown from a

wagon into the loft. The two pink-speckled hillsides lay back against

a dark ridge of woods. The sky was cloudless and cold blue. The boy

dropped down by her side and put one arm under her and the other over

her and began methodically kissing her face, making little noises like

a fish. He did not remove his hat but it was pushed far enough back

not to interfere. When her glasses got in his way, he took them off of

her and slipped them into his pocket.

The girl at first did not return any of the kisses but presently she

began to and after she had put several on his cheek, she reached his

lips and remained there, kissing him again and again as if she were

trying to draw all the breath out of him. His breath was clear and

sweet like a child’s and the kisses were sticky like a child’s. He

mumbled about loving her and about knowing when he first seen her that

he loved her, but the mumbling was like the sleepy fretting of a child

being put to sleep by his mother. Her mind, throughout this, never

stopped or lost itself for a second to her feelings. “You ain’t said

you loved me none,” he whispered finally, pulling back from her. “You

got to say that.”

She looked away from him off into the hollow sky and then down at a

black ridge and then down farther into what appeared to be two green

swelling lakes. She didn’t realize he had taken her glasses but this

landscape could not seem exceptional to her for she seldom paid any

close attention to her surroundings.

“You got to say it,” he repeated. “You got to say you love me.”

She was always careful how she committed herself. “In a sense,” she

began, “if you use the word loosely, you might say that. But it’s not

a word I use. I don’t have illusions. I’m one of those people who see

through to nothing.”

The boy was frowning. “You got to say it. I said it and you got to say

it,” he said.

The girl looked at him almost tenderly. “You poor baby,” she murmured.

“It’s just as well you don’t understand,” and she pulled him by the

neck, face-down, against her. “We are all damned,” she said, “but some

of us have taken off our blindfolds and see that there’s nothing to

see. It’s a kind of salvation.”

The boy’s astonished eyes looked blankly through the ends of her hair.

“Okay,” he almost whined, “but do you love me or don’tcher?”

“Yes,” she said and added, “in a sense. But I must tell you something.

There mustn’t be anything dishonest between us.” She lifted his head

and looked him in the eye. “I am thirty years old,” she said. “I have

a number of degrees.”

The boy’s look was irritated but dogged. “I don’t care,” he said. “I

don’t care a thing about what all you done. I just want to know if you

love me or don’tcher?” and he caught her to him and wildly planted her

face with kisses until she said, “Yes, yes.”

“Okay then,” he said, letting her go. “Prove it.”

She smiled, looking dreamily out on the shifty landscape. She had

seduced him without even making up her mind to try. “How?” she asked,

feeling that he should be delayed a little.

He leaned over and put his lips to her ear. “Show me where your wooden

leg joins on,” he whispered.

The girl uttered a sharp little cry and her face instantly drained of

color. The obscenity of the suggestion was not what shocked her. As a

child she had sometimes been subject to feelings of shame but

education had removed the last traces of that as a good surgeon

scrapes for cancer; she would no more have felt it over what he was

asking than she would have believed in his Bible. But she was as

sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail. No one

ever touched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his

soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away. “No,” she

said.

“I known it,” he muttered, sitting up. “You’re just playing me for a sucker.”

“On no no!” she cried. “It joins on at the knee. Only at the knee. Why

do you want to see it?”

The boy gave her a long penetrating look. “Because,” he said, “it’s

what makes you different. You ain’t like anybody else.”

She sat staring at him. There was nothing about her face or her round

freezing-blue eyes to indicate that this had moved her; but she felt

as if her heart had stopped and left her mind to pump her blood. She

decided that for the first time in her life she was face to face with

real innocence. This boy, with an instinct that came from beyond

wisdom, had touched the truth about her. When after a minute, she said

in a hoarse high voice, “All right,” it was like surrendering to him

completely. It was like losing her own life and finding it again,

miraculously, in his.

Very gently, he began to roll the slack leg up. The artificial limb,

in a white sock and brown flat shoe, was bound in a heavy material

like canvas and ended in an ugly jointure where it was attached to the

stump. The boy’s face and his voice were entirely reverent as he

uncovered it and said, “Now show me how to take it off and on.”

She took it off for him and put it back on again and then he took it

off himself, handling it as tenderly as if it were a real one. “See!”

he said with a delighted child’s face. “Now I can do it myself!”

“Put it back on,” she said. She was thinking that she would run away

with him and that every night he would take the leg off and every

morning put it back on again. “Put it back on,” she said.

“Not yet,” he murmured, setting it on its foot out of her reach.

“Leave it off for awhile. You got me instead.”

She gave a little cry of alarm but he pushed her down and began to

kiss her again. Without the leg she felt entirely dependent on him.

Her brain seemed to have stopped thinking altogether and to be about

some other function that it was not very good at. Different

expressions raced back and forth over her face. Every now and then the

boy, his eyes like two steel spikes, would glance behind him where the

leg stood. Finally she pushed him off and said, “Put it back on me

now.”

“Wait,” he said. He leaned the other way and pulled the valise toward

him and opened it. It had a pale blue spotted lining and there were

only two Bibles in it. He took one of these out and opened the cover

of it. It was hollow and contained a pocket flask of whiskey, a pack

of cards, and a small blue box with printing on it. He laid these out

in front of her one at a time in an evenly-spaced row, like one

presenting offerings at the shrine of a goddess. He put the blue box

in her hand. THIS PRODUCT TO BE USED ONLY FOR THE PREVENTION OF

DISEASE, she read, and dropped it. The boy was unscrewing the top of

the flask. He stopped and pointed, with a smile, to the deck of cards.

It was not an ordinary deck but one with an obscene picture on the

back of each card. “Take a swig,” he said, offering her the bottle

first. He held it in front of her, but like one mesmerized, she did

not move.

Her voice when she spoke had an almost pleading sound. “Aren’t you,”

she murmured, “aren’t you just good country people?”

The boy cocked his head. He looked as if he were just beginning to

understand that she might be trying to insult him. “Yeah,” he said,

curling his lip slightly, “but it ain’t held me back none. I’m as good

as you any day in the week.”

“Give me my leg,” she said.

He pushed it farther away with his foot. “Come on now, let’s begin to

have us a good time,” he said coaxingly. “We ain’t got to know one

another good yet.”

“Give me my leg!” she screamed and tried to lunge for it but he pushed

her down easily.

“What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?” he asked, frowning as he

screwed the top on the flask and put it quickly back inside the Bible.

“You just a while ago said you didn’t believe in nothing. I thought

you was some girl!”

Her face was almost purple. “You’re a Christian!” she hissed. “You’re

a fine Christian! You’re just like them all – say one thing and do

another. You’re a perfect Christian, you’re…”

The boy’s mouth was set angrily. “I hope you don’t think,” he said in

a lofty indignant tone, “that I believe in that crap! I may sell

Bibles but I know which end is up and I wasn’t born yesterday and I

know where I’m going!”

“Give me my leg!” she screeched. He jumped up so quickly that she

barely saw him sweep the cards and the blue box back into the Bible

and throw the Bible into the valise. She saw him grab the leg and then

she saw it for an instant slanted forlornly across the inside of the

suitcase with a Bible at either side of its opposite ends. He slammed

the lid shut and snatched up the valise and swung it down the hole and

then stepped through himself. When all of him had passed but his head,

he turned and regarded her with a look that no longer had any

admiration in it. “I’ve gotten a lot of interesting things,” he said.

“One time I got a woman’s glass eye this way. And you needn’t to think

you’ll catch me because Pointer ain’t really my name. I use a

different name at every house I call at and don’t stay nowhere long.

And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga,” he said, using the name as if

he didn’t think much of it, “you ain’t so smart. I been believing in

nothing ever since I was born!” and then the toast-colored hat

disappeared down the hole and the girl was left, sitting on the straw

in the dusty sunlight. When she turned her churning face toward the

opening, she saw his blue figure struggling successfully over the

green speckled lake.

Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging

up onions, saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head

across the meadow toward the highway. “Why, that looks like that nice

dull young man that tried to sell me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell

said, squinting. “He must have been selling them to the Negroes back

in there. He was so simple,” she said, “but I guess the world would be

better off if we were all that simple.”

Mrs. Freeman’s gaze drove forward and just touched him before he

disappeared under the hill. Then she returned her attention to the

evil-smelling onion shoot she was lifting from the ground. “Some can’t

be that simple,” she said. “I know I never could.”