English 10 Mr. Gunnar A Worn Path by Eudora Welty

English 10 Mr. Gunnar
A Worn Path by Eudora Welty
It was December—a bright frozen day in the early morning. Far out in the country there was
an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pinewoods.
Her name was Phoenix Jackson. She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark
pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and
lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock. She carried a thin, small cane made from an
umbrella, and with this she kept tapping the frozen earth in front of her. This made a grave and
persistent noise in the still air, that seemed meditative like the chirping of a solitary little bird.
She wore a dark striped dress reaching down to her shoe tops, and an equally long apron
of bleached sugar sacks, with a full pocket: all neat and tidy, but every time she took a step she
might have fallen over her shoelaces, which dragged from her unlaced shoes. She looked straight
ahead. Her eyes were blue with age. Her skin had a pattern all its own of numberless branching
wrinkles and as though a whole little tree stood in the middle of her forehead, but a golden color
ran underneath, and the two knobs of her cheeks were illumined by a yellow burning under the
dark. Under the red rag her hair came down on her neck in the frailest of ringlets, still black, and
with an odor like copper.
Now and then there was a quivering in the thicket. Old Phoenix said, "Out of my way, all
you foxes, owls, beetles, jack rabbits, coons and wild animals!. . . Keep out from under these
feet, little bob-whites.... Keep the big wild hogs out of my path. Don't let none of those come
running my direction. I got a long way." Under her small black-freckled hand her cane, limber as
a buggy whip, would switch at the brush as if to rouse up any hiding things.
On she went. The woods were deep and still. The sun made the pine needles almost too
bright to look at, up where the wind rocked. The cones dropped as light as feathers. Down in the
hollow was the mourning dove—it was not too late for him.
The path ran up a hill. "Seem like there is chains about my feet, time I get this far," she said,
in the voice of argument old people keep to use with themselves. "Something always take a hold
of me on this hill— pleads I should stay."
After she got to the top she turned and gave a full, severe look behind her where she had
come. "Up through pines," she said at length. "Now down through oaks."
Her eyes opened their widest, and she started down gently. But before she got to the bottom
of the hill a bush caught her dress.
Her fingers were busy and intent, but her skirts were full and long, so that before she could
pull them free in one place they were caught in another. It was not possible to allow the dress to
tear. "I in the thorny bush," she said. "Thorns, you doing your appointed work. Never want to let
folks pass, no sir. Old eyes thought you was a pretty little green bush."
Finally, trembling all over, she stood free, and after a moment dared to stoop for her cane. "Sun
so high!" she cried, leaning back and looking, while the thick tears went over her eyes. "The time
getting all gone here."
At the foot of this hill was a place where a log was laid across the creek. "Now comes the trial,"
said Phoenix. Putting her right foot out, she mounted the log and shut her eyes. Lifting her skirt,
leveling her cane fiercely before her, like a festival figure in some parade, she began to march
across. Then she opened her eyes and she was safe on the other side.
"I wasn't as old as I thought," she said.
But she sat down to rest. She spread her skirts on the bank around her and folded her hands
over her knees. Up above her was a tree in a pearly cloud of mistletoe. She did not dare to close
her eyes, and when a little boy brought her a plate with a slice of marble-cake on it she spoke to
him. "That would be acceptable," she said. But when she went to take it there was just her own
hand in the air.
So she left that tree, and had to go through a barbed-wire fence. There she had to creep and
crawl, spreading her knees and stretching her fingers like a baby trying to climb the steps. But
she talked loudly to herself: she could not let her dress be torn now, so late in the day, and she
could not pay for having her arm or her leg sawed off if she got caught fast where she was.
At last she was safe through the fence and risen up out in the clearing. Big dead trees, like
black men with one arm, were standing in the purple stalks of the withered cotton field. There sat
a buzzard.
"Who you watching?" In the furrow she made her way along. "Glad this not the season for
bulls," she said, looking sideways, "and the good Lord made his snakes to curl up and sleep in
the winter. A pleasure I don't see no two-headed snake coming around that tree, where it come
once. It took a while to get by him, back in the summer."
She passed through the old cotton and went into a field of dead corn. It whispered and shook
and was taller than her head. "Through the maze now," she said, for there was no path.
Then there was something tall, black, and skinny there, moving before her. At first she took it for
a man. It could have been a man dancing in the field. But she stood still and listened, and it did
not make a sound. It was as silent as a ghost.
"Ghost," she said sharply, "who be you the ghost of? For I have heard of nary death close
by."
But there was no answer--only the ragged dancing in the wind. She shut her eyes, reached out
her hand, and touched a sleeve. She found a coat and inside that an emptiness, cold as ice.
"You scarecrow," she said. Her face lighted. "I ought to be shut up for good," she said with
laughter. "My senses is gone. I too old. I the oldest people I ever know. Dance, old scarecrow,"
she said, "while I dancing with you."
She kicked her foot over the furrow, and with mouth drawn down, shook her head once or
twice in a little strutting way. Some husks blew down and whirled in streamers about her skirts.
Then she went on, parting her way from side to side with the cane, through the whispering
field. At last she came to the end, to a wagon track where the silver grass blew between the red
ruts. The quail were walking around like pullets, seeming all dainty and unseen.
"Walk pretty," she said. "This the easy place. This the easy going." She followed the track,
swaying through the quiet bare fields, through the little strings of trees silver in their dead leaves,
past cabins silver from weather, with the doors and windows boarded shut, all like old women
under a spell sitting there. "I walking in their sleep," she said, nodding her head vigorously.
In a ravine she went where a spring was silently flowing through a hollow log. Old Phoenix
bent and drank. "Sweet-gum makes the water sweet," she said, and drank more. "Nobody know
who made this well, for it was here when I was born."
The track crossed a swampy part where the moss hung as white as lace from every
limb. "Sleep on, alligators, and blow your bubbles." Then the track went into the road.
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Deep, deep the road went down between the high green-colored banks. Overhead the liveoaks met, and it was as dark as a cave.
A black dog with a lolling tongue came up out of the weeds by the ditch. She was
meditating, and not ready, and when he came at her she only hit him a little with her cane. Over
she went in the ditch, like a little puff of milkweed.
Down there, her senses drifted away. A dream visited her, and she reached her hand up, but
nothing reached down and gave her a pull. So she lay there and presently went to talking. "Old
woman," she said to herself, "that black dog come up out of the weeds to stall you off, and now
there he sitting on his fine tail, smiling at you."
A white man finally came along and found her—a hunter, a young man, with his dog on a
chain.
"Well, Granny!" he laughed. "What are you doing there?" "Lying on my back like a June-bug
waiting to be fumed over, mister," she said, reaching up her hand.
He lifted her up, gave her a swing in the air, and set her down. "Anything broken, Granny?" "No
sir, them old dead weeds is springy enough," said Phoenix, when she had got her breath. "I thank
you for your trouble."
"Where do you live, Granny?" he asked, while the two dogs were growling at each other. "Away
back yonder, sir, behind the ridge. You can't even see it from here." "On your way home?" "No
sir, I going to town." "Why, that's too far! That's as far as I walk when I come out myself, and
I get something for my trouble." He patted the stuffed bag he carried, and there hung down a
little closed claw. It was one of the bob-whites, with its beak hooked bitterly to show it was
dead. "Now you go on home, Granny!"
"I bound to go to town, mister," said Phoenix. "The time come around." He gave another laugh,
filling the whole landscape. "I know you old colored people! Wouldn't miss going to town to see
Santa Claus!"
But something held old Phoenix very still. The deep lines in her face went into a fierce and
different radiation. Without warning, she had seen with her own eyes a flashing nickel fall out of
the man's pocket onto the ground.
"How old are you, Granny?" he was saying. "There is no telling, mister," she said, "no telling."
Then she gave a little cry and clapped her hands and said, "Git on away from here, dog! Look!
Look at that dog!" She laughed as if in admiration. "He ain't scared of nobody. He a big black
dog." She whispered, "Sic him!"
"Watch me get rid of that cur," said the man. "Sic him, Pete! Sic him!" Phoenix heard the dogs
fighting, and heard the man running and throwing sticks. She even heard a gunshot. But she was
slowly bending forward by that time, further and further forward, the lids stretched down over
her eyes, as if she were doing this in her sleep. Her chin was lowered almost to her knees. The
yellow palm of her hand came out from the fold of her apron. Her fingers slid down and along
the ground under the piece of money with the grace and care they would have in lifting an egg
from under a setting hen. Then she slowly straightened up, she stood erect, and the nickel was in
her apron pocket. A bird flew by. Her lips moved. "God watching me the whole time. I come to
stealing."
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The man came back, and his own dog panted about them. "Well, I scared him off that time,"
he said, and then he laughed and lifted his gun and pointed it at Phoenix.
She stood straight and faced him. "Doesn't the gun scare you?" he said, still pointing it. "No, sir,
I seen plenty go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done," she said, holding utterly
still.
He smiled, and shouldered the gun. "Well, Granny," he said, "you must be a hundred years
old, and scared of nothing. I'd give you a dime if I had any money with me. But you take my
advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to you."
"I bound to go on my way, mister," said Phoenix. She inclined her head in the red rag. Then
they went in different directions, but she could hear the gun shooting again and again over the
hill.
She walked on. The shadows hung from the oak trees to the road like curtains. Then she
smelled wood-smoke, and smelled the river, and she saw a steeple and the cabins on their steep
steps. Dozens of little black children whirled around her. There ahead was Natchez shining. Bells
were ringing. She walked on.
In the paved city it was Christmas time. There were red and green electric lights strung and
crisscrossed everywhere, and all turned on in the daytime. Old Phoenix would have been lost if
she had not distrusted her eyesight and depended on her feet to know where to take her.
She paused quietly on the sidewalk where people were passing by. A lady came along in the
crowd, carrying an armful of red-, green- and silver-wrapped presents; she gave off perfume like
the red roses in hot summer, and Phoenix stopped her.
"Please, missy, will you lace up my shoe?" She held up her foot. "What do you want,
Grandma?" "See my shoe," said Phoenix. "Do all right for out in the country, but wouldn't look
right to go in a big building."
"Stand still then, Grandma," said the lady. She put her packages down on the sidewalk
beside her and laced and tied both shoes tightly.
"Can't lace 'em with a cane," said Phoenix. "Thank you, missy. I doesn't mind asking a nice
lady to tie up my shoe, when I gets out on the street."
Moving slowly and from side to side, she went into the big building, and into a tower of
steps, where she walked up and around and around until her feet knew to stop.
She entered a door, and there she saw nailed up on the wall the document that had been
stamped with the gold seal and framed in the gold frame, which matched the dream that was
hung up in her head.
"Here I be," she said. There was a fixed and ceremonial stiffness over her body. "A charity case,
I suppose," said an attendant who sat at the desk before her. But Phoenix only looked above her
head. There was sweat on her face, the wrinkles in her skin shone like a bright net.
"Speak up, Grandma," the woman said. "What's your name? We must have your history, you
know. Have you been here before? What seems to be the trouble with you?"
Old Phoenix only gave a twitch to her face as if a fly were bothering her. "Are you deaf?" cried
the attendant. But then the nurse came in. "Oh, that's just old Aunt Phoenix," she said. "She
doesn't come for herself—she has a little grandson. She makes these trips just as regular as
clockwork. She lives away back off the Old
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Natchez Trace." She bent down. "Well, Aunt Phoenix, why don't you just take a seat? We won't
keep you standing after your long trip." She pointed.
The old woman sat down, bolt upright in the chair. "Now, how is the boy?" asked the nurse. Old
Phoenix did not speak. "I said, how is the boy?" But Phoenix only waited and stared straight
ahead, her face very solemn and withdrawn into rigidity.
"Is his throat any better?" asked the nurse. "Aunt Phoenix, don't you hear me? Is your
grandson's throat any better since the last time you came for the medicine?"
With her hands on her knees, the old woman waited, silent, erect and motionless, just as if
she were in armor.
"You mustn't take up our time this way, Aunt Phoenix," the nurse said. "Tell us quickly
about your grandson, and get it over. He isn't dead, is he?'
At last there came a flicker and then a flame of comprehension across her face, and she
spoke.
"My grandson. It was my memory had left me. There I sat and forgot why I made my long
trip."
"Forgot?" The nurse frowned. "After you came so far?" Then Phoenix was like an old woman
begging a dignified forgiveness for waking up frightened in the night. "I never did go to school,
I was too old at the Surrender," she said in a soft voice. "I'm an old woman without an education.
It was my memory fail me. My little grandson, he is just the same, and I forgot it in the coming."
"Throat never heals, does it?" said the nurse, speaking in a loud, sure voice to old Phoenix.
By now she had a card with something written on it, a little list. "Yes. Swallowed lye. When was
it?—January—two, three years ago?"
Phoenix spoke unasked now. "No, missy, he not dead, he just the same. Every little while
his throat begin to close up again, and he not able to swallow. He not get his breath. He not able
to help himself. So the time come around, and I go on another trip for the soothing medicine."
"All right. The doctor said as long as you came to get it, you could have it," said the
nurse. "But it's an obstinate case."
"My little grandson, he sit up there in the house all wrapped up, waiting by himself,"
Phoenix went on. "We is the only two left in the world. He suffer and it don't seem to put him
back at all. He got a sweet look. He going to last. He wear a little patch quilt and peep out
holding his mouth open like a little bird. I remembers so plain now. I not going to forget him
again, no, the whole enduring time. I could tell him from all the others in creation."
"All right." The nurse was trying to hush her now. She brought her a bottle of
medicine. "Charity," she said, making a check mark in a book.
Old Phoenix held the bottle close to her eyes, and then carefully put it into her pocket. "I thank
you," she said. "It's Christmas time, Grandma," said the attendant. "Could I give you a few
pennies out of my purse?"
"Five pennies is a nickel," said Phoenix stiffly. "Here's a nickel," said the attendant.
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Phoenix rose carefully and held out her hand. She received the nickel and then fished the
other nickel out of her pocket and laid it beside the new one. She stared at her palm closely, with
her head on one side.
Then she gave a tap with her cane on the floor. "This is what come to me to do," she said. "I
going to the store and buy my child a little windmill they sells, made out of paper. He going to
find it hard to believe there such a thing in the world. I'll march myself back where he waiting,
holding it straight up in this hand."
She lifted her free hand, gave a little nod, turned around, and walked out of the doctor's
office. Then her slow step began on the stairs, going down.
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Everything That Rises Must Converge
Flannery O’Connor
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Her doctor had told Julian's mother that she must lose twenty pounds on account of her blood
pressure, so on Wednesday nights Julian had to take her downtown on the bus for a reducing
class at the Y. The reducing class was de-signed for working girls over fifty, who weighed from
165 to 200 pounds. His mother was one of the slimmer ones, but she said ladies did not tell their
age or weight. She would not ride the buses by herself at night since they had been integrated,
and because the reducing class was one of her few pleasures, necessary for her health, and free,
she said Julian could at least put himself out to take her, considering all she did for him. Julian
did not like to consider all she did for him, but every Wednesday night he braced himself and
took her.
She was almost ready to go, standing before the hall mirror, putting on her hat, while he, his
hands behind him, ap-peared pinned to the door frame, waiting like Saint Sebastian for the
arrows to begin piercing him. The hat was new and had cost her seven dollars and a half. She
kept saying, “Maybe I shouldn't have paid that for it. No, I shouldn't have. I'll take it off and
return it tomorrow. I shouldn't have bought it.”
Julian raised his eyes to heaven. “Yes, you should have bought it,” he said. “Put it on and let's
go.” It was a hideous hat A purple velvet flap came down on one side of it and mood up on the
other; the rest of it was green and looked like a cushion with the stuffing out. He decided it was
less comical than jaunty and pathetic. Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed
him.
She lifted the hat one more time and set it down slowly on top of her head. Two wings of gray
hair protruded on either side of her florid face, but her eyes, sky-blue, were as innocent and
untouched by experience as they must have been when she was ten. Were it not that she was a
widow who had struggled fiercely to feed and clothe and put him through school and who was
supporting him still, “until he got on his feet,” she might have been a little girl that he had to take
to town. “It's all right, it's all right,” he said. “Let's go.” He opened door himself and started
down the walk to get her going. The sky was a dying violet and the houses stood out darkly
against it, bulbous liver-colored monstrosities of a uniform ugliness though no two were alike.
Since this had been a fashionable neighborhood forty years ago, his mother persisted in thinking
they did well to have an apartment in it. Each house had a narrow collar of dirt around it in
which sat, usually, a grubby child. Julian walked with his hands in his pockets, his head down
and thrust forward and his eyes glazed with the determination to make himself completely numb
during the time he would be sacrificed to her pleasure.
The door closed and he turned to find the dumpy figure, surmounted by the atrocious hat,
coming toward him. “Well,” she said, “you only live once and paying a little more for it, I at
least won't meet myself coming and going.”
“Some day I'll start making money,” Julian said gloomily- he knew he never would - “and you
can have one of those jokes whenever you take the fit.” But first they would move. He
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visualized a place where the nearest neighbors would be three miles away on either side.
“I think you're doing fine,” she said, drawing on her gloves. “You've only been out of school a
year. Rome wasn't built in a day.”
She was one of the few members of the Y reducing class who arrived in hat and gloves and
who had a son who had been to college. “It takes time,” she said, “and the world is in such a
mess. This hat looked better on me than any of the others, though when she brought it out I said,
‘Take that thing back. I wouldn't have it on my head,’ and she said, ‘Now wait till you see it on,’
and when she put it on me, I said, ‘We-ull,’ and she said, ‘If you ask me, that hat does something
for you and you do something for the hat, and besides,’ she said, ‘with that hat, you won't meet
yourself coming and going.’”
Julian thought he could have stood his lot better if she had been selfish, if she had been an old
hag who drank and screamed at him. He walked along, saturated in depression, as if in the midst
of his martyrdom he had lost his faith. Catching sight of his long, hopeless, irritated face, she
stopped suddenly with a grief-stricken look, and pulled back on his arm. “Wait on me,” she said.
“I'm going back to the house and take this thing off and tomorrow I'm going to return it. I was
out of my head. I can pay the gas bill with that seven-fifty.”
He caught her arm in a vicious grip. “You are not going to take it back,” he said. “I like it.”
“Well,” she said, “I don't think I ought. . .”“Shut up and enjoy it,” he muttered, more
depressed than ever.
“With the world in the mess it's in,” she said, “it's a wonder we can enjoy anything. I tell you,
the bottom rail is on the top.”
Julian sighed.
“Of course,” she said, “if you know who you are, you can go anywhere.” She said this every
time he took her to the reducing class. “Most of them in it are not our kind of people,” she said,
“but I can be gracious to anybody. I know who I am.”
“They don't give a damn for your graciousness,” Julian said savagely. “Knowing who you are
is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you
are.”
She stopped and allowed her eyes to flash at him. “I most certainly do know who I am,” she
said, “and if you don't know who you are, I'm ashamed of you.”
“Oh hell,” Julian said.
“Your great-grandfather was a former governor of this state,” she said. “Your grandfather was
a prosperous land-owner. Your grandmother was a Godhigh.”
“Will you look around you,” he said tensely, “and see where you are now?” and he swept his
arm jerkily out to indicate the neighborhood, which the growing darkness at least made less
dingy.
“You remain what you are,” she said. “Your great-grand-father had a plantation and two
hundred slaves.”
“There are no more slaves,” he said irritably.
“They were better off when they were,” she said. He groaned to see that she was off on that
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topic. She rolled onto it every few days like a train on an open track. He knew every stop, every
junction, every swamp along the way, and knew the exact point at which her conclusion would
roil majestically into the station: “It's ridiculous. It's simply not realistic. They should rise, yes,
but on their own side of the fence.”
“Let's skip it,” Julian said.
“The ones I feel sorry for,” she said, “are the ones that are half white. They're tragic.”
“Will you skip it?”
“Suppose we were half white. We would certainly have mixed feelings.”
“I have mixed feelings now,” he groaned.
“Well let's talk about something pleasant,” she said. “I remember going to Grandpa's when I
was a little girl. Then the house had double stairways that went up to what was really the second
floor - all the cooking was done on the first. I used to like to stay down in the kitchen on account
of the way the walls smelled. I would sit with my nose pressed against the plaster and take deep
breaths. Actually the place belonged to the Godhighs but your grandfather Chestny paid the
mortgage and saved it for them. They were in reduced circumstances,” she said, “but reduced or
not, they never forgot who they were.”
“Doubtless that decayed mansion reminded them,” Julian muttered. He never spoke of it
without contempt or thought of it without longing. He had seen it once when he was a child
before it had been sold. The double stairways had rotted and been torn down. Negroes were
living in it. But it remained in his mind as his mother had known it. It appeared in his dreams
regularly. He would stand on the wide porch, listening to the rustle of oak leaves, then wander
through the high-ceilinged hall into the parlor that opened onto it and gaze at the worn rugs and
faded draperies. It occurred to him that it was he, not she, who could have appreciated it. He
preferred its threadbare elegance to anything he could name and it was because of it that all the
neighborhoods they had lived in had been a torment to him - whereas she had hardly known the
difference. She called her insensitivity “being adjustable.”
“And I remember the old darky who was my nurse, Caroline. There was no better person in
the world. I've always had a great respect for my colored friends,” she said. “I’d do anything in
the world for them and they'd. . .”
“Will you for God's sake get off that subject?” Julian said. When he got on a bus by himself,
he made it a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother's sins.
“You're mighty touchy tonight,” she said. “Do you feel all right?”
“Yes I feel all right” he said. “Now lay off.”
She pursed her lips. “Well, you certainly are in a vile humor,” she observed “I just won't speak
to you at all.”
They had reached the bus stop. There was no bus in sight and Julian, his hands still jammed in
his pockets and his head thrust forward, scowled down the empty street. The frustration of
having to wait on the bus as well as ride on it began to creep up his neck like a hot hand. The
presence of his mother was borne in upon him as she gave a pained sigh. He looked at her
bleakly. She was holding herself very erect under the preposterous hat wearing it like a banner of
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her imaginary dignity. There was in him an evil urge to break her spirit. He suddenly unloosened
his tie and pulled it off and put it in his pocket
She stiffened. “Why must you look like that when you take me to town?” she said. “Why must
you deliberately embarrass me?”
“If you'll never learn where you arc,” he said, “you can at least learn where I am.”
“You look like a thug,” she said.
“Then I must be one” he murmured.
“I'll just go home” she said. “I will not bother you. If you can’t do a little thing’ like that for
me . . .”
Rolling his eyes upward, he put his tie back on. “Restored to my class,” he muttered. He thrust
his face toward her and hissed, “True culture is in the mind, the mind,” he said, and tapped his
head, “the mind.”
“It's in the heart,” she said, “and in how you do things and how you do things is because of
who you are.”
“Nobody in the damn bus cares who you are.”
“I care who I am” she said icily.
The lighted bus appeared on top of the next hill and as it approached, they moved out into the
street to meet it. He put his hand under her elbow and hoisted her up On the creaking step. She
entered with a little smile, as if she were going into a drawing room where everyone had been
waiting for her. While he put in the tokens, she sat down on one of the broad front seats for three
which faced the aisle. A thin woman with protruding teeth and long yellow hair was sitting on
the end of it. His mother moved up beside her and left room for Julian beside herself. He sat
down and looked at the floor across the aisle where a pair of thin feet in red and white canvas
sandals were planted.
His mother immediately began a general conversation meant to attract anyone who felt like
talking. “Can it get any hotter?” she said and removed from her purse a folding fan, black with a
Japanese scene on it, which she began to flutter before her.
“I reckon it might could,” the woman with the protruding teeth said, “but I know for a fact my
apartment couldn’t get no hotter.”
“It must get the afternoon sun, " his mother said. She sat forward and looked up and down the
bus. It was half filled. Everybody was white. “I see we have the bus to ourselves,” she said.
Julian cringed.
“For a change,” said the woman across the aisle, the owner of the red and white canvas
sandals. “I come on one the other day and they were thick as fleas - up front and all through.”
“The world is in a mess everywhere,” his mother said. “I don't know how we’ve let it get in
this fix.”
“What gets my goat is all those boys from good families stealing automobile tires,” the woman
with the protruding teeth said. “I told my boy, I said you may not be rich but you been raised
right and if I ever catch you in any such mess, they can send you on to the reformatory. Be
exactly where you belong.”
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“Training tells,” his mother said. “Is your boy in high school?”
“Ninth grade,” the woman said.
“My son just finished college last year. He wants to write but he’s selling typewriters until he
gets started,” his mother said.
The woman leaned forward and peered at Julian. He threw her such a malevolent look that she
subsided against the seat. On the floor across the aisle there was an abandoned newspaper. He
got up and got it and opened it out in front of him. His mother discreetly continued the
conversation in a lower tone but the woman across the aisle said in a loud voice, “Well that’s
nice. Selling typewriters is close to writing. He can go right from one to the other.”
“I tell him,” his mother said, “that Rome wasn't built in a day.”
Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where
he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself
when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out
and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place
where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it
he could see her with absolute clarity.
The old lady was clever enough and he thought that if she had started from any of the right
premises, more might have been expected of her. She lived according to the laws of her own
fantasy world outside of which he had never seen her set foot. The law of it was to sacrifice
herself for him after she had first created the necessity to do so by making a mess of things. If he
had permitted her sacrifices, it was only because her lack of foresight had made them necessary.
All of her life had been a struggle to act like a Chestny and to give him everything she thought a
Chestny ought to have without the goods a Chestny ought to have; but since, said she, it was fun
to struggle, why complain? And when you had won, as she had won, what fun to look back on
the hard times! He could not forgive her that she had enjoyed the struggle and that she thought
she had won.
What she meant when she said she had won was that she had brought him up successfully and
had sent him to college and that he had turned out so well-good looking (her teeth had gone
unfilled so that his could be straightened), intelligent (he realized he was too intelligent to be a
success), and with a future ahead of him (there was of course no future ahead of him). She
excused his gloominess on the grounds that he was still growing up and his radical ideas on his
lack of practical experience. She said he didn’t yet know a thing about “life,” that he hadn’t even
entered the real world - when already he was as disenchanted with it as a man of fifty.
The further irony of all this was that in spite of her, he had turned out so well. In spite of going
to only a third-rate college, he had, on his own initiative, come out with a first-rate education; in
spite of growing up dominated by a small mind, he had ended up with a large one; in spite of all
her foolish views, he was free of prejudice and unafraid to face facts. Most miraculous of all,
instead of being blinded by love for her as she was for him, he had cut himself emotionally free
of her and could see her with complete objectivity. He was not dominated by his mother.
The bus stopped with a sudden jerk and shook him from his meditation. A woman from the
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back lurched forward with little steps and barely escaped falling in his newspaper as she righted
herself. She got off and a large Negro got on. Julian kept his paper lowered to watch. It gave him
a certain satisfaction to see injustice in daily operation. It confirmed his view that with a few
exceptions there was no one worth knowing within a radius of three hundred miles. The Negro
was well dressed and carried a briefcase. He looked around and then sat down on the other end
of the seat where the woman with the red and white canvas sandals was sitting. He immediately
unfolded a newspaper and obscured himself behind it. Julianís mother's elbow at once prodded
insistently into his ribs. “Now you see why I won't ride on these buses by myself,” she
whispered.
The woman with the red and white canvas sandals had risen at the same time the Negro sat
down and had gone farther back in the bus and taken the seat of the woman who had got off His
mother leaned forward and cast her an approving look.
Julian rose, crossed the aisle, and sat down in the place of the woman with the canvas sandals.
From this position, he looked serenely across at his mother. Her face had turned an angry red. He
stared at her, making his eyes the eyes of a stranger. He felt his tension suddenly lift as if he had
openly declared war on her.
He would have liked to get in conversation with the Negro and to talk with him about art or
politics or any subject that would be above the comprehension of those around them, but the man
remained entrenched behind his paper. He was either ignoring the change of seating or had never
noticed it. There was no way for Julian to convey his sympathy.
His mother kept her eyes fixed reproachfully on his face. The woman with the protruding teeth
was looking at him avidly as if he were a type of monster new to her.
“Do you have a light?” he asked the Negro.
Without looking away from his paper, the man reached in his pocket and handed him a packet
of matches.
“Thanks,” Julian said. For a moment he held the matches foolishly. A NO SMOKING sign
looked down upon him from over the door. This alone would not have deterred him; he had no
cigarettes. He had quit smoking some months before because he could not afford it. “Sorry,” he
muttered and handed back the matches. The Negro lowered the paper and gave him an annoyed
look. He took the matches and raised the paper again.
His mother continued to gaze at him but she did not take advantage of his momentary
discomfort. Her eyes retained their battered look. Her face seemed to be unnaturally red, as if her
blood pressure had risen. Julian allowed no glimmer of sympathy to show on his face. Having
got the advantage, he wanted desperately to keep it and carry it through. He would have liked to
teach her a lesson that would last her a while, but there seemed no way to continue the point. The
Negro refused to come out from behind his paper.
Julian folded his arms and looked stolidly before him, facing her but as if he did not see her, as
if he had ceased to recognize her existence. He visualized a scene in which, the bus having
reached their stop, he would remain in his seat and when she said, “Aren’t you going to get off?”
he would look at her as at a stranger who had rashly addressed him. The corner they got off on
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was usually deserted, but it was well lighted and it would not hurt her to walk by herself the four
blocks to the Y. He decided to wait until the time came and then decide whether or not he would
let her get off by herself He would have to be at the Y at ten to bring her back, but he could leave
her wondering if he was going to show up. There was no reason for her to think she could always
depend on him.
He retired again into the high-ceilinged room sparsely set-tled with large pieces of antique
furniture. His soul expanded momentarily but then he became aware of his mother across from
him and the vision shriveled. He studied her coldly. Her feet in little pumps dangled like a
child’s and did not quite reach the floor. She was training on him an exaggerated look of
reproach. He felt completely detached from her. At that moment he could with pleasure have
slapped her as he would have slapped a particularly obnoxious child in his charge.
He began to imagine various unlikely ways by which he could teach her a lesson. He might
make friends with some distinguished Negro professor or lawyer and bring him home to spend
the evening. He would be entirely justified but her blood pressure would rise to 300. He could
not push her to the extent of making her have a stroke, and moreover, he had never been
successful at making any Negro friends. He had tried to strike up an acquaintance on the bus
with some of the better types, with ones that looked like professors or min-isters or lawyers. One
morning he had sat down next to a distinguished-looking dark brown man who had answered his
questions with a sonorous solemnity but who had turned out to be an undertaker. Another day he
had sat down beside a cigar-smoking Negro with a diamond ring on his finger, but after a few
stilted pleasantries, the Negro had rung the buzzer and risen, slipping two lottery tickets into
Julian's hand as he climbed over him to leave.
He imagined his mother lying desperately ill and his being able to secure only a Negro doctor
for her. He toyed with that idea for a few minutes and then dropped it for a momen-tary vision of
himself participating as a sympathizer in a sit-in demonstration. This was possible but he did not
linger with it. Instead, he approached the ultimate horror. He brought home a beautiful
suspiciously Negroid woman. Prepare your-self, he said. There is nothing you can do about it.
This is the woman I've chosen. She’s intelligent, dignified, even good, and she’s suffered and she
hasn’t thought it fun. Now persecute us, go ahead and persecute us. Drive her out of here, but
remember, you’re driving me too. His eyes were narrowed and through the indignation he had
generated, he saw his mother across the aisle, purple-faced, shrunken to the dwarf-like
proportions of her moral nature, sitting like a mummy beneath the ridiculous banner of her hat.
He was tilted out of his fantasy again as the bus stopped. The door opened with a sucking hiss
and out of the dark a large, gaily dressed, sullen-looking colored woman got on with a little boy.
The child, who might have been four, had on a short plaid suit and a Tyrolean hat with a blue
feather in it. Julian hoped that he would sit down beside him and that the woman would push in
beside his mother. He could think of no better arrangement.
As she waited for her tokens, the woman was surveying the seating possibilities - he hoped
with the idea of sitting where she was least wanted. There was something familiar-looking about
her but Julian could not place what it was. She was a giant of a woman. Her face was set not only
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to meet opposition but to seek it out. The downward tilt of her large lower lip was like a warning
sign: DON’T TAMPER WITH ME. Her bulging figure was encased in a green crepe dress and
her feet overflowed in red shoes. She had on a hideous hat. A purple velvet flap came down on
one side of it and stood up on the other; the rest of it was green and looked like a cushion with
the stuffing out. She carried a mammoth red pocketbook that bulged throughout as if it were
stuffed with rocks.
To Julian's disappointment, the little boy climbed up on the empty seat beside his mother. His
mother lumped all children, black and white, into the common category, “cute,” and she thought
little Negroes were on the whole cuter than little white children. She smiled at the little boy as he
climbed on the seat.
Meanwhile the woman was bearing down upon the empty seat beside Julian. To his
annoyance, she squeezed herself into it. He saw his mother's face change as the woman settled
herself next to him and he realized with satisfaction that this was more objectionable to her than
it was to him. Her face seemed almost gray and there was a look of dull recognition in her eyes,
as if suddenly she had sickened at some awful confrontation. Julian saw that it was because she
and the woman had, in a sense, swapped sons. Though his mother would not realize the symbolic
significance of this, she would feel it. His amusement showed plainly on his face.
The woman next to him muttered something unintelligible to herself He was conscious of a
kind of bristling next to him, a muted growling like that of an angry cat. He could not see
anything but the red pocketbook upright on the bulg-ing green thighs. He visualized the woman
as she had stood waiting for her tokens-the ponderous figure, rising from the red shoes upward
over the solid hips, the mammoth bosom, the haughty face, to the green and purple hat.
His eyes widened.
The vision of the two hats, identical, broke upon him with the radiance of a brilliant sunrise.
His face was suddenly lit with joy. He could not believe that Fate had thrust upon his mother
such a lesson. He gave a loud chuckle so that she would look at him and see that he saw. She
turned her eyes on him slowly. The blue in them seemed to have turned a bruised purple. For a
moment he had an uncomfortable sense of her innocence, but it lasted only a second before
principle rescued him. Justice entitled him to laugh. His grin hardened until it said to her as
plainly as if he were saying aloud: Your punishment exactly fits your pettiness. This should teach
you a permanent lesson.
Her eyes shifted to the woman. She seemed unable to bear looking at him and to find the
woman preferable. He became conscious again of the bristling presence at his side. The woman
was rumbling like a volcano about to become active. His mother's mouth began to twitch slightly
at one corner. With a sinking heart, he saw incipient signs of recovery on her face and realized
that this was going to strike her suddenly as funny and was going to be no lesson at all. She kept
her eyes on the woman and an amused smile came over her face as if the woman were a monkey
that had stolen her hat. The little Negro was looking up at her with large fascinated eyes. He had
been trying to attract her attention for some time.
“Carver!” the woman said suddenly. “Come heah!”
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When he saw that the spotlight was on him at last, Carver drew his feet up and turned himself
toward Julianís mother and giggled.
“Carver!” the woman said. “You heah me? Come heah!”
Carver slid down from the seat but remained squatting with his back against the base of it, his
head turned slyly around toward Julian's mother, who was smiling at him. The woman reached a
hand across the aisle and snatched him to her. He righted himself and hung backwards on her
knees, grinning at Julian's mother. “Isn’t he cute?” Julian's mother said to the woman with the
protruding teeth.
“I reckon he is,” the woman said without conviction.
The Negress yanked him upright but he eased out of her grip and shot across the aisle and
scrambled, giggling wildly, onto the seat beside his love.
“I think he likes me,” Julian's mother said, and smiled at the woman. It was the smile she used
when she was being particularly gracious to an inferior. Julian saw everything lost. The lesson
had rolled off her like rain on a roof.
The woman stood up and yanked the little boy off the seat as if she were snatching him from
contagion. Julian could feel the rage in her at having no weapon like his mother's smile. She gave
the child a sharp slap across his leg. He howled once and then thrust his head into her stomach
and kicked his fret against her shins. “Be-have,” she said vehemently.
The bus stopped and the Negro who had been reading the newspaper got off. The woman
moved over and set the little boy down with a thump between herself and Julian. She held him
firmly by the knee. In a moment he put his hands in front of his face and peeped at Julian's
mother through his fingers.
“I see yoooooooo !” she said and put her hand in front of her face and peeped at him.
The woman slapped his hand down. “Quit yo’ foolishness,” she said, “before I knock the
living Jesus out of you!”
Julian was thankful that the next stop was theirs. He reached up and pulled the cord. The
woman reached up and pulled it at the same time. Oh my God, he thought. He had the terrible
intuition that when they got off the bus together, his mother would open her purse and give the
little boy a nickel. The gesture would be as natural to her as breathing. The bus stopped and the
woman got up and lunged to the front, dragging the child, who wished to stay on, after her. in
and his mother got up and followed. As they neared e door, Julian tried to relieve her of her
pocketbook.
“No,” she murmured, “I want to give the little boy a nickel.”
“No!” Julian hissed. “No!”
She smiled down at the child and opened her bag. The bus door opened and the woman picked
him up by the arm and descended with him, hanging at her hip. Once in the street she set him
down and shook him.
Julian's mother had to close her purse while she got down the bus step but as soon as her feet
were on the ground, she opened it again and began to rummage inside. “I can’t find but a penny,”
she whispered, “but it looks like a new one.”
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“Don’t do it!” Julian said fiercely between his teeth. There was a streetlight on the corner and
she hurried to get under it so that she could better see into her pocketbook. The woman was
heading off rapidly down the street with the child still hanging backward on her hand.
“Oh little boy!” Julian's mother called and took a few quick steps and caught up with them just
beyond the lamppost. “Here’s a bright new penny for you,” and she held out the coin, which
shone bronze in the dim light.
The huge woman turned and for a moment stood, her shoulders lifted and her face frozen with
frustrated rage, and stared at Julianís mother. Then all at once she seemed to explode like a piece
of machinery that had been given one ounce of pressure too much. Julian saw the black fist
swing out with the red pocketbook. He shut his eyes and cringed as he heard the woman shout,
“He don't take nobody’s pennies!” When he opened his eyes, the woman was disappearing down
the street with the little boy staring wide-eyed over her shoulder. Julianís mother was sitting on
the sidewalk.
“I told you not to do that,” Julian said angrily. “I told you not to do that!”
He stood over her for a minute, gritting his teeth. Her legs were stretched out in front of her
and her hat was on her lap. He squatted down and looked her in the face. It was totally
expressionless. “You got exactly what you deserved,” he said. “Now get up.”
He picked up her pocketbook and put what had fallen out back in it. He picked the hat up off
her lap. The penny caught his eye on the sidewalk and he picked that up and let it drop before her
eyes into the purse. Then he stood up and leaned over and held his hands out to pull her up. She
remained immobile. He sighed. Rising above them on either side were black apartment
buildings, marked with irregular rectangles of light. At the end of the block a man came out of a
door and walked off in the opposite direction. “All right,” he said, “suppose somebody happens
by and wants to know why you’re sitting on the sidewalk?”
She took the hand and, breathing hard, pulled heavily up on it and then stood for a moment,
swaying slightly as if the spots of light in the darkness were circling around her. Her eyes,
shadowed and confused, finally settled on his face. He did not try to conceal his irritation. “I
hope this teaches you a lesson,” he said. She leaned forward and her eyes raked his face. She
seemed trying to determine his identity. Then, as if she found nothing familiar about him, she
started off with a headlong movement in the wrong direction.
“Aren’t you going on to the Y?” he asked.
“Home,” she muttered.
“Well, are we walking?”
For answer she kept going. Julian followed along, his hands behind him. He saw no reason to
let the lesson she had had go without backing it up with an explanation of its meaning. She might
as well be made to understand what had happened to her. “Don’t think that was just an uppity
Negro woman,” he said. “That was the whole colored race which will no longer take your
condescending pennies. That was your black double. She can wear the same hat as you, and to be
sure,” he added gratuitously (because he thought it was funny), “it looked better on her than it
did on you. What all this means,” he said, “is that the old world is gone. The old manners are
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obsolete and your graciousness is not worth a damn.” He thought bitterly of the house that had
been lost for him. “You aren’t who you think you are,” he said.
She continued to plow ahead, paying no attention to him. Her hair had come undone on one
side. She dropped her pocketbook and took no notice. He stooped and picked it up and handed it
to her but she did not take it.
”You needn’t act as if the world had come to an end,” he aid, “because it hasn’t. From now on
you’ve got to live in a new world and face a few realities for a change. Buck up,” he said, “it
won't kill you.”
She was breathing fast.
“Let's wait on the bus,” he said.
“Home,” she said thickly.
“I hate to see you behave like this,” he said. “Just like a child. I should be able to expect more
of you.” He decided to stop where he was and make her stop and wait for a bus. “I'm not going
any farther,” he said, stopping. “We’re going on the bus.”
She continued to go on as if she had not heard him. He took a few steps and caught her arm
and stopped her. He looked into her face and caught his breath. He was looking into a face he
had never seen before. “Tell Grandpa to come get me,” she said.
He stared, stricken.
“Tell Caroline to come get me,” she said.
Stunned, he let her go and she lurched forward again, walking as if one leg were shorter than
the other. A tide of darkness seemed to be sweeping her from him. “Mother!” he cried. “Darling,
sweetheart, wait!” Crumpling, she fell to the pavement. He dashed forward and fell at her side,
crying, “Mamma, Mamma!” He turned her over. Her face was fiercely distorted. One eye, large
and staring, moved slightly to the left as if it had become unmoored. The other remained fixed on
him, raked his face again, found nothing and closed.
“Wait here, wait here!” he cried and jumped up and began to run for help toward a cluster of
lights he saw in the distance ahead of him. “Help, help!” he shouted, but his voice was thin,
scarcely a thread of sound. The lights drifted farther away the faster he ran and his feet moved
numbly as if they carried him nowhere. The tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her,
postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow.
Marigolds
By Eugenia W. Collier
somewhat unaware of the world outside our
community. Nowadays we would be called culturally
deprived and people would write books and hold
conferences about us. In those days everybody we
knew was just as hungry and ill clad as we were.
Poverty was the cage in which we all were trapped,
and our hatred of it was still the vague, undirected
restlessness of the zoo-bred flamingo who knows that
nature created him to fly free.
When I think of the hometown of my youth, all
that I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly
dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets into
the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat
and between the toes of bare brown feet. I don’t know
why I should remember only the dust. Surely there
must have been lush green lawns and paved streets
under leafy shade trees somewhere in town; but
memory is an abstract painting—it does not present
things as they are, but rather as they feel. And so,
when I think of that time and that place, I remember
only the dry September of the dirt roads and grassless
yards of the shantytown where I lived. And one other
thing I remember, another incongruency of
memory—a brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the
dust—Miss Lottie’s marigolds.
incongruency: inconsistency; lack of agreement or
harmony
multicolored skein: The writer is comparing her many
feelings to a skein, or long coiled piece of many
colored yarn.
amorphous: vague, shapeless.
Whenever the memory of those marigolds
flashes across my mind, a strange nostalgia comes
with it and remains long after the picture has faded. I
feel again the chaotic emotions of adolescence,
illusive as smoke, yet as real as the potted geranium
before me now. Joy and rage and wild animal
gladness and shame become tangled together in the
multicolored skein of fourteen-going-on-fifteen as I
recall that devastating moment when I was suddenly
more woman than child, years ago in Miss Lottie’s
yard. I think of those marigolds at the strangest times; I
remember them vividly now as I desperately pass
away the time.
chary: not generous.
As I think of those days I feel most poignantly
the tag end of summer, the bright, dry times when we
began to have a sense of shortening days and the
imminence of the cold.
By the time I was fourteen, my brother Joey
and I were the only children left at our house, the older
ones having left home for early marriage or the lure of
the city, and the two babies having been sent to
relatives who might care for them better than we. Joey
was three years younger than I, and a boy, and
therefore vastly inferior. Each morning our mother and
father trudged wearily down the dirt road and around
the bend, she to her domestic job, he to his daily
unsuccessful quest for work. After our few chores
around the tumbledown shanty, Joey and I were free
to run wild in the sun with other children similarly
situated.
I suppose that futile waiting was the sorrowful
background music of our impoverished little
community when I was young. The Depression that
gripped the nation was no new thing to us, for the
black workers of rural Maryland had always been
depressed. I don’t know what it was that we were
waiting for; certainly not for the prosperity that was
“just around the corner,” for those were white folks’
words, which we never believed. Nor did we wait for
hard work and thrift to pay off in shining success, as
the American Dream promised, for we knew better
than that, too. Perhaps we waited for a miracle,
amorphous in concept but necessary if one were to
have the grit to rise before dawn each day and labor in
the white man’s vineyard until after dark, or to wander
about in the September dust offering one’s sweat in
return for some meager share of bread. But God was
chary with miracles in those days, and so we
waited—and waited.
For the most part, those days are ill-defined in
my memory, running together and combining like a
fresh watercolor painting left out in the rain. I
remember squatting in the road drawing a picture in
the dust, a picture which Joey gleefully erased with
one sweep of his dirty foot. I remember fishing for
minnows in a muddy creek and watching sadly as they
eluded my cupped hands, while Joey laughed
uproariously. And I remember, that year, a strange
restlessness of body and of spirit, a feeling that
something old and familiar was ending, and something
unknown and therefore terrifying was beginning.
We children, of course, were only vaguely
aware of the extent of our poverty. Having no radios,
few newspapers, and no magazines, we were
-1-
One day returns to me with special clarity for
some reason, perhaps because it was the beginning of
the experience that in some inexplicable way marked
the end of innocence. I was loafing under the great
oak tree in our yard, deep in some reverie which I
have now forgotten, except that it involved some
secret, secret thoughts of one of the Harris boys
across the yard. Joey and a bunch of kids were bored
now with the old tire suspended from an oak limb,
which had kept them entertained for a while.
siding from white to a sullen gray. The boards
themselves seemed to remain upright not from being
nailed together but rather from leaning together, like a
house that a child might have constructed from cards.
A brisk wind might have blown it down, and the fact
that it was still standing implied a kind of enchantment
that was stronger than the elements. There it stood
and as far as I know is standing yet—a gray, rotting
thing with no porch, no shutters, no steps, set on a
cramped lot with no grass, not even any weeds—a
monument to decay.
“Hey, Lizabeth,” Joey yelled. He never talked
when he could yell. “Hey, Lizabeth, let’s go
somewhere.”
In front of the house in a squeaky rocking chair
sat Miss Lottie’s son, John Burke, completing the
impression of decay. John Burke was what was known
as queer-headed. Black and ageless, he sat rocking
day in and day out in a mindless stupor, lulled by the
monotonous squeak-squawk of the chair. A battered
hat atop his shaggy head shaded him from the sun.
Usually John Burke was totally unaware of everything
outside his quiet dream world. But if you disturbed him,
if you intruded upon his fantasies, he would become
enraged, strike out at you, and curse at you in some
strange enchanted language which only he could
understand. We children made a game of thinking of
ways to disturb John Burke and then to elude his
violent retribution.
I came reluctantly from my private world.
“Where you want to go? What you want to do?”
The truth was that we were becoming tired of
the formlessness of our summer days. The idleness
whose prospect had seemed so beautiful during the
busy days of spring now had degenerated to an almost
desperate effort to fill up the empty midday hours.
“Let’s go see can we find some locusts on the
hill,” someone suggested.
Joey was scornful. “Ain’t no more locusts there.
Y’all got ‘em all while they was still green.”
But our real fun and our real fear lay in Miss
Lottie herself. Miss Lottie seemed to be at least a
hundred years old. Her big frame still held traces of the
tall, powerful woman she must have been in youth,
although it was now bent and drawn. Her smooth skin
was a dark reddish brown, and her face had Indian-like
features and the stern stoicism that one associates
with Indian faces. Miss Lottie didn’t like intruders
either, especially children. She never left her yard, and
nobody ever visited her. We never knew how she
managed those necessities which depend on human
interaction—how she ate, for example, or even
whether she ate. When we were tiny children, we
thought Miss Lottie was a witch and we made up tales
that we half believed ourselves about her exploits. We
were far too sophisticated now, of course, to believe
the witch nonsense. But old fears have a way of
clinging like cobwebs, and so when we sighted the
tumbledown shack, we had to stop to reinforce our
nerves.
The argument that followed was brief and not
really worth the effort. Hunting locust trees wasn’t fun
anymore by now.
“Tell you what,” said Joey finally, his eyes
sparkling. “Let’s us go over to Miss Lottie’s.”
Clarity: n.: clearness.
Inexplicable: not explainable or understandable.
The idea caught on at once, for annoying Miss
Lottie was always fun. I was still child enough to
scamper along with the group over rickety fences and
through bushes that tore our already raggedy clothes,
back to where Miss Lottie lived. I think now that we
must have made a tragicomic spectacle, five or six
kids of different ages, each of us clad in only one
garment—the girls in faded dresses that were too long
or too short, the boys in patchy pants, their sweaty
brown chests gleaming in the hot sun. A little cloud of
dust followed our thin legs and bare feet as we
tramped over the barren land.
“Look, there she is,” I whispered, forgetting that
Miss Lottie could not possibly have heard me from that
distance. “She’s fooling with them crazy flowers.”
“Yeh, look at ‘er.”
ostensibly: seemingly; apparently.
When Miss Lottie’s house came into view we
stopped, ostensibly to plan our strategy, but actually
to reinforce our courage. Miss Lottie’s house was the
most ramshackle of all our ramshackle homes. The
sun and rain had long since faded its rickety frame
retribution: n.: revenge.
stoicism: calm indifference to pleasure or pain.
-2-
Suddenly zing—an expertly aimed stone cut the head
off one of the blossoms.
Miss Lottie’s marigolds were perhaps the
strangest part of the picture. Certainly they did not fit in
with the crumbling decay of the rest of her yard.
Beyond the dusty brown yard, in front of the sorry gray
house, rose suddenly and shockingly a dazzling strip
of bright blossoms, clumped together in enormous
mounds, warm and passionate and sun-golden. The
old black witch-woman worked on them all summer,
every summer, down on her creaky knees, weeding
and cultivating and arranging, while the house
crumbled and John Burke rocked. For some perverse
reason, we children hated those marigolds. They
interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place; they
were too beautiful; they said too much that we could
not understand; they did not make sense. There was
something in the vigor with which the old woman
destroyed the weeds that intimidated us. It should
have been a comical sight—the old woman with the
man’s hat on her cropped white head, leaning over the
bright mounds, her big backside in the air—but it
wasn’t comical, it was something we could not name.
We had to annoy her by whizzing a pebble into her
flowers or by yelling a dirty word, then dancing away
from her rage, reveling in our youth and mocking her
age. Actually, I think it was the flowers we wanted to
destroy, but nobody had the nerve to try it, not even
Joey, who was usually fool enough to try anything.
“Who out there?” Miss Lottie’s backside came
down and her head came up as her sharp eyes
searched the bushes. “You better git!”
We had crouched down out of sight in the
bushes, where we stifled the giggles that insisted on
coming. Miss Lottie gazed warily across the road for a
moment, then cautiously returned to her weeding.
Zing—Joey sent a pebble into the blooms, and
another marigold was beheaded.
intimidated: v.: frightened.
Miss Lottie was enraged now. She began
struggling to her feet, leaning on a rickety cane and
shouting. “Y’all git! Go on home!” Then the rest of the
kids let loose with their pebbles, storming the flowers
and laughing wildly and senselessly at Miss Lottie’s
impotent rage. She shook her stick at us and started
shakily toward the road crying, “Git ‘long! John Burke!
John Burke, come help!”
Then I lost my head entirely, mad with the
power of inciting such rage, and ran out of the bushes
in the storm of pebbles, straight toward Miss Lottie,
chanting madly, “Old witch, fell in a ditch, picked up a
penny and thought she was rich!” The children
screamed with delight, dropped their pebbles, and
joined the crazy dance, swarming around Miss Lottie
like bees and chanting, “Old lady witch!” while she
screamed curses at us. The madness lasted only a
moment, for John Burke, startled at last, lurched out of
his chair, and we dashed for the bushes just as Miss
Lottie’s cane went whizzing at my head.
“Y’all git some stones,” commanded Joey now
and was met with instant giggling obedience as
everyone except me began to gather pebbles from the
dusty ground. “Come on, Lizabeth.”
I just stood there peering through the bushes,
torn between wanting to join the fun and feeling that it
was all a bit silly.
“You scared, Lizabeth?”
I cursed and spat on the ground—my favorite gesture
of phony bravado. “Y’all children get the stones, I’ll
show you how to use ‘em.”
I did not join the merriment when the kids
gathered again under the oak in our bare yard.
Suddenly I was ashamed, and I did not like being
ashamed. The child in me sulked and said it was all in
fun, but the woman in me flinched at the thought of the
malicious attack that I had led. The mood lasted all
afternoon. When we ate the beans and rice that was
supper that night, I did not notice my father’s silence,
for he was always silent these days, nor did I notice
my mother’s absence, for she always worked until well
into evening. Joey and I had a particularly bitter
argument after supper; his exuberance got on my
nerves. Finally I stretched out upon the pallet in the
room we shared and fell into a fitful doze.
I said before that we children were not
consciously aware of how thick were the bars of our
cage. I wonder now, though, whether we were not
more aware of it than I thought. Perhaps we had some
dim notion of what we were, and how little chance we
had of being anything else. Otherwise, why would we
have been so preoccupied with destruction? Anyway,
the pebbles were collected quickly, and everybody
looked at me to begin the fun.
“Come on, y’all.”
When I awoke, somewhere in the middle of the
night, my mother had returned, and I vaguely listened
to the conversation that was audible through the thin
walls that separated our rooms. At first I heard no
words, only voices. My mother’s voice was like a cool,
dark room in summer—peaceful, soothing, quiet. I
We crept to the edge of the bushes that
bordered the narrow road in front of Miss Lottie’s
place. She was working placidly, kneeling over the
flowers, her dark hand plunged into the golden mound.
-3-
loved to listen to it; it made things seem all right
somehow. But my father’s voice cut through hers,
shattering the peace.
Long after the sobbing and humming had
stopped, I lay on the pallet, still as stone with my
hands over my ears, wishing that I too could cry and
be comforted. The night was silent now except for the
sound of the crickets and of Joey’s soft breathing. But
the room was too crowded with fear to allow me to
sleep, and finally, feeling the terrible aloneness of 4
A.M., I decided to awaken Joey.
“Twenty-two years, Maybelle, twenty-two
years,” he was saying, “and I got nothing for you,
nothing, nothing.”
“It’s all right, honey, you’ll get something.
Everybody out of work now, you know that.”
“Ouch! What’s the matter with you? What you
want?” he demanded disagreeably when I had pinched
and slapped him awake.
“It ain’t right. Ain’t no man ought to eat his
woman’s food year in and year out, and see his
children running wild. Ain’t nothing right about that.”
“Come on, wake up.”
“Honey, you took good care of us when you
had it. Ain’t nobody got nothing nowadays.”
“What for? Go ‘way.”
I was lost for a reasonable reply. I could not
say, “I’m scared and I don’t want to be alone,” so I
merely said, “I’m going out. If you want to come, come
on.”
“I ain’t talking about nobody else, I m talking
about me. God knows I try.” My mother said something
I could not hear, and my father cried out louder, “What
must a man do, tell me that?”
The promise of adventure awoke him. “Going
out now? Where to, Lizabeth? What you going to do?”
“Look, we ain’t starving. I git paid every week,
and Mrs. Ellis is real nice about giving me things. She
gonna let me have Mr. Ellis’s old coat for you this
winter—”
I was pulling my dress over my head. Until now
I had not thought of going out. “Just come on,” I replied
tersely.
impotent: adj.: powerless; helpless.
I was out the window and halfway down the
road before Joey caught up with me.
pallet: small bed or cot.
“Wait, Lizabeth, where you going?”
“Damn Mr. Ellis’s coat! And damn his money!
You think I want white folks’ leavings?
I was running as if the Furies were after me,
as perhaps they were—running silently and furiously
until I came to where I had half known I was headed:
to Miss Lottie’s yard.
“Damn, Maybelle”—and suddenly he sobbed,
loudly and painfully, and cried helplessly and
hopelessly in the dark night. I had never heard a man
cry before. I did not know men ever cried. I covered
my ears with my hands but could not cut off the sound
of my father’s harsh, painful, despairing sobs. My
father was a strong man who could whisk a child upon
his shoulders and go singing through the house. My
father whittled toys for us, and laughed so loud that the
great oak seemed to laugh with him, and taught us
how to fish and hunt rabbits. How could it be that my
father was crying? But the sobs went on, unstifled,
finally quieting until I could hear my mother’s voice,
deep and rich, humming softly as she used to hum to a
frightened child.
The half-dawn light was more eerie than
complete darkness, and in it the old house was like the
ruin that my world had become—foul and crumbling, a
grotesque caricature. It looked haunted, but I was not
afraid, because I was haunted too.
“Lizabeth, you lost your mind?” panted Joey.
Furies: in Greek and Roman mythology, spirits who
pursue people who have committed crimes,
sometimes driving them mad.
The world had lost its boundary lines. My
mother, who was small and soft, was now the strength
of the family; my father, who was the rock on which the
family had been built, was sobbing like the tiniest child.
Everything was suddenly out of tune, like a broken
accordion. Where did I fit into this crazy picture? I do
not now remember my thoughts, only a feeling of great
bewilderment and fear.
I had indeed lost my mind, for all the
smoldering emotions of that summer swelled in me
and burst—the great need for my mother who was
never there, the hopelessness of our poverty and
degradation, the bewilderment of being neither child
nor woman and yet both at once, the fear unleashed
by my father’s tears. And these feelings combined in
one great impulse toward destruction.
-4-
at the end of that life she had nothing except a fallingdown hut, a wrecked body, and John Burke, the
mindless son of her passion. Whatever verve there
was left in her, whatever was of love and beauty and
joy that had not been squeezed out by life, had been
there in the marigolds she had so tenderly cared for.
“Lizabeth!”
I leaped furiously into the mounds of marigolds
and pulled madly, trampling and pulling and destroying
the perfect yellow blooms. The fresh smell of early
morning and of dew-soaked marigolds spurred me on
as I went tearing and mangling and sobbing while Joey
tugged my dress or my waist crying, “Lizabeth, stop,
please stop!”
Of course I could not express the things that I
knew about Miss Lottie as I stood there awkward and
ashamed. The years have put words to the things I
knew in that moment, and as I look back upon it, I
know that that moment marked the end of innocence.
Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things
at face value, an ignorance of the area below the
surface. In that humiliating moment I looked beyond
myself and into the depths of another person. This was
the beginning of compassion, and one cannot have
both compassion and innocence.
And then I was sitting in the ruined little garden
among the uprooted and ruined flowers, crying and
crying, and it was too late to undo what I had done.
Joey was sitting beside me, silent and frightened, not
knowing what to say. Then, “Lizabeth, look!’
I opened my swollen eyes and saw in front of
me a pair of large, calloused feet; my gaze lifted to the
swollen legs, the age-distorted body clad in a tight
cotton nightdress, and then the shadowed Indian face
surrounded by stubby white hair. And there was no
rage in the face now, now that the garden was
destroyed and there was nothing any longer to be
protected.
The years have taken me worlds away from
that time and that place, from the dust and squalor of
our lives, and from the bright thing that I destroyed in a
blind, childish striking out at God knows what. Miss
Lottie died long ago and many years have passed
since I last saw her hut, completely barren at last, for
despite my wild contrition she never planted
marigolds again. Yet, there are times when the image
of those passionate yellow mounds returns with a
painful poignancy. For one does not have to be
ignorant and poor to find that his life is as barren as
the dusty yards of our town. And I too have planted
marigolds.
“M-miss Lottie!” I scrambled to my feet and just
stood there and stared at her, and that was the
moment when childhood faded and womanhood
began. That violent, crazy act was the last act of
childhood. For as I gazed at the immobile face with the
sad, weary eyes, I gazed upon a kind of reality which
is hidden to childhood. The witch was no longer a
witch but only a broken old woman who had dared to
create beauty in the midst of ugliness and sterility. She
had been born in squalor and lived in it all her life. Now
Contrition: n.: deep feelings of guilt and repentance.
COPYRIGHT © 2000-2004 MISTERSUAREZ.COM
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Thank You Ma’am
Langston Hughes
5
10
She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails. It had
a long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o’clock at night,
and she was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap
broke with the single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy’s weight and the weight of the
purse combined caused him to lose his balance so, intsead of taking off full blast as he had
hoped, the boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up. the large woman simply
turned around and kicked him right square in his blue-jeaned sitter. Then she reached down,
picked the boy up by his shirt front, and shook him until his teeth rattled.
After that the woman said, "Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here." She still held him.
But she bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, "Now
ain’t you ashamed of yourself?"
15
Firmly gripped by his shirt front, the boy said, "Yes’m."
The woman said, "What did you want to do it for?"
The boy said, "I didn’t aim to."
She said, "You a lie!"
By that time two or three people passed, stopped, turned to look, and some stood watching.
20
"If I turn you loose, will you run?" asked the woman.
"Yes’m," said the boy.
"Then I won’t turn you loose," said the woman. She did not release him.
"I’m very sorry, lady, I’m sorry," whispered the boy.
25
"Um-hum! And your face is dirty. I got a great mind to wash your face for you. Ain’t you got
nobody home to tell you to wash your face?"
"No’m," said the boy.
"Then it will get washed this evening," said the large woman starting up the street, dragging the
frightened boy behind her.
He looked as if he were fourteen or fifteen, frail and willow-wild, in tennis shoes and blue jeans.
30
The woman said, "You ought to be my son. I would teach you right from wrong. Least I can do
right now is to wash your face. Are you hungry?"
"No’m," said the being dragged boy. "I just want you to turn me loose."
"Was I bothering you when I turned that corner?" asked the woman.
"No’m."
35
40
"But you put yourself in contact with me," said the woman. "If you think that that contact is not
going to last awhile, you got another though coming. When I get through with you, sir, you are
going to remember Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones."
Sweat popped out on the boy’s face and he began to struggle. Mrs. Jones stopped, jerked him
around in front of her, put a half-nelson about his neck, and continued to drag him up the street.
When she got to her door, she dragged the boy inside, down a hall, and into a large kitchenettefurnished room at the rear of the house. She switched on the light and left the door open. The boy
could hear other roomers laughing and talking in the large house. Some of their doors were open,
too, so he knew he and the woman were not alone. The woman still had him by the neck in the
middle of her room.
45
She said, "What is your name?"
"Roger," answered the boy.
"Then, roger, you go to that sink and wash your face," said the woman, whereupon she turned
him loose--at last. Roger looked at the door—looked at the woman—looked at the door—and
went to the sink.
50
Let the water run until it gets warm," she said. "Here’s a clean towel."
"You gonna take me to jail?" asked the boy, bending over the sink.
"Not with that face, I would not take you nowhere," said the woman. "Here I am trying to get
home to cook me a bite to eat and you snatch my pocketbook! Maybe, you ain’t been to your
supper either, late as it be. Have you?"
55
"There’s nobody home at my house," said the boy.
"Then we’ll eat," said the woman, "I believe you’re hungry—or been hungry—to try to snatch
my pockekbook."
"I wanted a pair of blue suede shoes," said the boy.
"Well, you didn’t have to snatch my pocketbook to get some suede shoes," said Mrs. Luella
60
Bates Washington Jones. "You could of asked me."
"M’am?"
65
The water dripping from his face, the boy looked at her. There was a long pause. A very long
pause. After he had dried his face and not knowing what else to do dried it again, the boy turned
around, wondering what next. The door was open. He could make a dash for it down the hall. He
could run, run, run, run, run!
The woman was sitting on the day-bed. After a while she said, "I were young once and I wanted
things I could not get."
There was another long pause. The boy’s mouth opened. Then he frowned, but not knowing he
frowned.
70
The woman said, "Um-hum! You thought I was going to say but, didn’t you? You thought I was
going to say, but I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks. Well, I wasn’t going to say that." Pause.
Silence. "I have done things, too, which I would not tell you, son—neither tell God, if he didn’t
already know. So you set down while I fix us something to eat. You might run that comb through
your hair so you will look presentable."
75
In another corner of the room behind a screen was a gas plate and an icebox. Mrs. Jones got up
and went behind the screen. The woman did not watch the boy to see if he was going to run now,
nor did she watch her purse which she left behind her on the day-bed. But the boy took care to sit
on the far side of the room where he thought she could easily see him out of the corner other eye,
80
if she wanted to. He did not trust the woman not to trust him. And he did not want to be
mistrusted now.
"Do you need somebody to go to the store," asked the boy, "maybe to get some milk or
something?"
"Don’t believe I do," said the woman, "unless you just want sweet milk yourself. I was going to
make cocoa out of this canned mild I got her."
85
"That will be fine," said the boy.
She heated some lima beans and ham she had in the icebox, made the cocoa, and set the table.
90
The woman did not ask the boy anything about where he lived, or his folks, or anything else that
would embarrass him. Instead, as they ate, she told him about her job in a hotel beauty-shop that
stayed open late, what the work was like, and how all kinds of women came in and out, blondes,
red-heads, and Spanish. Then she cut him a half of her ten-cent cake.
"Eat some more, son," she said.
95
When they were finished eating she got up and said, "Now, here, take this ten dollars and buy
yourself some blue suede shoes. And next time, do not make the mistake of latching onto my
pocketbook nor nobody else’s—because shoes come be devilish like that will burn your feet. I
got to get my rest now. But I wish you would behave yourself, son, from here on in."
She led him down the hall to the front door and opened it. "Goodnight!" Behave yourself, boy!"
she said, looking out into the street.
100
The boy wanted to say something else other that "Thank you, m’am" tto Mrs. Luella Bates
Washington Jones, but he couldn’t do so as he turned at the barren stoop and looked back at the
large woman in the door. He barely managed to say "Thank you" before she shut the door. And
he never saw her again.
The Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan Poe
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon
insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose,
however, that gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point
definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of
risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution
overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as
such to him who has done the wrong.
It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my
good will. I continued, as was my in to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my to smile
now was at the thought of his immolation.
He had a weak point --this Fortunato --although in other regards he was a man to be
respected and even feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have
the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and
opportunity, to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting and
gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was
sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially; --I was skilful in the Italian vintages
myself, and bought largely whenever I could.
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I
encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much.
The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted
by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him that I thought I should never have done
wringing his hand.
I said to him --"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are
looking to-day. But I have received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my
doubts."
"How?" said he. "Amontillado, A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle of the carnival!"
"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full Amontillado price
without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a
bargain."
"Amontillado!"
"I have my doubts."
"Amontillado!"
"And I must satisfy them."
"Amontillado!"
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchresi. If any one has a critical turn it is he. He
will tell me --"
"Luchresi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry."
"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own.
"Come, let us go."
"Whither?"
"To your vaults."
"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an
engagement. Luchresi--"
"I have no engagement; --come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are
afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre."
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! You have been imposed
upon. And as for Luchresi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado."
Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm; and putting on a mask of black silk
and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.
There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honour of the time.
I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not
to stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate
disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato, bowed him through
several suites of rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding
staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the
descent, and stood together upon the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode.
"The pipe," he said.
"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which gleams from these cavern
walls."
He turned towards me, and looked into my eves with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum
of intoxication.
"Nitre?" he asked, at length.
"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?"
"Ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh!"
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
"It is nothing," he said, at last.
"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich,
respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me
it is no matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is
Luchresi --"
"Enough," he said; "the cough's a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a
cough."
"True --true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily --but
you should use all proper caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps.
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay
upon the mould.
"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells
jingled.
"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."
"And I to your long life."
He again took my arm, and we proceeded.
"These vaults," he said, "are extensive."
"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family."
"I forget your arms."
"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs
are imbedded in the heel."
"And the motto?"
"Nemo me impune lacessit." (this means: “no one insults me with impunity”)
"Good!" he said.
The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the
Medoc. We had passed through long walls of piled skeletons, with casks and puncheons
intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made
bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.
"The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the
river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too
late. Your cough --"
"It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed
with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not
understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement --a grotesque one.
"You do not comprehend?" he said.
"Not I," I replied.
"Then you are not of the brotherhood."
"How?"
"You are not of the masons."
"Yes, yes," I said; "yes, yes."
"You? Impossible! A mason?"
"A mason," I replied.
"A sign," he said, "a sign."
"It is this," I answered, producing from beneath the folds of my roquelaire a trowel.
"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado."
"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and again offering him my arm. He
leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through
a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in
which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been
lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of
Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth side
the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a
mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a
still interior crypt or recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It
seemed to have been constructed for no especial use within itself, but formed merely the interval
between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of
their circumscribing walls of solid granite.
It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured to pry into the depth of
the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.
"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchresi --"
"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I
followed immediately at his heels. In niche, and finding an instant he had reached the extremity
of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment
more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each
other about two feet,
horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing
the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much
astounded to resist. Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.
"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed, it is very
damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must
first render you all the little attentions in my power."
"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.
"True," I replied; "the Amontillado."
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before
spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With
these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the
niche.
I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of
Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low
moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. There was then a
long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard
the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I
might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labours and sat down upon the bones.
When at last the clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the
fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I
again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon the
figure within.
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained
form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated, I trembled.
Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant
reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I
reapproached the wall; I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I re-echoed, I aided, I
surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still.
It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the
ninth and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a
single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its
destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon
my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as that of the
noble Fortunato. The voice said-"Ha! ha! ha! --he! he! he! --a very good joke, indeed --an excellent jest. We will have many
a rich laugh about it at the palazzo --he! he! he! --over our wine --he! he! he!"
"The Amontillado!" I said.
"He! he! he! --he! he! he! --yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting late? Will not they be
awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone."
"Yes," I said, "let us be gone."
"For the love of God, Montresor!"
"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"
But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud --
"Fortunato!"
No answer. I called again -"Fortunato!"
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There
came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the
catacombs that made it so. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its
position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the
half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!
The Chrysanthemums
John Steinbeck
5
10
The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the
rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a
closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining
like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas 1~iver, the yellow
stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley
now in December. The thick willow scrub along the river flamed with sharp and positive yellow
leaves.
It was a time of quiet and of waiting. The air was cold and tender. A light wind blew up from
the southwest so that the farmers were mildly hopeful of a good rain before long; but fog and
rain did not go together.
15
Across the river, on Henry Allen's foothill ranch there was little work to be done, for the hay
was cut and stored and the orchards were plowed up to receive the rain deeply when it should
come. The cattle on the higher slopes were becoming shaggy and rough-coated.
20
Elisa Allen, working in her flower garden, looked down across the yard and saw Henry, her
husband, talking to two men in business suits. The three of them stood by the tractor shed, each
man with one foot on the side of the little Ford-son. They smoked cigarettes and studied the
machine as they talked.
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Elisa watched them for a moment and then went back to her work. She was thirty-five. Her
face was lean and strong and her eyes were as clear as water. Her figure looked blocked and
heavy in her gardening costume, a man's black hat pulled low down over her eyes, clod-hopper
shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron with four big
pockets to hold the snips, the trowel and scratcher, the seeds and the knife she worked with. She
wore heavy leather gloves to protect her hands while she worked.
She was cutting down the old year's chrysanthemum stalks with a pair of short and powerful
scissors. She looked down toward the men by the tractor shed now and then. Her face was eager
and mature and handsome; even her work with the scissors was over-eager, over-powerful. The
chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and easy for her energy.
She brushed a cloud of hair out of her eyes with the back of her glove, and left a smudge of
earth on her cheek in doing it. Behind her stood the neat white farm house with red geraniums
close-banked around it as high as the windows. It was a hard-swept looking little house, with
hard-polished windows, and a clean mud-mat on the front steps.
Elisa cast another glance toward the tractor shed. The strangers were getting into their Ford
coupe. She took off a glove and put her strong fingers down into the forest of new green
chrysanthemum sprouts that were growing around the old roots. She spread the leaves and
looked down among the close-growing stems. No aphids were there, no sowbugs or snails or
cutworms. Her terrier fingers destroyed such pests before they could get started.
Elisa started at the sound of her husband's voice. He had come near quietly, and he leaned over
the wire fence that protected her flower garden from cattle and dogs and chickens.
"At it again," he said. "You've got a strong new crop coming.
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Elisa straightened her back and pulled on the gardening glove again. "Yes. They'll be strong
this coming year." In her tone and on her face there was a little smugness.
You've got a gift with things," Henry observed. "Some of those yellow chrysanthemums you
had this year were ten inches across. I wish you'd work out in the orchard and raise some apples
that big."
Her eyes sharpened. "Maybe I could do it, too. I've a gift with things, all right. My mother had
it. She could stick anything in the ground and make it grow. She said it was having planters'
hands that knew how to do it."
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"Well, it sure works with flowers," he said. "Henry, who were those men you were talking
to?"
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"Why, sure, that's what I came to tell you. They were from the Western Meat Company. I sold
those thirty head of three-year-old steers. Got nearly my own price, too."
"Good," she said. "Good for you.
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"And I thought," he continued, "I thought how it's Saturday afternoon, and we might go into
Salinas for dinner at a restaurant, and then to a picture show--to celebrate, you see."
"Good," she repeated. "Oh, yes. That will be good."
Henry put on his joking tone. "There's fights tonight. How'd you like to go to the fights?"
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"Oh, no," she said breathlessly. "No, I wouldn't like fights."
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"Just fooling, Elisa. We'll go to a movie. Let's see. It's two now. I'm going to take Scotty and
bring down those steers from the hill. It'll take us maybe two hours. We'll go in town about five
and have dinner at the Cominos Hotel. Like that?"
"Of course I'll like it. It's good to eat away from home."
"All right, then. I'll go get up a couple of horses."
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She said, "I'll have plenty of time transplant some of these sets, I guess."
She heard her husband calling Scotty down by the barn. And a little later she saw the two men
ride up the pale yellow hillside in search of the steers.
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There was a little square sandy bed kept for rooting the chrysanthemums. With her trowel she
turned the soil over and over, and smoothed it and patted it firm. Then she dug ten parallel
trenches to receive the sets. Back at the chrysanthemum bed she pulled out the little crisp shoots,
trimmed off the leaves of each one with her scissors and laid it on a small orderly pile.
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A squeak of wheels and plod of hoofs came from the road. Elisa looked up. The country road
ran along the dense bank of willows and cotton-woods that bordered the river, and up this road
came a curious vehicle, curiously drawn. It was an old spring-wagon, with a round canvas top on
it like the cover of a prairie schooner. It was drawn by an old bay horse and a little grey-andwhite burro. A big stubble-bearded man sat between the cover flaps and drove the crawling team.
Underneath the wagon, between the hind wheels, a lean and rangy mongrel dog walked sedately.
Words were painted on the canvas in clumsy, crooked letters. "Pots, pans, knives, sisors, lawn
mores, Fixed." Two rows of articles, and the triumphantly definitive "Fixed" below. The black
paint had run down in little sharp points beneath each letter.
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Elisa, squatting on the ground, watched to see the crazy, loose-jointed wagon pass by. But it
didn't pass. It turned into the farm road in front of her house, crooked old wheels skirling and
squeaking. The rangy dog darted from between the wheels and ran ahead. Instantly the two ranch
shepherds flew out at him. Then all three stopped, and with stiff and quivering tails, with taut
straight legs, with ambassadorial dignity, they slowly circled, sniffing daintily. The caravan
pulled up to Elisa's wire fence and stopped. Now the newcomer dog, feeling outnumbered,
lowered his tail and retired under the wagon with raised hackles and bared teeth.
The man on the wagon seat called out, "That's a bad dog in a fight when he gets started."
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Elisa laughed. I see he is. How soon does he generally get started?"
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The man caught up her laughter and echoed it heartily. "Sometimes not for weeks and weeks,"
he said. He climbed stiffly down, over the wheel. The horse and the donkey drooped like
unwatered flowers.
Elisa saw that he was a very big man. Although his hair and beard were graying, he did not
look old. His worn black suit was wrinkled and spotted with grease. The laughter had
disappeared from his face and eyes the moment his laughing voice ceased. His eyes were dark,
and they were full of the brooding that gets in the eyes of teamsters and of sailors. The calloused
hands he rested on the wire fence were cracked, and every crack was a black line. He took off his
battered hat.
"I'm off my general road, ma'am," he said. "Does this dirt road cut over across the river to the
Los Angeles highway?"
Elisa stood up and shoved the thick scissors in her apron pocket. "Well, yes, it does, but it
winds around and then fords the river. I don't think your team could pull through the sand."
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He replied with some asperity, "It might surprise you what them beasts can pull through."
"When they get started?" she asked.
He smiled for a second. "Yes. When they get started."
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"Well," said Elisa, "I think you'll save time if you go back to the Salinas road and pick up the
highway there."
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He drew a big finger down the chicken wire and made it sing. "I ain't in any hurry, ma am. I
go from Seattle to San Diego and back every year. Takes all my time. About six months each
way. I aim to follow nice weather."
Elisa took off her gloves and stuffed them in the apron pocket with the scissors. She touched
the under edge of her man's hat, searching for fugitive hairs. "That sounds like a nice kind of a
way to live," she said.
He leaned confidentially over the fence. "Maybe you noticed the writing on my wagon. I mend
pots and sharpen knives and scissors. You got any of them things to do?"
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"Oh, no," she said quickly. "Nothing like that." Her eyes hardened with resistance.
"Scissors is the worst thing," he explained. "Most people just ruin scissors trying to sharpen
'em, but I know how. I got a special tool. It's a little bobbit kind of thing, and patented. But it
sure does the trick."
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"No. My scissors are all sharp."
"All right, then. Take a pot," he continued earnestly, "a bent pot, or a pot with a hole. I can
make it like new so you don't have to buy no new ones. That's a saving for you.
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"No," she said shortly. "I tell you I have nothing like that for you to do."
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His face fell to an exaggerated sadness. His voice took on a whining undertone. "I ain't had a
thing to do today. Maybe I won't have no supper tonight. You see I'm off my regular road. I
know folks on the highway clear from Seattle to San Diego. They save their things for me to
sharpen up because they know I do it so good and save them money.
"I'm sorry," Elisa said irritably. "I haven't anything for you to do."
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His eyes left her face and fell to searching the ground. They roamed about until they came to
the chrysanthemum bed where she had been working. "What's them plants, ma'am?"
The irritation and resistance melted from Elisa's face. "Oh, those are chrysanthemums, giant
whites and yellows. I raise them every year, bigger than anybody around here."
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"Kind of a long-stemmed flower? Looks like a quick puff of colored smoke?" he asked.
"That's it. What a nice way to describe them."
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"They smell kind of nasty till you get used to them," he said.
"It's a good bitter smell," she retorted, "not nasty at all."
He changed his tone quickly. "I like the smell myself."
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"I had ten-inch blooms this year," she said.
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The man leaned farther over the fence. "Look. I know a lady down the road a piece, has got
the nicest garden you ever seen. Got nearly every kind of flower but no chrysanthemums. Last
time I was mending a copper-bottom washtub for her (that's a hard job but I do it good), she said
to me, 'If you ever run acrost some nice chrysanthemums I wish you'd try to get me a few seeds.'
That's what she told me."
Elisa's eyes grew alert and eager. "She couldn't have known much about chrysanthemums.
You can raise them from seed, but it's much easier to root the little sprouts you see there."
"Oh," he said. "I s'pose I can't take none to her, then."
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"Why yes you can," Elisa cried. "I can put some in damp sand, and you can carry them right
along with you. They'll take root in the pot if you keep them damp. And then she can transplant
them."
"She'd sure like to have some, ma'am. You say they're nice ones?"
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"Beautiful," she said. "Oh, beautiful." Her eyes shone. She tore off the battered hat and shook
out her dark pretty hair. "I'll put them in a flower pot, and you can take them right with you.
Come into the yard."
While the man came through the picket fence Elisa ran excitedly along the geranium-bordered
path to the back of the house. And she returned carrying a big red flower pot. The gloves were
forgotten now. She kneeled on the ground by the starting bed and dug up the sandy soil with her
fingers and scooped it into the bright new flower pot. Then she picked up the little pile of shoots
she had prepared. With her strong fingers she pressed them into the sand and tamped around
them with her knuckles. The man stood over her. "I'll tell you what to do," she said. "You
remember so you can tell the lady."
"Yes, I'll try to remember."
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"Well, look. These will take root in about a month. Then she must set them out, about a foot
apart in good rich earth like this, see?" She lifted a handful of dark soil for him to look at.
"They'll grow fast and tall. Now remember this. In July tell her to cut them down, about eight
inches from the ground."
"Before they bloom?" he asked.
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"Yes, before they bloom." Her face was tight with eagerness. "They'll grow right up again.
About the last of September the buds will start."
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She stopped and seemed perplexed. "It's the budding that takes the most care," she said
hesitantlv. "I don't know how to tell you." She looked deep into his eyes, searchingly. Her mouth
opened a little, and she seemed to be listening. "I'll try to tell you," she said. "Did you ever hear
of planting hands?"
"Can't say I have, ma am.
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"Well, I can only tell you what it feels like. It's when you're picking off the buds you don't
want. Everything goes right down into your fingertips. You watch your fingers work. They do it
themselves. You can feel how it is. They pick and pick the buds. They never make a mistake.
They're with the plant. Do you see? Your fingers and the plant. You can feel that, right up your
arm. They know. They never make a mistake. You can feel it. When you're like that you can't do
anything wrong. Do you see that? Can you understand that?"
She was kneeling on the ground looking up at him. Her breast swelled passionately.
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The man's eyes narrowed. He looked away self-consciously. "Maybe I know," he said.
"Sometimes in the night in the wagon there--"
Elisa's voice grew husky. She broke in on him. "I've never lived as you do, but I know what
you mean. When the night is dark--why, the stars are sharp-pointed, and there's quiet. Why, you
rise up and up! Every pointed star gets driven into your body. It's like that. Hot and sharp and-lovely."
Kneeling there, her hand went out toward his legs in the greasy black trousers. Her hesitant
fingers almost touched the cloth. Then her hand dropped to the ground. She crouched low like a
fawning dog.
He said, "It's nice, just like you say. Only when you don't have no dinner, it ain't."
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She stood up then, very straight, and her face was ashamed. She held the flower pot out to him
and placed it gently in his arms. "Here. Put it in your wagon, on the seat, where you can watch it.
Maybe I can find something for you to do."
At the back of the house she dug in the can pile and found two old and battered aluminum
saucepans. She carried them back and gave them to him. "Here, maybe you can fix these."
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His manner changed. He became professional. "Good as new I can fix them." At the back of
his wagon he set a little anvil, and out of an oily tool box dug a small machine hammer. Elisa
came through the gate to watch him while he pounded out the dents in the kettles. His mouth
grew sure and knowing. At a difficult part of the work he sucked his under-lip.
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"You sleep right in the wagon?" Elisa asked.
"Right in the wagon, ma'am. Rain or shine I'm dry as a cow in there."
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It must be nice," she said. "It must be very nice. I wish women could do such things."
"It ain't the right kind of a life for a woman.
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Her upper lip raised a little, showing her teeth. "How do you know? How can you tell?" she
said.
"I don't know, ma'am," he protested. "Of course I don't know. Now here's your kettles, done.
You don't have to buy no new ones.
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"How much?"
"Oh, fifty cents'll do. I keep my prices down and my work good. That's why I have all them
satisfied customers up and down the highway."
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Elisa brought him a fifty-cent piece from the house and dropped it in his hand. "You might be
surprised to have a rival some time. I can sharpen scissors, too. And I can beat the dents out of
little pots. I could show you what a woman might do."
He put his hammer back in the oily box and shoved the little anvil out of sight. "It would be a
lonely life for a woman, ma'am, and a scarey life, too, with animals creeping under the wagon all
night." He climbed over the singletree, steadying himself with a hand on the burro's white rump.
He settled himself in the seat, picked up the lines. "Thank you kindly, ma'am," he said. "I'll do
like you told me; I'll go back and catch the Salinas road."
"Mind," she called, "if you're long in getting there, keep the sand damp."
"Sand, ma'am?. .. Sand? Oh, sure. You mean around the chrysanthemums. Sure I will." He
clucked his tongue. The beasts leaned luxuriously into their collars. The mongrel dog took his
place between the back wheels. The wagon turned and crawled out the entrance road and back
the way it had come, along the river.
Elisa stood in front of her wire fence watching the slow progress of the caravan. Her shoulders
were straight, her head thrown back, her eyes half-closed, so that the scene came vaguely into
them. Her lips moved silently, forming the words "Good-bye--good-bye." Then she whispered,
"That's a bright direction. There's a glowing there." The sound of her whisper startled her. She
shook herself free and looked about to see whether anyone had been listening. Only the dogs had
heard. They lifted their heads toward her from their sleeping in the dust, and then stretched out
their chins and settled asleep again. Elisa turned and ran hurriedly into the house.
In the kitchen she reached behind the stove and felt the water tank. It was full of hot water
from the noonday cooking. In the bathroom she tore off her soiled clothes and flung them into
the corner. And then she scrubbed herself with a little block of pumice, legs and thighs, loins and
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chest and arms, until her skin was scratched and red. When she had dried herself she stood in
front of a mirror in her bedroom and looked at her body. She tightened her stomach and threw
out her chest. She turned and looked over her shoulder at her back.
After a while she began to dress, slowly. She put on her newest underclothing and her nicest
stockings and the dress which was the symbol of her prettiness. She worked carefully on her hair,
pencilled her eyebrows and rouged her lips.
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Before she was finished she heard the little thunder of hoofs and the shouts of Henry and his
helper as they drove the red steers into the corral. She heard the gate bang shut and set herself for
Henry's arrival.
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His step sounded on the porch. He entered the house calling, "Elisa, where are you?"
"In my room, dressing. I'm not ready. There's hot water for your bath. Hurry up. It's getting
late."
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When she heard him splashing in the tub, Elisa laid his dark suit on the bed, and shirt and
socks and tie beside it. She stood his polished shoes on the floor beside the bed. Then she went to
the porch and sat primly and stiffly down. She looked toward the river road where the willowline was still yellow with frosted leaves so that under the high grey fog they seemed a thin band
of sunshine. This was the only color in the grey afternoon. She sat unmoving for a long time. Her
eyes blinked rarely.
Henry came banging out of the door, shoving his tie inside his vest as he came. Elisa stiffened
and her face grew tight. Henry stopped short and looked at her. "Why--why, Elisa. You look so
nice!"
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"Nice? You think I look nice? What do you mean by 'nice'?"
Henry blundered on. "I don't know. I mean you look different, strong and happy."
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"I am strong? Yes, strong. What do you mean 'strong'?"
He looked bewildered. "You're playing some kind of a game," he said helplessly. "It's a kind
of a play. You look strong enough to break a calf over your knee, happy enough to eat it like a
watermelon."
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For a second she lost her rigidity. "Henry! Don't talk like that. You didn't know what you
said." She grew complete again. "I'm strong," she boasted. "I never knew before how strong."
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Henry looked down toward the tractor shed, and when he brought his eyes back to her, they
were his own again. "I'll get out the car. You can put on your coat while I'm starting."
Elisa went into the house. She heard him drive to the gate and idle down his motor, and then
she took a long time to put on her hat. She pulled it here and pressed it there. When Henry turned
the motor off she slipped into her coat and went out.
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The little roadster bounced along on the dirt road by the river, raising the birds and driving the
rabbits into the brush. Two cranes flapped heavily over the willow-line and dropped into the
river-bed.
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Far ahead on the road Elisa saw a dark speck. She knew.
She tried not to look as they passed it, but her eyes would not obey. She whispered to herself
sadly, "He might have thrown them off the road. That wouldn't have been much trouble, not very
much. But he kept the pot," she explained. "He had to keep the pot. That's why he couldn't get
them off the road."
The roadster turned a bend and she saw the caravan ahead. She swung full around toward her
husband so she could not see the little covered wagon and the mismatched team as the car passed
them.
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In a moment it was over. The thing was done. She did not look back. She said loudly, to be
heard above the motor, "It will be good, tonight, a good dinner."
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"Now you're changed again," Henry complained. He took one hand from the wheel and patted
her knee. "I ought to take you in to dinner oftener. It would be good for both of us. We get so
heavy out on the ranch."
"Henry," she asked, "could we have wine at dinner?"
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"Sure we could. Say! That will be fine."
She was silent for a while; then she said, "Henry, at those prize fights, do the men hurt each
other very much?"
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"Sometimes a little, not often. Why?"
"Well, I've read how they break noses, and blood runs down their chests. I've read how the
fighting gloves get heavy and soggy with blood."
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He looked around at her. "What's the matter, Elisa? I didn't know you read things like that."
He brought the car to a stop, then turned to the right over the Salinas River bridge.
"Do any women ever go to the fights?" she asked.
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"Oh, sure, some. What's the matter, Elisa? Do you want to go? I don't think you'd like it, but
I'll take you if you really want to go."
She relaxed limply in the seat. "Oh, no. No. I don't want to go. I'm sure I don't." Her face was
turned away from him. "It will be enough if we can have wine. It will be plenty." She turned up
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her coat collar so he could not see that she was crying weakly--like an old woman.
The Endless Streetcar Ride into the Night and the
Tinfoil Noose- J. Shepherd
5
10
Mewling, puking babes. That's the way we all start. Damply clinging to someone's shoulder,
burping weakly, clawing our way into life. All of us. Then gradually, surely, we begin to divide
into two streams, all marching together up that long yellow brick road of life, but on opposite
sides of the street. One crowd goes on to become the Official people, peering out at us from
television screens, magazine covers. They are forever appearing in newsreels, carrying attache
cases, surrounded by banks of microphones while the world waits for their decisions and
statements. And the rest of us go on to become... just us.
They are the Prime Ministers, the Presidents, Cabinet members, Stars, dynamic molders of the
Universe, while we remain forever the onlookers, the applauders of their real lives.
Forever down in the dark dungeons of our souls we ask ourselves:
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"How did they get away from me? When did I make that first misstep that took me forever to the
wrong side of the street, to become eternally part of the accursed, anonymous Audience?"
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It seems like one minute we're all playing around back of the garage, kicking tin cans and yelling
at girls, and the next instant you find yourself doomed to exist as an office boy in the Mail Room
of Life, while another ex-mewling, puking babe sends down Dicta, says "No comment" to the
Press, and lives a real, genuine Life on the screen of the world.
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Countless sufferers at this hour are spending billions of dollars and endless man hours lying on
analysts' couches, trying to pinpoint the exact moment that they stepped off the track and into the
bushes forever. It all hinges on one sinister reality that is rarely mentioned, no doubt due to its
implacable, irreversible inevitability. These decisions cannot be changed, no matter how many
brightly cheerful, buoyantly optimistic books on HOW TO ACHIEVE A RICHER, FULLER,
MORE BOUNTTFUL LIFE or SEVEN MAGIC GOLDEN KEYS TO INSTANT DYNAMIC
SUCCESS or THE SECRET OF HOW TO BECOME A BILLIONATRE we read, or how many
classes are attended for instruction in handshaking, back-slapping, grinning, and making AfterDinner speeches. Joseph Stalin was not a Dale Carnegie graduate. He went all the way. It is an
unpleasant truth that is swallowed, if at all, like a rancid, bitter pill. A star is a star; a numberless
cipher is a numberless cipher.
Even more eerie a fact is that the Great Divide is rarely a matter of talent or personality. Or even
luck. Adolf Hitler had a notoriously weak handshake. His smile was, if anything, a vapid
mockery. But inevitably his star zoomed higher and higher. Cinema luminaries of the first order
are rarely blessed with even the modicum of Talent, and often their physical beauty leaves much
to be desired. What is the difference between Us and Them, We and They, the Big Ones and the
great, teeming rabble?
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There are about four times in a man's life, or a woman's, too, for that matter, when unexpectedly,
from out of the darkness, the blazing carbon lamp, the cosmic searchlight of Truth shines full
upon them. It is how we react to those moments that forever seals our fate. One crowd simply
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puts on its sunglasses, lights another cigar, and heads for the nearest plush French restaurant in
the jazziest section of town, sits down and orders a drink, and ignores the whole thing. While we,
the Doomed, caught in the brilliant glare of illumination, see ourselves inescapably for what we
are, and from that day on sulk in the weeds, hoping no one else will spot us.
Those moments happen when we are least able to fend them off. I caught the first one full in the
face when I was fourteen. The fourteenth summer is a magic one for all kids. You have just slid
out of the pupa stage, leaving your old baby skin behind, and have not yet become a grizzled,
hardened, tax-paying beetle. At fourteen you are made of cellophane. You curl easily and
everyone can see through you.
When I was fourteen, Life was flowing through me in a deep, rich torrent of Castoria. How did I
know that the first rocks were just ahead, and I was about to have my keel ripped out on the reef?
Sometimes you feel as though you are alone in a rented rowboat, bailing like mad in the darkness
with a leaky bailing can. It is important to know that there are at least two billion other ciphers in
the same boat, bailing with the same leaky can. They all think they are alone and are crossed
with an evil star. They are right.
I'm fourteen years old, in my sophomore year at high school. One day Schwartz, my purported
best friend, sidled up to me edgily outside of school while we were waiting on the steps to come
in after lunch. He proceeded to outline his plan:
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"Helen's old man won't let me take her out on a date on Saturday night unless I get a date for her
girlfriend. A double date. The old coot figures, I guess, that if there are four of us there won't be
no monkey business. Well, how about it? Do you want to go on a blind date with this chick? I
never seen her."
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Well. For years I had this principle—absolutely no blind dates. I was a man of perception and
taste, and life was short. But there is a time in your life when you have to stop taking and begin
to give just a little. For the first time the warmth of sweet Human Charity brought the roses to my
cheeks. After all, Schwartz was my friend. It was little enough to do, have a blind date with some
no doubt skinny, pimply girl for your best friend. I would do it for Schwartz. He would do as
much for me.
"Okay. Okay, Schwartz."
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Then followed the usual ribald remarks, feckless boasting, and dirty jokes about dates in general
and girls in particular. It was decided that next Saturday we would go all the way. I had a
morning paper route at the time, and my life savings stood at about $1.80. I was all set to blow it
on one big night.
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I will never forget that particular Saturday as long as I live. The air was as soft as the finest of
spun silk. The scent of lilacs hung heavy. The catalpa trees rustled in the early evening breeze
from off the Lake. The inner Me itched in that nameless way, that indescribable way that only
the fourteen-year-old Male fully knows.
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All that afternoon I had carefully gone over my wardrobe to select the proper symphony of
sartorial brilliance. That night I set out wearing my magnificent electric blue sport coat, whose
shoulders were so wide that they hung out over my frame like vast, drooping eaves, so wide I
had difficulty going through an ordinary door head-on. The electric blue sport coat draped
voluminously almost to my knees, its wide lapels flapping soundlessly in the slightest breeze.
My pleated gray flannel slacks began just below my breastbone and indeed chafed my armpits.
High-belted, cascading down finally to grasp my ankles in a vise-like grip. My tie, indeed one of
my most prized possessions, had been a gift from my Aunt Glenn upon the state occasion of
graduation from eighth grade. It was of a beautiful silky fabric, silvery pearly colored, four
inches wide at the fulcrum, and of such a length to endanger occasionally my zipper in moments
of haste. Hand-painted upon it was a magnificent blood-red snail.
I had spent fully two hours carefully arranging and rearranging my great mop of wavy hair, into
which I had rubbed fully a pound and a half of Greasy Kid Stuff.
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Helen and Schwartz waited on the corner under the streetlight at the streetcar stop near Junie Jo's
home. Her name was Junie Jo Prewitt. I won't forget it quickly, although she has, no doubt,
forgotten mine. I walked down the dark street alone, past houses set back off the street, through
the darkness, past privet hedges, under elm trees, through air rich and ripe with promise. Her
house stood back from the street even farther than the others. It sort of crouched in the darkness,
looking out at me, kneeling. Pregnant with Girldom. A real Girlfriend house.
The first faint touch of nervousness filtered through the marrow of my skull bone as I knocked
on the door of the screen-enclosed porch. No answer. I knocked again, louder. Through the
murky screens I could see faint lights in the house itself. Still no answer. Then I found a small
doorbell button buried in the sash. I pressed. From far off in the bowels of the house I heard two
chimes "Bong" politely. It sure didn't sound like our doorbell. We had a real ripper that went off
like a broken buzz saw, more of a BRRRAAAAKKK than a muffled Bong. This was a rich
people's doorbell.
The door opened and there stood a real, genuine, gold-plated Father: potbelly, underwear shirt,
suspenders, and all.
"Well?" he asked.
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For one blinding moment of embarrassment I couldn't remember her name. After all, she was a
blind date. I couldn't just say:
"I'm here to pick up some girl." He turned back into the house and hollered: JUNIE JO! SOME
KID’S HERE!
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"Heh, heh...." I countered.
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He led me into the living room. It was an itchy house, sticky stucco walls of a dull orange color,
and all over the floor this Oriental rug with the design crawling around, making loops and swirls.
I sat on an overstuffed chair covered in stiff green mohair that scratched even through my slacks.
Little twisty bridge lamps stood everywhere. I instantly began to sweat down the back of my
clean white shirt. Like I said, it was a very itchy house. It had little lamps sticking out of the
walls that looked like phony candles, with phony glass orange flames. The rug started moaning
to itself.
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I sat on the edge of the chair and tried to talk to this Father. He was a Cub fan. We struggled
under water for what seemed like an hour and a half, when suddenly I heard someone coming
down the stairs. First the feet; then those legs, and there she was. She was magnificent! The
greatest-looking girl I ever saw in my life! I have hit the double jackpot! And on a blind date!
Great Scott!
My senses actually reeled as I clutched the arm of that bilge-green chair for support. Junie Jo
Prewitt made Cleopatra look like a Girl Scout!
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Five minutes later we are sitting in the streetcar, heading toward the bowling alley. I am sitting
next to the most fantastic creation in the Feminine department known to Western man. There are
the four of us in that long, yellow-lit streetcar. No one else was aboard; just us four. I, naturally,
being a trained gentleman, sat on the aisle to protect her from candy wrappers and cigar butts and
such. Directly ahead of me, also on the aisle, sat Schwartz, his arm already flung affectionately
in a death grip around Helen's neck as we boomed and rattled through the night.
I casually flung my right foot up onto my left knee so that she could see my crepe-soled,
perforated, wing-toed, Scotch bluchers with the two-toned laces. I started to work my famous
charm on her. Casually, with my practiced offhand, cynical, cutting, sardonic humor I told her
about how my Old Man had cracked the block in the Oldsmobile, how the White Sox were going
to have a good year this year, how my kid brother wet his pants when he saw a snake, how I
figured it was going to rain, what a great guy Schwartz was, what a good second baseman I was,
how I figured I might go out for football. On and on I rolled, like Old Man River, pausing
significantly for her to pick up the conversation. Nothing.
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Ahead of us Schwartz and Helen were almost indistinguishable from one another. They giggled,
bit each other's ears, whispered, clasped hands, and in general made me itch even more.
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From time to time Junie Jo would bend forward stiffly from the waist and say something I could
never quite catch into Helen's right ear.
I told her my great story of the time that Uncle Carl lost his false teeth down the airshaft. Still
nothing. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that she had her coat collar turned up, hiding
most of her face as she sat silently, looking forward past Helen Weathers into nothingness.
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I told her about this old lady on my paper route who chews tobacco, and roller skates in the
backyard every morning. I still couldn't get through to her. Casually I inched my right arm up
over the back of the seat behind her shoulders. The acid test. She leaned forward, avoiding my
arm, and stayed that way.
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"Heh, heh, heh...."
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As nonchalantly as I could, I retrieved it, battling a giant cramp in my right shoulder blade. I sat
in silence for a few seconds, sweating heavily as ahead Schwartz and Helen are going at it hot
and heavy.
It was then that I became aware of someone saying something to me. It was an empty car. There
was no one else but us. I glanced around, and there it was. Above us a line of car cards looked
down on the empty streetcar. One was speaking directly to me, to me alone.
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DO YOU OFFEND?
Do I offend?!
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With no warning, from up near the front of the car where the motorman is steering I see this
thing coming down the aisle directly toward me. It's coming closer and closer. I can't escape it.
It's this blinding, fantastic, brilliant, screaming blue light. I am spread-eagled in it. There's a pin
sticking through my thorax. I see it all now.
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I AM THE BLIND DATE!
ME!!
I'M the one they're being nice to!
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I'm suddenly getting fatter, more itchy. My new shoes are like bowling balls with laces; thick,
rubber-crepe bowling balls. My great tie that Aunt Glenn gave me is two feet wide, hanging
down to the floor like some crinkly tinfoil noose. My beautiful hand-painted snail is seven feet
high, sitting up on my shoulder, burping. Great Scott! It is all clear to me in the searing white
light of Truth. My friend Schwartz, I can see him saying to Junie Jo:
"I got this crummy fat friend who never has a date. Let's give him a break and...."
I AM THE BLIND DATE!
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They are being nice to me! She is the one who is out on a Blind Date. A Blind Date that didn't
make it.
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In the seat ahead, the merriment rose to a crescendo. Helen tittered; Schwartz cackled. The
marble statue next to me stared gloomily out into the darkness as our streetcar rattled on. The
ride went on and on.
I AM THE BLIND DATE!
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I didn't say much the rest of the night. There wasn't much to be said.
The Last Leaf
O. Henry
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In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves
into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street
crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street.
Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route,
suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!
So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north
windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some
pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."
At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar
for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of
an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so
congenial that the joint studio resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia,
stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side
this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the
maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman
with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed
old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead,
looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.
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"She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical
thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on
the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made
up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"
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"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.
"Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"
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"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there
is nothing of the kind."
"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter
through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in
her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will
get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-
in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."
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After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp.
Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.
Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue
stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.
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She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young
artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors
write to pave their way to Literature.
As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of
the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to
the bedside. Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting counting backward.
"Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and
"seven", almost together.
Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary
yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine,
gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn
had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the
crumbling bricks.
"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.
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"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were
almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another
one. There are only five left now."
"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."
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"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days.
Didn't the doctor tell you?" "Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with
magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love
that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your
chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were
ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the
street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her
drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork
chops for her greedy self."
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"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There
goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall
before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."
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"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and
not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow.
I need the light, or I would draw the shade down."
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"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly. "I'd rather be here by you," said
Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves."
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"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as
fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I
want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor,
tired leaves."
"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll
not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."
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Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and
had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body
of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting
near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a
masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and
then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to
those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to
excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who
scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting
to protect the two young artists in the studio above.
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Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one
corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to
receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she
would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world
grew weaker. Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and
derision for such idiotic imaginings.
"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off
from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your
fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot
poor leetle Miss Yohnsy."
"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange
fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you
are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet."
"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you.
For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in
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which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve
shall all go away. Gott! yes."
Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and
motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy
vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was
falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on
an upturned kettle for a rock.
When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open
eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
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"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.
Wearily Sue obeyed.
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But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong
night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still
dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay,
it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground.
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"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind.
It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time."
"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't
think of yourself. What would I do?"
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But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making
ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one
by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.
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The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its
stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed,
while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.
When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.
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The ivy leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken
broth over the gas stove.
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"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show
me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some
milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows
about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."
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And hour later she said:
"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."
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The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.
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"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll
win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of
an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no
hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable."
The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now that's all."
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And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and
very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.
"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day
in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in
his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold.
They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a
lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered
brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear,
at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind
blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."
The Lottery
Shirley Jackson
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The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the
flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The people of the village
began to gather in the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten o'clock; in some
towns there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on June 2th.
but in this village, where there were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took less
than two hours, so it could begin at ten o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to
allow the villagers to get home for noon dinner.
The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling
of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before
they broke into boisterous play. and their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books
and reprimands. Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and the other boys
soon followed his example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby and Harry Jones
and Dickie Delacroix-- the villagers pronounced this name "Dellacroy"--eventually made a great
pile of stones in one corner of the square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The
girls stood aside, talking among themselves, looking over their shoulders at the boys. and the
very small children rolled in the dust or clung to the hands of their older brothers or sisters.
Soon the men began to gather. surveying their own children, speaking of planting and rain,
tractors and taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the corner, and their
jokes were quiet and they smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house dresses
and sweaters, came shortly after their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of
gossip as they went to join their husbands. Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began
to call to their children, and the children came reluctantly, having to be called four or five times.
Bobby Martin ducked under his mother's grasping hand and ran, laughing, back to the pile of
stones. His father spoke up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and took his place between his
father and his oldest brother.
The lottery was conducted--as were the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program--by
Mr. Summers. who had time and energy to devote to civic activities. He was a round-faced,
jovial man and he ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him. because he had no
children and his wife was a scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden box,
there was a murmur of conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called. "Little late
today, folks." The postmaster, Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a three- legged stool, and the
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stool was put in the center of the square and Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The
villagers kept their distance, leaving a space between themselves and the stool. and when Mr.
Summers said, "Some of you fellows want to give me a hand?" there was a hesitation before two
men. Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter. came forward to hold the box steady on the stool
while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers inside it.
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The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago, and the black box now resting
on the stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the oldest man in town, was
born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked
to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a story that the
present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had
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been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the
lottery, Mr. Summers began talking again about a new box, but every year the subject was
allowed to fade off without anything's being done. The black box grew shabbier each year: by
now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original
wood color, and in some places faded or stained.
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Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box securely on the stool until Mr.
Summers had stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of the ritual had
been forgotten or discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of paper
substituted for the chips of wood that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr.
Summers had argued. had been all very well when the village was tiny, but now that the
population was more than three hundred and likely to keep on growing, it was necessary to use
something that would fit more easily into he black box. The night before the lottery, Mr.
Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of paper and put them in the box, and it was then
taken to the safe of Mr. Summers' coal company and locked up until Mr. Summers was ready to
take it to the square next morning. The rest of the year, the box was put way, sometimes one
place, sometimes another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another year underfoot
in the post office. and sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left there.
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There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr. Summers declared the lottery open.
There were the lists to make up--of heads of families. heads of households in each family.
members of each household in each family. There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers
by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had
been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory. tuneless chant
that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used
to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the
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people, but years and years ago this p3rt of the ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been,
also, a ritual salute, which the official of the lottery had had to use in addressing each person who
came up to draw from the box, but this also had changed with time, until now it was felt
necessary only for the official to speak to each person approaching. Mr. Summers was very good
at all this; in his clean white shirt and blue jeans. with one hand resting carelessly on the black
box. he seemed very proper and important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves and the
Martins.
Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the assembled villagers, Mrs.
Hutchinson came hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over her shoulders,
and slid into place in the back of the crowd. "Clean forgot what day it was," she said to Mrs.
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Delacroix, who stood next to her, and they both laughed softly. "Thought my old man was out
back stacking wood," Mrs. Hutchinson went on. "and then I looked out the window and the kids
was gone, and then I remembered it was the twenty-seventh and came a-running." She dried her
hands on her apron, and Mrs. Delacroix said, "You're in time, though. They're still talking away
up there."
Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and found her husband and children
standing near the front. She tapped Mrs. Delacroix on the arm as a farewell and began to make
her way through the crowd. The people separated good-humoredly to let her through: two or
three people said. in voices just loud enough to be heard across the crowd, "Here comes your,
Missus, Hutchinson," and "Bill, she made it after all." Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and
Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said cheerfully. "Thought we were going to have to get on
without you, Tessie." Mrs. Hutchinson said. grinning, "Wouldn't have me leave m'dishes in the
sink, now, would you. Joe?," and soft laughter ran through the crowd as the people stirred back
into position after Mrs. Hutchinson's arrival.
"Well, now." Mr. Summers said soberly, "guess we better get started, get this over with, so's we
can go back to work. Anybody ain't here?"
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"Dunbar." several people said. "Dunbar. Dunbar."
Mr. Summers consulted his list. "Clyde Dunbar." he said. "That's right. He's broke his leg, hasn't
he? Who's drawing for him?"
"Me. I guess," a woman said. and Mr. Summers turned to look at her. "Wife draws for her
husband." Mr. Summers said. "Don't you have a grown boy to do it for you, Janey?" Although
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Mr. Summers and everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well, it was the
business of the official of the lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr. Summers waited with
an expression of polite interest while Mrs. Dunbar answered.
"Horace's not but sixteen vet." Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. "Guess I gotta fill in for the old man
this year."
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"Right." Sr. Summers said. He made a note on the list he was holding. Then he asked, "Watson
boy drawing this year?"
A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. "Here," he said. "I m drawing for my mother and me."
He blinked his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several voices in the crowd said thin#s like
"Good fellow, lack." and "Glad to see your mother's got a man to do it."
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"Well," Mr. Summers said, "guess that's everyone. Old Man Warner make it?"
"Here," a voice said. and Mr. Summers nodded.
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A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his throat and looked at the list. "All
ready?" he called. "Now, I'll read the names--heads of families first--and the men come up and
take a paper out of the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at it until
everyone has had a turn. Everything clear?"
The people had done it so many times that they only half listened to the directions: most of them
were quiet. wetting their lips. not looking around. Then Mr. Summers raised one hand high and
said, "Adams." A man disengaged himself from the crowd and came forward. "Hi. Steve." Mr.
Summers said. and Mr. Adams said. "Hi. Joe." They grinned at one another humorlessly and
nervously. Then Mr. Adams reached into the black box and took out a folded paper. He held it
firmly by one corner as he turned and went hastily back to his place in the crowd. where he stood
a little apart from his family. not looking down at his hand.
"Allen." Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham."
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"Seems like there's no time at all between lotteries any more." Mrs. Delacroix said to Mrs.
Graves in the back row.
"Seems like we got through with the last one only last week."
"Time sure goes fast.-- Mrs. Graves said.
"Clark.... Delacroix"
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"There goes my old man." Mrs. Delacroix said. She held her breath while her husband went
forward.
"Dunbar," Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the box while one of the women
said. "Go on. Janey," and another said, "There she goes."
"We're next." Mrs. Graves said. She watched while Mr. Graves came around from the side of the
box, greeted Mr. Summers gravely and selected a slip of paper from the box. By now, all through
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the crowd there were men holding the small folded papers in their large hand. turning them over
and over nervously Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar holding the slip
of paper.
"Harburt.... Hutchinson."
"Get up there, Bill," Mrs. Hutchinson said. and the people near her laughed.
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"Jones."
"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the
north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."
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Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's
good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves,
nobody work any more, live hat way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn
be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's
always been a lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there
joking with everybody."
"Some places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said.
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"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly. "Pack of young fools."
"Martin." And Bobby Martin watched his father go forward. "Overdyke.... Percy."
"I wish they'd hurry," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. "I wish they'd hurry."
"They're almost through," her son said.
"You get ready to run tell Dad," Mrs. Dunbar said.
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Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward precisely and selected a slip from
the box. Then he called, "Warner."
"Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery," Old Man Warner said as he went through the crowd.
"Seventy-seventh time."
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"Watson" The tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd. Someone said, "Don't be nervous,
Jack," and Mr. Summers said, "Take your time, son."
"Zanini."
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After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr. Summers. holding his slip of
paper in the air, said, "All right, fellows." For a minute, no one moved, and then all the slips of
paper were opened. Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once, saving. "Who is it?,"
"Who's got it?," "Is it the Dunbars?," "Is it the Watsons?" Then the voices began to say, "It's
Hutchinson. It's Bill," "Bill Hutchinson's got it."
"Go tell your father," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son.
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People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring
down at the paper in his hand. Suddenly. Tessie Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers. "You
didn't give him time enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!"
"Be a good sport, Tessie." Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, "All of us took the same
chance."
"Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.
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"Well, everyone," Mr. Summers said, "that was done pretty fast, and now we've got to be
hurrying a little more to get done in time." He consulted his next list. "Bill," he said, "you draw
for the Hutchinson family. You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?"
"There's Don and Eva," Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. "Make them take their chance!"
"Daughters draw with their husbands' families, Tessie," Mr. Summers said gently. "You know
that as well as anyone else."
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"It wasn't fair," Tessie said.
"I guess not, Joe." Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. "My daughter draws with her husband's
family; that's only fair. And I've got no other family except the kids."
"Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it's you," Mr. Summers said in explanation,
"and as far as drawing for households is concerned, that's you, too. Right?"
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"Right," Bill Hutchinson said.
"How many kids, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked formally.
"Three," Bill Hutchinson said.
"There's Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little Dave. And Tessie and me."
"All right, then," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you got their tickets back?"
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Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. "Put them in the box, then," Mr. Summers
directed. "Take Bill's and put it in."
"I think we ought to start over," Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as she could. "I tell you it
wasn't fair. You didn't give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw that."
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Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box. and he dropped all the papers but
those onto the ground. where the breeze caught them and lifted them off.
"Listen, everybody," Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people around her.
"Ready, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked. and Bill Hutchinson, with one quick glance around at his
wife and children. nodded.
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"Remember," Mr. Summers said. "take the slips and keep them folded until each person has
taken one. Harry, you help little Dave." Mr. Graves took the hand of the little boy, who came
willingly with him up to the box. "Take a paper out of the box, Davy." Mr. Summers said. Davy
put his hand into the box and laughed. "Take just one paper." Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you
hold it for him." Mr. Graves took the child's hand and removed the folded paper from the tight
fist and held it while little Dave stood next to him and looked up at him wonderingly.
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"Nancy next," Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her school friends breathed heavily as
she went forward switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily from the box "Bill, Jr.," Mr.
Summers said, and Billy, his face red and his feet overlarge, near knocked the box over as he got
a paper out. "Tessie," Mr. Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around defiantly.
and then set her lips and went up to the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her.
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"Bill," Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the box and felt around, bringing his
hand out at last with the slip of paper in it.
The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, "I hope it's not Nancy," and the sound of the whisper
reached the edges of the crowd.
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"It's not the way it used to be." Old Man Warner said clearly. "People ain't the way they used to
be."
"All right," Mr. Summers said. "Open the papers. Harry, you open little Dave's."
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Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general sigh through the crowd as he held it
up and everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and Bill. Jr.. opened theirs at the same time.
and both beamed and laughed. turning around to the crowd and holding their slips of paper above
their heads.
"Tessie," Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr. Summers looked at Bill
Hutchinson, and Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank.
"It's Tessie," Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed. "Show us her paper. Bill."
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Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of paper out of her hand. It had a black
spot on it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with the heavy pencil in the
coal company office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the crowd.
"All right, folks." Mr. Summers said. "Let's finish quickly."
Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still
remembered to use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was ready; there were
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stones on the ground with the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box Delacroix
selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. "Come
on," she said. "Hurry up."
Mr. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said. gasping for breath. "I can't run at all.
You'll have to go ahead and I'll catch up with you."
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The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy Hutchinson few pebbles.
Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out
desperately as the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she said. A stone hit her on the side of
the head. Old Man Warner was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone." Steve Adams was in the
front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.
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"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.
The Scarlet Ibis
James Hurst
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It was in the clove of seasons, summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born, that the ibis
lit in the bleeding tree. The flower garden was stained with rotting brown magnolia petals and
ironweeds grew rank amid the purple phlox. The five o'clocks by the chimney still marked time,
but the oriole nest in the elm was untenanted and rocked back and forth like an empty cradle.
The last graveyard flowers were blooming, and their smell drifted across the cotton field and
through every room of our house, speaking softly the names of our dead. It's strange hat all this
is still so clear to me, now that that summer has since fled and time has had its way. A grindstone
stands where the bleeding tree stood, just outside the kitchen door, and now if an oriole sings in
the elm, its song seems to die up in the leaves, a silvery dust.
But sometimes (like right now), as I sit in the cool, green-draped parlor, the grindstone begins to
turn, and time with all its changes is ground away--and I remember Doodle. Doodle was just
about the craziest brother a boy ever had. Of course, he wasn't a crazy crazy like old Miss
Leedie, who was in love with President Wilson and wrote him a letter every day, but was a nice
crazy, like someone you meet in your dreams.
He was born when I as six and was, from the outset, a disappointment. He seemed all head, with
a tiny body which was red and shriveled like an old man's. Everybody thought he was going to
die. Daddy had Mr. Heath, the carpenter, build a little mahogany coffin for him. But he didn't
die, and when he was three months old, Mama and Daddy decided they might as well name him.
They named him William Armstrong, which was like tying a big tail on a small kite. Such a
name sounds good only on a tombstone.
I thought myself pretty smart at many things, like holding my breath, running, jumping, or
climbing the vines in Old Woman Swamp, and I wanted more than anything else someone to box
with, and someone to perch with in the top fork of the great pine behind the barn, where across
the fields and swamps you could see the sea. But Mama, crying, told me that even if William
Armstrong lived, he would never do these things with me. He might not, she sobbed, even be "all
there."
It was bad enough having an invalid brother, but having one who possibly was not all there was
unbearable, so began to make plans to kill him by smothering him with a pillow. However, one
afternoon as I watched him, my head poked between the iron posts of the foot of the bed, he
looked straight at me and grinned. I skipped through the rooms, down the echoing halls,
shouting, "Mama, he smiled. he's all there! He's all there!" and he was. As long as he lay all the
time in bed, we called him William Armstrong, even though it was formal and sounded as if we
were referring to one of our ancestors, but with his creeping around on the deerskin rug and
beginning to talk, something had to be done about his name.
It was I who renamed him. When he crawled, he crawled backwards, as if he were in reverse and
couldn't change gears. If you called him, he'd turn around as if he were going in the other
direction, then he'd back right up to you to be picked up. Crawling backward made him look like
a doodlebug, so I began to call him Doodle, and in time even Mama and Daddy thought it was a
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better name than William Armstrong. Yes. Renaming my brother was perhaps the kindest thing I
ever did for him, because nobody expects much for someone called Doodle. Although Doodle
learned to crawl, he showed no signs of walking, but he wasn't idle. He talked so much that we
all quit listening to what he said.
It was about this time that Daddy built him a go-cart and I had to pull him around. If I so much
as picked up my cap, he's start crying to go with me and Mama would call from wherever she
was, "Take Doodle with you." He was a burden in many ways. The doctor had said that he
mustn't get too excited, too hot, too cold, or too tired and that he must always be treated gently.
A long list of don'ts went with him, all of which I ignored once we got out of the house. His skin
was very sensitive, and he had to wear a big straw hat whenever he went out. When the going got
rough and he had to climb to the sides of the go-cart, the hat slipped all the way down over his
ears. He was a sight. Finally, I could see I was licked. Doodle was my brother and he was going
to cling to me forever, no matter what I did, so I dragged him across the burning cotton field to
share with him the only beauty I knew, Old Woman Swamp. His eyes were round with wonder
as he gazed about him, and his little hands began to stroke the rubber grass. Then he began to
cry.
"For heaven's sake, what's the matter?" I asked, annoyed.
"It's so pretty," he said. "So pretty, pretty, pretty."
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After that day Doodle and I often went down into Old Woman Swamp. There is within me (and
with sadness I have watched it in others) a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as
our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction, and at times I was mean to Doodle. One
day I took him up to the barn loft and showed him his casket, telling him now we all had
believed he would die. It was covered with a film of Paris green sprinkled to kill the rats, and
screech owls had built a nest inside it.
Doodle studied the mahogany box for a long time, then said, "It's not mine."
"It is," I said. "And before I'll help you down from the loft, you're going to have to touch it."
"I won't touch it," he said sullenly.
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"Then I'll leave you here by yourself," I threatened, and made as if I were going down. Doodle
was frightened of being left.
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"Don't go leave me, Brother," he cried, and he leaned toward the coffin. His hand, trembling,
reached out, and when he touched the casket he screamed. A screech owl flapped out of the box
into our faces, scaring us and covering us with Paris green. Doodle was paralyzed, so I put him
on my shoulder and carried him down the ladder, and even when we were outside in the bright
sunshine, he clung to me, crying. "Don't leave me. Don't leave me."
When Doodle was five years old, I was embarrassed at having a brother of that age who couldn't
walk, so I set out to teach him. We were down in Old Woman Swamp and it was spring and the
sick-sweet smell of bay flowers hung everywhere like a mournful song.
"I'm going to teach you to walk, Doodle," I said.
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"I can't walk, Brother," he said.
"Who says so?" I demanded.
"Mama, the doctor--everybody."
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"Oh, you can walk," I said, and I took him by the arms and stood him up. He collapsed onto the
grass like a half empty flour sack. It was as if he had no bones in his little legs. "I'm going to
teach you to walk." It seemed so hopeless from the beginning that it's a miracle I didn't give up.
But all of us must have something or someone to be proud of, and Doodle had become mine. I
did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and
death. Every day that summer we went to the pine beside the stream of Old Woman Swamp, and
I put him on his feet at least a hundred times each afternoon.
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Occasionally I too became discouraged because it didn't seem as if he was trying, and I would
say, "Doodle, don't you want to earn to walk?" He'd nod his head, and I'd say, "Well, if you don't
keep trying, you'll never learn." Then I'd paint for him a picture of us as old men, white-haired,
him with a long white beard and me still pulling him around in the go-cart. This never failed to
make him try again.
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Finally one day, after many weeks of practicing, he stood alone for a few seconds. When he fell,
I grabbed him in my arms and hugged him, our laughter pealing through the swamp like a
ringing bell. Now we know it could be done. Hope no longer hid in the dark palmetto thicket but
perched like a cardinal in the lacy toothbrush tree, brilliantly visible. "Yes, yes," I cried, and he
cried it too, and the grass beneath us was soft and the smell of the swamp was sweet.
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At breakfast on our chosen day, when Mama, Daddy, and Aunt Nicey were in the dining room, I
brought Doodle to the door in the go-cart just as usual and head them turn their backs, making
them cross their hearts and hope to die if they peeked. I helped Doodle up, and when he was
standing alone I let them look. There wasn't a sound as Doodle walked slowly across the room
and sat down at his place at the table. Then Mama began to cry and ran over to him, hugging him
and kissing him. Daddy hugged him too, so I went to Aunt Nicey, who was thanks praying in the
doorway, and began to waltz her around. We danced together quite well until she came down on
my big toe with her brogans, hurting me so badly I thought I was crippled for life. Doodle told
them it was I who had taught him to walk, so everyone wanted to hug me, and I began to cry.
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They did not know that I did it for myself; that pride, whose slave I was, spoke to me louder than
all their voices, and that Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled
brother. Within a few months, Doodle had learned to walk well and his go-cart was put up in the
barn loft (it is still there) beside his little mahogany coffin.
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Once I had succeeded in teaching Doodle to walk, I began to believe in my own infallibility, and
I prepared a terrific development program for him, unknown to Mama and Daddy, of course. I
would teach him to run, to swim, to climb trees, and to fight. He, too, now believed in my
infallibility, so we set the deadline for these accomplishments less than a year away, when, it had
been decided, Doodle could start school. On hot days, Doodle and I went down to Horsehead
Landing, and I gave him swimming lessons or showed him how to row a boat. Sometimes we
descended into the cool greenness of Old Woman Swamp and climbed the rope vines or boxed
scientifically beneath the pine where he had learned to walk. Promise hung about us like the
leaves, and wherever we looked, ferns unfurled and birds broke into song.
So we came to that clove of seasons. School was only a few weeks away, and Doodle was far
behind schedule. He could barely clear the ground when climbing up the rope vines, and his
swimming was certainly not passable. We decided to double our efforts, to make that last drive
and reach our pot of gold. I made him swim until he turned red and his eyes became glazed.
Once, he could go no further, so he collapsed on the ground and began to cry.
"Aw, come on, Doodle," I urged. "You can do it. Do you want to be different from everybody
else when you start school?"
"Does it make any difference?"
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"It certainly does," I said. "Now, come on," and I helped him up. As we slipped through dog
days, Doodle began to look feverish, and Mama felt his forehead, asking him if he felt ill. At
night he didn't sleep well, and sometimes he had nightmares, crying out until I touched him and
said, "Wake up, Doodle. Wake up." It was Saturday noon, just a few days before school was to
start. I should have already admitted defeat, but my pride wouldn't let me. The excitement of our
program had now been gone for weeks, but still we kept on with a tired doggedness. It was too
late to turn back, for we had both wandered too far into a net of expectations and had left no
crumbs behind. Daddy, Mama, Doodle, and I were seated at the dining-room table having lunch.
It was a hot day, with all the windows and doors open in case a breeze should come. In the
kitchen Aunt Nicey was humming softly. Suddenly, from out in the yard, came a strange
croaking noise. Doodle stopped eating, with a piece of bread poised ready for his mouth, his eyes
popped round like two blue buttons.
"What's that?" he whispered. I jumped up, knocking over my chair, and had reached the door
when Mama called, "Pick up the chair, sit down again, and say excuse me." By the time I had
done this, Doodle had excused himself and had slipped out into the yard.
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He was looking up into the bleeding tree. "It's a great big red bird!" he called. The bird croaked
loudly again, and Mama and Daddy came out into the yard. We shaded our eyes with our hands
against the hazy glare of the sun and peered up through the still leaves. On the topmost branch a
bird the size of a chicken, with scarlet feathers and long legs, was precariously. Its wings hung
down loosely, and as we watched, a feather dropped away and floated slowly down through the
green leaves. Doodle's hands were clasped at his throat, and I had never seen him stand still so
long.
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"What is it?" he asked. At that moment the bird began to flutter, but the wings were
uncoordinated, and amid much flapping and a spray of flying feathers, it tumbled down,
bumping through the limbs of the bleeding tree and landing at our feet with a thud. Its long,
graceful neck jerked twice into an S, then straightened out, and the bird was still. A white veil
came over the eyes and the long white beak unhinged. Its legs were crossed and its clawlike feet
were delicately curved at rest. Even death did not mar its grace, for it lay on the earth like a
broken vase of red flowers, and we stood around it, awed by its exotic beauty.
"Go bring me the bird book," said Daddy. I ran into the house and brought back the bird book.
As we watched, Daddy thumbed through its pages. "It's a scarlet ibis," he said, pointing to a
picture. "It lives in the tropics--South America to Florida. A storm must have brought it here."
Sadly, we all looked back at the bird. A scarlet ibis! How many miles it had traveled to die like
this, in our yard, beneath the bleeding tree.
"Dead birds is bad luck," said Aunt Nicey, poking her head from the kitchen door. "Specially red
dead birds!"
As soon as I had finished eating, Doodle and I hurried off to Horsehead Landing. Time was
short, and Doodle still had a long way to go if he was going to keep up with the other boys when
he started school. The sun, gilded with the yellow cast of autumn, still burned fiercely, but the
dark green woods through which we passed were shady and cool. When we reached the landing,
Doodle said he was too tired to swim, so we got into a skiff and floated down the creek with the
tide. Doodle did not speak and kept his head turned away, letting one hand trail limply in the
water.
After we had drifted a long way, I put the oars in place and made Doodle row back against the
tide. Black clouds began to gather in the southwest, and he kept watching them, trying to pull the
oars a little faster. When we reached Horsehead Landing, lightning was playing across half the
sky and thunder roared out, hiding even the sound of the sea. The sun disappeared and darkness
descended. Doodle was both tired and frightened, and when he stepped from the skiff he
collapsed onto the mud, sending an armada of fiddler crabs rustling off into the marsh grass. I
helped him up, and as he wiped the mud off his trousers, he smiled at me ashamedly. He had
failed and we both knew it, so we started back home, racing the storm.
The lightening was near now, and from fear he walked so close behind me he kept stepping on
my heels. The faster I walked, the faster he walked, so I began to run. The rain was coming,
roaring through the pines, and then, like a bursting Roman candle, a gum tree ahead of us was
shattered by a bolt of lightening. When the deafening peal of thunder had died, and in the
moment before the rain arrived, I heard Doodle, who had fallen behind, cry out, "Brother,
Brother, don't leave me! Don't leave me!"
The knowledge that Doodle's and my plans had come to naught was bitter, and that streak of
cruelty within me awakened. I ran as fast as I could, leaving him far behind with a wall of rain
dividing us. The drops stung my face like nettles, and the wind flared the wet glistening leaves of
the bordering trees. Soon I could hear his voice no more. I hadn't run too far before I became
tired, and the flood of childish spite evanesced as well. I stopped and waited for Doodle. The
sound of rain was everywhere, but the wind had died and it fell straight down in parallel paths
like ropes hanging from the sky.
195
As I waited, I peered through the downpour, but no one came. Finally I went back and found him
huddled beneath a red nightshade bush beside the road. He was sitting on the ground, his face
buried in his arms, which were resting on his drawn-up knees. "Let's go, Doodle," I said.
200
He didn't answer, so I placed my hand on his forehead and lifted his head. Limply, he fell
backwards onto the earth. He had been bleeding from the mouth, and his neck and the front of
his shirt were stained a brilliant red. Doodle! Doodle! I cried, shaking him, but there was no
answer but the ropy rain. He say very awkwardly, with his head thrown far back, making his
vermilion neck appear unusually long and slim. His little legs, bent sharply at the knees, had
never before seemed so fragile, so thin. I began to weep, and the tear-blurred vision in red before
me looked very familiar.
205
"Doodle!" I screamed above the pounding storm and threw my body to the earth above his. For a
long time, it seemed forever, I lay there crying, sheltering my fallen scarlet ibis from the heresy
of rain.
The Veldt
Ray Bradbury
"George, I wish you'd look at the nursery."
5
"What's wrong with it?"
"I don't know."
10
"Well, then."
"I just want you to look at it, is all, or call a psychologist in to look at it."
"What would a psychologist want with a nursery?"
15
"You know very well what he'd want." His wife paused in the middle of the kitchen and
watched the stove busy humming to itself, making supper for four.
"It's just that the nursery is different now than it was."
20
"All right, let's have a look."
25
They walked down the hall of their soundproofed Happylife Home, which had cost them
thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and
played and sang and was good to them. Their approach sensitized a switch somewhere and the
nursery light flicked on when they came within ten feet of it. Similarly, behind them, in the
halls, lights went on and off as they left them behind, with a soft automaticity.
"Well," said George Hadley.
30
They stood on the thatched floor of the nursery. It was forty feet across by forty feet long
and thirty feet high; it had cost half again as much as the rest of the house. "But nothing's too
good for our children," George had said.
35
The nursery was silent. It was empty as a jungle glade at hot high noon. The walls were
blank and two dimensional. Now, as George and Lydia Hadley stood in the center of the room,
the walls began to purr and recede into crystalline distance, it seemed, and presently an
African veldt appeared, in three dimensions, on all sides, in color reproduced to the final
pebble and bit of straw. The ceiling above them became a deep sky with a hot yellow sun.
40
George Hadley felt the perspiration start on his brow.
"Let's get out of this sun," he said. "This is a little too real. But I don't see anything wrong."
45
"Wait a moment, you'll see," said his wife.
50
Now the hidden odorophonics were beginning to blow a wind of odor at the two people in
the middle of the baked veldtland. The hot straw smell of lion grass, the cool green smell of the
hidden water hole, the great rusty smell of animals, the smell of dust like a red paprika in the
hot air. And now the sounds: the thump of distant antelope feet on grassy sod, the papery rustling
of vultures. A shadow passed through the sky. The shadow flickered on George Hadley's
upturned, sweating face.
"Filthy creatures," he heard his wife say.
55
"The vultures."
"You see, there are the lions, far over, that way. Now they're on their way to the water hole.
They've just been eating," said Lydia. "I don't know what."
60
"Some animal." George Hadley put his hand up to shield off the burning light from his
squinted eyes. "A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe."
"Are you sure?" His wife sounded peculiarly tense.
65
"No, it's a little late to be sure," be said, amused. "Nothing over there I can see but cleaned
bone, and the vultures dropping for what's left."
"Did you bear that scream?" she asked.
70
'No."
"About a minute ago?"
75
80
85
"Sorry, no."
The lions were coming. And again George Hadley was filled with admiration for the
mechanical genius who had conceived this room. A miracle of efficiency selling for an absurdly
low price. Every home should have one. Oh, occasionally they frightened you with their
clinical accuracy, they startled you, gave you a twinge, but most of the time what fun for
everyone, not only your own son and daughter, but for yourself when you felt like a quick jaunt
to a foreign land, a quick change of scenery. Well, here it was!
And here were the lions now, fifteen feet away, so real, so feverishly and startlingly real that
you could feel the prickling fur on your hand, and your mouth was stuffed with the dusty
upholstery smell of their heated pelts, and the yellow of them was in your eyes like the
yellow of an exquisite French tapestry, the yellows of lions and summer grass, and the sound
of the matted lion lungs exhaling on the silent noontide, and the smell of meat from the
panting, dripping mouths.
90
The lions stood looking at George and Lydia Hadley with terrible green-yellow eyes.
"Watch out!" screamed Lydia.
95
The lions came running at them.
Lydia bolted and ran. Instinctively, George sprang after her. Outside, in the hall, with the door
slammed he was laughing and she was crying, and they both stood appalled at the other's
reaction.
100
"George!"
"Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Lydia!"
105
110
"They almost got us!"
"Walls, Lydia, remember; crystal walls, that's all they are. Oh, they look real, I must admit Africa in your parlor - but it's all dimensional, superreactionary, supersensitive color film and
mental tape film behind glass screens. It's all odorophonics and sonics, Lydia. Here's my
handkerchief."
"I'm afraid." She came to him and put her body against him and cried steadily. "Did you
see? Did you feel? It's too real."
115
"Now, Lydia..."
"You've got to tell Wendy and Peter not to read any more on Africa."
"Of course - of course." He patted her.
120
"Promise?"
"Sure."
125
"And lock the nursery for a few days until I get my nerves settled."
"You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished him a month ago by
locking the nursery for even a few hours - the tantrum be threw! And Wendy too. They live
for the nursery."
130
"It's got to be locked, that's all there is to it."
"All right." Reluctantly he locked the huge door. "You've been working too hard. You need a
rest."
135
"I don't know - I don't know," she said, blowing her nose, sitting down in a chair that
immediately began to rock and comfort her. "Maybe I don't have enough to do. Maybe I have
time to think too much. Why don't we shut the whole house off for a few days and take a
vacation?"
140
"You mean you want to fry my eggs for me?"
"Yes." She nodded.
145
"And dam my socks?"
"Yes." A frantic, watery-eyed nodding.
"And sweep the house?"
150
"Yes, yes - oh, yes!''
"But I thought that's why we bought this house, so we wouldn't have to do anything?"
155
160
"That's just it. I feel like I don't belong here. The house is wife and mother now, and
nursemaid. Can I compete with an African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as
efficiently or quickly as the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot. And it isn't just me. It's you.
You've been awfully nervous lately."
"I suppose I have been smoking too much."
"You look as if you didn't know what to do with yourself in this house, either. You smoke a
little more every morning and drink a little more every afternoon and need a little more sedative
every night. You're beginning to feel unnecessary too."
165
"Am I?" He paused and tried to feel into himself to see what was really there.
"Oh, George!" She looked beyond him, at the nursery door. "Those lions can't get out of
there, can they?"
170
He looked at the door and saw it tremble as if something had jumped against it from the
other side.
"Of course not," he said.
175
At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy and Peter were at a special plastic carnival across town
and bad televised home to say they'd be late, to go ahead eating. So George Hadley, bemused,
sat watching the dining-room table produce warm dishes of food from its mechanical interior.
180
"We forgot the ketchup," he said.
"Sorry," said a small voice within the table, and ketchup appeared.
190
As for the nursery, thought George Hadley, it won't hurt for the children to be locked out
of it awhile. Too much of anything isn't good for anyone. And it was clearly indicated that the
children had been spending a little too much time on Africa. That sun. He could feel it on his
neck, still, like a hot paw. And the lions. And the smell of blood. Remarkable how the nursery
caught the telepathic emanations of the children's minds and created life to fill their every
desire. The children thought lions, and there were lions. The children thought zebras, and there
were zebras. Sun - sun. Giraffes - giraffes. Death and death.
195
That last. He chewed tastelessly on the meat that the table bad cut for him. Death thoughts.
They were awfully young, Wendy and Peter, for death thoughts. Or, no, you were never too
young, really. Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.
When you were two years old you were shooting people with cap pistols.
185
But this - the long, hot African veldt - the awful death in the jaws of a lion. And repeated
again and again.
200
"Where are you going?"
He didn't answer Lydia. Preoccupied, be let the lights glow softly on ahead of him,
extinguish behind him as he padded to the nursery door. He listened against it. Far away, a
lion roared.
205
He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he stepped inside, he heard a faraway scream.
And then another roar from the lions, which subsided quickly.
210
215
He stepped into Africa. How many times in the last year had he opened this door and found
Wonderland, Alice, the Mock Turtle, or Aladdin and his Magical Lamp, or Jack Pumpkinhead
of Oz, or Dr. Doolittle, or the cow jumping over a very real-appearing moon-all the delightful
contraptions of a make-believe world. How often had he seen Pegasus flying in the sky ceiling,
or seen fountains of red fireworks, or heard angel voices singing. But now, is yellow hot Africa,
this bake oven with murder in the heat. Perhaps Lydia was right. Perhaps they needed a little
vacation from the fantasy which was growing a bit too real for ten-year-old children. It was all
right to exercise one's mind with gymnastic fantasies, but when the lively child mind settled on
one pattern...? It seemed that, at a distance, for the past month, he had heard lions roaring, and
smelled their strong odor seeping as far away as his study door. But, being busy, he had paid it
no attention.
220
George Hadley stood on the African grassland alone. The lions looked up from their feeding,
watching him. The only flaw to the illusion was the open door through which he could see his
wife, far down the dark hall, like a framed picture, eating her dinner abstractedly.
225
"Go away," he said to the lions.
They did not go.
230
He knew the principle of the room exactly. You sent out your thoughts. Whatever you
thought would appear. "Let's have Aladdin and his lamp," he snapped. The veldtland remained;
the lions remained.
"Come on, room! I demand Aladdin!" he said.
235
Nothing happened. The lions mumbled in their baked pelts.
"Aladdin!"
He went back to dinner. "The fool room's out of order," he said. "It won't respond."
240
"Or--"
"Or what?"
245
"Or it can't respond," said Lydia, "because the children have thought about Africa and lions
and killing so many days that the room's in a rut."
"Could be."
250
"Or Peter's set it to remain that way."
"Set it?"
"He may have got into the machinery and fixed something."
255
"Peter doesn't know machinery."
"He's a wise one for ten. That I.Q. of his -"
260
"Nevertheless -"
"Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad."
265
The Hadleys turned. Wendy and Peter were coming in the front door, cheeks like
peppermint candy, eyes like bright blue agate marbles, a smell of ozone on their jumpers from
their trip in the helicopter.
"You're just in time for supper," said both parents.
270
"We're full of strawberry ice cream and hot dogs," said the children, holding hands. "But
we'll sit and watch."
"Yes, come tell us about the nursery," said George Hadley.
275
The brother and sister blinked at him and then at each other. "Nursery?"
"All about Africa nd everything," said the father with false joviality.
"I don't understand," said Peter.
280
"Your mother and I were just traveling through Africa with rod and reel; Tom Swift and his
Electric Lion," said George Hadley.
"There's no Africa in the nursery," said Peter simply.
285
"Oh, come now, Peter. We know better."
"I don't remember any Africa," said Peter to Wendy. "Do you?"
290
"No."
"Run see and come tell."
She obeyed
295
"Wendy, come back here!" said George Hadley, but she was gone. The house lights
followed her like a flock of fireflies. Too late, he realized he had forgotten to lock the nursery
door after his last inspection.
300
"Wendy'll look and come tell us," said Peter.
"She doesn't have to tell me. I've seen it."
"I'm sure you're mistaken, Father."
305
"I'm not, Peter. Come along now."
But Wendy was back. "It's not Africa," she said breathlessly.
310
315
"We'll see about this," said George Hadley, and they all walked down the hall together and
opened the nursery door.
There was a green, lovely forest, a lovely river, a purple mountain, high voices singing, and
Rima, lovely and mysterious, lurking in the trees with colorful flights of butterflies, like
animated bouquets, lingering in her long hair. The African veldtland was gone. The lions were
gone. Only Rima was here now, singing a song so beautiful that it brought tears to your eyes.
George Hadley looked in at the changed scene. "Go to bed," he said to the children.
320
They opened their mouths.
"You heard me," he said.
325
They went off to the air closet, where a wind sucked them like brown leaves up the flue to
their slumber rooms.
George Hadley walked through the singing glade and picked up something that lay in the
comer near where the lions had been. He walked slowly back to his wife.
330
"What is that?" she asked.
"An old wallet of mine," he said.
335
He showed it to her. The smell of hot grass was on it and the smell of a lion. There were drops
of saliva on it, it bad been chewed, and there were blood smears on both sides.
He closed the nursery door and locked it, tight.
340
In the middle of the night he was still awake and he knew his wife was awake. "Do you think
Wendy changed it?" she said at last, in the dark room.
"Of course."
"Made it from a veldt into a forest and put Rima there instead of lions?"
345
"Yes."
"Why?"
350
"I don't know. But it's staying locked until I find out."
"How did your wallet get there?"
355
"I don't know anything," he said, "except that I'm beginning to be sorry we bought that
room for the children. If children are neurotic at all, a room like that -"
"It's supposed to help them work off their neuroses in a healthful way."
"I'm starting to wonder." He stared at the ceiling.
360
"We've given the children everything they ever wanted. Is this our reward-secrecy,
disobedience?"
365
"Who was it said, 'Children are carpets, they should be stepped on occasionally'? We've
never lifted a hand. They're insufferable - let's admit it. They come and go when they like; they
treat us as if we were offspring. They're spoiled and we're spoiled."
"They've been acting funny ever since you forbade them to take the rocket to New York a
few months ago."
370
"They're not old enough to do that alone, I explained."
"Nevertheless, I've noticed they've been decidedly cool toward us since."
375
"I think I'll have David McClean come tomorrow morning to have a look at Africa."
"But it's not Africa now, it's Green Mansions country and Rima."
"I have a feeling it'll be Africa again before then."
380
A moment later they heard the screams.
Two screams. Two people screaming from downstairs. And then a roar of lions.
385
"Wendy and Peter aren't in their rooms," said his wife.
He lay in his bed with his beating heart. "No," he said. "They've broken into the nursery."
"Those screams - they sound familiar."
390
"Do they?"
"Yes, awfully."
395
And although their beds tried very hard, the two adults couldn't be rocked to sleep for another
hour. A smell of cats was in the night air.
"Father?" said Peter.
400
"Yes."
Peter looked at his shoes. He never looked at his father any more, nor at his mother. "You
aren't going to lock up the nursery for good, are you?"
405
"That all depends."
"On what?" snapped Peter.
410
"On you and your sister. If you intersperse this Africa with a little variety - oh, Sweden
perhaps, or Denmark or China -"
"I thought we were free to play as we wished."
"You are, within reasonable bounds."
415
"What's wrong with Africa, Father?"
"Oh, so now you admit you have been conjuring up Africa, do you?"
420
"I wouldn't want the nursery locked up," said Peter coldly. "Ever."
"Matter of fact, we're thinking of turning the whole house off for about a month. Live sort
of a carefree one-for-all existence."
425
"That sounds dreadful! Would I have to tie my own shoes instead of letting the shoe tier do
it? And brush my own teeth and comb my hair and give myself a bath?"
"It would be fun for a change, don't you think?"
430
"No, it would be horrid. I didn't like it when you took out the picture painter last month."
"That's because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son."
"I don't want to do anything but look and listen and smell; what else is there to do?"
435
"All right, go play in Africa."
"Will you shut off the house sometime soon?"
440
"We're considering it."
"I don't think you'd better consider it any more, Father."
"I won't have any threats from my son!"
445
"Very well." And Peter strolled off to the nursery.
****************
"Am I on time?" said David McClean.
450
"Breakfast?" asked George Hadley.
"Thanks, had some. What's the trouble?"
455
"David, you're a psychologist."
"I should hope so."
460
"Well, then, have a look at our nursery. You saw it a year ago when you dropped by; did you
notice anything peculiar about it then?"
"Can't say I did; the usual violences, a tendency toward a slight paranoia here or there,
usual in children because they feel persecuted by parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing."
465
They walked down the ball. "I locked the nursery up," explained the father, "and the
children broke back into it during the night. I let them stay so they could form the patterns for
you to see."
There was a terrible screaming from the nursery.
470
"There it is," said George Hadley. "See what you make of it."
They walked in on the children without rapping.
475
The screams had faded. The lions were feeding.
"Run outside a moment, children," said George Hadley. "No, don't change the mental
combination. Leave the walls as they are. Get!"
480
With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions clustered at a distance, eating
with great relish whatever it was they had caught.
"I wish I knew what it was," said George Hadley. "Sometimes I can almost see. Do you
think if I brought high-powered binoculars here and -"
485
David McClean laughed dryly. "Hardly." He turned to study all four walls. "How long has
this been going on?"
"A little over a month."
490
"It certainly doesn't feel good."
"I want facts, not feelings."
495
500
"My dear George, a psychologist never saw a fact in his life. He only hears about feelings;
vague things. This doesn't feel good, I tell you. Trust my hunches and my instincts. I have a
nose for something bad. This is very bad. My advice to you is to have the whole damn room torn
down and your children brought to me every day during the next year for treatment."
"Is it that bad?"
"I'm afraid so. One of the original uses of these nurseries was so that we could study the
patterns left on the walls by the child's mind, study at our leisure, and help the child. In this case,
505
however, the room has become a channel toward-destructive thoughts, instead of a release away
from them."
"Didn't you sense this before?"
510
"I sensed only that you bad spoiled your children more than most. And now you're letting
them down in some way. What way?"
"I wouldn't let them go to New York."
"What else?"
515
"I've taken a few machines from the house and threatened them, a month ago, with closing up
the nursery unless they did their homework. I did close it for a few days to show I meant
business."
520
"Ah, ha!"
"Does that mean anything?"
525
530
"Everything. Where before they had a Santa Claus now they have a Scrooge. Children
prefer Santas. You've let this room and this house replace you and your wife in your children's
affections. This room is their mother and father, far more important in their lives than their real
parents. And now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there's hatred here. You
can feel it coming out of the sky. Feel that sun. George, you'll have to change your life. Like too
many others, you've built it around creature comforts. Why, you'd starve tomorrow if
something went wrong in your kitchen. You wouldn't know how to tap an egg. Nevertheless,
turn everything off. Start new. It'll take time. But we'll make good children out of bad in a year,
wait and see."
"But won't the shock be too much for the children, shutting the room up abruptly, for good?"
535
"I don't want them going any deeper into this, that's all."
The lions were finished with their red feast.
540
The lions were standing on the edge of the clearing watching the two men.
"Now I'm feeling persecuted," said McClean. "Let's get out of here. I never have cared for
these damned rooms. Make me nervous."
545
"The lions look real, don't they?" said George Hadley. I don't suppose there's any way -"
"What?"
"- that they could become real?"
550
"Not that I know."
"Some flaw in the machinery, a tampering or something?"
555
"No."
They went to the door.
"I don't imagine the room will like being turned off," said the father.
560
"Nothing ever likes to die - even a room."
"I wonder if it hates me for wanting to switch it off?"
565
"Paranoia is thick around here today," said David McClean. "You can follow it like a spoor.
Hello." He bent and picked up a bloody scarf. "This yours?"
"No." George Hadley's face was rigid. "It belongs to Lydia."
570
They went to the fuse box together and threw the switch that killed the nursery.
The two children were in hysterics. They screamed and pranced and threw things. They yelled
and sobbed and swore and jumped at the furniture.
575
"You can't do that to the nursery, you can't!''
"Now, children."
The children flung themselves onto a couch, weeping.
580
"George," said Lydia Hadley, "turn on the nursery, just for a few moments. You can't be so
abrupt."
"No."
585
"You can't be so cruel..."
590
"Lydia, it's off, and it stays off. And the whole damn house dies as of here and now. The more
I see of the mess we've put ourselves in, the more it sickens me. We've been contemplating our
mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!"
And he marched about the house turning off the voice clocks, the stoves, the heaters, the
shoe shiners, the shoe lacers, the body scrubbers and swabbers and massagers, and every other
machine be could put his hand to.
595
The house was full of dead bodies, it seemed. It felt like a mechanical cemetery. So silent.
None of the humming hidden energy of machines waiting to function at the tap of a button.
600
"Don't let them do it!" wailed Peter at the ceiling, as if he was talking to the house, the
nursery. "Don't let Father kill everything." He turned to his father. "Oh, I hate you!"
"Insults won't get you anywhere."
"I wish you were dead!"
605
"We were, for a long while. Now we're going to really start living. Instead of being handled
and massaged, we're going to live."
610
Wendy was still crying and Peter joined her again. "Just a moment, just one moment, just
another moment of nursery," they wailed.
"Oh, George," said the wife, "it can't hurt."
"All right - all right, if they'll just shut up. One minute, mind you, and then off forever."
615
"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" sang the children, smiling with wet faces.
620
"And then we're going on a vacation. David McClean is coming back in half an hour to help
us move out and get to the airport. I'm going to dress. You turn the nursery on for a minute,
Lydia, just a minute, mind you."
And the three of them went babbling off while he let himself be vacuumed upstairs
through the air flue and set about dressing himself. A minute later Lydia appeared.
625
"I'll be glad when we get away," she sighed.
"Did you leave them in the nursery?"
"I wanted to dress, too. Oh, that horrid Africa. What can they see in it?"
630
"Well, in five minutes we'll be on our way to Iowa. Lord, how did we ever get in this house?
What prompted us to buy a nightmare?"
"Pride, money, foolishness."
635
"I think we'd better get downstairs before those kids get engrossed with those damned
beasts again."
Just then they heard the children calling, "Daddy, Mommy, come quick - quick!"
640
They went downstairs in the air flue and ran down the hall. The children were nowhere in
sight. "Wendy? Peter!"
645
They ran into the nursery. The veldtland was empty save for the lions waiting, looking at
them. "Peter, Wendy?"
The door slammed.
"Wendy, Peter!"
650
George Hadley and his wife whirled and ran back to the door.
"Open the door!" cried George Hadley, trying the knob. "Why, they've locked it from the
outside! Peter!" He beat at the door. "Open up!"
655
He heard Peter's voice outside, against the door.
"Don't let them switch off the nursery and the house," he was saying.
660
Mr. and Mrs. George Hadley beat at the door. "Now, don't be ridiculous, children. It's time to
go. Mr. McClean'll be here in a minute and..."
And then they heard the sounds.
665
The lions on three sides of them, in the yellow veldt grass, padding through the dry straw,
rumbling and roaring in their throats.
The lions.
670
Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and they turned and looked back at the beasts edging slowly
forward crouching, tails stiff.
Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.
675
680
And suddenly they realized why those other screams bad sounded familiar.
"Well, here I am," said David McClean in the nursery doorway, "Oh, hello." He stared at
the two children seated in the center of the open glade eating a little picnic lunch. Beyond them
was the water hole and the yellow veldtland; above was the hot sun. He began to perspire.
"Where are your father and mother?"
The children looked up and smiled. "Oh, they'll be here directly."
685
"Good, we must get going." At a distance Mr. McClean saw the lions fighting and
clawing and then quieting down to feed in silence under the shady trees.
He squinted at the lions with his hand tip to his eyes.
Now the lions were done feeding. They moved to the water hole to drink.
690
A shadow flickered over Mr. McClean's hot face. Many shadows flickered. The vultures were
dropping down the blazing sky.
"A cup of tea?" asked Wendy in the silence.
Under the Lion’s Paw
Hamlin Garland
5
10
15
20
It was the last of autumn and first day of winter coming together. All day long the ploughmen on
their prairie farms had moved to and fro in their wide level fields through the falling snow, which
melted as it fell, wetting them to the skin all day, notwithstanding the frequent squalls of snow,
the dripping, desolate clouds, and the muck of the furrows, black and tenacious as tar.
Under their dripping harness the horses swung to and fro silently with that marvellous
uncomplaining patience which marks the horse. All day the wild geese, honking wildly, as they
sprawled sidewise down the wind, seemed to be fleeing from an enemy behind, and with neck
outthrust and wings extended, sailed down the wind, soon lost to sight.
Yet the ploughman behind his plough, though the snow lay on his ragged great-coat, and the cold
clinging mud rose on his heavy boots, fettering him like gyves, whistled in the very beard of the
gale. As day passed, the snow, ceasing to melt, lay along the ploughed land, and lodged in the
depth of the stubble, till on each slow round the last furrow stood out black and shining as jet
between the ploughed land and the gray stubble.
When night began to fall, and the geese, flying low, began to alight invisibly in the near cornfield, Stephen Council was still at work "finishing a land." He rode on his sulky plough when
going with the wind, but walked when facing it. Sitting bent and cold but cheery under his slouch
hat, he talked encouragingly to his four-in-hand.
"Come round there, boys! Round agin! We got t' finish this land. Come in there, Dan! Stiddy,
Kate, stiddy! None o' y'r tantrums, Kittie. It's purty tuff, but got a be did. Tchk! tchk! Step along,
Pete! Don't let Kate git y'r single-tree on the wheel. Once more!"
25
They seemed to know what he meant, and that this was the last round, for they worked with
greater vigor than before. "Once more, boys, an' then, sez I, oats an' a nice warm stall, an' sleep
f'r all."
By the time the last furrow was turned on the land it was too dark to see the house, and the snow
was changing to rain again. The tired and hungry man could see the light from the kitchen
shining through the leafless hedge, and he lifted a great shout, "Supper f'r a half a dozen!"
30
It was nearly eight o'clock by the time he had finished his chores and started for supper. He was
picking his way carefully through the mud, when the tall form of a man loomed up before him
with a premonitory cough.
"Waddy ye want ?" was the rather startled question of the farmer.
35
"Well, ye see," began the stranger, in a deprecating tone, "we'd like t' git in f'r the night. We've
tried every house f'r the last two miles, but they hadn't any room f'r us. My wife's jest about sick,
'n' the children are cold and hungry-- "
"Oh, y' want 'o stay all night, eh, ?"
"Yes, sir; it 'ud be a great accom-- "
40
"Waal, I don't make it a practice t' turn anybuddy way hungry, not on sech nights as this. Drive
right in. We ain't got much, but sech as it is--"
But the stranger had disappeared. And soon his steaming, weary team, with drooping heads and
swinging single-trees, moved past the well to the block beside the path. Council stood at the side
of the "schooner" and helped the children out two little half-sleeping children and then a small
woman with a babe in her arms.
45
50
"There ye go!" he shouted jovially, to the children. "Now we're all right! Run right along to the
house there, an' tell Mam' Council you wants sumpthin' t' eat. Right this way, Mis' keep right off
t' the right there. I'll go an' git a lantern. Come," he said to the dazed and silent group at his side.
"Mother'" he shouted, as he neared the fragrant and warmly lighted kitchen, "here are some
wayfarers an' folks who need sumpthin' t' eat an' a place t' snoot." He ended by pushing them all
in.
Mrs. Council, a large, jolly, rather coarse-looking woman, too the children in her arms. "Come
right in, you little rabbits. 'Mos asleep, hey? Now here's a drink o' milk f'r each o' ye. I'll have
sam tea in a minute. Take off y'r things and set up t' the fire."
55
While she set the children to drinking milk, Council got out hi lantern and went out to the barn to
help the stranger about his team, where his loud, hearty voice could be heard as it came and went
between the haymow and the stalls.
The woman came to light as a small, timid, and discouraged looking woman, but still pretty, in a
thin and sorrowful way.
60
"Land sakes! An' you've travelled all the way from Clear Lake' t'-day in this mud! Waal! Waal!
No wonder you're all tired out Don't wait f'r the men, Mis'-- " She hesitated, waiting for the name.
"Haskins."
65
"Mis' Haskins, set right up to the table an' take a good swig o tea whilst I make y' s'm toast. It's
green tea, an' it's good. I tell Council as I git older I don't seem to enjoy Young Hyson n'r
Gunpowder. I want the reel green tea, jest as it comes off'n the vines. Seems t' have more heart in
it, some way. Don't s'pose it has. Council says it's all in m' eye."
Going on in this easy way, she soon had the children filled with bread and milk and the woman
thoroughly at home, eating some toast and sweet-melon pickles, and sipping the tea.
70
"See the little rats!" she laughed at the children. "They're full as they can stick now, and they
want to go to bed. Now, don't git up, Mis' Haskins; set right where you are an' let me look after
'em. I know all about young ones, though I'm all alone now. Jane went an' married last fall. But,
as I tell Council, it's lucky we keep our health. Set right there, Mis' Haskins; I won't have you stir
a finger."
It was an unmeasured pleasure to sit there in the warm, homely kitchen. the jovial chatter of the
housewife driving out and holding at bay the growl of the impotent, cheated wind.
75
The little woman's eyes filled with tears which fell down upon the sleeping baby in her arms.
The world was not so desolate and cold and hopeless, after all.
"Now I hope. Council won't stop out there and talk politics all night. He's the greatest man to talk
politics an' read the Tribune
--How old is it?"
80
She broke off and peered down at the face of the babe.
"Two months 'n' five days," said the mother, with a mother's exactness.
"Ye don't say! I want 'o know! The dear little pudzy-wudzy!" she went on, stirring it up in the
neighborhood of the ribs with her fat forefinger.
"Pooty tough on 'oo to go gallivant'n' 'cross lots this way-- "
85
90
"Yes, that's so; a man can't lift a mountain," said Council, entering the door. "Mother, this is Mr.
Haskins, from Kansas. He's been eat up 'n' drove out by grasshoppers."
"Glad t' see yeh! Pa, empty that wash-basin 'n' give him a chance t' wash." Haskins was a tall
man, with a thin, gloomy face. His hair was a reddish brown, like his coat, and seemed equally
faded by the wind and sun, and his sallow face, though hard and set, was pathetic somehow. You
would have felt that he had suffered much by the line of his mouth showing under his thin,
yellow mustache.
"Hadn't Ike got home yet, Sairy?"
"Hadn't seen 'im."
95
"W-a-a-l, set right up, Mr. Haskins; wade right into what we've got; 'taint much, but we manage
to live on it she gits fat on it," laughed Council, pointing his thumb at his wife.
100
After supper, while the women put the children to bed, Haskins and Council talked on, seated
near the huge cooking-stove, the steam rising from their wet clothing. In the Western fashion
Council told as much of his own life as he drew from his guest. He asked but few questions, but
by and by the story of Haskins' struggles and defeat came out. The story was a terrible one, but
he told it quietly, seated with his elbows on his knees, gazing most of the time at the hearth.
"I didn't like the looks of the country, anyhow," Haskins said, partly rising and glancing at his
wife. "I was ust t' northern Ingyannie, where we have lots o' timber 'n' lots o' rain, 'n' I didn't like
the looks o' that dry prairie. What galled me the worst was goin' s' far away acrosst so much fine
land layin' all through here vacant.
105
110
"And the 'hoppers eat ye four years, hand runnin', did they?"
"Eat! They wiped us out. They chawed everything that was green. They jest set around waitin' f'r
us to die t' eat us, too. My God! I ust t' dream of 'em sittin' 'round on the bedpost, six feet long,
workin' their jaws. They eet the fork-handles. They got worse 'n' worse till they jest rolled on one
another, piled up like snow in winter Well, it ain't no use. If I was t' talk all winter I couldn't tell
nawthin'. But all the while I couldn't help thinkin' of all that land back here that nobuddy was
usin' that I ought 'o had 'stead o' bein' out there in that cussed country."
"Waal, why didn't ye stop an' settle here ?" asked Ike, who had come in and was eating his
supper.
115
"Fer the simple reason that you fellers wantid ten 'r fifteen dollars an acre fer the bare land, and I
hadn't no money fer that kind o' thing."
120
"Yes, I do my own work," Mrs. Council was heard to say in the pause which followed. "I'm a
gettin' purty heavy t' be on m'laigs all day, but we can't afford t' hire, so I keep rackin' around
somehow, like a foundered horse. S' lame I tell Council he can t tell how lame I am, f'r I'm jest as
lame in one laig as t' other." And the good soul laughed at the joke on herself as she took a
handful of flour and dusted the biscuit-board to keep the dough from sticking.
"Well, I hadn't never been very strong," said Mrs. Haskins. "Our folks was Canadians an' smallboned, and then since my last child I hadn't got up again fairly. I don't like t' complain. Tim has
about all he can bear now but they was days this week when I jest wanted to lay right down an'
die."
125
130
"Waal, now, I'll tell ye," said Council, from his side of the stove silencing everybody with his
good-natured roar, "I'd go down and see Butler, anyway, if I was you. I guess he'd let you have
his place purty cheap; the farm's all run down. He's teen anxious t' let t' somebuddy next year. It
'ud be a good chance fer you. Anyhow, you go to bed and sleep like a babe. I've got some
ploughing t' do, anyhow, an' we'll see if somethin' can't be done about your case. Ike, you go out
an' see if the horses is all right, an' I'll show the folks t' bed."
When the tired husband and wife were lying under the generous quilts of the spare bed, Haskins
listened a moment to the wind in the eaves, and then said, with a slow and solemn tone,
"There are people in this world who are good enough t' be angels, an' only haff t' die to be
angels."
135
II
140
Jim Butler was one of those men called in the West "land poor." Early in the history of Rock
River he had come into the town and started in the grocery business in a small way, occupying a
small building in a mean part of the town. At this period of his life he earned all he got, and was
up early and late sorting beans, working over butter, and carting his goods to and from the station.
But a change came over him at the end of the second year, when he sold a lot of land for four
times what he paid for it. From that time forward he believed in land speculation as the surest
way of getting rich. Every cent he could save or spare from his trade he put into land at forced
sale, or mortgages on land, which were "just as good as the wheat," he was accustomed to say.
145
Farm after farm fell into his hands, until he was recognized as one of the leading landowners of
the county. His mortgages were scattered all over Cedar County, and as they slowly but surely
fell in he sought usually to retain the former owner as tenant.
He was not ready to foreclose; indeed, he had the name of being one of .\"easiest" men in the
town. He let the debtor off again and again, extending the time whenever possible.
150
"I don't want y'r land," he said. "All I'm after is the int'rest on my money that's all. Now, if y'
want 'o stay on the farm, why,
I'll give y' a good chance. I can't have the land layint vacant." And in many cases the owner
remained as tenant.
155
160
165
In the meantime he had sold his store; he couldn't spend time in it he was mainly occupied now
with sitting around town on rainy days smoking and "gassin' with the boys," or in riding to and
from his farms. In fishing-time he fished a good deal. Doc Grimes, Ben Ashley, and Cal
Cheatham were his cronies on these fishing excursions or hunting trips in the time of chickens or
partridges. In winter they went to Northern Wisconsin to shoot deer.
In spite of all these signs of easy life Butler persisted in saying he "hadn't enough money to pay
taxes on his land," and was careful to convey the impression that he was poor in spite of his
twenty farms. At one time he was said to be worth fifty thousand dollars, but land had been a
little slow of sale of late, so that he was not worth so much.
A fine farm, known as the Higley place, had fallen into his hands in the usual way the previous
year, and he had not been able to find a tenant for it. Poor Higley, after working himself nearly to
death on it in the attempt to lift the mortgage, had gone off to Dakota, leaving the farm and his
curse to Butler.
This was the farm which Council advised Haskins to apply for; and the next day Council hitched
up his team and drove down to see Butler.
170
"You jest let me do the talkin'," he said. "We'll find him wearin' out his pants on some salt barrel
somew'ers; and if he thought you wanted a place he'd sock it to you hot and heavy. You jest keep
quiet, I'll fix 'im."
Butler was seated in Ben Ashley's store telling fish yarns when Council sauntered in casually.
"Hello, But; lyin' agin, hey?"
"Hello, Steve! How goes it?"
175
"Oh, so-so. Too clang much rain these days. I thought it was goin' t freeze up f'r good last night.
Tight squeak if I get m' ploughin' done. How's farmin' with you these days?"
"Bad. Ploughin' ain't half done."
"It 'ud be a religious idee f'r you t' go out an' take a hand y'rself."
"I don't haff to," said Butler, with a wink.
180
"Got anybody on the Higley place?"
"No. Know of anybody?"
"Waal, no; not eggsackly. I've got a relation back t' Michigan who's ben hot an' cold on the idea
o' comin' West f'r some time. Might come if he could get a good lay-out. What do you talk on the
farm?"
185
"Well, I d' know. I'll rent it on shares or I'll rent it money rent."
"Waal, how much money, say?"
"Well, say ten per cent, on the price two-fifty."
"Wall, that ain't bad. Wait on 'im till 'e thrashes?"
190
Haskins listened eagerly to this important question, but Council was coolly eating a dried apple
which he had speared out of a barrel with his knife. Butler studied him carefully.
"Well, knocks me out of twenty-five dollars interest."
"My relation'll need all he's got t' git his crops in," said Council, in the same, indifferent way.
"Well, all right; say wait," concluded Butler.
195
"All right; this is the man. Haskins, this is Mr. Butler no relation to Ben the hardest-working man
in Cedar County."
On the way home Haskins said: "I ain't much better off. I'd like that farm; it's a good farm, but
it's all run down, an' so 'm I. I could make a good farm of it if I had half a show. But I can't stock
it n'r seed it."
200
"Waal, now, don't you worry," roared Council in his ear. "We'll pull y' through somehow till next
harvest. He's agreed t' hire it ploughed, an' you can earn a hundred dollars ploughin' an' y' c'n git
the seed o' me, an' pay me back when y' can."
Haskins was silent with emotion, but at last he said, "I ain't got nothin' t' live on."
"Now, don't you worry 'bout that. You jest make your headquarters at ol' Steve Council's.
Mother'll take a pile o' comfort in havin' y'r wife an' children 'round.
205
Y' see, Jane's married off lately, an' Ike's away a good 'eal, so we'll be darn glad t' have y' stop
with us this winter. Nex' spring we'll see if y' can't git a start agin." And he chirruped to the team,
which sprang forward with the rumbling, clattering wagon.
"Say, looky here, Council, you can't do this. I never saw " shouted Haskins in his neighbor's ear.
210
215
Council moved about uneasily in his seat and stopped his stammering gratitude by saying: "Hold
on, now; don't make such a fuss over a little thing. When I see a man down, an' things all on top
of 'm, I jest like t' kick 'em off an' help 'm up. That's the kind of religion I got, an' it's about the
only kind."
They rode the rest of the way home in silence. And when the red light of the lamp shone out into
the darkness of the cold and windy night, and he thought of this refuge for his children and wife,
Haskins could have put his arm around the neck of his burly companion and squeezed him like a
lover. But he contented himself with saying, "Steve Council, you'll git y'r pay f'r this some day."
"Don't want any pay. My religion ain't run on such business principles."
220
The wind was growing colder, and the ground was covered with a white frost, as they turned into
the gate of the Council farm, and the children came rushing out, shouting, "Papa's come!" They
hardly looked like the same children who had sat at the table the night before. Their torpidity,
under the influence of sunshine and Mother Council, had given way to a sort of spasmodic
cheerfulness, as insects in winter revive when laid on the hearth.
III
225
Haskins worked like a fiend, and his wife, like the heroic woman that she was, bore also
uncomplainingly the most terrible burdens. They rose early and toiled without intermission till
the darkness fell on the plain, then tumbled into bed, every bone and muscle aching with fatigue,
to rise with the sun next morning to the same round of the same ferocity of labor.
230
235
The eldest boy drove a team all through the spring, ploughing and seeding, milked the cows, and
did chores innumerable, in most ways taking the place of a man.
An infinitely pathetic but common figure this boy on the American farm, where there is no law
against child labor. To see him in his coarse clothing, his huge boots, and his ragged cap, as he
staggered with a pail of water from the well, or trudged in the cold and cheerless dawn out into
the frosty field behind his team, gave the city-bred visitor a sharp pang of sympathetic pain. Yet
Haskins loved his boy, and would have saved him from this if he could, but he could not.
By June the first year the result of such Herculean toil began to show on the farm. The yard was
cleaned up and sown to grass, the garden ploughed and planted, and the house mended.
Council had given them four of his cows.
240
245
"Take 'em an' run 'em on shares. I don't want 'o milk s' many. Ike's away s' much now, Sat'd'ys
an' Sund'ys, I can't stand the bother anyhow."
Other men, seeing the confidence of Council in the newcomer, had sold him tools on time; and
as he was really an able farmer, he soon had round him many evidences of his care and thrift. At
the advice of Council he had taken the farm for three years, with the privilege of re-renting or
buying at the end of the term.
"It's a good bargain, an' y' want 'o nail it," said Council. "If you have any kind ov a crop, you c'n
pay y'r debts, an' keep seed an' bread."
250
The new hope which now sprang up in the heart of Haskins and his wife grew almost as a pain
by the time the wide field of wheat began to wave and rustle and swirl in the winds of July. Day
after day he would snatch a few moments after supper to go and look at it.
"'Have ye seen the wheat t'-day, Nettie?" he asked one night as he rose from supper.
"No, Tim, I ain't had time."
"Well, take time now. Le's go look at it."
255
She threw an old hat on her head Tommy's hat and looking almost pretty in her thin, sad way,
went out with her husband to the hedge.
"Ain't it grand, Nettie ? Just look at it."
It was grand. Level, russet here and there, heavy-headed, wide as a lake, and full of
multitudinous whispers and gleams of wealth, it stretched away before the gazers like the fabled
field of the cloth of gold.
260
"Oh, I think I hope we'll have a good crop, Tim; and oh, how good the people have been to us!"
"Yes; I don't know where we'd be t'-day if it hadn't teen f'r Council and his wife."
"They're the best people in the world," said the little woman, with a great sob of gratitude.
"We'll be in the field on Monday sure," said Haskins, gripping the rail on the fences as if already
at the work of the harvest.
265
The harvest came, bounteous, glorious, but the winds came and blew it into tangles, and the rain
matted it here and there close to the ground, increasing the work of gathering it threefold.
270
Oh, how they toiled in those glorious days! Clothing dripping with sweat, arms aching, filled
with briers, fingers raw and bleeding, backs broken with the weight of heavy bundles, Haskins
and his man toiled on. Tummy drove the harvester, while his father and a hired man bound on
the machine. In this way they cut ten acres every day, and almost every night after supper, when
the hand went to bed, Haskins returned to the field shocking the bound grain in the light of the
moon. Many a night he worked till his anxious wife came out at ten o'clock to call him in to rest
and lunch.
275
At the same time she cooked for the men, took care of the children, washed and ironed, milked
the cows at night, made the butter, and sometimes fed the horses and watered them while her
husband kept at the shocking.
No slave in the Roman galleys could have toiled so frightfully and lived, for this man thought
himself a free man, and that he was working for his wife and babes.
280
When he sank into his bed with a deep groan of relief, too tired to change his grimy, dripping
clothing, he felt that he was getting
nearer and nearer to a home of his own, and pushing the wolf of want a little farther from his
door.
285
There is no despair so deep as the despair of a homeless man or woman. To roam the roads of the
country or the streets of the city, to feel there is no rood of ground on which the feet can rest, to
halt weary and hungry outside lighted windows and hear laughter and song within, these are the
hungers and rebellions that drive men to crime and women to shame.
It was the memory of this homelessness, and the fear of its coming again, that spurred Timothy
Haskins and Nettie, his wife, to such ferocious labor during that first year.
290
295
IV
"'M, yes; 'm, yes; first-rate," said Butler, as his eye took in the neat garden, the pig-pen, and the
well-filled barnyard. "You're gitt'n' quite a stock around yeh. Done well, eh?" Haskins was
showing Butler around the place. He had not seen it for a year, having spent the year in
Washington and Boston with Ashley, his brother-in-law, who had been elected to Congress.
"Yes, I've laid out a good deal of money durin' the last three years. I've paid out three hundred
dollars f'r fencin'."
"Um h'm! I see, I see," said Butler, while Haskins went on:
300
"The kitchen there cost two hundred; the barn ain't cost much in money, but I've put a lot o' time
on it. I've dug a new well, and I-- "
"Yes, yes, I see. You've done well. Stock worth a thousand dollars," said Butler, picking his teeth
with a straw.
305
"About that," said Haskins, modestly. "We begin to feel's if we was gitt'n' a home f'r ourselves;
but we've worked hard. I tell you we begin to feel it, Mr. Butler, and we're goin' t' begin to ease
up purty soon. We've been kind o' plannin' a trip back t' her folks after the fall ploughin's done."
"Eggs-actly!" said Butler, who was evidently thinking of something else. "I suppose you've kind
o' calc'lated on stayin' here three years more?"
"Well, yes. Fact is, I think I c'n buy the farm this fall, if you'll give me a reasonable show."
"Um m! What do you call a reasonable show?"
310
"Well, say a quarter down and three years' time."
Butler looked at the huge stacks of wheat, which filled the yard, over which the chickens were
fluttering and crawling, catching grasshoppers, and out of which the crickets were singing
innumerably. He smiled in a peculiar way as he said, "Oh, I won't be hard on yeh. But what did
you expect to pay f'r the place?"
315
"Why, about what you offered it for before, two thousand five hundred, or possibly three
thousand dollars," he added quickly, as he saw the owner shake his head.
"This farm is worth five thousand and five hundred dollars," said Butler, in a careless and
decided voice.
320
"What!" almost shrieked the astounded Haskins. "What's that? Five thousand ? Why, that's
double what you offered it for three years ago."
"Of course, and it's worth it. It was all run down then now it's in good shape. You've laid out
fifteen hundred dollars in improvements, according to your own story."
"But you had nothin' t' do about that. It's my work an' my money."
"You bet it was; but it's my land."
325
"But what's to pay me for all my-- "
"Ain't you had the use of 'em?" replied Butler, smiling calmly into his face.
Haskins was like a man struck on the head with a sandbag; he couldn't think; he stammered as he
tried to say: "But I never'd git the use You'd rob me! More'n that: you agreed you promised that I
could buy or rent at the end of three years at-- "
330
"That's all right. But I didn't say I'd let you carry off the improvements, nor that I'd go on renting
the farm at two-fifty. The land is doubled in value, it don't matter how; it don't enter into the
question; an' now you can pay me five hundred dollars a year rent, or take it on your own terms
at fifty-five hundred, or git out."
He was turning away when Haskins, the sweat pouring from his face, fronted him, saying again:
335
"But you've done nothing to make it so. You hadn't added a cent. I put it all there myself,
expectin' to buy. I worked an' sweat to improve it. I was workin' for myself an' babes-- "
"Well, why didn't you buy when I offered to sell? What y' kickin' about?"
"I'm kickin' about payin' you twice f'r my own things, my own fences, my own kitchen, my own
garden."
340
Butler laughed. "You're too green t' eat, young feller. Your improvements! The law will sing
another tune."
"But I trusted your word."
"Never trust anybody, my friend. Besides, I didn't promise not to do this thing. Why, man, don't
look at me like that. Don't take me for a thief. It's the law. The reg'lar thing. Everybody does it."
345
350
"I don't care if they do. It's stealin' jest the same. You take three thousand dollars of my money
the work o' my hands and my wife's." He broke down at this point. He was not a strong man
mentally. He could face hardship, ceaseless toil, but he could not face the cold and sneering face
of Butler.
"But I don't take it," said Butler, coolly "All you've got to do is to go on jest as you've been acoin', or give me a thousand dollars down, and a mortgage at ten per cent on the rest."
Haskins sat down blindly on a bundle of oats near by, and with staring eyes and drooping head
went over the situation. He was under the lion's paw. He felt a horrible numbness in his heart and
limbs. He was hid in a mist, and there was no path out.
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360
Butler walked about, looking at the huge stacks of grain, and pulling now and again a few
handfuls out, shelling the heads in his hands and blowing the chaff away. He hummed a little
tune as he did so. He had an accommodating air of waiting.
Haskins was in the midst of the terrible toil of the last year. He was walking again in the rain and
the mud behind his plough he felt the dust and dirt of the threshing. The ferocious husking-time,
with its cutting wind and biting, clinging snows, lay hard upon him. Then he thought of his wife,
how she had cheerfully cooked and baked, without holiday and without rest.
"Well, what do you think of it?" inquired the cool, mocking, insinuating voice of Butler.
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"I think you're a thief and a liar!" shouted Haskins, leaping up. "A black-hearted houn'!" Butler's
smile maddened him; with a sudden leap he caught a fork in his hands, and whirled it in the air.
"You'll never rob another man, damn ye!" he grated through his teeth, a look of pitiless ferocity
in his accusing eyes.
Butler shrank and quivered, expecting the blow; stood, held hypnotized by the eyes of the man
he had a moment before despised a man transformed into an avenging demon. But in the deadly
hush between the lift of the weapon and its fall there came a gush of faint, childish laughter and
then across the range of his vision, far away and dim, he saw the sun-bright head of his baby girl,
as, with the pretty, tottering run of a two-year-old, she moved across the grass of the dooryard.
His hands relaxed: the fork fell to the ground; his head lowered.
"Make out y'r deed an' mor'gage, an' git off'n my land, an' don't ye never cross my line agin; if y'
do, I'll kill ye."
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Butler backed away from the man in wild haste, and climbing into his buggy with trembling
limbs drove off down the road, leaving Haskins seated dumbly on the sunny pile of sheaves, his
head sunk into his hands.