A Good Man is Hard to Find
by
Flannery O'Connor
From:Flannery
O'Connor: Collected Works the Library of America
Flannery O'Connor
1925-1964
A
Good Man Is Hard to Find
(c)1953, 1954
p137
THE GRANDMOTHER didn't
want to go to
Bailey didn't look up
from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children's mother, a
young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and
was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like
rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out
of a jar. "The children have been to
The children's mother
didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a stocky child
with glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to
"She wouldn't stay
at home to be queen for a day," June Star said without raising her yellow
head.
"Yes and what would
you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother asked.
"I'd smack his
face," John Wesley said.
"She wouldn't stay
at home for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd miss
something. She has to go everywhere we go."
138 A GOOD MAN IS HARD
TO FIND
"All right,
Miss," the grandmother said. "Just remember that the next time you
want me to curl your hair."
June Star said her hair
was naturally curly.
The next morning the
grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She had her big black
valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and
underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She
didn't intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because
he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of the
gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like
to arrive at a motel with a cat.
She sat in the middle of
the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and
the children's mother and the baby sat in front and they left
The old lady settled herself
comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her
purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children's mother still had
on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the
grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets
on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her
collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she
had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an
accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was
a lady.
She said she thought it
was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot nor too cold, and she
cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour and that the
patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of trees and sped
out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed out interesting
details of the scenery:
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO
FIND 139
that made rows of green
lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the
meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their
mother had gone back to sleep.
"Let's go through
"If I were a little
boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state
that way.
"
"You said it,"
June Star said.
"In my time,"
said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children were more
respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People
did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed
to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a
picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little
Negro out of the back window. He waved.
"He didn't have any
britches on," June Star said.
"He probably didn't
have any," the grandmother explained. "Little niggers in the country
don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture,"
she said.
The children exchanged
comic books.
The grandmother offered
to hold the baby and the children's mother passed him over the front seat to
her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the things they
were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck her
leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally he gave her a
faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced
in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!"
the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old family burying
ground. That belonged to the plantation."
"Where's the
plantation?" John Wesley asked.
"Gone With the Wind," said the grandmother. "Ha.
Ha."
When the children
finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened the lunch and ate
it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let
I40 A GOOD MAN IS HARD
TO FIND
the children throw the box
and the paper napkins out the window. When there was nothing else to do they
played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it
suggested. John Wesley took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow
and John Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn't play
fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother.
The grandmother said she
would tell them a story if they would keep quiet. When she told a story, she
rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic. She said once when
she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden from
They stopped at The
Tower for barbecued sandwiches. The Tower was a part
stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside
of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck
here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying,
TRY RED SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S
YOUR MAN!
Red Sammy was lying on
the bare ground outside The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray
monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree, chattered nearby.
The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the
A GOOD
MAN IS HARD TO FIND 141 highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the
car and run toward him.
Inside, The Tower was a
long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing
space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon
and Red Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than
her skin, came and took their order. The children's mother put a dime in the
machine and played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother said
that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to
dance but he only glared at her. He didn't have a naturally sunny disposition
like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother's brown eyes were very
bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in
her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the children's
mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out
onto the dance floor and did her tap routine.
"Ain't she
cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you like
to come be my little girl?"
"No I certainly
wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place
like this for a minion bucks!" and she ran back to the table.
"Ain't she
cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.
"Arn't you
ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.
Red Sam came in and told
his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these people's
order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung
over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat
down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. "You
can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating
red face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to
trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?"
"People are
certainly not nice like they used to be," said the grandmother.
"Two fellers come
in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys
looked all right to me. Said they worked
142 A GOOD MAN IS HARD
TO FIND
at the mill and you know I
let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?"
"Because you're a
good man!" the grandmother said at once.
"Yes'm, I suppose
so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer.
His wife brought the
orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray, two in each hand
and one balanced on her arm. "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's
that you can trust," she said. "And I don't count nobody out of that,
not nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.
"Did you read about
that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the grandmother.
"I wouldn't be a
bit surprised if he didn't attact this place right here," said the woman.
"If he hears about it being here,I wouldn't be
none surprised to see him. If he hears it's two cent
in the cash register, I wouldn't be a tall surprised if he . . ."
"That'll do,"
Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their Co'-Colas," and the woman
went off to get the rest of the order.
"A good man is hard
to find," Red Sammy said. "Every- thing is getting terrible. I
remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no
more."
He and the grandmother
discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion
They drove off again
into the hot afternoon. The grand- mother took cat naps and woke up every few
minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an
old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a
young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that
there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO
FIND 143
arbors on either side in front
where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly
which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing
to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the
more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors
were still standing. "There was a secret panel in this house," she
said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the
story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came
through but it was never found . . ."
"Hey!" John
Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find it! We'll poke all the woodwork
and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can't we turn
off there?"
"We never have seen
a house with a secret panel!" June Star shrieked. "Let's go to the
house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with the secret
panel!"
"It's not far from
here, I know," the grandmother said. "It wouldn't take over twenty
minutes."
Bailey was looking
straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he said.
The children began to
yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John
Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother's
shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even
on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby
began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his
father could feel the blows in his kidney.
"All right!"
he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. "Will you
all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don't shut up, we
won't go anywhere.
"It would be very
educational for them," the grandmother murmured.
"All right,"
Bailey said, "but get this: this is the only time we're going to stop for
anything like this. This is the one and only time."
"The dirt road that
you have to turn down is about a mile back," the grandmother directed.
"I marked it when we passed."
144 A GOOD MAN IS HARD
TO FIND
"A dirt road,"
Bailey groaned.
After they had turned
around and were headed toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other
points about the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and the
candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was probably in
the fireplace.
"You can't go
inside this house," Bailey said. "You don't know who lives
there."
"While you all talk
to the people in front, I'll run around behind and get in a window," John
Wesley suggested.
"We'll all stay in
the car," his mother said. They turned onto the dirt road and the car
raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times
when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt
road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous
embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue
tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute,
they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on
them.
"This place had
better turn up in a minute," Bailey said, "or I'm going to turn
around."
The road looked as if no
one had traveled on it in months.
"It's not much
farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought
came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face
and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the
corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket
under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing,the cat,
sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.
The children were thrown
to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto
the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over
once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey
remained in the driver's seat with the cat-gray-striped with a broad white face
and an orange nose-clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.
As soon as the children
saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car,
shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up
under the
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO
FIND 145
dashboard, hoping she was injured
so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible
thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered
so vividly was not in
Bailey removed the cat
from his neck with both hands and flung it out the window against the side of a
pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started looking for the children's
mother. She was sitting against the side of the red gutted ditch, holding the
screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face and a broken shoulder.
"We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.
"But nobody's
killed," June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out
of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing
up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side. They all sat
down in the ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock. They were
all shaking.
"Maybe a car will
come along," said the children's mother hoarsely.
"I believe I have
injured an organ," said the grandmother, pressing her side, but no one
answered her. Bailey's teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt
with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the l
shirt. The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in
The road was about ten
feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees on the other side of
it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark
and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill,
coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The grandmother stood up
and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued
to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even
slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered
hearse-like automobile. There were three men in it.
It came to a stop just
over them and for some minutes, the driver looked down with a steady
expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn't speak. Then he turned
his
146 A GOOD MAN IS HARD
TO FIND
head and muttered something
to the other two and they got out. One was a fat boy in black trousers and a
red sweat shirt with a silver stallion embossed on the front of it. He moved
around on the right side of them and stood staring, his mouth partly open in a
kind of loose grin. The other had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a
gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He came around slowly
on the left side. Neither spoke.
The driver got out of
the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at them. He was an older man
than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-
rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long creased face
and didn't have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too
tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also had
guns.
"We've had an
ACCIDENT!" the children screamed.
The grandmother had the
peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was
as familiar to her as if she had known him au her life but she could not recall
who he was. He moved away from the car and began to come down the embankment,
placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn't slip. He had on tan and white
shoes and no socks, and his ankles were red and thin. "Good
afternoon," he said. "I see you all had you a little spill."
"We turned over
twice!" said the grandmother.
"Once","
he corrected. "We seen it happen. Try their car
and see will it run, Hiram," he said quietly to the boy with the gray hat.
"What you got that
gun for?" John Wesley asked. "Whatcha gonna do with that gun?"
"Lady," the
man said to the children's mother, "would you mind calling them children
to sit down by you? Children make me nervous. I want all you all to sit down
right together there where you're at."
"What are you
telling US what to do for?" June Star asked.
Behind them the line of
woods gaped like a dark open mouth. "Come here," said their mother.
"Look here now,"
Bailey began suddenly, "we're in a predicament! We're in . . ."
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO
FIND 147
The grandmother
shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. "You're The
Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once!"
"Yes'm," the
man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be
known, "but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't
of reckernized me."
Bailey turned his head
sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The
old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened.
"Lady," he
said, "don't you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don't mean. I don't reckon he meant to talk to you
thataway."
"You wouldn't shoot
a lady, would you?" the grandmother said and removed a clean handkerchief
from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it.
The Misfit pointed the
toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole and then covered it up
again. "I would hate to have to," he said.
"Listen," the
grandmother almost screamed, "I know you're a good man. You don't look a
bit like you have com- mon blood. I know you must come
from nice people!"
"Yes mam," he
said, "finest people in the world." When he smiled he showed a row of
strong white teeth. "God never made a finer woman than my mother and my
daddy's heart was pure gold," he said. The boy with the red sweat shirt
had come around behind them and was standing with his gun at his hip. The
Misfit squatted down on the ground. "Watch them children, Bobby Lee,"
he said. "You know they make me nervous." He looked at the six of
them huddled together in front of him and he seemed to be embarrassed as if he
couldn't think of anything to say. "Ain't a cloud in the sky," he
remarked, looking up at it. "Don't see no sun but
don't see no cloud neither."
"Yes, it's a
beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen," she said,
"you shouldn't call yourself The Misfit because I know you're a good man
at heart. I can just look at you and tell "
"Hush!" Bailey
yelled. "Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!" He was
squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn't
move.
148 A GOOD MAN IS HARD
TO FIND
"I prechate that,
lady," The Misfit said and drew a little circle in the ground with the
butt of his gun.
"It'll take a half
a hour to fix this here car," Hiram called, looking over the raised hood
of it.
"Well, first you
and Bobby Lee get him and that little boy to step over yonder with you,"
The Misfit said, pointing to Bailey and John Wesley. "The boys want to ast
you some- thing," he said to Bailey. "Would you mind stepping back in
them woods there with them?"
"Listen,"
Bailey began, "we're in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes what this
is," and his voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as the
parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.
The grandmother reached
up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the
woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a
second she let it fall on the ground. Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if
he were assisting an old man. John Wesley caught hold of his father's hand and
Bobby Lee followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached the
dark edge, Bailey turned and supporting himself against a gray naked pine
trunk, he shouted, "I'll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me!"
"Come back this
instant!" his mother shrilled but they all disappeared into the woods.
"Bailey Boy!"
the grandmother called in a tragic voice but she found she was looking at The
Misfit squatting on the ground in front of her. "I just know you're a good
man," she said desperately. "You're not a bit common!"
"
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO
FIND I49
making do until we can get
better. We borrowed these from some folks we met," he explained.
"That's perfectly
all right," the grandmother said. "Maybe Bailey has an extra shirt in
his suitcase."
"I'll look and see
terrectly," The Misfit said.
"Where are they
taking him?" the children's mother screamed.
"Daddy was a card
himself," The Misfit said. "You couldn't put anything over on him. He
never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had
the knack of handling them."
"You could be
honest too if you'd only try," said the grandmother. "Think how
wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have
to think about some- body chasing you all the time."
The Misfit kept
scratching in the ground with the butt of his gun as if he were thinking about
it. "Yes'm, somebody is always after you," he murmured.
The grandmother noticed
how thin his shoulder blades were just behind-his hat because she was standing
up looking down on him. "Do you ever pray?" she asked.
He shook his head. All
she saw was the black hat wiggle between his shoulder blades. "
There was a pistol shot
from the woods, followed closely by another. Then silence. The old lady's head
jerked around. She could hear the wind move through the tree tops like a long
satisfied insuck of breath. "Bailey Boy!" she called.
"I was a gospel
singer for a while," The Misfit said. "I been
most everything. Been in the arm service, both land and sea, at home and
abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed
Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet," and he
looked up at the children's mother and the little girl who were sitting close
together, their faces white and their eyes glassy; "I even seen a woman
flogged," he said.
"Pray, pray,"
the grandmother began, "pray, pray . . ."
"I never was a bad
boy that I remember of," The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice,
"but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the
penitentiary. I was buried alive," and he looked up and held her attention
to him by a steady stare.
150 A GOOD MAN IS HARD
TO FIND
"That's when you
should have started to pray," she said "What did you do to get sent
to the penitentiary that first time?"
"Turn to the right,
it was a wall," The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky.
"Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling,
look down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set
there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain't recalled it to this
day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never
come."
"Maybe they put you
in by mistake," the old lady said vaguely.
"
"You must have
stolen something," she said.
The Misfit sneered
slightly. "Nobody had nothing I wanted," he
said. "It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was
kill my daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought
nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was
buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can go there and see
for yourself."
"If you would
pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you."
"That's
right," The Misfit said.
"Well then, why
don't you pray?" she asked trembling with delight suddenly.
"I don't want no
hep," he said. "I'm doing all right by myself."
Bobby Lee and Hiram came
ambling back from the woods. Bobby Lee was dragging a yellow shirt with bright
blue parrots in it.
"Thow me that
shirt, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. The shirt came
flying at him and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. The grandmother
couldn't name what the shirt reminded her of. "No, lady," The Misfit
said while he was buttoning it up, "I found out the crime don't matter.
You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his
car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and
just be punished for it."
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO
FIND 151
The children's mother
had begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn't get her breath.
"Lady," he asked, "would you and that little girl like to step off
yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband?"
"Yes, thank
you," the mother said faintly. Her left arm dangled helplessly and she was
holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. "Hep that lady up,
Hiram," The Misfit said as she struggled to climb out of the ditch,
"and Bobby Lee, you hold onto that little girl's hand."
"I don't want to
hold hands with him," June Star said. "He reminds me of a pig."
The fat boy blushed and
laughed and caught her by the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram
and her mother.
Alone
with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice. There was not a cloud
in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her
but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her
mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying,
"Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was
saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing.
"Yes'm," The
Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus shown
everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He
hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because
they had the papers on me. Of course," he said, "they never shown me
my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a
signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know
what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they
match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated
right. I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what
all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."
There was a piercing
scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. "Does it seem
right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and
another ain't punished at all?"
"Jesus!" the
old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady!
I know you come from nice
152 A GOOD MAN IS HARD
TO FIND people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all
the money I've got!"
"Lady," The
Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."
There were two more
pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey
hen crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!" as if her
heart would break.
"Jesus was the only
One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit
continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown
everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do
but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing
for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can-by
killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.
No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a
snarl.
"Maybe He didn't
raise the dead," the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and
feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under
her.
"I wasn't there so
I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been
there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I
wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady,"
he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I
wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the
grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close
to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of
my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him
on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot
her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and
took off his glasses and began to clean them.
Hiram and Bobby Lee
returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the
grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs
crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO
FIND 153
Without his glasses, The
Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her
off and thow her where you shown the others," he said, picking up the cat
that was rubbing itself against his leg.
"She was a talker,
wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.
"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had
been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
"Some
fun!"
Bobby Lee said.
"Shut up, Bobby
Lee" The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."