Side by Side 3= 3 Good Country People
Mon= day, November 10, 2008
7:0= 6 PM
by Flannery O'Connor
Bes= ides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had = two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings. Her forward expression was steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truc= k. Her eyes never swerved to left or right but turned as the story turned as = if they followed a yellow line down the center of it. She seldom used the oth= er expression because it was not often necessary for her to retract a stateme= nt, but when she did, her face came to a complete stop, there was an almost imperceptible movement of her black eyes, during which they seemed to be receding, and then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she mi= ght stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each other, wa= s no longer there in spirit. As for getting anything across to her when this was the case, Mrs. Hopewell had given it up. She might talk her head off. Mrs. Freeman could never be brought to admit herself wrong to any point. She wo= uld stand there and if she could be brought to say anything, it was something like, “Well, I wouldn’t of said it was and I wouldn’t of said it was= n’t” or letting her gaze range over the top kitchen shelf where there was an assortment of dusty bottles, she might remark, “I see you ain’t ate ma= ny of them figs you put up last summer.”
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They carried on their most important business in the kitchen at breakfast. Every morning Mrs. Hopewell got up at seven o’clock and lit her gas heater and Joy’s. Joy was her daughter, a large blonds girl who had an artificial l= eg. Mrs. Hopewell thought of her as a child though she was thirty-two years old and highly educated. Joy would get up while her mother was eating and lumb= er into the bathroom and slam the door, and before long, Mrs. Freeman would arrive at the back door. Joy would hear her mother call, “Come on in,”= and then they would talk for a while in low voices that were indistinguishable= in the bathroom. By the time Joy came in, they had usually finished the weath= er report and were on one or the other of Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, Glynese= or Carramae. Joy called them Glycerin and Caramel. Glynese, a redhead, was eighteen and= had many admirers; Carramae, a blonde, was only fifteen but already married and pregnant. She could not keep anything on her stomach. Every morning Mrs. Freeman told Mrs. Hopewell how many times she had vomited since the last report.
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Mrs. Hopewell liked to tell people that Glynese and Carramae were two of the fi= nest girls she knew and that Mrs. Freeman was a lady and that she was never ash= amed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody they might meet. Then she would tell how she had happened to hire the Freemans in the first place and how they were a godsend to her and how she had had them four years. The re= ason for her keeping them so long was that they were not trash. They were good country people. She had telephoned the man whose name they had given as reference and he had told her that Mr. Freeman was a good farmer but that = his wife was the nosiest woman ever to walk the earth. “She’s got to be in= to everything,” the man said. “If she don’t get there before the dust s= ettles, you can bet she’s dead, that’s all. She’ll want to know all your bus= iness. I can stand him real good,” he had said, “but me nor my wife neither cou= ld have stood that woman one more minute on this place.” That had put Mrs. Hopew= ell off for a few days.
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She= had hired them in the end because there were no other applicants but she had m= ade up her mind beforehand exactly how she would handle the woman. Since she w= as the type who had to be into everything, then, Mrs. Hopewell had decided, s= he would not only let her be into everything, she would see to it that she was into everything – she would give her the responsibility of everything, s= he would put her in charge. Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but= she was able to use other people’s in such a constructive way that she had k= ept them four years.
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Not= hing is perfect. This was one of Mrs. Hopewell’s favorite sayings. Another wa= s: that is life! And still another, the most important, was: well, other peop= le have their opinions too. She would make these statements, usually at the table, in a tone of gentle insistence as if no one held them but her, and = the large hulking Joy, whose constant outrage had obliterated every expression from her face, would stare just a little to the side of her, her eyes icy blue, with the look of someone who had achieved blindness by an act of will and means to keep it.
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Whe= n Mrs. Hopewell said to Mrs. Freeman that life was like that, Mrs. Freeman would = say, “I always said so myself.” Nothing had been arrived at by anyone that = had not first been arrived at by her. She was quicker than Mr. Freeman. When Mrs. Hopewell said to her after they had been on the place for a while, “You = know, you’re the wheel behind the wheel,” and winked, Mrs. Freeman had said,= “I know it. I’ve always been quick. It’s some that are quicker than others.”=
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“= Everybody is different,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
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“= Yes, most people is,” Mrs. Freeman said.
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“= It takes all kinds to make the world.”
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“= I always said it did myself.”
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The= girl was used to this kind of dialogue for breakfast and more of it for dinner; sometimes they had it for supper too. When they had no guest they ate in t= he kitchen because that was easier. Mrs. Freeman always managed to arrive at = some point during the meal and to watch them finish it. She would stand in the doorway if it were summer but in the winter she would stand with one elbow= on top of the refrigerator and look down at them, or she would stand by the g= as heater, lifting the back of her skirt slightly. Occasionally she would sta= nd against the wall and roll her head from side to side. At no time was she in any hurry to leave. All this was very trying on Mrs. Hopewell but she was a woman of great patience. She realized that nothing is perfect and that in = the Freemans she had good country people and that if, in this day and age, you= get good country people, you had better hang onto them.
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She= had had plenty of experience with trash. Before the Freemans she had averaged = one tenant family a year. The wives of these farmers were not the kind you wou= ld want to be around you for very long. Mrs. Hopewell, who had divorced her husband long ago, needed someone to walk over the fields with her; and when Joy had to be impressed for these services, her remarks were usually so ug= ly and her face so glum that Mrs. Hopewell would say, “If you can’t come pleasantly, I don’t want you at all,” to which the girl, standing squa= re and rigid-shouldered with her neck thrust slightly forward, would reply, “If= you want me, here I am – LIKE I AM.”
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Mrs. Hopewell excused this attitude because of the leg (which had been shot off= in a hunting accident when Joy was ten). It was hard for Mrs. Hopewell to rea= lize that her child was thirty-two now and that for more than twenty years she = had had only one leg. She thought of her still as a child because it tore her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times. Her name was really Joy but as soon as she was twenty-one and away from home, she had had it legally chan= ged. Mrs. Hopewell was certain that she had thought and thought until she had h= it upon the ugliest name in any language. Then she had gone and had the beaut= iful name, Joy, changed without telling her mother until after she had done it.= Her legal name was Hulga.
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Whe= n Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad blank hull of a battleship. She would not use it. She continued to call her Joy to which t= he girl responded but in a purely mechanical way.
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Hul= ga had learned to tolerate Mrs. Freeman who saved her from taking walks with her mother. Even Glynese and Carramae were useful when they occupied attention that might otherwise have been directed at her. At first she had thought s= he could not stand Mrs. Freeman for she had found it was not possible to be r= ude to her. Mrs. Freeman would take on strange resentments and for days togeth= er she would be sullen but the source of her displeasure was always obscure; a direct attack, a positive leer, blatant ugliness to her face – these nev= er touched her. And without warning one day, she began calling her Hulga.
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She= did not call her that in front of Mrs. Hopewell who would have been incensed b= ut when she and the girl happened to be out of the house together, she would = say something and add the name Hulga to the end of it, and the big spectacled Joy-Hulga would scowl and redden as if her privacy had been intruded upon.= She considered the name her personal affair. She had arrived at it first purel= y on the basis of its ugly sound and then the full genius of its fitness had st= ruck her. She had a vision of the name working like the ugly sweating Vulcan who stayed in the furnace and to whom, presumably, the goddess had to come when called. She saw it as the name of her highest creative act. One of her maj= or triumphs was that her mother had not been able to turn her dust into Joy, = but the greater one was that she had been able to turn it herself into Hulga. However, Mrs. Freeman’s relish for using the name only irritated her. It= was as if Mrs. Freeman’s beady steel-pointed eyes had penetrated far enough = behind her face to reach some secret fact. Something about her seemed to fascinate Mrs. Freeman and then one day Hulga realized that it was the artificial le= g. Mrs. Freeman had a special fondness for the details of secret infections, hidden deformities, assaults upon children. Of diseases, she preferred the lingering or incurable. Hulga had heard Mrs. Hopewell give her the details= of the hunting accident, how the leg had been literally blasted off, how she = had never lost consciousness. Mrs. Freeman could listen to it any time as if it had happened an hour ago.
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When Hulga stumped into the kitchen in the morning (she could walk without maki= ng the awful noise but she made it – Mrs. Hopewell was certain – because = it was ugly-sounding), she glanced at them and did not speak. Mrs. Hopewell would= be in her red kimono with her hair tied around her head in rags. She would be sitting at the table, finishing her breakfast and Mrs. Freeman would be hanging by her elbow outward from the refrigerator, looking down at the ta= ble. Hulga always put her eggs on the stove to boil and then stood over them wi= th her arms folded, and Mrs. Hopewell would look at her – a kind of indirec= t gaze divided between her and Mrs. Freeman – and would think that if she would= only keep herself up a little, she wouldn’t be so bad looking. There was noth= ing wrong with her face that a pleasant expression wouldn’t help. Mrs. Hopew= ell said that people who looked on the bright side of things would be beautiful even if they were not.
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Whe= never she looked at Joy this way, she could not help but feel that it would have been better if the child had not taken the Ph.D. It had certainly not brou= ght her out any and now that she had it, there was no more excuse for her to g= o to school again. Mrs. Hopewell thought it was nice for girls to go to school = to have a good time but Joy had “gone through.” Anyhow, she would not hav= e been strong enough to go again. The doctors had told Mrs. Hopewell that with the best of care, Joy might see forty-five. She had a weak heart. Joy had made= it plain that if it had not been for this condition, she would be far from th= ese red hills and good country people. She would be in a university lecturing = to people who knew what she was talking about. And Mrs. Hopewell could very w= ell picture here there, looking like a scarecrow and lecturing to more of the same. Here she went about all day in a six-year-old skirt and a yellow swe= at shirt with a faded cowboy on a horse embossed on it. She thought this was funny; Mrs. Hopewell thought it was idiotic and showed simply that she was still a child. She was brilliant but she didn’t have a grain of sense. It seemed to Mrs. Hopewell that every year she grew less like other people and more like herself – bloated, rude, and squint-eyed. And she said such st= range things! To her own mother she had said – without warning, without excuse, standing up in the middle of a meal with her face purple and her mouth half full – “Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and se= e what you are not? God!” she had cried sinking down again and staring at her p= late, “Malebranche was right: we are not our own light. We are not our own lig= ht!” Mrs. Hopewell had no idea to this day what brought that on. She had only m= ade the remark, hoping Joy would take it in, that a smile never hurt anyone. T= he girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, “My daughter is a nurse,” or “My daugh= ter is a school teacher,” or even, “My daughter is a chemical engineer.” You = could not say, “My daughter is a philosopher.” That was something that had ended= with the Greeks and Romans. All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, readin= g. Sometimes she went for walks but she didn’t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men. She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.
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One= day Mrs. Hopewell had picked up one of the books the girl had just put down and opening it at random, she read, “Science, on the other hand, has to asse= rt its soberness and seriousness afresh and declare that it is concerned solely w= ith what-is. Nothing – how can it be for science anything but a horror and a phantasm? If science is right, then one thing stands firm: science wishes = to know nothing of nothing. Such is after all the strictly scientific approac= h to Nothing. We know it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing.” These words = had been underlined with a blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell like s= ome evil incantation in gibberish. She shut the book quickly and went out of t= he room as if she were having a chill.
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This morning when the girl came in, Mrs. Freeman was on Carramae. “She thrown= up four times after supper,” she said, “and was up twict in the night aft= er three o’clock. Yesterday she didn’t do nothing but ramble in the bureau draw= er. All she did. Stand up there and see what she could run up on.”
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“= She’s got to eat,” Mrs. Hopewell muttered, sipping her coffee, while she watch= ed Joy’s back at the stove. She was wondering what the child had said to the Bible salesman. She could not imagine what kind of a conversation she could possibly have had with him.
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He = was a tall gaunt hatless youth who had called yesterday to sell them a Bible. He= had appeared at the door, carrying a large black suitcase that weighted him so heavily on one side that he had to brace himself against the door facing. = He seemed on the point of collapse but he said in a cheerful voice, “Good morning, Mrs. Cedars!” and set the suitcase down on the mat. He was not a bad-looking young man though he had on a bright blue suit and yellow socks that were not pulled up far enough. He had prominent face bones and a stre= ak of sticky-looking brown hair falling across his forehead.
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“= I’m Mrs. Hopewell,” she said.
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“= Oh!” he said, pretending to look puzzled but with his eyes sparkling, “I saw it = said ‘The Cedars’ on the mailbox so I thought you was Mrs. Cedars!” and h= e burst out in a pleasant laugh. He picked up the satchel and under cover of a pan= t, he fell forward into her hall. It was rather as if the suitcase had moved first, jerking him after it. “Mrs. Hopewell!” he said and grabbed her = hand. “I hope you are well!” and he laughed again and then all at once his face s= obered completely. He paused and gave her a straight earnest look and said, “La= dy, I’ve come to speak of serious things.”
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“= Well, come in,” she muttered, none too pleased because her dinner was almost r= eady. He came into the parlor and sat down on the edge of a straight chair and p= ut the suitcase between his feet and glanced around the room as if he were si= zing her up by it. Her silver gleamed on the two sideboards; she decided he had never been in a room as elegant as this.
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“= Mrs. Hopewell,” he began, using her name in a way that sounded almost intimat= e, “I know you believe in Chrustian service.”
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“= Well, yes,” she murmured.
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“= I know,” he said and paused, looking very wise with his head cocked on one side, = that you’re a good woman. Friends have told me.”
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Mrs. Hopewell never liked to be taken for a fool. “What are you selling?” s= he asked.
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“= Bibles,” the young man said and his eye raced around the room before he added, “I= see you have no family Bible in your parlor, I see that is the one lack you go= t!”
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Mrs. Hopewell could not say, “My daughter is an atheist and won’t let me ke= ep the Bible in the parlor.” She said, stiffening slightly, “I keep my Bible = by my bedside.” This was not the truth. It was in the attic somewhere.
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“= Lady,” he said, “the word of God ought to be in the parlor.”
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“= Well, I think that’s a matter of taste,” she began, “I think…”
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“= Lady,” he said, “for a Chrustian, the word of God ought to be in every room in = the house besides in his heart. I know you’re a Chrustian because I can see = it in every line of your face.”
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She= stood up and said, “Well, young man, I don’t want to buy a Bible and I smell= my dinner burning.”
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He = didn’t get up. He began to twist his hands and looking down at them, he said soft= ly, “Well lady, I’ll tell you the truth – not many people want to buy on= e nowadays and besides, I know I’m real simple. I don’t know how to say a thing b= ut to say it. I’m just a country boy.” He glanced up into her unfriendly fac= e. “People like you don’t like to fool with country people like me!”
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“= Why!” she cried, “good country people are the salt of the earth! Besides, we a= ll have different ways of doing, it takes all kinds to make the world go ‘r= ound. That’s life!”
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“= You said a mouthful,” he said.
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“= Why, I think there aren’t enough good country people in the world!” she said, stirred. “I think that’s what’s wrong with it!”
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His= face had brightened. “I didn’t intraduce myself,” he said. “I’m Manle= y Pointer from out in the country around Willohobie, not even from a place, just from nea= r a place.”
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“= You wait a minute,” she said. “I have to see about my dinner.” She went out t= o the kitchen and found Joy standing near the door where she had been listening.=
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“= Get rid of the salt of the earth,” she said, “and let’s eat.”
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Mrs. Hopewell gave her a pained look and turned the heat down under the vegetab= les. “I can’t be rude to anybody,” she murmured and went back into the pa= rlor.
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He = had opened the suitcase and was sitting with a Bible on each knee.
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“I appreciate your honesty,” he said. “You don’t see any more real hone= st people unless you go way out in the country.”
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“= I know,” she said, “real genuine folks!” Through the crack in the door she hear= d a groan.
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“= I guess a lot of boys come telling you they’re working their way through college= ,” he said, “but I’m not going to tell you that. Somehow,” he said, “I d= on’t want to go to college. I want to devote my life to Chrustian service. See,” he s= aid, lowering his voice, “I got this heart condition. I may not live long. Wh= en you know it’s something wrong with you and you may not live long, well then, lady…” He paused, with his mouth open, and stared at her.
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He = and Joy had the same condition! She knew that her eyes were filling with tears= but she collected herself quickly and murmured, “Won’t you stay for dinner= ? We’d love to have you!” and was sorry the instant she heard herself say it.
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“= Yes mam,” he said in an abashed voice. “I would sher love to do that!”
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Joy= had given him one look on being introduced to him and then throughout the meal= had not glanced at him again. He had addressed several remarks to her, which s= he had pretended not to hear. Mrs. Hopewell could not understand deliberate rudeness, although she lived with it, and she felt she had always to overf= low with hospitality to make up for Joy’s lack of courtesy. She urged him to= talk about himself and he did. He said he was the seventh child of twelve and t= hat his father had been crushed under a tree when he himself was eight years o= ld. He had been crushed very badly, in fact, almost cut in two and was practic= ally not recognizable. His mother had got along the best she could by hard work= ing and she had always seen that her children went to Sunday School and that t= hey read the Bible every evening. He was now nineteen years old and he had been selling Bibles for four months. In that time he had sold seventy-seven Bib= les and had the promise of two more sales. He wanted to become a missionary be= cause he thought that was the way you could do most for people. “He who losest= his life shall find it,” he said simply and he was so sincere, so genuine and earnest that Mrs. Hopewell would not for the world have smiled. He prevent= ed his peas from sliding onto the table by blocking them with a piece of bread which he later cleaned his plate with. She could see Joy observing sidewise how he handled his knife and fork and she saw too that every few minutes, = the boy would dart a keen appraising glance at the girl as if he were trying to attract her attention.
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Aft= er dinner Joy cleared the dishes off the table and disappeared and Mrs. Hopew= ell was left to talk with him. He told her again about his childhood and his father’s accident and about various things that had happened to him. Eve= ry five minutes or so she would stifle a yawn. He sat for two hours until fin= ally she told him she must go because she had an appointment in town. He packed= his Bibles and thanked her and prepared to leave, but in the doorway he stopped and wring her hand and said that not on any of his trips had he met a lady= as nice as her and he asked if he could come again. She had said she would al= ways be happy to see him.
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Joy= had been standing in the road, apparently looking at something in the distance, when he came down the steps toward her, bent to the side with his heavy valise. He stopped where she was standing and confronted her directly. Mrs. Hopewell could not hear what he said but she trembled to think what Joy wo= uld say to him. She could see that after a minute Joy said something and that = then the boy began to speak again, making an excited gesture with his free hand. After a minute Joy said something else at which the boy began to speak once more. Then to her amazement, Mrs. Hopewell saw the two of them walk off together, toward the gate. Joy had walked all the way to the gate with him= and Mrs. Hopewell could not imagine what they had said to each other, and she = had not yet dared to ask.
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Mrs. Freeman was insisting upon her attention. She had moved from the refrigera= tor to the heater so that Mrs. Hopewell had to turn and face her in order to s= eem to be listening. “Glynese gone out with Harvey Hill again last night,”= she said. “She had this sty.”
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“= Hill,” Mrs. Hopewell said absently, “is that the one who works in the garage?=
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“= Nome, he’s the one that goes to chiropractor school,” Mrs. Freeman said. “= She had this sty. Been had it two days. So she says when he brought her in the oth= er night he says, ‘Lemme get rid of that sty for you,’ and she says, ‘H= ow?’ and he says, ‘You just lay yourself down acrost the seat of that car and I= ll show you.’ So she done it and he popped her neck. Kept on a-popping it several times until she made him quit. This morning,” Mrs. Freeman said, “she = ain’t got no sty. She ain’t got no traces of a sty.”
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“= I never heard of that before,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
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“= He ast her to marry him before the Ordinary,” Mrs. Freeman went on, “and she = told him she wasn’t going to be married in no office.”
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“= Well, Glynese is a fine girl,” Mrs. Hopewell said. “Glynese and Carramae are= both fine girls.”
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“= Carramae said when her and Lyman was married Lyman said it sure felt sacred to him.= She said he said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars for being married by a preacher.”
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“= How much would he take?” the girl asked from the stove.
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“= He said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars,” Mrs. Freeman repeated.
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“= Well we all have work to do,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
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“= Lyman said it just felt more sacred to him,” Mrs. Freeman said. “The doctor = wants Carramae to eat prunes. Says instead of medicine. Says them cramps is comi= ng from pressure. You know where I think it is?”
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“= She’ll be better in a few weeks,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
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“= In the tube,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Else she wouldn’t be as sick as she is.=
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Hul= ga had cracked her two eggs into a saucer and was bringing them to the table along with a cup of coffee that she had filled too full. She sat down carefully = and began to eat, meaning to keep Mrs. Freeman there by questions if for any reason she showed an inclination to leave. She could perceive her mother= s eye on her. The first round-about question would be about the Bible salesman a= nd she did not wish to bring it on. “How did he pop her neck?” she asked.=
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Mrs. Freeman went into a description of how he had popped her neck. She said he owned a ’55 Mercury but that Glynese said she would rather marry a man w= ith only a ’36 Plymouth who would be married by a preacher. The girl asked w= hat if he had a ’32 Plymouth and Mrs. Freeman said what Glynese had said was a = ’36 Plymouth.
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Mrs. Hopewell said there were not many girls with Glynese’s common sense. She= said what she admired in those girls was their common sense. She said that remi= nded her that they had had a nice visitor yesterday, a young man selling Bibles. “Lord,” she said, “he bored me to death but he was so sincere and ge= nuine I couldn’t be rude to him. He was just good country people, you know,” s= he said, “—just the salt of the earth.”
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“= I seen him walk up,” Mrs. Freeman said, “and then later – I seen him walk o= ff,” and Hulga could feel the slight shift in her voice, the slight insinuation, th= at he had not walked off alone, had he? Her face remained expressionless but = the color rose into her neck and she seemed to swallow it down with the next spoonful of egg. Mrs. Freeman was looking at her as if they had a secret together.
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“= Well, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go ‘round,” Mrs. Hopewell = said. “It’s very good we aren’t all alike.”
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“= Some people are more alike than others,” Mrs. Freeman said.
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Hul= ga got up and stumped, with about twice the noise that was necessary, into her ro= om and locked the door. She was to meet the Bible salesman at ten o’clock a= t the gate. She had thought about it half the night. She had started thinking of= it as a great joke and then she had begun to see profound implications in it.= She had lain in bed imagining dialogues for them that were insane on the surfa= ce but that reached below the depths that no Bible salesman would be aware of. Their conversation yesterday had been of this kind.
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He = had stopped in front of her and had simply stood there. His face was bony and sweaty and bright, with a little pointed nose in the center of it, and his look was different from what it had been at the dinner table. He was gazin= g at her with open curiosity, with fascination, like a child watching a new fantastic animal at the zoo, and he was breathing as if he had run a great distance to reach her. His gaze seemed somehow familiar but she could not think where she had been regarded with it before. For almost a minute he didn’t say anything. Then on what seemed an insuck of breath, he whisper= ed, “You ever ate a chicken that was two days old?”
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The= girl looked at him stonily. He might have just put this question up for consideration at the meeting of a philosophical association. “Yes,” she presently replied as if she had considered it from all angles.
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“= It must have been mighty small!” he said triumphantly and shook all over with li= ttle nervous giggles, getting very red in the face, and subsiding finally into = his gaze of complete admiration, while the girl’s expression remained exactl= y the same.
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“= How old are you?” he asked softly.
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She waited some time before she answered. Then in a flat voice she said, “Seventeen.”
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His smiles came in succession like waves breaking on the surface of a little l= ake. “I see you got a wooden leg,” he said. “I think you’re real brave.= I think you’re real sweet.”
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The= girl stood blank and solid and silent.
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“= Walk to the gate with me,” he said. “You’re a brave sweet little thing and I= liked you the minute I seen you walk in the door.”
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Hul= ga began to move forward.
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“= What’s your name?” he asked, smiling down on the top of her head.
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“= Hulga,” she said.
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“= Hulga,” he murmured, “Hulga. Hulga. I never heard of anybody name Hulga before. = You’re shy, aren’t you, Hulga?” he asked.
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She nodded, watching his large red hand on the handle of the giant valise.
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“= I like girls that wear glasses,” he said. “I think a lot. I’m not like thes= e people that a serious thought don’t ever enter their heads. It’s because I ma= y die.”
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“= I may die too,” she said suddenly and looked up at him. His eyes were very sma= ll and brown, glittering feverishly.
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“= Listen,” he said, “don’t you think some people was meant to meet on account of = what all they got in common and all? Like they both think serious thoughts and all?= ” He shifted the valise to his other hand so that the hand nearest her was free= . He caught hold of her elbow and shook it a little. “I don’t work on Satur= day,” he said. “I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing= . O’er the hills and far away. Picnics and things. Couldn’t we go on a picnic tomorrow? Say yes, Hulga,” he said and gave her a dying look as if he fe= lt his insides about to drop out of him. He had even seemed to sway slightly towa= rd her.
&nb= sp;
Dur= ing the night she had imagined that she seduced him. She imagined that the two= of them walked on the place until they came to the storage barn beyond the two back fields and there, she imagined, that things came to such a pass that = she very easily seduced him and that then, of course, she had to reckon with h= is remorse. True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind. She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper understanding of life. She took all his shame away and turned it into something useful.
&nb= sp;
She= set off for the gate at exactly ten o’clock, escaping without drawing Mrs. Hopewell’s attention. She didn’t take anything to eat, forgetting that= food is usually taken on a picnic. She wore a pair of slacks and a dirty white shi= rt, and as an afterthought, she had put some Vapex on the collar of it since s= he did not own any perfume. When she reached the gate no one was there.
&nb= sp;
She looked up and down the empty highway and had the furious feeling that she = had been tricked, that he only meant to make her walk to the gate after the id= ea of him. Then suddenly he stood up, very tall, from behind a bush on the opposite embankment. Smiling, he lifted his hat which was new and wide-brimmed. He had not worn it yesterday and she wondered if he had boug= ht it for the occasion. It was toast-colored with a red and white band around= it and was slightly too large for him. He stepped from behind the bush still carrying the black valise. He had on the same suit and the same yellow soc= ks sucked down in his shoes from walking. He crossed the highway and said, = I knew you’d come!”
&nb= sp;
The= girl wondered acidly how he had known this. She pointed to the valise and asked, “Why did you bring your Bibles?”
&nb= sp;
He = took her elbow, smiling down on her as if he could not stop. “You can never t= ell when you’ll need the word of God, Hulga,” he said. She had a moment in= which she doubted that this was actually happening and then they began to climb = the embankment. They went down into the pasture toward the woods. The boy walk= ed lightly by her side, bouncing on his toes. The valise did not seem to be h= eavy today; he even swung it. They crossed half the pasture without saying anyt= hing and then, putting his hand easily on the small of her back, he asked softl= y, “Where does your wooden leg join on?”
&nb= sp;
She turned an ugly red and glared at him and for an instant the boy looked abashed. “I didn’t mean you no harm,” he said. “I only meant you= re so brave and all. I guess God takes care of you.”
&nb= sp;
“= No,” she said, looking forward and walking fast, “I don’t even believe in God.=
&nb= sp;
At = this he stopped and whistled. “No!” he exclaimed as if he were too astonish= ed to say anything else.
&nb= sp;
She walked on and in a second he was bouncing at her side, fanning with his ha= t. “That’s very unusual for a girl,” he remarked, watching her out of t= he corner of his eye. When they reached the edge of the wood, he put his hand on her back again and drew her against him without a word and kissed her heavily.=
&nb= sp;
The= kiss, which had more pressure than feeling behind it, produced that extra surge = of adrenalin in the girl that enables one to carry a packed trunk out of a burning house, but in her, the power went at once to the brain. Even befor= e he released her, her mind, clear and detached and ironic anyway, was regarding him from a great distance, with amusement but with pity. She had never been kissed before and she was pleased to discover that it was an unexceptional experience and all a matter of the mind’s control. Some people might enj= oy drain water if they were told it was vodka. When the boy, looking expectant but uncertain, pushed her gently away, she turned and walked on, saying nothing as if such business, for her, were common enough.
&nb= sp;
He = came along panting at her side, trying to help her when he saw a root that she might trip over. He caught and held back the long swaying blades of thorn = vine until she had passed beyond them. She led the way and he came breathing heavily behind her. Then they came out on a sunlit hillside, sloping softly into another one a little smaller. Beyond, they could see the rusted top of the old barn where the extra hay was stored.
&nb= sp;
The= hill was sprinkled with small pink weeds. “Then you ain’t saved?” he asked suddenly, stopping.
&nb= sp;
The= girl smiled. It was the first time she had smiled at him at all. “In my econo= my,” she said, “I’m saved and you are damned but I told you I didn’t beli= eve in God.”
&nb= sp;
Not= hing seemed to destroy the boy’s look of admiration. He gazed at her now as i= f the fantastic animal at the zoo had put its paw through the bars and given him= a loving poke. She thought he looked as if he wanted to kiss her again and s= he walked on before he had the chance.
&nb= sp;
“= Ain’t there somewheres we can sit down sometime?” he murmured, his voice softe= ning toward the end of the sentence.
&nb= sp;
“= In that barn,” she said.
&nb= sp;
The= y made for it rapidly as if it might slide away like a train. It was a large two-story barn, cook and dark inside. The boy pointed up the ladder that l= ed into the loft and said, “It’s too bad we can’t go up there.”
&nb= sp;
“= Why can’t we?” she asked.
&nb= sp;
“= Yer leg,” he said reverently.
&nb= sp;
The= girl gave him a contemptuous look and putting both hands on the ladder, she cli= mbed it while he stood below, apparently awestruck. She pulled herself expertly through the opening and then looked down at him and said, “Well, come on= if your coming,” and he began to climb the ladder, awkwardly bringing the suitcase with him.
&nb= sp;
“= We won’t need the Bible,” she observed.
&nb= sp;
“= You never can tell,” he said, panting. After he had got into the loft, he wa= s a few seconds catching his breath. She had sat down in a pile of straw. A wi= de sheath of sunlight, filled with dust particles, slanted over her. She lay = back against a bale, her face turned away, looking out the front opening of the barn where hay was thrown from a wagon into the loft. The two pink-speckled hillsides lay back against a dark ridge of woods. The sky was cloudless and cold blue. The boy dropped down by her side and put one arm under her and = the other over her and began methodically kissing her face, making little nois= es like a fish. He did not remove his hat but it was pushed far enough back n= ot to interfere. When her glasses got in his way, he took them off of her and slipped them into his pocket.
&nb= sp;
The= girl at first did not return any of the kisses but presently she began to and a= fter she had put several on his cheek, she reached his lips and remained there, kissing him again and again as if she were trying to draw all the breath o= ut of him. His breath was clear and sweet like a child’s and the kisses were sticky like a child’s. He mumbled about loving her and about knowing whe= n he first seen her that he loved her, but the mumbling was like the sleepy fretting of a child being put to sleep by his mother. Her mind, throughout this, never stopped or lost itself for a second to her feelings. “You ai= n’t said you loved me none,” he whispered finally, pulling back from her. = You got to say that.”
&nb= sp;
She looked away from him off into the hollow sky and then down at a black ridge and then down farther into what appeared to be two green swelling lakes. S= he didn’t realize he had taken her glasses but this landscape could not seem exceptional to her for she seldom paid any close attention to her surroundings.
&nb= sp;
“= You got to say it,” he repeated. “You got to say you love me.”
&nb= sp;
She= was always careful how she committed herself. “In a sense,” she began, “= if you use the word loosely, you might say that. But it’s not a word I use. I don= t have illusions. I’m one of those people who see through to nothing.”
&nb= sp;
The= boy was frowning. “You got to say it. I said it and you got to say it,” he= said.
&nb= sp;
The= girl looked at him almost tenderly. “You poor baby,” she murmured. “It’= s just as well you don’t understand,” and she pulled him by the neck, face-down,= against her. “We are all damned,” she said, “but some of us have taken off o= ur blindfolds and see that there’s nothing to see. It’s a kind of salvati= on.”
&nb= sp;
The= boy’s astonished eyes looked blankly through the ends of her hair. “Okay,” h= e almost whined, “but do you love me or don’tcher?”
&nb= sp;
“= Yes,” she said and added, “in a sense. But I must tell you something. There mu= stn’t be anything dishonest between us.” She lifted his head and looked him in= the eye. “I am thirty years old,” she said. “I have a number of degrees.= ”
&nb= sp;
The= boy’s look was irritated but dogged. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t= care a thing about what all you done. I just want to know if you love me or don’tcher= ?” and he caught her to him and wildly planted her face with kisses until she sai= d, “Yes, yes.”
&nb= sp;
“= Okay then,” he said, letting her go. “Prove it.”
&nb= sp;
She smiled, looking dreamily out on the shifty landscape. She had seduced him without even making up her mind to try. “How?” she asked, feeling that= he should be delayed a little.
&nb= sp;
He = leaned over and put his lips to her ear. “Show me where your wooden leg joins o= n,” he whispered.
&nb= sp;
The= girl uttered a sharp little cry and her face instantly drained of color. The obscenity of the suggestion was not what shocked her. As a child she had sometimes been subject to feelings of shame but education had removed the = last traces of that as a good surgeon scrapes for cancer; she would no more have felt it over what he was asking than she would have believed in his Bible.= But she was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail.= No one ever touched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away. “No,” she s= aid.
&nb= sp;
“= I known it,” he muttered, sitting up. “You’re just playing me for a sucker.=
&nb= sp;
“= On no no!” she cried. “It joins on at the knee. Only at the knee. Why do you= want to see it?”
&nb= sp;
The= boy gave her a long penetrating look. “Because,” he said, “it’s what m= akes you different. You ain’t like anybody else.”
&nb= sp;
She= sat staring at him. There was nothing about her face or her round freezing-blue eyes to indicate that this had moved her; but she felt as if her heart had stopped and left her mind to pump her blood. She decided that for the first time in her life she was face to face with real innocence. This boy, with = an instinct that came from beyond wisdom, had touched the truth about her. Wh= en after a minute, she said in a hoarse high voice, “All right,” it was l= ike surrendering to him completely. It was like losing her own life and findin= g it again, miraculously, in his.
&nb= sp;
Very gently, he began to roll the slack leg up. The artificial limb, in a white sock and brown flat shoe, was bound in a heavy material like canvas and en= ded in an ugly jointure where it was attached to the stump. The boy’s face a= nd his voice were entirely reverent as he uncovered it and said, “Now show me h= ow to take it off and on.”
&nb= sp;
She= took it off for him and put it back on again and then he took it off himself, handling it as tenderly as if it were a real one. “See!” he said with a delighted child’s face. “Now I can do it myself!”
&nb= sp;
“= Put it back on,” she said. She was thinking that she would run away with him an= d that every night he would take the leg off and every morning put it back on aga= in. “Put it back on,” she said.
&nb= sp;
“= Not yet,” he murmured, setting it on its foot out of her reach. “Leave it = off for awhile. You got me instead.”
&nb= sp;
She= gave a little cry of alarm but he pushed her down and began to kiss her again. Without the leg she felt entirely dependent on him. Her brain seemed to ha= ve stopped thinking altogether and to be about some other function that it was not very good at. Different expressions raced back and forth over her face. Every now and then the boy, his eyes like two steel spikes, would glance behind him where the leg stood. Finally she pushed him off and said, “Pu= t it back on me now.”
&nb= sp;
“= Wait,” he said. He leaned the other way and pulled the valise toward him and open= ed it. It had a pale blue spotted lining and there were only two Bibles in it= . He took one of these out and opened the cover of it. It was hollow and contai= ned a pocket flask of whiskey, a pack of cards, and a small blue box with prin= ting on it. He laid these out in front of her one at a time in an evenly-spaced row, like one presenting offerings at the shrine of a goddess. He put the = blue box in her hand. THIS PRODUCT TO BE USED ONLY FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISEAS= E, she read, and dropped it. The boy was unscrewing the top of the flask. He stopped and pointed, with a smile, to the deck of cards. It was not an ordinary deck but one with an obscene picture on the back of each card. = Take a swig,” he said, offering her the bottle first. He held it in front of = her, but like one mesmerized, she did not move.
&nb= sp;
Her= voice when she spoke had an almost pleading sound. “Aren’t you,” she murmu= red, “aren’t you just good country people?”
&nb= sp;
The= boy cocked his head. He looked as if he were just beginning to understand that= she might be trying to insult him. “Yeah,” he said, curling his lip slight= ly, “but it ain’t held me back none. I’m as good as you any day in the week.”=
&nb= sp;
“= Give me my leg,” she said.
&nb= sp;
He = pushed it farther away with his foot. “Come on now, let’s begin to have us a = good time,” he said coaxingly. “We ain’t got to know one another good yet= .”
&nb= sp;
“= Give me my leg!” she screamed and tried to lunge for it but he pushed her down e= asily.
&nb= sp;
“= What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?” he asked, frowning as he screwed t= he top on the flask and put it quickly back inside the Bible. “You just a while= ago said you didn’t believe in nothing. I thought you was some girl!”
&nb= sp;
Her= face was almost purple. “You’re a Christian!” she hissed. “You’re a f= ine Christian! You’re just like them all – say one thing and do another. You’re a p= erfect Christian, you’re…”
&nb= sp;
The= boy’s mouth was set angrily. “I hope you don’t think,” he said in a lofty = indignant tone, “that I believe in that crap! I may sell Bibles but I know which e= nd is up and I wasn’t born yesterday and I know where I’m going!”
&nb= sp;
“= Give me my leg!” she screeched. He jumped up so quickly that she barely saw him = sweep the cards and the blue box back into the Bible and throw the Bible into the valise. She saw him grab the leg and then she saw it for an instant slanted forlornly across the inside of the suitcase with a Bible at either side of= its opposite ends. He slammed the lid shut and snatched up the valise and swun= g it down the hole and then stepped through himself. When all of him had passed= but his head, he turned and regarded her with a look that no longer had any admiration in it. “I’ve gotten a lot of interesting things,” he said= . “One time I got a woman’s glass eye this way. And you needn’t to think you= ll catch me because Pointer ain’t really my name. I use a different name at every= house I call at and don’t stay nowhere long. And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga,” he said, using the name as if he didn’t think much of it, “y= ou ain’t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!” and then t= he toast-colored hat disappeared down the hole and the girl was left, sitting= on the straw in the dusty sunlight. When she turned her churning face toward = the opening, she saw his blue figure struggling successfully over the green speckled lake.
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging up onions, saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head across the meadow to= ward the highway. “Why, that looks like that nice dull young man that tried t= o sell me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell said, squinting. “He must have be= en selling them to the Negroes back in there. He was so simple,” she said, = “but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that simple.”
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Freeman’s gaze drove forward and just touched him before he disappeared = under the hill. Then she returned her attention to the evil-smelling onion shoot= she was lifting from the ground. “Some can’t be that simple,” she said. = “I know I never could.”
&nb= sp;
Dec= eption
Rip= ping off
Hid= ing under the cause of God
Why= dies he rip people off??
“= Real Americans”
http://w= ww.enotes.com/good-country-people
Through O'Connor's use of symbolism, we discover Hulga's belief in noth= ing and intellect only veil her true faith and pride that she hides in her sacred leg.
While the surface level of “Good Country People” conveys t= he story of how Hulga’s wooden leg was stolen by Manley, if we penetrate deeper, we discover that the wooden = leg represents Hulga’s faith and pride.
Hulga’s Faith
Throughout the story Hulga claims to believe in nothing, but Hulga’s faith is actually embedded in her prosthetic leg. Even though Hu= lga considers faith in her wooden leg to be no faith at all, a belief in nothing is truly impossibl= e. Every person has be= liefs based on background, environment, and situations: even an atheist decides certain things to believe in. Out of fear of the unknown, Hulga subconsciously chooses an object she thinks of as unchanging and permanent: her wooden leg.
When Hulga was younger, she felt differently about her leg: ashamed of it. But as she grew older, Hulga placed faith in her education = and wooden leg instead of feeling embarrassed of it. After Hulga’s reliance = on her leg, she panics when she can no longer trust her sacred leg. She has never depended upon anything other than her education and leg, and Manley depriv= es Hulga of both. After being left in the loft, Hulga has lost her intelligen= ce and faith, and because of this humiliating lesson, she must decide what is most important and dependable in her life.
Hulga’s Pride
Hulga also bases her pride in her artificial leg. She wraps her entire self into the leg and allows it to become a private obsession, never allowing anyone to touch it, taking care of it in private. The leg that us= ed to cause Hulga shame ironically becomes a source of self-assurance. While Hulga seems super= ior and appears to place all self-importance solely on her intelligence, on cl= oser examination, Hulga actually hides her pride in her leg.
Although Hulga holds herself back because of her wooden leg, Hulga’s pride is still outsized. Hulga places herself above others, and = when Manley Pointer comes along appearing so simple, she thinks she can easily outsmart him. Manley, however, knows he can just as easily outsmart the prideful Hulga.
To determine how to steal Hulga’s leg, Manley must figure ou= t how Hulga views herself, so he takes a stab at her ego, asking questions to determine the size of her= ego. Later into the story when Manley has realized how highly Hulga views herse= lf, he pretends to be polite by not suggesting they go into the hayloft. This flusters Hulga into proving herself to him, and she blindly falls into Manley’s clever trap.
Once abandoned in the hayloft, Hulga is left without her faith, pride, and intelligence, and she must humble herself by asking for help. H= ulga has discovered she = is not as intelligent or independent as she thought. Hulga’s pride has b= een twisted into humility, and she must decide what to place her faith in now = that it has been snatched away. Left in the loneliness of the hayloft, Hulga must learn how to d= eal with only one leg. Through O’Connor’s use of symbolism, we find= that Hulga’s belief in nothing is only veiling her true faith and pride that = lay in her sacred leg.
http://modern-american-fiction.suite101.com/article= .cfm/symbolism_in_good_country_people
33: Treachery=
To Country and Hosts
Count and Archbishop knawling from hunger
To guests (hospitality)
Manley was en= joying hospitality – broke it
Both are “g= odless” – they are in the vestibule
In Good Country People, Manley Pointer bre= aks the sacred ties of hospitality and takes advantage of Hulga’s trust in h= im. Dante puts breach of trust as the second most important infraction in hell, after pride.
Seems like a = very narrow con-man
What motivate= s a man to collect these body parts?
What does it suggest?
P= asted from <file:///G:\English\Dante\03-Side%20by%20Side%20Jou= rnal%2033%20Good%20Country%20People.doc>
Side by Side 3= 3 Good Country People
Mon= day, November 10, 2008
7:0= 6 PM
by Flannery O'Connor
Bes= ides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had = two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings. Her forward expression was steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truc= k. Her eyes never swerved to left or right but turned as the story turned as = if they followed a yellow line down the center of it. She seldom used the oth= er expression because it was not often necessary for her to retract a stateme= nt, but when she did, her face came to a complete stop, there was an almost imperceptible movement of her black eyes, during which they seemed to be receding, and then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she mi= ght stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each other, wa= s no longer there in spirit. As for getting anything across to her when this was the case, Mrs. Hopewell had given it up. She might talk her head off. Mrs. Freeman could never be brought to admit herself wrong to any point. She wo= uld stand there and if she could be brought to say anything, it was something like, “Well, I wouldn’t of said it was and I wouldn’t of said it was= n’t” or letting her gaze range over the top kitchen shelf where there was an assortment of dusty bottles, she might remark, “I see you ain’t ate ma= ny of them figs you put up last summer.”
&nb= sp;
They carried on their most important business in the kitchen at breakfast. Every morning Mrs. Hopewell got up at seven o’clock and lit her gas heater and Joy’s. Joy was her daughter, a large blonds girl who had an artificial l= eg. Mrs. Hopewell thought of her as a child though she was thirty-two years old and highly educated. Joy would get up while her mother was eating and lumb= er into the bathroom and slam the door, and before long, Mrs. Freeman would arrive at the back door. Joy would hear her mother call, “Come on in,”= and then they would talk for a while in low voices that were indistinguishable= in the bathroom. By the time Joy came in, they had usually finished the weath= er report and were on one or the other of Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, Glynese= or Carramae. Joy called them Glycerin and Caramel. Glynese, a redhead, was eighteen and= had many admirers; Carramae, a blonde, was only fifteen but already married and pregnant. She could not keep anything on her stomach. Every morning Mrs. Freeman told Mrs. Hopewell how many times she had vomited since the last report.
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Hopewell liked to tell people that Glynese and Carramae were two of the fi= nest girls she knew and that Mrs. Freeman was a lady and that she was never ash= amed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody they might meet. Then she would tell how she had happened to hire the Freemans in the first place and how they were a godsend to her and how she had had them four years. The re= ason for her keeping them so long was that they were not trash. They were good country people. She had telephoned the man whose name they had given as reference and he had told her that Mr. Freeman was a good farmer but that = his wife was the nosiest woman ever to walk the earth. “She’s got to be in= to everything,” the man said. “If she don’t get there before the dust s= ettles, you can bet she’s dead, that’s all. She’ll want to know all your bus= iness. I can stand him real good,” he had said, “but me nor my wife neither cou= ld have stood that woman one more minute on this place.” That had put Mrs. Hopew= ell off for a few days.
&nb= sp;
She= had hired them in the end because there were no other applicants but she had m= ade up her mind beforehand exactly how she would handle the woman. Since she w= as the type who had to be into everything, then, Mrs. Hopewell had decided, s= he would not only let her be into everything, she would see to it that she was into everything – she would give her the responsibility of everything, s= he would put her in charge. Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but= she was able to use other people’s in such a constructive way that she had k= ept them four years.
&nb= sp;
Not= hing is perfect. This was one of Mrs. Hopewell’s favorite sayings. Another wa= s: that is life! And still another, the most important, was: well, other peop= le have their opinions too. She would make these statements, usually at the table, in a tone of gentle insistence as if no one held them but her, and = the large hulking Joy, whose constant outrage had obliterated every expression from her face, would stare just a little to the side of her, her eyes icy blue, with the look of someone who had achieved blindness by an act of will and means to keep it.
&nb= sp;
Whe= n Mrs. Hopewell said to Mrs. Freeman that life was like that, Mrs. Freeman would = say, “I always said so myself.” Nothing had been arrived at by anyone that = had not first been arrived at by her. She was quicker than Mr. Freeman. When Mrs. Hopewell said to her after they had been on the place for a while, “You = know, you’re the wheel behind the wheel,” and winked, Mrs. Freeman had said,= “I know it. I’ve always been quick. It’s some that are quicker than others.”=
&nb= sp;
“= Everybody is different,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
&nb= sp;
“= Yes, most people is,” Mrs. Freeman said.
&nb= sp;
“= It takes all kinds to make the world.”
&nb= sp;
“= I always said it did myself.”
&nb= sp;
The= girl was used to this kind of dialogue for breakfast and more of it for dinner; sometimes they had it for supper too. When they had no guest they ate in t= he kitchen because that was easier. Mrs. Freeman always managed to arrive at = some point during the meal and to watch them finish it. She would stand in the doorway if it were summer but in the winter she would stand with one elbow= on top of the refrigerator and look down at them, or she would stand by the g= as heater, lifting the back of her skirt slightly. Occasionally she would sta= nd against the wall and roll her head from side to side. At no time was she in any hurry to leave. All this was very trying on Mrs. Hopewell but she was a woman of great patience. She realized that nothing is perfect and that in = the Freemans she had good country people and that if, in this day and age, you= get good country people, you had better hang onto them.
&nb= sp;
She= had had plenty of experience with trash. Before the Freemans she had averaged = one tenant family a year. The wives of these farmers were not the kind you wou= ld want to be around you for very long. Mrs. Hopewell, who had divorced her husband long ago, needed someone to walk over the fields with her; and when Joy had to be impressed for these services, her remarks were usually so ug= ly and her face so glum that Mrs. Hopewell would say, “If you can’t come pleasantly, I don’t want you at all,” to which the girl, standing squa= re and rigid-shouldered with her neck thrust slightly forward, would reply, “If= you want me, here I am – LIKE I AM.”
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Hopewell excused this attitude because of the leg (which had been shot off= in a hunting accident when Joy was ten). It was hard for Mrs. Hopewell to rea= lize that her child was thirty-two now and that for more than twenty years she = had had only one leg. She thought of her still as a child because it tore her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times. Her name was really Joy but as soon as she was twenty-one and away from home, she had had it legally chan= ged. Mrs. Hopewell was certain that she had thought and thought until she had h= it upon the ugliest name in any language. Then she had gone and had the beaut= iful name, Joy, changed without telling her mother until after she had done it.= Her legal name was Hulga.
&nb= sp;
Whe= n Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad blank hull of a battleship. She would not use it. She continued to call her Joy to which t= he girl responded but in a purely mechanical way.
&nb= sp;
Hul= ga had learned to tolerate Mrs. Freeman who saved her from taking walks with her mother. Even Glynese and Carramae were useful when they occupied attention that might otherwise have been directed at her. At first she had thought s= he could not stand Mrs. Freeman for she had found it was not possible to be r= ude to her. Mrs. Freeman would take on strange resentments and for days togeth= er she would be sullen but the source of her displeasure was always obscure; a direct attack, a positive leer, blatant ugliness to her face – these nev= er touched her. And without warning one day, she began calling her Hulga.
&nb= sp;
She= did not call her that in front of Mrs. Hopewell who would have been incensed b= ut when she and the girl happened to be out of the house together, she would = say something and add the name Hulga to the end of it, and the big spectacled Joy-Hulga would scowl and redden as if her privacy had been intruded upon.= She considered the name her personal affair. She had arrived at it first purel= y on the basis of its ugly sound and then the full genius of its fitness had st= ruck her. She had a vision of the name working like the ugly sweating Vulcan who stayed in the furnace and to whom, presumably, the goddess had to come when called. She saw it as the name of her highest creative act. One of her maj= or triumphs was that her mother had not been able to turn her dust into Joy, = but the greater one was that she had been able to turn it herself into Hulga. However, Mrs. Freeman’s relish for using the name only irritated her. It= was as if Mrs. Freeman’s beady steel-pointed eyes had penetrated far enough = behind her face to reach some secret fact. Something about her seemed to fascinate Mrs. Freeman and then one day Hulga realized that it was the artificial le= g. Mrs. Freeman had a special fondness for the details of secret infections, hidden deformities, assaults upon children. Of diseases, she preferred the lingering or incurable. Hulga had heard Mrs. Hopewell give her the details= of the hunting accident, how the leg had been literally blasted off, how she = had never lost consciousness. Mrs. Freeman could listen to it any time as if it had happened an hour ago.
&nb= sp;
When Hulga stumped into the kitchen in the morning (she could walk without maki= ng the awful noise but she made it – Mrs. Hopewell was certain – because = it was ugly-sounding), she glanced at them and did not speak. Mrs. Hopewell would= be in her red kimono with her hair tied around her head in rags. She would be sitting at the table, finishing her breakfast and Mrs. Freeman would be hanging by her elbow outward from the refrigerator, looking down at the ta= ble. Hulga always put her eggs on the stove to boil and then stood over them wi= th her arms folded, and Mrs. Hopewell would look at her – a kind of indirec= t gaze divided between her and Mrs. Freeman – and would think that if she would= only keep herself up a little, she wouldn’t be so bad looking. There was noth= ing wrong with her face that a pleasant expression wouldn’t help. Mrs. Hopew= ell said that people who looked on the bright side of things would be beautiful even if they were not.
&nb= sp;
Whe= never she looked at Joy this way, she could not help but feel that it would have been better if the child had not taken the Ph.D. It had certainly not brou= ght her out any and now that she had it, there was no more excuse for her to g= o to school again. Mrs. Hopewell thought it was nice for girls to go to school = to have a good time but Joy had “gone through.” Anyhow, she would not hav= e been strong enough to go again. The doctors had told Mrs. Hopewell that with the best of care, Joy might see forty-five. She had a weak heart. Joy had made= it plain that if it had not been for this condition, she would be far from th= ese red hills and good country people. She would be in a university lecturing = to people who knew what she was talking about. And Mrs. Hopewell could very w= ell picture here there, looking like a scarecrow and lecturing to more of the same. Here she went about all day in a six-year-old skirt and a yellow swe= at shirt with a faded cowboy on a horse embossed on it. She thought this was funny; Mrs. Hopewell thought it was idiotic and showed simply that she was still a child. She was brilliant but she didn’t have a grain of sense. It seemed to Mrs. Hopewell that every year she grew less like other people and more like herself – bloated, rude, and squint-eyed. And she said such st= range things! To her own mother she had said – without warning, without excuse, standing up in the middle of a meal with her face purple and her mouth half full – “Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and se= e what you are not? God!” she had cried sinking down again and staring at her p= late, “Malebranche was right: we are not our own light. We are not our own lig= ht!” Mrs. Hopewell had no idea to this day what brought that on. She had only m= ade the remark, hoping Joy would take it in, that a smile never hurt anyone. T= he girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, “My daughter is a nurse,” or “My daugh= ter is a school teacher,” or even, “My daughter is a chemical engineer.” You = could not say, “My daughter is a philosopher.” That was something that had ended= with the Greeks and Romans. All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, readin= g. Sometimes she went for walks but she didn’t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men. She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.
&nb= sp;
One= day Mrs. Hopewell had picked up one of the books the girl had just put down and opening it at random, she read, “Science, on the other hand, has to asse= rt its soberness and seriousness afresh and declare that it is concerned solely w= ith what-is. Nothing – how can it be for science anything but a horror and a phantasm? If science is right, then one thing stands firm: science wishes = to know nothing of nothing. Such is after all the strictly scientific approac= h to Nothing. We know it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing.” These words = had been underlined with a blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell like s= ome evil incantation in gibberish. She shut the book quickly and went out of t= he room as if she were having a chill.
&nb= sp;
This morning when the girl came in, Mrs. Freeman was on Carramae. “She thrown= up four times after supper,” she said, “and was up twict in the night aft= er three o’clock. Yesterday she didn’t do nothing but ramble in the bureau draw= er. All she did. Stand up there and see what she could run up on.”
&nb= sp;
“= She’s got to eat,” Mrs. Hopewell muttered, sipping her coffee, while she watch= ed Joy’s back at the stove. She was wondering what the child had said to the Bible salesman. She could not imagine what kind of a conversation she could possibly have had with him.
&nb= sp;
He = was a tall gaunt hatless youth who had called yesterday to sell them a Bible. He= had appeared at the door, carrying a large black suitcase that weighted him so heavily on one side that he had to brace himself against the door facing. = He seemed on the point of collapse but he said in a cheerful voice, “Good morning, Mrs. Cedars!” and set the suitcase down on the mat. He was not a bad-looking young man though he had on a bright blue suit and yellow socks that were not pulled up far enough. He had prominent face bones and a stre= ak of sticky-looking brown hair falling across his forehead.
&nb= sp;
“= I’m Mrs. Hopewell,” she said.
&nb= sp;
“= Oh!” he said, pretending to look puzzled but with his eyes sparkling, “I saw it = said ‘The Cedars’ on the mailbox so I thought you was Mrs. Cedars!” and h= e burst out in a pleasant laugh. He picked up the satchel and under cover of a pan= t, he fell forward into her hall. It was rather as if the suitcase had moved first, jerking him after it. “Mrs. Hopewell!” he said and grabbed her = hand. “I hope you are well!” and he laughed again and then all at once his face s= obered completely. He paused and gave her a straight earnest look and said, “La= dy, I’ve come to speak of serious things.”
&nb= sp;
“= Well, come in,” she muttered, none too pleased because her dinner was almost r= eady. He came into the parlor and sat down on the edge of a straight chair and p= ut the suitcase between his feet and glanced around the room as if he were si= zing her up by it. Her silver gleamed on the two sideboards; she decided he had never been in a room as elegant as this.
&nb= sp;
“= Mrs. Hopewell,” he began, using her name in a way that sounded almost intimat= e, “I know you believe in Chrustian service.”
&nb= sp;
“= Well, yes,” she murmured.
&nb= sp;
“= I know,” he said and paused, looking very wise with his head cocked on one side, = that you’re a good woman. Friends have told me.”
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Hopewell never liked to be taken for a fool. “What are you selling?” s= he asked.
&nb= sp;
“= Bibles,” the young man said and his eye raced around the room before he added, “I= see you have no family Bible in your parlor, I see that is the one lack you go= t!”
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Hopewell could not say, “My daughter is an atheist and won’t let me ke= ep the Bible in the parlor.” She said, stiffening slightly, “I keep my Bible = by my bedside.” This was not the truth. It was in the attic somewhere.
&nb= sp;
“= Lady,” he said, “the word of God ought to be in the parlor.”
&nb= sp;
“= Well, I think that’s a matter of taste,” she began, “I think…”
&nb= sp;
“= Lady,” he said, “for a Chrustian, the word of God ought to be in every room in = the house besides in his heart. I know you’re a Chrustian because I can see = it in every line of your face.”
&nb= sp;
She= stood up and said, “Well, young man, I don’t want to buy a Bible and I smell= my dinner burning.”
&nb= sp;
He = didn’t get up. He began to twist his hands and looking down at them, he said soft= ly, “Well lady, I’ll tell you the truth – not many people want to buy on= e nowadays and besides, I know I’m real simple. I don’t know how to say a thing b= ut to say it. I’m just a country boy.” He glanced up into her unfriendly fac= e. “People like you don’t like to fool with country people like me!”
&nb= sp;
“= Why!” she cried, “good country people are the salt of the earth! Besides, we a= ll have different ways of doing, it takes all kinds to make the world go ‘r= ound. That’s life!”
&nb= sp;
“= You said a mouthful,” he said.
&nb= sp;
“= Why, I think there aren’t enough good country people in the world!” she said, stirred. “I think that’s what’s wrong with it!”
&nb= sp;
His= face had brightened. “I didn’t intraduce myself,” he said. “I’m Manle= y Pointer from out in the country around Willohobie, not even from a place, just from nea= r a place.”
&nb= sp;
“= You wait a minute,” she said. “I have to see about my dinner.” She went out t= o the kitchen and found Joy standing near the door where she had been listening.=
&nb= sp;
“= Get rid of the salt of the earth,” she said, “and let’s eat.”
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Hopewell gave her a pained look and turned the heat down under the vegetab= les. “I can’t be rude to anybody,” she murmured and went back into the pa= rlor.
&nb= sp;
He = had opened the suitcase and was sitting with a Bible on each knee.
&nb= sp;
“I appreciate your honesty,” he said. “You don’t see any more real hone= st people unless you go way out in the country.”
&nb= sp;
“= I know,” she said, “real genuine folks!” Through the crack in the door she hear= d a groan.
&nb= sp;
“= I guess a lot of boys come telling you they’re working their way through college= ,” he said, “but I’m not going to tell you that. Somehow,” he said, “I d= on’t want to go to college. I want to devote my life to Chrustian service. See,” he s= aid, lowering his voice, “I got this heart condition. I may not live long. Wh= en you know it’s something wrong with you and you may not live long, well then, lady…” He paused, with his mouth open, and stared at her.
&nb= sp;
He = and Joy had the same condition! She knew that her eyes were filling with tears= but she collected herself quickly and murmured, “Won’t you stay for dinner= ? We’d love to have you!” and was sorry the instant she heard herself say it.
&nb= sp;
“= Yes mam,” he said in an abashed voice. “I would sher love to do that!”
&nb= sp;
Joy= had given him one look on being introduced to him and then throughout the meal= had not glanced at him again. He had addressed several remarks to her, which s= he had pretended not to hear. Mrs. Hopewell could not understand deliberate rudeness, although she lived with it, and she felt she had always to overf= low with hospitality to make up for Joy’s lack of courtesy. She urged him to= talk about himself and he did. He said he was the seventh child of twelve and t= hat his father had been crushed under a tree when he himself was eight years o= ld. He had been crushed very badly, in fact, almost cut in two and was practic= ally not recognizable. His mother had got along the best she could by hard work= ing and she had always seen that her children went to Sunday School and that t= hey read the Bible every evening. He was now nineteen years old and he had been selling Bibles for four months. In that time he had sold seventy-seven Bib= les and had the promise of two more sales. He wanted to become a missionary be= cause he thought that was the way you could do most for people. “He who losest= his life shall find it,” he said simply and he was so sincere, so genuine and earnest that Mrs. Hopewell would not for the world have smiled. He prevent= ed his peas from sliding onto the table by blocking them with a piece of bread which he later cleaned his plate with. She could see Joy observing sidewise how he handled his knife and fork and she saw too that every few minutes, = the boy would dart a keen appraising glance at the girl as if he were trying to attract her attention.
&nb= sp;
Aft= er dinner Joy cleared the dishes off the table and disappeared and Mrs. Hopew= ell was left to talk with him. He told her again about his childhood and his father’s accident and about various things that had happened to him. Eve= ry five minutes or so she would stifle a yawn. He sat for two hours until fin= ally she told him she must go because she had an appointment in town. He packed= his Bibles and thanked her and prepared to leave, but in the doorway he stopped and wring her hand and said that not on any of his trips had he met a lady= as nice as her and he asked if he could come again. She had said she would al= ways be happy to see him.
&nb= sp;
Joy= had been standing in the road, apparently looking at something in the distance, when he came down the steps toward her, bent to the side with his heavy valise. He stopped where she was standing and confronted her directly. Mrs. Hopewell could not hear what he said but she trembled to think what Joy wo= uld say to him. She could see that after a minute Joy said something and that = then the boy began to speak again, making an excited gesture with his free hand. After a minute Joy said something else at which the boy began to speak once more. Then to her amazement, Mrs. Hopewell saw the two of them walk off together, toward the gate. Joy had walked all the way to the gate with him= and Mrs. Hopewell could not imagine what they had said to each other, and she = had not yet dared to ask.
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Freeman was insisting upon her attention. She had moved from the refrigera= tor to the heater so that Mrs. Hopewell had to turn and face her in order to s= eem to be listening. “Glynese gone out with Harvey Hill again last night,”= she said. “She had this sty.”
&nb= sp;
“= Hill,” Mrs. Hopewell said absently, “is that the one who works in the garage?=
&nb= sp;
“= Nome, he’s the one that goes to chiropractor school,” Mrs. Freeman said. “= She had this sty. Been had it two days. So she says when he brought her in the oth= er night he says, ‘Lemme get rid of that sty for you,’ and she says, ‘H= ow?’ and he says, ‘You just lay yourself down acrost the seat of that car and I= ll show you.’ So she done it and he popped her neck. Kept on a-popping it several times until she made him quit. This morning,” Mrs. Freeman said, “she = ain’t got no sty. She ain’t got no traces of a sty.”
&nb= sp;
“= I never heard of that before,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
&nb= sp;
“= He ast her to marry him before the Ordinary,” Mrs. Freeman went on, “and she = told him she wasn’t going to be married in no office.”
&nb= sp;
“= Well, Glynese is a fine girl,” Mrs. Hopewell said. “Glynese and Carramae are= both fine girls.”
&nb= sp;
“= Carramae said when her and Lyman was married Lyman said it sure felt sacred to him.= She said he said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars for being married by a preacher.”
&nb= sp;
“= How much would he take?” the girl asked from the stove.
&nb= sp;
“= He said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars,” Mrs. Freeman repeated.
&nb= sp;
“= Well we all have work to do,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
&nb= sp;
“= Lyman said it just felt more sacred to him,” Mrs. Freeman said. “The doctor = wants Carramae to eat prunes. Says instead of medicine. Says them cramps is comi= ng from pressure. You know where I think it is?”
&nb= sp;
“= She’ll be better in a few weeks,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
&nb= sp;
“= In the tube,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Else she wouldn’t be as sick as she is.=
&nb= sp;
Hul= ga had cracked her two eggs into a saucer and was bringing them to the table along with a cup of coffee that she had filled too full. She sat down carefully = and began to eat, meaning to keep Mrs. Freeman there by questions if for any reason she showed an inclination to leave. She could perceive her mother= s eye on her. The first round-about question would be about the Bible salesman a= nd she did not wish to bring it on. “How did he pop her neck?” she asked.=
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Freeman went into a description of how he had popped her neck. She said he owned a ’55 Mercury but that Glynese said she would rather marry a man w= ith only a ’36 Plymouth who would be married by a preacher. The girl asked w= hat if he had a ’32 Plymouth and Mrs. Freeman said what Glynese had said was a = ’36 Plymouth.
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Hopewell said there were not many girls with Glynese’s common sense. She= said what she admired in those girls was their common sense. She said that remi= nded her that they had had a nice visitor yesterday, a young man selling Bibles. “Lord,” she said, “he bored me to death but he was so sincere and ge= nuine I couldn’t be rude to him. He was just good country people, you know,” s= he said, “—just the salt of the earth.”
&nb= sp;
“= I seen him walk up,” Mrs. Freeman said, “and then later – I seen him walk o= ff,” and Hulga could feel the slight shift in her voice, the slight insinuation, th= at he had not walked off alone, had he? Her face remained expressionless but = the color rose into her neck and she seemed to swallow it down with the next spoonful of egg. Mrs. Freeman was looking at her as if they had a secret together.
&nb= sp;
“= Well, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go ‘round,” Mrs. Hopewell = said. “It’s very good we aren’t all alike.”
&nb= sp;
“= Some people are more alike than others,” Mrs. Freeman said.
&nb= sp;
Hul= ga got up and stumped, with about twice the noise that was necessary, into her ro= om and locked the door. She was to meet the Bible salesman at ten o’clock a= t the gate. She had thought about it half the night. She had started thinking of= it as a great joke and then she had begun to see profound implications in it.= She had lain in bed imagining dialogues for them that were insane on the surfa= ce but that reached below the depths that no Bible salesman would be aware of. Their conversation yesterday had been of this kind.
&nb= sp;
He = had stopped in front of her and had simply stood there. His face was bony and sweaty and bright, with a little pointed nose in the center of it, and his look was different from what it had been at the dinner table. He was gazin= g at her with open curiosity, with fascination, like a child watching a new fantastic animal at the zoo, and he was breathing as if he had run a great distance to reach her. His gaze seemed somehow familiar but she could not think where she had been regarded with it before. For almost a minute he didn’t say anything. Then on what seemed an insuck of breath, he whisper= ed, “You ever ate a chicken that was two days old?”
&nb= sp;
The= girl looked at him stonily. He might have just put this question up for consideration at the meeting of a philosophical association. “Yes,” she presently replied as if she had considered it from all angles.
&nb= sp;
“= It must have been mighty small!” he said triumphantly and shook all over with li= ttle nervous giggles, getting very red in the face, and subsiding finally into = his gaze of complete admiration, while the girl’s expression remained exactl= y the same.
&nb= sp;
“= How old are you?” he asked softly.
&nb= sp;
She waited some time before she answered. Then in a flat voice she said, “Seventeen.”
&nb= sp;
His smiles came in succession like waves breaking on the surface of a little l= ake. “I see you got a wooden leg,” he said. “I think you’re real brave.= I think you’re real sweet.”
&nb= sp;
The= girl stood blank and solid and silent.
&nb= sp;
“= Walk to the gate with me,” he said. “You’re a brave sweet little thing and I= liked you the minute I seen you walk in the door.”
&nb= sp;
Hul= ga began to move forward.
&nb= sp;
“= What’s your name?” he asked, smiling down on the top of her head.
&nb= sp;
“= Hulga,” she said.
&nb= sp;
“= Hulga,” he murmured, “Hulga. Hulga. I never heard of anybody name Hulga before. = You’re shy, aren’t you, Hulga?” he asked.
&nb= sp;
She nodded, watching his large red hand on the handle of the giant valise.
&nb= sp;
“= I like girls that wear glasses,” he said. “I think a lot. I’m not like thes= e people that a serious thought don’t ever enter their heads. It’s because I ma= y die.”
&nb= sp;
“= I may die too,” she said suddenly and looked up at him. His eyes were very sma= ll and brown, glittering feverishly.
&nb= sp;
“= Listen,” he said, “don’t you think some people was meant to meet on account of = what all they got in common and all? Like they both think serious thoughts and all?= ” He shifted the valise to his other hand so that the hand nearest her was free= . He caught hold of her elbow and shook it a little. “I don’t work on Satur= day,” he said. “I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing= . O’er the hills and far away. Picnics and things. Couldn’t we go on a picnic tomorrow? Say yes, Hulga,” he said and gave her a dying look as if he fe= lt his insides about to drop out of him. He had even seemed to sway slightly towa= rd her.
&nb= sp;
Dur= ing the night she had imagined that she seduced him. She imagined that the two= of them walked on the place until they came to the storage barn beyond the two back fields and there, she imagined, that things came to such a pass that = she very easily seduced him and that then, of course, she had to reckon with h= is remorse. True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind. She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper understanding of life. She took all his shame away and turned it into something useful.
&nb= sp;
She= set off for the gate at exactly ten o’clock, escaping without drawing Mrs. Hopewell’s attention. She didn’t take anything to eat, forgetting that= food is usually taken on a picnic. She wore a pair of slacks and a dirty white shi= rt, and as an afterthought, she had put some Vapex on the collar of it since s= he did not own any perfume. When she reached the gate no one was there.
&nb= sp;
She looked up and down the empty highway and had the furious feeling that she = had been tricked, that he only meant to make her walk to the gate after the id= ea of him. Then suddenly he stood up, very tall, from behind a bush on the opposite embankment. Smiling, he lifted his hat which was new and wide-brimmed. He had not worn it yesterday and she wondered if he had boug= ht it for the occasion. It was toast-colored with a red and white band around= it and was slightly too large for him. He stepped from behind the bush still carrying the black valise. He had on the same suit and the same yellow soc= ks sucked down in his shoes from walking. He crossed the highway and said, = I knew you’d come!”
&nb= sp;
The= girl wondered acidly how he had known this. She pointed to the valise and asked, “Why did you bring your Bibles?”
&nb= sp;
He = took her elbow, smiling down on her as if he could not stop. “You can never t= ell when you’ll need the word of God, Hulga,” he said. She had a moment in= which she doubted that this was actually happening and then they began to climb = the embankment. They went down into the pasture toward the woods. The boy walk= ed lightly by her side, bouncing on his toes. The valise did not seem to be h= eavy today; he even swung it. They crossed half the pasture without saying anyt= hing and then, putting his hand easily on the small of her back, he asked softl= y, “Where does your wooden leg join on?”
&nb= sp;
She turned an ugly red and glared at him and for an instant the boy looked abashed. “I didn’t mean you no harm,” he said. “I only meant you= re so brave and all. I guess God takes care of you.”
&nb= sp;
“= No,” she said, looking forward and walking fast, “I don’t even believe in God.=
&nb= sp;
At = this he stopped and whistled. “No!” he exclaimed as if he were too astonish= ed to say anything else.
&nb= sp;
She walked on and in a second he was bouncing at her side, fanning with his ha= t. “That’s very unusual for a girl,” he remarked, watching her out of t= he corner of his eye. When they reached the edge of the wood, he put his hand on her back again and drew her against him without a word and kissed her heavily.=
&nb= sp;
The= kiss, which had more pressure than feeling behind it, produced that extra surge = of adrenalin in the girl that enables one to carry a packed trunk out of a burning house, but in her, the power went at once to the brain. Even befor= e he released her, her mind, clear and detached and ironic anyway, was regarding him from a great distance, with amusement but with pity. She had never been kissed before and she was pleased to discover that it was an unexceptional experience and all a matter of the mind’s control. Some people might enj= oy drain water if they were told it was vodka. When the boy, looking expectant but uncertain, pushed her gently away, she turned and walked on, saying nothing as if such business, for her, were common enough.
&nb= sp;
He = came along panting at her side, trying to help her when he saw a root that she might trip over. He caught and held back the long swaying blades of thorn = vine until she had passed beyond them. She led the way and he came breathing heavily behind her. Then they came out on a sunlit hillside, sloping softly into another one a little smaller. Beyond, they could see the rusted top of the old barn where the extra hay was stored.
&nb= sp;
The= hill was sprinkled with small pink weeds. “Then you ain’t saved?” he asked suddenly, stopping.
&nb= sp;
The= girl smiled. It was the first time she had smiled at him at all. “In my econo= my,” she said, “I’m saved and you are damned but I told you I didn’t beli= eve in God.”
&nb= sp;
Not= hing seemed to destroy the boy’s look of admiration. He gazed at her now as i= f the fantastic animal at the zoo had put its paw through the bars and given him= a loving poke. She thought he looked as if he wanted to kiss her again and s= he walked on before he had the chance.
&nb= sp;
“= Ain’t there somewheres we can sit down sometime?” he murmured, his voice softe= ning toward the end of the sentence.
&nb= sp;
“= In that barn,” she said.
&nb= sp;
The= y made for it rapidly as if it might slide away like a train. It was a large two-story barn, cook and dark inside. The boy pointed up the ladder that l= ed into the loft and said, “It’s too bad we can’t go up there.”
&nb= sp;
“= Why can’t we?” she asked.
&nb= sp;
“= Yer leg,” he said reverently.
&nb= sp;
The= girl gave him a contemptuous look and putting both hands on the ladder, she cli= mbed it while he stood below, apparently awestruck. She pulled herself expertly through the opening and then looked down at him and said, “Well, come on= if your coming,” and he began to climb the ladder, awkwardly bringing the suitcase with him.
&nb= sp;
“= We won’t need the Bible,” she observed.
&nb= sp;
“= You never can tell,” he said, panting. After he had got into the loft, he wa= s a few seconds catching his breath. She had sat down in a pile of straw. A wi= de sheath of sunlight, filled with dust particles, slanted over her. She lay = back against a bale, her face turned away, looking out the front opening of the barn where hay was thrown from a wagon into the loft. The two pink-speckled hillsides lay back against a dark ridge of woods. The sky was cloudless and cold blue. The boy dropped down by her side and put one arm under her and = the other over her and began methodically kissing her face, making little nois= es like a fish. He did not remove his hat but it was pushed far enough back n= ot to interfere. When her glasses got in his way, he took them off of her and slipped them into his pocket.
&nb= sp;
The= girl at first did not return any of the kisses but presently she began to and a= fter she had put several on his cheek, she reached his lips and remained there, kissing him again and again as if she were trying to draw all the breath o= ut of him. His breath was clear and sweet like a child’s and the kisses were sticky like a child’s. He mumbled about loving her and about knowing whe= n he first seen her that he loved her, but the mumbling was like the sleepy fretting of a child being put to sleep by his mother. Her mind, throughout this, never stopped or lost itself for a second to her feelings. “You ai= n’t said you loved me none,” he whispered finally, pulling back from her. = You got to say that.”
&nb= sp;
She looked away from him off into the hollow sky and then down at a black ridge and then down farther into what appeared to be two green swelling lakes. S= he didn’t realize he had taken her glasses but this landscape could not seem exceptional to her for she seldom paid any close attention to her surroundings.
&nb= sp;
“= You got to say it,” he repeated. “You got to say you love me.”
&nb= sp;
She= was always careful how she committed herself. “In a sense,” she began, “= if you use the word loosely, you might say that. But it’s not a word I use. I don= t have illusions. I’m one of those people who see through to nothing.”
&nb= sp;
The= boy was frowning. “You got to say it. I said it and you got to say it,” he= said.
&nb= sp;
The= girl looked at him almost tenderly. “You poor baby,” she murmured. “It’= s just as well you don’t understand,” and she pulled him by the neck, face-down,= against her. “We are all damned,” she said, “but some of us have taken off o= ur blindfolds and see that there’s nothing to see. It’s a kind of salvati= on.”
&nb= sp;
The= boy’s astonished eyes looked blankly through the ends of her hair. “Okay,” h= e almost whined, “but do you love me or don’tcher?”
&nb= sp;
“= Yes,” she said and added, “in a sense. But I must tell you something. There mu= stn’t be anything dishonest between us.” She lifted his head and looked him in= the eye. “I am thirty years old,” she said. “I have a number of degrees.= ”
&nb= sp;
The= boy’s look was irritated but dogged. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t= care a thing about what all you done. I just want to know if you love me or don’tcher= ?” and he caught her to him and wildly planted her face with kisses until she sai= d, “Yes, yes.”
&nb= sp;
“= Okay then,” he said, letting her go. “Prove it.”
&nb= sp;
She smiled, looking dreamily out on the shifty landscape. She had seduced him without even making up her mind to try. “How?” she asked, feeling that= he should be delayed a little.
&nb= sp;
He = leaned over and put his lips to her ear. “Show me where your wooden leg joins o= n,” he whispered.
&nb= sp;
The= girl uttered a sharp little cry and her face instantly drained of color. The obscenity of the suggestion was not what shocked her. As a child she had sometimes been subject to feelings of shame but education had removed the = last traces of that as a good surgeon scrapes for cancer; she would no more have felt it over what he was asking than she would have believed in his Bible.= But she was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail.= No one ever touched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away. “No,” she s= aid.
&nb= sp;
“= I known it,” he muttered, sitting up. “You’re just playing me for a sucker.=
&nb= sp;
“= On no no!” she cried. “It joins on at the knee. Only at the knee. Why do you= want to see it?”
&nb= sp;
The= boy gave her a long penetrating look. “Because,” he said, “it’s what m= akes you different. You ain’t like anybody else.”
&nb= sp;
She= sat staring at him. There was nothing about her face or her round freezing-blue eyes to indicate that this had moved her; but she felt as if her heart had stopped and left her mind to pump her blood. She decided that for the first time in her life she was face to face with real innocence. This boy, with = an instinct that came from beyond wisdom, had touched the truth about her. Wh= en after a minute, she said in a hoarse high voice, “All right,” it was l= ike surrendering to him completely. It was like losing her own life and findin= g it again, miraculously, in his.
&nb= sp;
Very gently, he began to roll the slack leg up. The artificial limb, in a white sock and brown flat shoe, was bound in a heavy material like canvas and en= ded in an ugly jointure where it was attached to the stump. The boy’s face a= nd his voice were entirely reverent as he uncovered it and said, “Now show me h= ow to take it off and on.”
&nb= sp;
She= took it off for him and put it back on again and then he took it off himself, handling it as tenderly as if it were a real one. “See!” he said with a delighted child’s face. “Now I can do it myself!”
&nb= sp;
“= Put it back on,” she said. She was thinking that she would run away with him an= d that every night he would take the leg off and every morning put it back on aga= in. “Put it back on,” she said.
&nb= sp;
“= Not yet,” he murmured, setting it on its foot out of her reach. “Leave it = off for awhile. You got me instead.”
&nb= sp;
She= gave a little cry of alarm but he pushed her down and began to kiss her again. Without the leg she felt entirely dependent on him. Her brain seemed to ha= ve stopped thinking altogether and to be about some other function that it was not very good at. Different expressions raced back and forth over her face. Every now and then the boy, his eyes like two steel spikes, would glance behind him where the leg stood. Finally she pushed him off and said, “Pu= t it back on me now.”
&nb= sp;
“= Wait,” he said. He leaned the other way and pulled the valise toward him and open= ed it. It had a pale blue spotted lining and there were only two Bibles in it= . He took one of these out and opened the cover of it. It was hollow and contai= ned a pocket flask of whiskey, a pack of cards, and a small blue box with prin= ting on it. He laid these out in front of her one at a time in an evenly-spaced row, like one presenting offerings at the shrine of a goddess. He put the = blue box in her hand. THIS PRODUCT TO BE USED ONLY FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISEAS= E, she read, and dropped it. The boy was unscrewing the top of the flask. He stopped and pointed, with a smile, to the deck of cards. It was not an ordinary deck but one with an obscene picture on the back of each card. = Take a swig,” he said, offering her the bottle first. He held it in front of = her, but like one mesmerized, she did not move.
&nb= sp;
Her= voice when she spoke had an almost pleading sound. “Aren’t you,” she murmu= red, “aren’t you just good country people?”
&nb= sp;
The= boy cocked his head. He looked as if he were just beginning to understand that= she might be trying to insult him. “Yeah,” he said, curling his lip slight= ly, “but it ain’t held me back none. I’m as good as you any day in the week.”=
&nb= sp;
“= Give me my leg,” she said.
&nb= sp;
He = pushed it farther away with his foot. “Come on now, let’s begin to have us a = good time,” he said coaxingly. “We ain’t got to know one another good yet= .”
&nb= sp;
“= Give me my leg!” she screamed and tried to lunge for it but he pushed her down e= asily.
&nb= sp;
“= What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?” he asked, frowning as he screwed t= he top on the flask and put it quickly back inside the Bible. “You just a while= ago said you didn’t believe in nothing. I thought you was some girl!”
&nb= sp;
Her= face was almost purple. “You’re a Christian!” she hissed. “You’re a f= ine Christian! You’re just like them all – say one thing and do another. You’re a p= erfect Christian, you’re…”
&nb= sp;
The= boy’s mouth was set angrily. “I hope you don’t think,” he said in a lofty = indignant tone, “that I believe in that crap! I may sell Bibles but I know which e= nd is up and I wasn’t born yesterday and I know where I’m going!”
&nb= sp;
“= Give me my leg!” she screeched. He jumped up so quickly that she barely saw him = sweep the cards and the blue box back into the Bible and throw the Bible into the valise. She saw him grab the leg and then she saw it for an instant slanted forlornly across the inside of the suitcase with a Bible at either side of= its opposite ends. He slammed the lid shut and snatched up the valise and swun= g it down the hole and then stepped through himself. When all of him had passed= but his head, he turned and regarded her with a look that no longer had any admiration in it. “I’ve gotten a lot of interesting things,” he said= . “One time I got a woman’s glass eye this way. And you needn’t to think you= ll catch me because Pointer ain’t really my name. I use a different name at every= house I call at and don’t stay nowhere long. And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga,” he said, using the name as if he didn’t think much of it, “y= ou ain’t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!” and then t= he toast-colored hat disappeared down the hole and the girl was left, sitting= on the straw in the dusty sunlight. When she turned her churning face toward = the opening, she saw his blue figure struggling successfully over the green speckled lake.
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging up onions, saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head across the meadow to= ward the highway. “Why, that looks like that nice dull young man that tried t= o sell me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell said, squinting. “He must have be= en selling them to the Negroes back in there. He was so simple,” she said, = “but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that simple.”
&nb= sp;
Mrs. Freeman’s gaze drove forward and just touched him before he disappeared = under the hill. Then she returned her attention to the evil-smelling onion shoot= she was lifting from the ground. “Some can’t be that simple,” she said. = “I know I never could.”
&nb= sp;
Dec= eption
Rip= ping off
Hid= ing under the cause of God
Why= dies he rip people off??
“= Real Americans”
http://w= ww.enotes.com/good-country-people
Through O'Connor's use of symbolism, we discover Hulga's belief in noth= ing and intellect only veil her true faith and pride that she hides in her sacred leg.
While the surface level of “Good Country People” conveys t= he story of how Hulga’s wooden leg was stolen by Manley, if we penetrate deeper, we discover that the wooden = leg represents Hulga’s faith and pride.
Hulga’s Faith
Throughout the story Hulga claims to believe in nothing, but Hulga’s faith is actually embedded in her prosthetic leg. Even though Hu= lga considers faith in her wooden leg to be no faith at all, a belief in nothing is truly impossibl= e. Every person has be= liefs based on background, environment, and situations: even an atheist decides certain things to believe in. Out of fear of the unknown, Hulga subconsciously chooses an object she thinks of as unchanging and permanent: her wooden leg.
When Hulga was younger, she felt differently about her leg: ashamed of it. But as she grew older, Hulga placed faith in her education = and wooden leg instead of feeling embarrassed of it. After Hulga’s reliance = on her leg, she panics when she can no longer trust her sacred leg. She has never depended upon anything other than her education and leg, and Manley depriv= es Hulga of both. After being left in the loft, Hulga has lost her intelligen= ce and faith, and because of this humiliating lesson, she must decide what is most important and dependable in her life.
Hulga’s Pride
Hulga also bases her pride in her artificial leg. She wraps her entire self into the leg and allows it to become a private obsession, never allowing anyone to touch it, taking care of it in private. The leg that us= ed to cause Hulga shame ironically becomes a source of self-assurance. While Hulga seems super= ior and appears to place all self-importance solely on her intelligence, on cl= oser examination, Hulga actually hides her pride in her leg.
Although Hulga holds herself back because of her wooden leg, Hulga’s pride is still outsized. Hulga places herself above others, and = when Manley Pointer comes along appearing so simple, she thinks she can easily outsmart him. Manley, however, knows he can just as easily outsmart the prideful Hulga.
To determine how to steal Hulga’s leg, Manley must figure ou= t how Hulga views herself, so he takes a stab at her ego, asking questions to determine the size of her= ego. Later into the story when Manley has realized how highly Hulga views herse= lf, he pretends to be polite by not suggesting they go into the hayloft. This flusters Hulga into proving herself to him, and she blindly falls into Manley’s clever trap.
Once abandoned in the hayloft, Hulga is left without her faith, pride, and intelligence, and she must humble herself by asking for help. H= ulga has discovered she = is not as intelligent or independent as she thought. Hulga’s pride has b= een twisted into humility, and she must decide what to place her faith in now = that it has been snatched away. Left in the loneliness of the hayloft, Hulga must learn how to d= eal with only one leg. Through O’Connor’s use of symbolism, we find= that Hulga’s belief in nothing is only veiling her true faith and pride that = lay in her sacred leg.
http://modern-american-fiction.suite101.com/article= .cfm/symbolism_in_good_country_people
33: Treachery=
To Country and Hosts
Count and Archbishop knawling from hunger
To guests (hospitality)
Manley was en= joying hospitality – broke it
Both are “g= odless” – they are in the vestibule
In Good Country People, Manley Pointer bre= aks the sacred ties of hospitality and takes advantage of Hulga’s trust in h= im. Dante puts breach of trust as the second most important infraction in hell, after pride.
Seems like a = very narrow con-man
What motivate= s a man to collect these body parts?
What does it suggest?
P= asted from <file:///G:\English\Dante\03-Side%20by%20Side%20Jou= rnal%2033%20Good%20Country%20People.doc>