Good Country P= eople
Fri= day, November 07, 2008
7:1= 0 PM
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 l= ast 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 tou= ched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private = and almost with her own eyes turned away. “No,” she said.
“N= ot yet,” he murmured, setting it on its foot out of her reach. “Leave it off for a= while. You got me instead.”
Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging up onions,= saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head across the meadow toward = the highway. “Why, that looks like that nice dull young man that tried = to sell me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell said, squinting. “He mu= st have been selling them to the Negroes back in there. He was so simple,” = she said, “but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that simp= le.”
Mrs. Freeman’s gaze drove forward and just touched him before he disappeared u= nder 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.”
Pa= sted from <file:///G:\English\Dante\08-Good%20Country%20People.doc>
Good Country P= eople
Fri= day, November 07, 2008
7:1= 0 PM
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 l= ast 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 tou= ched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private = and almost with her own eyes turned away. “No,” she said.
“N= ot yet,” he murmured, setting it on its foot out of her reach. “Leave it off for a= while. You got me instead.”
Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging up onions,= saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head across the meadow toward = the highway. “Why, that looks like that nice dull young man that tried = to sell me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell said, squinting. “He mu= st have been selling them to the Negroes back in there. He was so simple,” = she said, “but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that simp= le.”
Mrs. Freeman’s gaze drove forward and just touched him before he disappeared u= nder 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.”
Pa= sted from <file:///G:\English\Dante\08-Good%20Country%20People.doc>