The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [110]
Mr. Shortley was breathing softly as if he were asleep.
“A nigger don’t know when he has a friend,” She said. “And I’ll tell you another thing. I get a heap out of Sledgewig. Sledgewig said that in Poland they lived in a brick house and one night a man come and told them to get out of it before daylight. Do you believe they ever lived in a brick house?
“Airs,” she said. “That’s Just airs. A wooden house is good enough for me. Chancey,” she said, “turn thisaway”, I hate to see niggers mistreated and run out. I have a heap of pity for niggers and poor folks. Ain’t I always had?” she asked. “I say ain’t I always been a friend to niggers and poor folk?
“When the time comes,” she said, “I’ll stand up for the niggers and that’s that. I ain’t going to see that priest drive out all the niggers.”
Mrs. McIntyre bought a new drag harrow and a tractor with a power lift because she said, for the first time, she had some one who could handle machinery. She and Mrs Shortley had driven to the back field to inspect what he had harrowed the day before. “That’s been done beautifully!” Mrs. McIntyre said, looking out over he red undulating ground.
Mrs. McIntyre had changed since the t Displaced Person had working for her and Mrs. Shortley had observed the change very closely: she had begun to act like somebody who was getting rich secretly and she didn’t confide in Mrs. Shortley the way she used to. Mrs. Shortley suspected that the priest was at the bottom of the change. They were very slick. First he would get her into his Church and then he would get his hand in her pocketbook. Well, Mrs. Shortley thought, the more fool she! Mrs. Shortley had a secret herself. She knew something the Displaced Person was doing that would floor Mrs. McIntyre. “I still say he ain’t going to work forever for seventy dollars a month,” she murmured. She intended to keep her secret to herself and Mr. Shortley.
“Well,” Mrs. McIntyre said, “I may have to get rid of some of this other help so I can pay him more.”
Mrs. Shortley nodded to indicate she had known this for some time. ‘ ‘I’m not saying those niggers ain’t had it coming,” she said. “But they do the best they know how. You can always tell a nigger what to do and stand by until he does it.”
“That’s what the Judge said,” Mrs. McIntyre said and looked at her with approval. The Judge was her first husband, the one who had left her the place. Mrs. Shortley had heard that she had married him when she was thirty and he was seventy-five, thinking she would be rich as soon as he died, but the old man was a scoundrel and when his estate was settled, they found he didn’t have a nickel. All he left her were the fifty acres and the house. But she always spoke of him in a reverent way and quoted his sayings, such as, “One fellow’s misery is the other fellow’s gain,” and “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.”
“However,” Mrs. Shortley remarked, “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t,” and she had to turn away so that Mrs. McIntyre would not see her smile. She had found out what the Displaced Person was up to through the old man, Astor, and she had not told anybody but Mr. Shortley. Mr. Shortley had risen straight up in bed like Lazarus from the tomb.
“Shut your mouth!” he had said.
“Yes,” she had said.
“Naw!” Mr. Shortley had said.
“Yes,” she had said.
Mr. Shortley had fallen back flat.
“The Pole don’t know any better,” Mrs. Shortley had said. “I reckon that priest is putting him up to it is all. I blame the priest.”
The priest came frequently to see the Guizacs and he would always stop in and visit Mrs. McIntyre too and they would walk around the place and she would point out her improvements and listen to his rattling talk. It suddenly came to Mrs. Shortley that he was