The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [138]
They walked on for some time on streets like this before he remembered to turn again. The houses they were passing now were all unpainted and the wood inthem looked rotten; the street between was narrower. Nelson saw a colored man. Then another. Then another. “Niggers live in these houses,” he observed.
“Well come on and we’ll go some wheres else,” Mr. Head said. “We didn’t come to look at niggers,” and they turned down another street but they continued to see Negroes everywhere. Nelson’s skin began to prickle and they stepped along at a faster pace in order to leave the neighborhood as soon as possible. There wer ecolored men in their undershirts standing in the doors and colored women rocking on the sagging porches. Colored children played m the gutters and stopped what they were doing to look at them. Before long they began to pass rows of stores with colored customers in them but they didn’t pause at the entrances of these. Black eyesin black faces were watching them from every direction. “Yes,” Mr. Head said, “this is where you were born right here with all these niggers.”
Nelson scowled. “I think you done got us lost,” he said.
Mr. Head swung around sharply and looked for the dome. It was nowhere insight. “I ain’t got us lost either,” he said. “You’re just tired of walking.”
“I ain’t tired, I’m hungry,” Nelson said. “Give me a biscuit.”
They discovered then that they had lost the lunch.
“You were the one holding the sack,” Nelson said. “I would have kepaholt of it.”
“If you want to direct this trip, I’ll go on by myself and leave you right here, ” Mr. Head said and was pleased to see the boy turn white. However, he realized they were lost and drifting farther every minute from the station. He was hungry himself and beginning to be thirsty and since they had been in the colored neighborhood, t hey had both begun to sweat. Nelson had on his shoes and he was unaccustomed to them. The concrete sidewalks were very hard. They both wanted to find a place to sit down but this was impossible and they kept on walking, the boy muttering under his breath, “First you lost the sack and then you lost the way,” and Mr. Head growling from time to time, “Anybody wants to be from this nigger heaven can be from it!”
By now the sun was well forward in the sky. The odor of dinners cookingdrifted out to them. The Negroes were all at their doors to see them pass. “Whyn’tyou ast one of these niggers the way?” Nelson said. “You got us lost.”
“This is where you were born,” Mr. Head said. “You can ast one yourself ifyou want to.”
Nelson was afraid of the colored men and he didn’t want to be laughed at by the colored children. Up ahead he saw a large colored woman leaning in a doorway that opened onto the sidewalk. Her hair stood straight out from her head for abou tfour inches all around and she was resting on bare brown feet that turned pink at the sides. She had on a pink dress that showed her exact shape. As they came abreast of her, she lazily lifted one hand to her head and her fingers disappeared into her hair.
Nelson stopped. He felt his breath drawn up by the woman’s dark eyes. “How do you get back to town?” he said in a voice that did not sound like his own.
After a minute she said, “You in town now,” in a rich low tone that made Nelson feel as if a cool spray had been turned on him.
“How do you get back to the train?” he said in the same reedlike voice.
“You can catch you a car,” she said.
He understood she was making fun of him but he was too paralyzed even to scowl. He stood drinking in every detail of her. His eyes traveled up from her great knees to her forehead and then made a triangular path from the glistening sweat on her neck ‘down and across her tremendous bosom and