The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [17]
Some of the men turned around and snickered. One doubled over.
“Me,” Roy said. “I’m gonna run right down there now so I’ll be first to vote for Boy Blue tomorrow morning.”
“Listen!” Rayber shouted, “I’m not trying…”
“George,” the barber yelled, “you heard that speech?”
“Yessir,” George said.
“Who you gonna vote for, George?”
“I’m not trying to…” Rayber yelled.
“I don’t know is they gonna let me vote,” George said. “Do, I gonna vote for Mr. Hawkson.”
“Listen!” Rayber yelled, “do you think I’m trying to change your fat minds? What do you think I am?” He jerked the barber around by the shoulder. “Do you think I’d tamper with your damn fool ignorance?”
The barber shook Rayber’s grip off his shoulder. “Don’t get excited,” he said, “we all thought it was a fine speech. That’s what I been saying all along—you got to think, you got to…” He lurched backward when Rayber hit him, and landed sitting on the footrest of the next chair. “Thought it was fine,” he finished, looking steadily at Rayber’s white, half-lathered face glaring down at him. “It’s what I been saying all along.”
The blood began pounding up Raybers neck just! under his skin. He turned and pushed quickly through the men around him to the door. Outside, the sun was suspending everything in a pool of heat, and before he had turned the first corner, almost running, lather began to drip inside his collar and down the barber’s bib, dangling to his knees.
Wildcat (1947)
OLD GABRIEL shuffled across the room waving his stick slowly sideways in front of him.
“Who that?” he whispered, appearing in the doorway. “I smells fo’ niggers.”
Their soft, minor-toned laughter rose above the frog’s hum and blended into voices.
“Cain’t you do no bettern that, Gabe?”
“Is you gain’ with us, Granpaw?”
“You oughter be able to smell good enough to git our names.”
Old Gabriel moved out on the porch a little way. “That Matthew an’ George an’ Willie Myrick. An’ who that other?”
“This Boon Williams, Granpaw.”
Gabriel felt for the edge of the porch with his stick. “What yawl doin’? Set down a spell.”
“We waitin’ on Mose an’ Luke.”
“We gain’ huntin’ that cat.”
“What yawl huntin’ him with?” old Gabriel muttered. “Yawl ain’t got nothin’ fit to kill a wildcat with.” He sat down on the edge of the porch and hung his feet over the side. “I done tal’ Mose an’ Luke that.”
“How many wildcats you killed, Gabrul?” Their voices, rising to him through the darkness, were full of gentle mockery.
“When I was a boy, there was a cat once,” Gabriel started. “It come ‘round here huntin’ blood. Come in through the winder of a cabin one night an’ sprung in bed with a nigger an’ tore that nigger’s throat open befo’ he could holler good.”
“This cat in the woods, Granpaw. It jus’ come out to git cows.
Jupe Williams seen it when he gone through to the sawmill.”
“What he done about it?”
“Started runnin’.” Their laughter broke over the night sounds again. “He thought it was after him.”
“It was,” old Gabriel murmured.
“It after cows.”
Gabriel sniffed. “It comin’ out the woods for mo’ than cows. It gonna git itssef some folks’ blood. You watch. An’ yawl gain’ off huntin’ it ain’t gonna do no good. It guin’ huntiu’ itssef. I been smellin’ it.”
“How you know that it you smellin’?”
“Ain’t no mistakin’ a wildcat. Ain’t heen one ‘round here since I was a boy. Why don’t yawl set a spell” he added.
“You ain’t afraid to stay here by yoself, is you paw?”
Old Gabriel stiffened. He felt for the post to pull himself up on. “Ef you waitin’ on Mose an’ Luke,” he said, “you better git goin’. They started over to yawl’s place an hour ago.”
II
“Come in here, I say! Come in here right now!”
The blind boy sat alone on the steps, staring ahetd. “All the men gone?” he called.
“All gone but Ol’ Hezuh. Come in.”
He hated to go in—among the women.
“I smells it,” he said.
“You come in here, Gabriel.”
He went in and walked to where the window was. The women were muttering at him.
“You stay in here, boy.”
“You be ‘tractin’ that cat right in this room, setlin’ out there.”
No