The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [171]
She did not say a word. She merely looked away with her mouth taut.
“They told me their bull was out but I never known that was him,” he said.
“I want that bull put up now,” she said, “and I’m going to drive over to O. T. and E. T.’s and tell them they’ll have to come get him today. I ought to charge for the time he’s been here—then it wouldn’t happen again.”
“They didn’t pay but seventy-five dollars for him,” Mr. Greenleaf offered.
“I wouldn’t have had him as a gift,” she said.
“They was just going to beef him,” Mr. Greenleaf went on, “but he got loose and run his head into their pickup truck. He don’t like cars and trucks. They had a time getting his horn out the fender and when they finally got him loose, he took off and they was too tired to run after him—but I never known that was him there.”
“It wouldn’t have paid you to know, Mr. Greenleaf,” she said. “But you know now. Get a horse and get him.”
In a half hour, from her front window she saw the bull, squirrel-colored, with jutting hips and long light horns, ambling down the dirt road that ran in front of the house. Mr. Greenleaf was behind him on the horse. “That’s a Greenleaf bull if I ever saw one,” she muttered. She went out on the porch and called, “Put him where he can’t get out.”
“He likes to bust loose,” Mr. Greenleaf said, looking with approval at the bull’s rump. “This gentleman is a sport.”
“If those boys don’t come for him, he’s going to be a dead sport,” she said. “I’m just warning you.”
He heard her but he didn’t answer.
“That’s the awfullest looking bull I ever saw,” she called but he was too far down the road to hear.
It was mid-morning when she turned into O. T. and E. T.’s driveway. The house, a new red-brick, low-to-the-ground building that looked like a warehouse with windows, was on top of a treeless hill. The sun was beating down directly on the white roof of it. It was the kind of house that everybody built now and nothing marked it as belonging to the Greenleafs except three dogs, part hound and part spitz, that rushed out from behind it as soon as she stopped her car. She reminded herself that you could always tell the class of people by the class of dog, and honked her horn. While she sat waiting for someone to come, she continued to study the house. All the windows were down and she wondered if the government could have air-conditioned the thing. No one came and she honked again. Presently a door opened and several children appeared in it and stood looking at her, making no move to come forward. She recognized this as a true Greenleaf trait—they could hang in a door, looking at you for hours.
“Can’t one of you children come here?” she called.
After a minute they all began to move forward, slowly. They had on overalls and were barefooted but they were not as dirty as she might have expected. There were two or three that looked distinctly like Greenleafs; the others not so much so. The smallest child was a girl with untidy black hair. They stopped about six feet from the automobile and stood looking at her.
“You’re mighty pretty,” Mrs. May said, addressing herself to the smallest girl.
There was no answer. They appeared to share one dispassionate expression between them.
“Where’s your Mamma?” she asked.
There was no answer to this for some time. Then one of them said something in French. Mrs. May did not speak French.
“Where’s your daddy?” she asked.
After a while, one of the boys said, “He ain’t hyar neither.”
“Ahhhh,” Mrs. May said as if something had been proven. “Where’s the colored man?”
She waited and decided no one was going to answer. “The cat has six little tongues,” she said. “How would you like to come home with me and let me teach you how to talk?” She laughed and her laugh died on the silent air. She felt as if she were on trial for her life, facing a jury of Greenleafs. “I’ll go down and see if I can find the colored man,” she said.
“You can go if you want to,” one of the boys said.
“Well, thank you,” she murmured and drove off.
The barn was down the lane from the house. She