The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [172]
“Mr. Greenleaf,” she had said, “I have to do for myself. I am not assisted hand and foot by the government. It would cost me $20,000 to install a milking parlor. I barely make ends meet as it is.”
“My boys done it,” Mr. Greenleaf had murmured, and then—”but all boys ain’t alike.”
“No indeed!” she had said. “I thank God for that!”
“I thank Gawd for ever-thang,” Mr. Greenleaf had drawled.
You might as well, she had thought in the fierce silence that followed; you’ve never done anything for yourself.
She stopped by the side of the barn and honked but no one appeared. For several minutes she sat in the car, observing the various machines parked around, wondering how many of them were paid for. They had a forage harvester and a rotary hay baler. She had those too. She decided that since no one was here, she would get out and have a look at the milking parlor and see if they kept it clean.
She opened the milking room door and stuck her head in and for the first second she felt as if she were going to lose her breath. The spotless white concrete room was filled with sunlight that came from a row of windows head-high along both walls. The metal stanchions gleamed ferociously and she had to squint to be able to look at all. She drew her head out the room quickly and closed the door and leaned against it, frowning. The light outside was not so bright but she was conscious that the sun was directly on top of her head, like a silver bullet ready to drop into her brain.
A Negro carrying a yellow calf-feed bucket appeared from around the corner of the machine shed and came toward her. He was a light yellow boy dressed in the cast-off army clothes of the Greenleaf twins. He stopped at a respectable distance and set the bucket on the ground.
“Where’s Mr. O. T. and Mr. E. T.?” she asked.
“Mist O. T. he in town, Mist E. T. he off yonder in the field,” the Negro said, pointing first to the left and then to the right as if he were naming the position of two planets.
“Can you remember a message?” she asked, looking as if she thought this doubtful.
“I’ll remember it if I don’t forget it,” he said with a touch of sullenness.
“Well, I’ll write it down then,” she said. She got in her car and took a stub of pencil from her pocket book and began to write on the back of an empty envelope. The Negro came and stood at the window. “I’m Mrs. May,” she said as she wrote. “Their bull is on my place and I want him off today. You can tell them I’m furious about it.”
“That bull lef here Sareday,” the Negro said, “and none of us ain’t seen him since. We ain’t knowed where he was.”
“Well, you know now,” she said, “and you can tell Mr. O. T. and Mr. E. T. that if they don’t come get him today, I’m going to have their daddy shoot him the first thing in the morning. I can’t have that bull ruining my herd.” She handed him the note.
“If I knows Mist O. T. and Mist E. T.,” he said, taking it, “they goin to say you go ahead on and shoot him. He done busted up one of our trucks already and we be glad to see the last of him.”
She pulled her head back and gave him a look from slightly bleared eyes. “Do they expect me to take my time and my worker to shoot their bull?” she asked. “They don’t want him so they just let him loose and expect somebody else to kill him? He’s eating my oats and ruining my herd and I’m expected to shoot him too?”
“I speck you is,” he said softly. “He done busted up…”
She gave him a very sharp look and said, “Well, I’m not surprised. That’s just the way some people are,” and after a second she asked, “Which is boss, Mr. O. T. or Mr. E. T.?” She had always suspected that they fought between themselves secretly.
“They never quarls,” the boy said. “They like