The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [175]
He detached himself from the can slowly. “Ain’t nobody ever ast me to shoot my boys’ own bull!” he said in a high rasping voice. He removed a rag from his back pocket and began to wipe his hands violently, then his nose.
She turned as if she had not heard this and said, “I’ll wait for you in the car. Go get your gun.”
She sat in the car and watched him stalk off toward the harness room where he kept a gun. After he had entered the room, there was a crash as if he had kicked something out of his way. Presently he emerged again with the gun, circled behind the car, opened the door violently and threw himself onto the seat beside her. He held the gun between his knees and looked straight ahead. He’d like to shoot me instead of the bull, she thought, and turned her face away so that he could not see her smile.
The morning was dry and clear. She drove through the woods for a quarter of a mile and then out into the open where there were fields on either side of the narrow road. The exhilaration of carrying her point had sharpened her senses. Birds were screaming everywhere, the grass was almost too bright to look at, the sky was an even piercing blue. “Spring is here!” she had gaily. Mr. Greenleaf lifted one muscle somewhere near his mouth as if he found this the most asinine remark ever made. When she stopped at the second pasture gate, he flung himself out of the car door and slammed it behind him. Then he opened the gate and she drove through. He closed it and flung himself back in, silently, and she drove around the rim of the pasture until she spotted the bull, almost in the center of it, grazing peacefully among the cows.
“The gentleman is waiting on you,” she said and gave Mr. Greenleaf’s furious profile a sly look. “Run him into that next pasture and when you get him in, I’ll drive in behind you and shut the gate myself.”
He flung himself out again, this time deliberately leaving the car door open so that she had to lean across the seat and close it. She sat smiling as she watched him make his way across the pasture toward the opposite gate. He seemed to throw himself forward at each step and then pull back as if he were calling on some power to witness that he was being forced. “Well,” she said aloud as if he were still in the car, “it’s your own boys who are making you do this, Mr. Greenleaf. “O. T. and E. T. were probably splitting their sides laughing at him now. She could hear their identical nasal voices saying, “Made Daddy shoot our bull for us. Daddy don’t know no better than to think that’s a fine bull he’s shooting. Gonna kill Daddy to shoot that bull!”
“If those boys cared a thing about you, Mr. Greenleaf,” she said, they would have come for that bull. I’m surprised at them.”
He was circling around to open the gate first. The bull, dark among the spotted cows, had not moved. He kept his head down, eating constantly. Mr. Greenleaf opened the gate and then began circling back to approach him from the rear. When he was about ten feet behind him, he flapped his arms at his sides. The bull lifted his head indolently and then lowered it again and continued to eat. Mr. Greenleaf stooped again and picked up something and threw it at him with a vicious swing. She decided it was a sharp rock for the bull leapt and then began to gallop until he disappeared over the rim of the hill. Mr. Greenleaf followed at his leisure.
“You needn’t think you’re going to lose him!” she cried and started the car straight across the pasture. She had to drive slowly over the terraces and when she reached the gate, Mr. Greenleaf and the bull were nowhere in sight. This pasture was smaller than the last, a green arena, encircled almost entirely by woods. She got out and closed the gate and stood looking for some sign of Mr. Greenleaf but he had disappeared completely. She knew at once that his plan was to lose the bull in the woods. Eventually, she would see him emerge somewhere from the circle of trees and come limping toward her and when he finally reached