The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [187]
He had never seen a child behave in such a way in his life. Neither his own children nor anyone else’s had ever displayed such temper in his presence, and he had never for an instant imagined that the child he had trained himself, the child who had been his constant companion for nine years, would embarrass him like this. The child he had never lifted a hand to!
Then he saw, with the sudden vision that sometimes comes with delayed recognition, that that had been his mistake.
She respected Pitts because, even with no just cause, he beat her; and if he—with his just cause—did not beat her now, he would have nobody to blame but himself if she turned out a hellion. He saw that the time had come, that he could no longer avoid whipping her, and as he turned off the highway onto the dirt road leading to home, he told himself that when he finished with her, she would never throw another bottle again.
He raced along the clay road until he came to the line where his own property began and then he turned off onto a side path, just wide enough for the automobile and bounced for a half a mile through the woods. He stopped the car at the exact spot where he had seen Pitts take his belt to her. It was a place where the road widened so that two cars could pass or one could turn around, an ugly red bald spot surrounded by long thin pines that appeared to be gathered there to witness anything that would take place in such a clearing. A few stones protruded from the clay.
“Get out,” he said and reached across her and opened the door.
She got out without looking at him or asking what they were going to do and he got out on his side and carne around the front of the car.
“Now I’m going to whip you!” he said, and his voice was extra loud and hollow and had a vibrating quality that appeared to be taken up and passed through the tops of the pines. He did not want to get caught in a downpour while he was whipping her and he said, “Hurry up and get ready against that tree,” and began to take of his belt.
What he had in mind to do appeared to come very slowly as if it had to penetrate a fog in her head. She did not move but gradually her confused expression began to clear. Where a few seconds before her face had been red and distorted and unorganized, it drained now of every vague line until nothing was left on it but positiveness, a look that went slowly past determination and reached certainty. “Nobody has ever beat me,” she said, “and if anybody tries it, I’ll kill him.”
“I don’t want no sass,” he said and started toward her. His knees felt very unsteady, as if they might turn either backward or forward.
She moved exactly one step back and, keeping her eye on him steadily, removed her glasses and dropped them behind a small rock near the tree he had told her to get ready against. “Take off your glasses,” she said.
“Don’t give me orders!” he said in a high, voice and slapped awkwardly at her ankles with his belt. She was on him so quickly that he could not have recalled which blow he felt first, whether the weight of her whole solid body or the jabs of her feet or the pummeling of her fist on his chest. He flailed the belt in the air, not knowing where to hit but trying to get her off him until he could decide where to get a grip on her.
“Leggo!” he shouted. “Leggo I tell you!” But she seemed to be everywhere, coming at him from all directions at once. It was as if he were being attacked not by one child but by a pack of small demons all with stout brown school shoe, and small rocklike fists. His glasses flew to the side.
“I toljer to take them off,” she growled without pausing.
He caught his knee and danced on one foot and a rain of