The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [210]
His Aunt Bessie had gone into the house and come out again with a small leather box. “You look very like Father,” she said and pulled up her chair beside him.
Without enthusiasm Calhoun opened the box, which shed a rustcolored dust over his knees, and removed the miniature of his greatgrandfather. He was shown this every time he came. The old man—round-faced, bald, altogether unremarkable-looking—sat with his hands knotted on the head of a black stick. His expression was all innocence and determination. The master merchant, the boy thought, and flinched. “And what would this stalwart worthy think of Partridge today,” he asked wryly, “with its festival in full swing after six citizens have been shot?”
“Father was progressive,” his Aunt Bessie said,”—the most forward-looking merchant Partridge ever had. He would either have been one of the prominent men shot or he would have been the one to subdue the maniac.”
The boy did not know how much of this he could stand. In the paper there had been pictures of the six “victims” and one of Singleton. Singleton’s was the only distinctive face in the lot. It was broad but bony and bleak. One eye was more nearly round than the other and in the more nearly round one Calhoun had recognized the composure of the man who knows he will and who is willing to suffer for the right to be himself. A calculating contempt lurked in the regular eye but in the general expression there was the tortured look of the man who becomes maddened finally by the madness around him. The other six faces were of the same general stamp as his greatgrandfather’s.
“As you get older, you’ll look more and more like Father,” his Aunt Mattie prophesied. “You have his ruddy complexion and much the same expression.”
“I’m a different type entirely,” he said stiffly.
“Peaches and cream,” his Aunt Bessie guffawed. “You’re getting a little pot-tummy too,” she said and took a lunge at his middle with her fist. “How old is our baby now?”
“Twenty-three,” he muttered, thinking that it could not go on like this for the whole visit, that once they had roughed him up a bit, they would leave off.
“And do you have a girl?” his Aunt Mattie asked.
“No,” he said wearily. “I take it,” he went on, “that around here Singleton is considered nothing but a mental case?”
“Yes,” his Aunt Bessie said,”—peculiar. He never conformed. He was not like the rest of us here.”
“A terrible drawback,” the boy said. Though his eyes were not mismatched, the shape of his face was broad like Singleton’s; but the real likeness between them was interior.
“Since he is insane, he is not responsible,” his Aunt Bessie said. The boy’s eyes brightened. He sat forward and fixed the old lady with a narrow gaze. “And where then,” he asked, “does the real guilt lie?”
“Father’s head was as smooth as an infant’s by the time he was thirty,” she said. “You had better hurry and get you a girl. Ha ha, What are you going to do with yourself now;”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew Ls pipe and a sack of tobacco. You could not ask them questions in depth. They were both good low-church Episcopalians but they had amoral imaginations. “I think I shall write,” he said and began to load the bowl.
“Well,” his Aunt Bessie said, “that’s fine. Maybe you’ll be another Margaret MitchelL”
“I hope you’ll do us justice,” his Aunt Mattie shouted. “Few do.”
“I’ll do you justice all right,” he said grimly. “I’m writing an expos…” He stopped and put the pipe in his mouth and sat back. It would be ridiculous to tell them. He removed the pipe and said, “Well, that’s too much to go into. It wouldn’t interest you ladies.”
His Aunt Bessie inclined her head significantly. “Calhoun,” she said, “we wouldn’t want to be disappointed in you.” They eyed him as if it had just occurred to them that the