The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [216]
“You mean a form to express it in.”
“It comes to the same thing,” he said.
They walked the next two blocks in silence but both appeared shaken. When the courthouse was in view they crossed the street to it and Mary Elizabeth stuck the tickets at a boy who stood beside an entrance that had been formed by roping in the rest of the square. People were beginning to assemble on the grass inside.
“And do we stand here while you take notes?” Calhoun asked.
The girl stopped and faced him. “Look, Baby Lamb,” she said, “you can do what you please. I’m going up to my father’s office in the building where I can work. You can stay down here and help select Miss Partridge Azalea if you want to.”
“I shall come,” he said, controlling himself, “I’d like to observe a great female writer taking notes.”
“Suit yourself,” she said.
He followed her up the courthouse steps and through a side door. His irritation was so extreme that he did not realize he had passed through the very door where Singleton had stood to shoot. They walked through an empty barnlike hall and silently up a flight of tobacco-stained steps into another barn like hall. Mary Elizabeth rooted in the grass bag for a key and then unlocked the door to her father’s office. They entered a large threadbare room lined with lawbooks. As if he were an incompetent, the girl dragged two straight chairs from one wall to a window that overlooked the porch. Then she sat down and stared out, apparently absorbed at once in the scene below.
Calhoun sat down in the other chair. To annoy her he began to look her over thoroughly. For what seemed at least five minutes, he did not take his eyes off her as she leaned with her elbows in the window. He stared at her so long that he was afraid her image would be etched forever on his retina. Finally he could stand the silence no longer. “What is your opinion of Singleton?” he asked abruptly.
She raised her head and appeared to look through him. “A Christ-figure,” she said.
The boy was stunned.
“I mean as myth,” she said scowling. “I’m not a Christian.” She returned her attention to the scene outside. Below a bugle sounded. “Sixteen girls in bathing suits are about to appear,” she drawled. “Surely this will be of interest to you?”
“Listen,” Calhoun said fiercely, “get this through your head. I’m not interested in the damn festival or the damn azalea queen. I’m here only because of my sympathy for Singleton. I’m going to write about him. Possibly a novel.”
“I intend to write a non-fiction study,” the girl said in a tone that made it evident fiction was beneath her.
They looked at each other with open and intense dislike. Calhoun felt that if he probed sufficiently he would expose her essential shallowness. “Since our forms are different,” he said, again with his ironical smile, “we might compare findings.”
“It’s quite simple,” the girl said. “He was the scapegoat. While Partridge flings itself about selecting Miss Partridge Azalea, Singleton suffers at Quincy. He expiates…”
“I don’t mean your abstract findings,” the boy said. “I mean your concrete findings. Have you ever seen him? What did he look like? The novelist is not interested in narrow abstractions—particularly when they’re obvious. He’s…”
“How many novels have you written?” she asked.
“This will be my first,” he said coldly. “Have you ever seen him?”
“No,” she said, “that isn’t necessary for me. What he looks like makes no difference—whether he has brown eyes or blue—that’s nothing to a thinker.”
“You are probably,” he said, “afraid to look at him. The novelist is never afraid to look at the real object.”
“I would not be afraid to look at him,” the girl said angrily, “if it were at all necessary. Whether he has brown eyes or blue is nothing to me.”
“There is more to it,” Calhoun said, “than whether he has brown eyes or blue. You might find your theories enriched by the sight of him. And I don’t mean by finding out