The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [22]
“He pulled the animal’s short, scraggy ears and rolled over with it in the mud.” Perhaps, Miss Willerton mused, that would be over doing it. But a sharecropper, she knew, might reasonably be expected to roll over in the mud. Once she had read a novel dealing with that kind of people in which they had done just as bad and, throughout three-fourths of the narrative, much worse. Lucia found it in cleaning out one of Miss Willertori’s bureau drawers and after glancing at a few random pages took it between thumb and index finger to the furnace and threw it in. “When I was cleaning your bureau out this morning, Willie, I found a book that Garner must have put there for a joke,” Miss Lucia told her later. “It was awful, but you know how Garner is. I burned it” And then, tittering, she added, “I was sure it couldn’t be yours.” Miss Willerton was sure it could be none other’s than hers but she hesitated in claiming the distinction. She had ordered it from the publisher because she didn’t want to ask for it at the library. It had cost her $3.75 with the postage and she had not finished the last four chapters. At least, she had got enough from it, though, to be able to say that Lot Motun might reasonably roll over in the mud with his dog. Having him do that would give more point to the hookworm, too, she decided. “Lot Motun called his dog. The dog pricked lip its ears and slunk over to him. He pulled the animal’s short. scraggy ears and rolled over with it in the mud.”
Miss Willerton settled back. That was a good beginning. Now she would plan her action. There had to be a woman, of course. Perhaps Lot could kill her. That type of woman always started trouble. She might even goad him on to kill her because of her wantonness and then he would be pursued by his conscience maybe.
He would have to have principles if that were going to be the case, but it would be fairly easy to give him those. Now how was she going to work that in with all the love interest there’d have to be, she wondered. There would have to be some quite violent, naturalistic scenes, the sadistic sort of thing one read of in connection with that class. It was a problem. However, Miss Willerton enjoyed such problems. She liked to plan passionate scenes best of all, but when she came to write them, she always began to feel peculiar and to wonder what the family would say when they read them. Garner would snap his fingers and wink at her at every opportunity; Bertha would think she was terrible; and Lucia would say in that silly voice of hers, “What have you been keeping from us, Willie? What have you been keeping from us,” and titter like she always did. But Miss Willerton couldn’t think about that now; she had to plan her characters.
Lot would be tall, stooped, and shaggy but with sad eyes that made him look like a gentleman in spite of his red neck and big fumbling hands. He’d have straight teeth and, to indicate that he had some spirit, red hair. His clothes would hang on him but he’d wear them nonchalantly like they were part of his skin; maybe, she mused, he’d better not roll over with the dog after all. The woman would be more or less pretty-yellow hair, fat ankles, muddy-colored eyes.
She would get supper for him in the cabin and he’d sit there eating the lumpy grits she hadn’t bothered to put salt in and thinking about something big, something way off—another cow, a painted house, a clean well, a farm of his own even. The woman would yowl at him for not cutting