The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [251]
“Ain’t nothing bad happen to you!” the old woman said. She said it as if they all knew that Mrs. Turpin was protected in some special way by Divine Providence. “You just had you a little fall.”
“We were in town at the doctor’s office for where the cow kicked Mr. Turpin,” Mrs. Turpin said in a Hat tone that indicated they could leave off their foolishness. “And there was this girl there. A big fat girl with her face all broke out. I could look at that girl and tell she was peculiar but I couldn’t tell how. And me and her mama were just talking and going along and all of a sudden WHAM! She throws this big book she was reading at me and…”
“Naw!”the old woman cried out.
“And then she jumps over the table and commences to choke me.”
“Naw!” they all exclaimed, “naw!”
“Hi come she do that?” the old woman asked. “What ail her?”
Mrs. Turpin only glared in front of her.
“Somethin ail her,” the old woman said.
“They carried her off in an ambulance,” Mrs. Turpin continued, “but before she went she was rolling on the floor and they were trying to hold her down to give her a shot and she said something to me.” She paused. “You know what she said to me?”
“What she say?”they asked.
“She said,” Mrs. Turpin began, and stopped, her face very dark and heavy. The sun was getting whiter and whiter, blanching the sky overhead so that the leaves of the hickory tree were black in the ‘face of it. She could not bring forth the words. “Something real ugly,” she muttered.
“She sho shouldn’t said nothin ugly to you,” the old woman said. “You so sweet. You the sweetest lady I know.”
“She pretty too,” the one with the hat on said.
“And stout,” the other one said. “I never knowed no sweeter white lady.”
“That’s the truth befo’ Jesus,” the old woman said.
“Amen! You des as sweet and pretty as you can be.”
Mrs. Turpin knew just exactly how much Negro flattery was worth and it added to her rage. “She said,” she began again and finished this time with a fierce rush of breath, “that I was an old wart hog from hell.”
There was an astounded silence.
“Where she at?” the youngest woman cried in a piercing voice.
“Lemme see her. I’ll kill her!”
“I’ll kill her with you!” the other one cried.
“She b’long in the sylum,” the old woman said emphatically.
“You the sweetest white lady I know.”
“She pretty too,” the other two said. “Stout as she can be and sweet. Jesus satisfiedwith her!”
“Deed he is,” the old woman declared.
Idiots! Mrs. Turpin growled to herself. You could never say anything intelligent to a nigger. You could talk at them but not with them. “Yawl ain’t drunk your water,” she said shortly. “Leave the bucket in the truck when you’re finished with it. I got more to do than just stand around and pass the time of day,” and she moved off and into the house.
She stood for a moment in the middle of the kitchen. The dark protuberance over her eye looked like a miniature tornado cloud which might any moment sweep across the horizon of her brow. Her lower lip protruded dangerously. She squared her massive shoulders. Then she marched into the front of the house and out the side door and started down the road to the pig parlor. She had the look of a woman going single-handed, weaponless, into battle.
The sun was a deep yellow now like a harvest moon and was riding westward very fast over the far tree line as if it meant to reach the hogs before she did. The road was rutted and she kicked several good-sized stones out of her path as she strode along. The pig parlor was on a little knoll at the end of a lane that ran off from the side of the barn. It was a square of concrete as large as a small room, with a board fence about four feet high around it. The concrete floor sloped slightly so that the hog wash could drain off into a trench where it was carried to the field for fertilizer. Claud was standing on the outside, on the edge of the concrete, hanging onto the top board, hosing down the floor inside. The