The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [257]
“Who them children belong to, you?” he said at length.
“I ain’t married yet,” she said. “They belong to momma.” She said it as if it were only a matter of time before she would be married.
Who in God’s name would marry her? Parker thought.
A large barefooted woman with a wide gap-toothed face appeared in the door behind Parker. She had apparently been there for several minutes.
“Good evening,” Parker said.
The woman crossed the porch and picked up what was left of the bushel of apples. “We thank you,” she said and returned with it into the house.
“That your old woman?” Parker muttered.
The girl nodded. Parker knew a lot of sharp things he could have said like “You got my sympathy,” but he was gloomily silent. He just sat there, looking at the view. He thought he must be coming down with something.
“If I pick up some peaches tomorrow I’ll bring you some,” he said.
‘I’ll be much obliged to you,” the girl said.
Parker had no intention of taking any basket of peaches back there but the next day he found himself doing it. He and the girl had almost nothing to say to each other. One thing he did say was, “I ain’t got any tattoo on my back.”
“What you got on it?” the girl said.
“My shirt,” Parker said. “Haw.”
“Haw, haw,” the girl said politely.
Parker thought he was losing his mind. He could not believe for a minute that he was attracted to a woman like this. She showed not the least interest in anything but what he brought until he appeared the third time with two cantaloups. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“O. E. Parker,” he said.
“What does the O. E. stand for?”
“You can just call me O. E.,” Parker said. “Or Parker. Don’t nobody call me by my name.”
“What’s it stand for?” she persisted.
“Never mind,” Parker said. “What’s yours?”
“I’ll tell you when you tell me what them letters are the short of,” she said. There was just a hint of flirtatiousness in her tone and it went rapidly to Parker’s head. He had never revealed the name to any man or woman, only to the files of the navy and the government, and it was on his baptismal record which he got at the age of a month; his mother was a Methodist. When the name leaked out of the navy files, Parker narrowly missed killing the man who used it.
“You’ll go blab it around,” he said.
‘I’Il swear I’ll never tell nobody,” she said. “On God’s holy word I swear it.”
Parker sat for a few minutes in silence. Then he reached for the girl’s neck, drew her ear close to his mouth and revealed the name in a low voice.
“Obadiah,” she whispered. Her face slowly brightened as if the name came as a sign to her. “Obadiah,” she said.
The name still stank in Parker’s estimation.
“Obadiah Elihue,” she said in a reverent voice.
“If you call me that aloud, I’ll bust your head open,”
Parker said. “What’s yours?”
“Sarah Ruth Cates,” she said.
“Glad to meet you, Sarah Ruth,” Parker said.
Sarah Ruth’s father was a Straight Gospel preacher but he was away, spreading it in Florida. Her mother did not seem to mind his attention to the girl so long as he brought a basket of something with him when he came. As for Sarah Ruth herself, it was plain to Parker after he had visited three times that she was crazy about him. She liked him even though she insisted that pictures on the skin were vanity of vanities and even after hearing him curse, and even after she had asked him if he was saved and he had replied that he didn’t see it was anything in particular to save him from. After that, inspired, Parker had said, “I’d be saved enough if you was to kiss me.”
She scowled. “That ain’t being saved,” she said.
Not long after that she agreed to take a ride in his truck. Parker parked it on a deserted road and suggested to her that they lie down together in the back of it.
“Not until after we’re married,” she said—just like that.
“Oh that ain’t necessary,” Parker said and as he reached for her, she thrust him away with such force that the door of the