The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [270]
As for him, he would have returned to squat on the doctor’s land and to take his orders from a nigger who chewed tencent cigars. And to think less about it than formerly. Instead he had been done in by a nigger actor, or one who called himself an actor. He didn’t believe the nigger was any actor.
There were two apartments on each floor of the building, He had been with the daughter three weeks when the people in the next hutch moved out. He had stood in the hall and watched the movingout and the next day he had watched a moving-In. The hall was narrow and dark and he stood in the corner out of the way, offering only a suggestion every now and then to the mover s that would have made their work easier for them if they had paid any attention. The furniture was new and cheap so he decided the people moving in might be a newly married couple and he would just wait around until they came and wish them well. After a while a large Negro in a light blue suit came lunging up the stairs, carrying two canvas suitcases, his head lowered against the strain. Behind him stepped a young tan-skinned woman with bright coppercolored hair. The Negro dropped the suitcases with a thud in front of the door of the next apartment.
“Be careful, Sweetie,” the woman said. “My make-up is in there.”
It broke upon him then just what was happening.
The Negro was grinning. He took a swipe at one of her hips.
“Quit it,” she said, “there’s an old guy watching.”
They both turned and looked at him.
“Had-do,” he said and nodded. Then he turned quickly into his own door.
His daughter was in the kitchen. “Who you think’s rented that apartment over there?” he asked, his face alight.
She looked at him suspiciously. “Who?” she muttered.
“A niggerl” he said in a gleeful voice. “A South Alabama nigger if I ever saw one. And got him this high-yeller, high-stepping woman with red hair and they two are going to live next door to you!” He slapped his knee. “Yes siree!” he said. “Damn if they ain’t!” It was the first time since coming up here that he had had occasion to laugh.
Her face squared up instantly. “All right now you listen to me,” she said. “You keep away from them. Don’t you go over there trying to get friendly with him. They ain’t the same around here and I don’t want any trouble with niggers, you hear me? If you have to live next to them, just you mind your business and they’ll mind theirs. That’s the way people were meant to get along in this world. Everybody can get along if they just mind their business. Live and let live.” She began to wrinkle her nose like a rabbit, a stupid way she had. “Up here everybody minds their own business and everybody gets along. That’s all you have to do.”
“I was getting along with niggers before you were born,” he said. He went back out into the hall and waited. He was willing to bet the nigger would like to talk to someone who understood him. Twice while he waited, he forgot and in his excitement, spit his tobacco juice against the baseboard. In about twenty minutes, the door of the apartment opened again and the Negro came out. He had put on a tie and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and Tanner noticed for the first time that he had a small almost invisible goatee. A real swell. He came on without appearing to see there was anyone else in the hall.
“Haddy, John,” Tanner said and nodded, but the Negro brushed past without hearing and went rattling rapidly down the stairs.
Could be deaf and dumb, Tanner thought. He went back into the apartment and sat down but each time he heard a noise in the hall, he got up and went to the door and stuck his head out to see if it might be the Negro. Once in the middle of the afternoon, he caught the Negro’s eye just as he was rounding the bend of the stairs again but before he could get out a word, the man was in his own apartment and had slammed the door. He had never known one to move that fast unless