The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [55]
She wouldn’t.
Suppose she would?
She made herself stop this gory thinking. She was only thirty-four. There was nothing permanent wrong with her. She was fat and her color was good. She thought of herself again in comparison with her mother at thirtyfour and she pinched her arm and smiled. Seeing that her mother or father neither had been Inuch to look at, she had done very well. They had been the dried-up type dried up and Pitman dried into them, them and Pitman shrunk down into something all dried and puckered up. And she had come out of that! A somebody as alive as her! She got up, gripping the banister rail but smiling to herself. She was warm and tat and beautiful and not too fat because Bill Hill liked her that way. She had gained some weight but he hadn’t noticed except that he was maybe more happy lately and didn’t know why. She felt the wholeness of herself, a whole thing climbing the stairs. She was up the first Hight now and she looked back, pleased. As soon as Bill Hill fell clown these steps once, maybe they would move. But they would move before that! Madam Zoleeda had known. She laughed aloud and, noved on down the hall. Mr. Jerger’s door grated and startled her. Oh Lord, she thought, him. He was a second-floor resident who was peculiar.
He peered at her coming down the hall. “Good morning!” he said, bowing the upper part of his body out the door. “Good morning to you!” He looked like a goat. He had little raisin eyes and a string beard and his jacket was a green that was almost black or a black that was almost green.
“Morning,” she said. “Hower you?”
“Well!” he screamed. “Well indeed on this glorious, day!” He was seventy-eight years old and his face looked as if it hal mildew on it. In the mornings he studied and in the afternoons he walked up and down the sidewalks, stopping children and asking them questions. Whenever he heard anyone in the hall, he opener: his door and looked out.
“Yeah, it’s a nice day,” she said languidly.
“Do you know what great birthday this is?” he asked.
“Uh-uh,” Ruby said. He always had a question like that. A history question that nobody knew; he would ask it and then make a speech on it. He used to teach in a high school.
“Guess,” he urged her.
“Abraham Lincoln,” she muttered.
“Hah! You are not trying,” he said. “Try.”
“George Washington,” she said, starting up the stairs.
“Shame on you!” he cried. “And your husband from there! Florida! Florida! Florida’s birthday,” he shouted. “Come in here.” He disappeared into his room, beckoning a long finger at her.
She came down the two steps and said, “I gotta be going,” and stuck her head inside the door. The room was the size of a large closet and the walls were completely covered with picture postcards of local buildings; this gave an illusion of space. A single transparent bulb hung down on Mr. Jerger and a small table.
“Now examine this,” he said. He was bending over a book, running his finger under the lines: “‘On Easter Sunday, April 3, 1516, he arrived on the tip of this continent.’ Do you know who this he was?” he demanded.
“Yeah, Christopher Columbus.” Ruby said.
“Ponce de Leon!” he screamed. “Ponce de Leon’ You should know something about Florida,” he said. “Your husband is from Florida.”
“Yeah, he was born in Miami,” Ruby said. “He’s not from Tennessee.”
“Florida is not a noble state,” Mr. Jerger said, “but it is an important one.”
“It’s important alrighto,” Ruby said.
“Do you know who Ponce de Leon was?”
“He was the founder of Florida,” Ruby said brightly.