The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [82]
“That wouldn’t hardly pay for more than the gas and the hotel,” he said. “It wouldn’t feed her.”
“Seventeen-fifty,” the old woman said. “That’s all I got so it isn’t any use you trying to milk me. You can take a lunch.”
Mr. ShiftIet was deeply hurt by the word “milk.” He didn’t doubt that she had more money sewed up in her mattress but he had already told her he was not interested in her money. “I’ll make that do,” he said and rose and walked off without treating with her further.
On Saturday the three of them drove into town in the car that the paint had barely dried on and Mr. ShiftIet and Lucynell were married in the Ordinary’s office while the old woman witnessed. As they came out of the courthouse, Mr. ShiftIet began twisting his neck in his collar. He looked morose and bitter as if he had been insulted while someone held him. “That didn’t satisfy me none,” he said. “That was just something a woman in an office did, nothing but paper work and blood tests. What do they know about my blood? If they was to take my heart and cut it out,” he said, “they wouldn’t know a thing about me. It didn’t satisfy me at all.”
“It satisfied the law,” the old woman said sharply.
“The law,” Mr. ShiftIet said and spit. “It’s the law that don’t satisfy me.”
He had painted the car dark green with a yellow band around it just under the windows. The three of them climbed in the front seat and the old woman said, “Don’t Lucynell look pretty? Looks like a baby doll.” Lucynell was dressed lip in a white dress that her mother had uprooted from a trunk and there was a Panama hat on her head with a bunch of red wooden cherries on the brim. Every now and then her placid expression was changed by a sly isolated little thought like a shoot of green in the desert. “You got a prize!” the old woman said.
Mr. ShiftIet didn’t even look at her.
They drove back to the house to let the old woman off and pick up the lunch. When they were ready to leave, she stood staring in the window of the car, with her fingers clenched around the glass. Tears began to seep sideways out of her eyes and run along the dirty creases in her face. “I ain’t ever been parted with her for two days before,” she said.
Mr. Shiftlet started the motor.
“And I wouldn’t let no man have her but you because I seen you would do right. Good-by, Sugarbaby,” she said, clutching at the sleeve of the white dress. Lucynell looked straight at her and didn’t seem to see her there at all. Mr. ShiftIet eased the car forward so that she had to move her hands.
The early afternoon was clear and open and surrounded by pale blue sky. Although the car would go only thirty miles an hour, Mr. Shiftlet imagined a terrific climb and dip and swerve that went entirely to his head so that he forgot his morning bitterness. He had always wanted an automobile but he had never been able to afford one before. He drove very fast because he wanted to make Mobile by nightfall.
Occasionally he stopped his thoughts long enough to look at Lucynell in the seat beside him. She had eaten the lunch as soon as they were out of the yard and now she was pulling the cherries off the hat one by one and throwing them out the window. He became depressed in spite of the car. He had driven about a hundred miles when he decided that she must be hungry again and at the next small town they came to, he stopped in front of an aluminum-painted eating place called The Hot Spot and took her in and ordered her a plate of ham and grits. The ride had made her sleepy and as soon as she got up on the stool, she rested her head on the counter and shut her eyes. There was no one in The Hot Spot but Mr. Shiftlet and the boy behind the counter, a pale youth with a greasy rag hung over his shoulder. Before he could dish up the food, she was snoring gently.
“Give it to her when she wakes up,” Mr. ShiftIet said. “I’ll pay for it now.”
The boy bent over her and stared at the long pink-gold hair and the half-shut sleeping eyes. Then