A Good Man is Hard to Findby Flannery O'Connor
THE GRANDMOTHER didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to
visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing
at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she
lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair
at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal.
"Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she
stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the
newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself
The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida
and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you
read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a
criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience
if I did."Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled
around then and faced the children's mother, a young woman in
slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was
tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the
top like rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the
baby his apricots out of a jar. "The children have been to Florida
before," the old lady said. "You all ought to take them somewhere
else for a change so they would see different parts of the world
and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee."The
children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old
boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, "If you don't
want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" He and the little
girl, June Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor."She
wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day," June Star said
without raising her yellow head."Yes and what would you do if this
fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother asked."I'd smack
his face," John Wesley said."She wouldn't stay at home for a
million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She
has to go everywhere we go."138 A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND"All
right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just remember that the next
time you want me to curl your hair."June Star said her hair was
naturally curly.The next morning the grandmother was the first one
in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise that looked
like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it
she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't
intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days
because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might
brush against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate
himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like to arrive at a motel with a
cat.She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and
June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children's mother
and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five
with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this
down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many
miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes
to reach the outskirts of the city.The old lady settled herself
comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up
with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The
children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied
up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue
straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a
navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars
and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline
she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet.
In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would
know at once that she was a lady.She said she thought it was going
to be a good day for driving, neither too hot nor too cold, and she
cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour
and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small
clumps of trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to
slow down. She pointed out interesting details of the scenery:
Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to
both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly
streaked with purple; and the various cropsA GOOD MAN IS HARD TO
FIND 139that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees
were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them
sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their
mother had gone back to sleep."Let's go through Georgia fast so we
won't have to look at it much," John Wesley said."If I were a
little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native
state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the
hills.""Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley
said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too.""You said it," June Star
said."In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined
fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and
their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look
at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro
child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a
picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the
little Negro out of the back window. He waved."He didn't have any
britches on," June Star said."He probably didn't have any," the
grandmother explained. "Little niggers in the country don't have
things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she
said.The children exchanged comic books.The grandmother offered to
hold the baby and the children's mother passed him over the front
seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him
about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed
up her mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland
one. Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large
cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it,
like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!" the grandmother said,
pointing it out. "That was the old family burying ground. That
belonged to the plantation.""Where's the plantation?" John Wesley
asked."Gone With the Wind," said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha."When the
children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened
the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich
and an olive and would not letI40 A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FINDthe
children throw the box and the paper napkins out the window. When
there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud
and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley
took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John
Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn't play
fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother.The
grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep
quiet. When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her
head and was very dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden
lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden from
Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking man and a
gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Saturday
afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday,
she said, Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody
at home and he left it on the front porch and returned in his buggy
to Jasper, but she never got the watermelon, she said, because a
nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T.! This story
tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he giggled and giggled but
June Star didn't think it was any good. She said she wouldn't marry
a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The
grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden
because he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it
first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very
wealthy man.They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sandwiches. The
Tower was a part stucco and part wood filling station and dance
hall set in a clearing outside of Timothy. A fat man named Red
Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and there on the
building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED
SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE
FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S YOUR MAN!Red
Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head
under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a
small chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back
into the tree and got on theA GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND 141 highest
limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run
toward him.Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at
one end and tables at the other and dancing space in the middle.
They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon and Red
Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter
than her skin, came and took their order. The children's mother put
a dime in the machine and played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the
grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked
Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He
didn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips
made him nervous. The grandmother's brown eyes were very bright.
She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she was dancing
in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the
children's mother put in another dime and played a fast number and
June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap
routine."Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the
counter. "Would you like to come be my little girl?""No I certainly
wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place
like this for a minion bucks!" and she ran back to the table."Ain't
she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely."Arn't
you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.Red Sam came in and told his
wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these
people's order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones
and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under
his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out
a combination sigh and yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't
win," and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray
handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he said.
"Ain't that the truth?""People are certainly not nice like they
used to be," said the grandmother."Two fellers come in here last
week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up
car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me.
Said they worked142 A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FINDat the mill and you
know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I
do that?""Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at
once."Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with
this answer.His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates
all at once without a tray, two in each hand and one balanced on
her arm. "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's that you can
trust," she said. "And I don't count nobody out of that, not
nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy."Did you read about
that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the
grandmother."I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't attact this
place right here," said the woman. "If he hears about it being
here,I wouldn't be none surprised to see him. If he hears it's two
cent in the cash register, I wouldn't be a tall surprised if he . .
.""That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their
Co'-Colas," and the woman went off to get the rest of the order."A
good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Every- thing is getting
terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen
door unlatched. Not no more."He and the grandmother discussed
better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was
entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way
Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said
it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children
ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the
lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and
biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a
delicacy.They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grand-
mother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own
snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old
plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she
was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across
the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and
two little wooden trellisA GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND 143arbors on
either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a
stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off
to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any
time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the
more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little
twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret panel in this
house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that
she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden
in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . .""Hey!"
John Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find it! We'll poke all
the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off
at? Hey Pop, can't we turn off there?""We never have seen a house
with a secret panel!" June Star shrieked. "Let's go to the house
with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with the
secret panel!""It's not far from here, I know," the grandmother
said. "It wouldn't take over twenty minutes."Bailey was looking
straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he
said.The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see
the house with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the
front seat and June Star hung over her mother's shoulder and whined
desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their
vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby
began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard
that his father could feel the blows in his kidney."All right!" he
shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. "Will
you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you
don't shut up, we won't go anywhere."It would be very educational
for them," the grandmother murmured."All right," Bailey said, "but
get this: this is the only time we're going to stop for anything
like this. This is the one and only time.""The dirt road that you
have to turn down is about a mile back," the grandmother directed.
"I marked it when we passed."144 A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND"A dirt
road," Bailey groaned.After they had turned around and were headed
toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other points about
the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and the
candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was
probably in the fireplace."You can't go inside this house," Bailey
said. "You don't know who lives there.""While you all talk to the
people in front, I'll run around behind and get in a window," John
Wesley suggested."We'll all stay in the car," his mother said. They
turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a
swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there
were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt
road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves
on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill,
looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the
next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated
trees looking down on them."This place had better turn up in a
minute," Bailey said, "or I'm going to turn around."The road looked
as if no one had traveled on it in months."It's not much farther,"
the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought
came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in
the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her
valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper
top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty
Sing,the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder.The children were
thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was
thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into
the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up
in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the
driver's seat with the cat-gray-striped with a broad white face and
an orange nose-clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.As soon as
the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they
scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The
grandmother was curled up under theA GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND
145dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would
not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had
before the accident was that the house she had remembered so
vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.Bailey removed the cat
from his neck with both hands and flung it out the window against
the side of a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started
looking for the children's mother. She was sitting against the side
of the red gutted ditch, holding the screaming baby, but she only
had a cut down her face and a broken shoulder. "We've had an
ACCIDENT!" the children screamed in a frenzy of delight."But
nobody's killed," June Star said with disappointment as the
grandmother limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head
but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the
violet spray hanging off the side. They all sat down in the ditch,
except the children, to recover from the shock. They were all
shaking."Maybe a car will come along," said the children's mother
hoarsely."I believe I have injured an organ," said the grandmother,
pressing her side, but no one answered her. Bailey's teeth were
clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots
designed in it and his face was as yellow as the l shirt. The
grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was
in Tennessee.The road was about ten feet above and they could see
only the tops of the trees on the other side of it. Behind the
ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and
deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of
a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The
grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract
their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared
around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the
hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearse-like
automobile. There were three men in it.It came to a stop just over
them and for some minutes, the driver looked down with a steady
expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn't speak.
Then he turned his146 A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FINDhead and muttered
something to the other two and they got out. One was a fat boy in
black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion
embossed on the front of it. He moved around on the right side of
them and stood staring, his mouth partly open in a kind of loose
grin. The other had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a
gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He came
around slowly on the left side. Neither spoke.The driver got out of
the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at them. He was
an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to
gray and he wore silver- rimmed spectacles that gave him a
scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn't have on any
shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too tight for
him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also had
guns."We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed.The grandmother
had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she
knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him au
her life but she could not recall who he was. He moved away from
the car and began to come down the embankment, placing his feet
carefully so that he wouldn't slip. He had on tan and white shoes
and no socks, and his ankles were red and thin. "Good afternoon,"
he said. "I see you all had you a little spill.""We turned over
twice!" said the grandmother."Once"," he corrected. "We seen it
happen. Try their car and see will it run, Hiram," he said quietly
to the boy with the gray hat."What you got that gun for?" John
Wesley asked. "Whatcha gonna do with that gun?""Lady," the man said
to the children's mother, "would you mind calling them children to
sit down by you? Children make me nervous. I want all you all to
sit down right together there where you're at.""What are you
telling US what to do for?" June Star asked.Behind them the line of
woods gaped like a dark open mouth. "Come here," said their
mother."Look here now," Bailey began suddenly, "we're in a
predicament! We're in . . ."A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND 147The
grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring.
"You're The Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once!""Yes'm,"
the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of
himself to be known, "but it would have been better for all of you,
lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me."Bailey turned his head
sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the
children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened."Lady,"
he said, "don't you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don't
mean. I don't reckon he meant to talk to you thataway.""You
wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" the grandmother said and removed
a clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes
with it.The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground and
made a little hole and then covered it up again. "I would hate to
have to," he said."Listen," the grandmother almost screamed, "I
know you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have com- mon
blood. I know you must come from nice people!""Yes mam," he said,
"finest people in the world." When he smiled he showed a row of
strong white teeth. "God never made a finer woman than my mother
and my daddy's heart was pure gold," he said. The boy with the red
sweat shirt had come around behind them and was standing with his
gun at his hip. The Misfit squatted down on the ground. "Watch them
children, Bobby Lee," he said. "You know they make me nervous." He
looked at the six of them huddled together in front of him and he
seemed to be embarrassed as if he couldn't think of anything to
say. "Ain't a cloud in the sky," he remarked, looking up at it.
"Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither.""Yes, it's a
beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen," she said, "you
shouldn't call yourself The Misfit because I know you're a good man
at heart. I can just look at you and tell ""Hush!" Bailey yelled.
"Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!" He was squatting
in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn't
move.148 A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND"I prechate that, lady," The
Misfit said and drew a little circle in the ground with the butt of
his gun."It'll take a half a hour to fix this here car," Hiram
called, looking over the raised hood of it."Well, first you and
Bobby Lee get him and that little boy to step over yonder with
you," The Misfit said, pointing to Bailey and John Wesley. "The
boys want to ast you some- thing," he said to Bailey. "Would you
mind stepping back in them woods there with them?""Listen," Bailey
began, "we're in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes what this
is," and his voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as
the parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.The
grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going
to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood
staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground.
Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting an old
man. John Wesley caught hold of his father's hand and Bobby Lee
followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached
the dark edge, Bailey turned and supporting himself against a gray
naked pine trunk, he shouted, "I'll be back in a minute, Mamma,
wait on me!""Come back this instant!" his mother shrilled but they
all disappeared into the woods."Bailey Boy!" the grandmother called
in a tragic voice but she found she was looking at The Misfit
squatting on the ground in front of her. "I just know you're a good
man," she said desperately. "You're not a bit common!""Nome, I
ain't a good man," The Misfit said after a second as if he had
considered her statement carefully, "but I ain't the worst in the
world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my
brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's some that can
live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others
has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's
going to be into every- thing!'" He put on his black hat and looked
up suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if he were
embarrassed again. "I'm sorry I don't have on a shirt before you
ladies," he said, hunching his shoulders slightly. "We buried our
clothes that we had on when we escaped and we're justA GOOD MAN IS
HARD TO FIND I49making do until we can get better. We borrowed
these from some folks we met," he explained."That's perfectly all
right," the grandmother said. "Maybe Bailey has an extra shirt in
his suitcase.""I'll look and see terrectly," The Misfit said."Where
are they taking him?" the children's mother screamed."Daddy was a
card himself," The Misfit said. "You couldn't put anything over on
him. He never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had
the knack of handling them.""You could be honest too if you'd only
try," said the grandmother. "Think how wonderful it would be to
settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about
some- body chasing you all the time."The Misfit kept scratching in
the ground with the butt of his gun as if he were thinking about
it. "Yes'm, somebody is always after you," he murmured.The
grandmother noticed how thin his shoulder blades were just
behind-his hat because she was standing up looking down on him. "Do
you ever pray?" she asked.He shook his head. All she saw was the
black hat wiggle between his shoulder blades. "Nome," he said.There
was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then
silence. The old lady's head jerked around. She could hear the wind
move through the tree tops like a long satisfied insuck of breath.
"Bailey Boy!" she called."I was a gospel singer for a while," The
Misfit said. "I been most everything. Been in the arm service, both
land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an
undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a
tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet," and he looked up at the
children's mother and the little girl who were sitting close
together, their faces white and their eyes glassy; "I even seen a
woman flogged," he said."Pray, pray," the grandmother began, "pray,
pray . . .""I never was a bad boy that I remember of," The Misfit
said in an almost dreamy voice, "but somewheres along the line I
done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried
alive," and he looked up and held her attention to him by a steady
stare.150 A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND"That's when you should have
started to pray," she said "What did you do to get sent to the
penitentiary that first time?""Turn to the right, it was a wall,"
The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. "Turn to
the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was
a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there,
trying to remember what it was I done and I ain't recalled it to
this day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but
it never come.""Maybe they put you in by mistake," the old lady
said vaguely."Nome," he said. "It wasn't no mistake. They had the
papers on me.""You must have stolen something," she said.The Misfit
sneered slightly. "Nobody had nothing I wanted," he said. "It was a
head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my
daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought
nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it.
He was buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can
go there and see for yourself.""If you would pray," the old lady
said, "Jesus would help you.""That's right," The Misfit said."Well
then, why don't you pray?" she asked trembling with delight
suddenly."I don't want no hep," he said. "I'm doing all right by
myself."Bobby Lee and Hiram came ambling back from the woods. Bobby
Lee was dragging a yellow shirt with bright blue parrots in
it."Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. The shirt came
flying at him and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. The
grandmother couldn't name what the shirt reminded her of. "No,
lady," The Misfit said while he was buttoning it up, "I found out
the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another,
kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later
you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished
for it."A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND 151The children's mother had
begun to make heaving noises as if she couldn't get her breath.
"Lady," he asked, "would you and that little girl like to step off
yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband?""Yes, thank
you," the mother said faintly. Her left arm dangled helplessly and
she was holding the baby, who had gone to sleep, in the other. "Hep
that lady up, Hiram," The Misfit said as she struggled to climb out
of the ditch, "and Bobby Lee, you hold onto that little girl's
hand.""I don't want to hold hands with him," June Star said. "He
reminds me of a pig."The fat boy blushed and laughed and caught her
by the arm and pulled her off into the woods after Hiram and her
mother.Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had
lost her voice. There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There
was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he
must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before
anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, "Jesus.
Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying
it, it sounded as if she might be cursing."Yes'm," The Misfit said
as if he agreed. "Jesus shown everything off balance. It was the
same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime
and they could prove I had committed one because they had the
papers on me. Of course," he said, "they never shown me my papers.
That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a
signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then
you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the
punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have
something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself The
Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit
what all I gone through in punishment."There was a piercing scream
from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report. "Does it seem
right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't
punished at all?""Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good
blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from
nice152 A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND people! Pray! Jesus, you ought
not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!""Lady,"
The Misfit said, looking beyond her far into the woods, "there
never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."There were two
more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a
parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy,
Bailey Boy!" as if her heart would break."Jesus was the only One
that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't
have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He
said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and
follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but
enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can-by killing
somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to
him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become
almost a snarl."Maybe He didn't raise the dead," the old lady
mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that
she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her."I
wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I
had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It
ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would
of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been
there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice
seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an
instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he
were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies.
You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on
the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him
and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun
down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean
them.Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the
ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in
a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's
and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO
FIND 153Without his glasses, The Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and
pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her off and thow her where you
shown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing
itself against his leg."She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee
said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel."She would of been a good
woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot
her every minute of her life.""Some fun!" Bobby Lee said."Shut up,
Bobby Lee" The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."
The Nightingale and the RoseBy: Oscar Wilde
'She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red
roses,' cried the young Student; 'but in all my garden there is no
red rose.'From her nest in the holm-oak tree the Nightingale heard
him, and she looked out through the leaves, and wondered.'No red
rose in all my garden!' he cried, and his beautiful eyes filled
with tears. 'Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I
have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets
of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made
wretched.''Here at last is a true lover,' said the Nightingale.
'Night after night have I sung of him, though I knew him not: night
after night have I told his story to the stars, and now I see him.
His hair is dark as the hyacinth-blossom, and his lips are red as
the rose of his desire; but passion has made his lace like pale
Ivory, and sorrow has set her seal upon his brow.''The Prince gives
a ball to-morrow night,' murmured the young Student, 'and my love
will be of the company. If I bring her a red rose she will dance
with me till dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I shall hold her in
my arms, and she will lean her head upon my shoulder, and her hand
will be clasped in mine. But there is no red rose in my garden, so
I shall sit lonely, and she will pass me by. She will have no heed
of me, and my heart will break.''Here indeed is the true lover,'
said the Nightingale. 'What I sing of he suffers: what is joy to
me, to him is pain. Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more
precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and
pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the
market-place. it may not be purchased of the merchants, 'or can it
be weighed out in the balance for gold.'
'The musicians will sit in their gallery,' said the young
Student, 'and play upon their stringed instruments, and my love
will dance to the sound of the harp and the violin. She will dance
so lightly that her feet will not touch the floor, and the
courtiers in their gay dresses will throng round her. But with me
she will not dance, for I have no red rose to give her;' and he
flung himself down on the grass, and buried his face in his hands,
and wept.'Why is he weeping?' asked a little Green Lizard, as he
ran past him with his tail in the air.'Why, indeed?' said a
Butterfly, who was fluttering about after a sunbeam.'Why, indeed?'
whispered a Daisy to his neighbour, in a soft, low voice.'He is
weeping for a red rose,' said the Nightingale.'For a red rose!'
they cried; 'how very ridiculous!' and the little Lizard, who was
something of a cynic, laughed outright.But the Nightingale
understood the secret of the Student's sorrow, and she sat silent
in the oak-tree, and thought about the mystery of Love.Suddenly she
spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She
passed through the grove like a shadow, and like a shadow she
sailed across the garden.In the centre of the grass-plot was
standing a beautiful Rose-tree, and when she saw it, she flew over
to it, and lit upon a spray.'Give me a red rose,' she cried, 'and I
will sing you my sweetest song.'But the Tree shook its head.'My
roses are white,' it answered; 'as white as the foam of the sea,
and whiter than the snow upon the mountain. But go to my brother
who grows round the old sun-dial, and perhaps he will give you what
you want.'
So the Nightingale flew over to the Rose-tree that was growing
round the old sun-dial.'Give me a red rose,' she cried, 'and I will
sing you my sweetest song.'But the Tree shook its head.'My roses
are yellow,' it answered; 'as yellow as the hair of the mermaiden
who sits upon an amber throne, and yellower than the daffodil that
blooms in the meadow before the mower comes with his scythe. But go
to my brother who grows beneath the Student's window, and perhaps
he will give you what you want.'So the Nightingale flew over to the
Rose-tree that was growing beneath the Student's window.'Give me a
red rose,' she cried, 'and I will sing you my sweetest song.'But
the Tree shook its head.'My roses are red,' it answered, 'as red as
the feet of the dove, and redder than the great fans of coral that
wave and wave in the ocean-cavern. But the winter has chilled my
veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken
my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year.''One red
rose is all I want,' cried the Nightingale, 'only one red rose! Is
there no way by which I can get it?''There is a way,' answered the
Tree; 'but it is so terrible that I dare not tell it to you.''Tell
it to me,' said the Nightingale, 'I am not afraid.''If you want a
red rose,' said the Tree, 'you must build it out of music by
moonlight, and stain it with your own heart's-blood. You must sing
to me with your breast against a thorn. All night long you must
sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your
life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine.'
'Death is a great price to pay for a red rose,' cried the
Nightingale, 'and Life is very dear to all. It is pleasant to sit
in the green wood, and to watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and
the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent of the
hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and
the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life,
and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?'So
she spread her brown wings for flight, and soared into the air. She
swept over the garden like a shadow, and like a shadow she sailed
through the grove.The young Student was still lying on the grass,
where she had left him, and the tears were not yet dry in his
beautiful eyes.'Be happy,' cried the Nightingale, 'be happy; you
shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by
moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask
of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is
wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power,
though he is mighty. Flame-coloured are his wings, and coloured
like flame is his body. His lips are sweet as honey, and his breath
is like frankincense.'The Student looked up from the grass, and
listened, but he could not understand what the Nightingale was
saying to him, for he only knew the things that are written down in
books.But the Oak-tree understood, and felt sad, for he was very
fond of the little Nightingale who had built her nest in his
branches.'Sing me one last song,' he whispered; 'I shall feel very
lonely when you are gone.'So the Nightingale sang to the Oak-tree,
and her voice was like water bubbling from a silver jar.
When she had finished her song the Student got lip, and pulled a
note-book and a lead-pencil out of his pocket.'She has form,' he
said to himself, as he walked away through the grove - 'that cannot
be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In
fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any
sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks
merely of music, and everybody knows that the arts are selfish.
Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her
voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any
practical good.' And he went into his room, and lay down on his
little pallet-bed, and began to think of his love; and, after a
time, he fell asleep.And when the Moon shone in the heavens the
Nightingale flew to the Rose-tree, and set her breast against the
thorn. All night long she sang with her breast against the thorn,
and the cold crystal Moon leaned down and listened. All night long
she sang, and the thorn went deeper and deeper into her breast, and
her life-blood ebbed away from her.She sang first of the birth of
love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the topmost spray of
the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvellous rose, petal following
petal, as song followed song. Yale was it, at first, as the mist
that hangs over the river - pale as the feet of the morning, and
silver as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a
mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was
the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of the Tree.But the
Tree cried to the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn.
'Press closer, little Nightingale,' cried the Tree, 'or the Day
will come before the rose is finished.'So the Nightingale pressed
closer against the thorn, and louder and louder grew her song, for
she sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and a
maid.
And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose,
like the flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the
lips of the bride. But the thorn had not yet reached her heart, so
the rose's heart remained white, for only a Nightingale's
heart's-blood can crimson the heart of a rose.And the Tree cried to
the Nightingale to press closer against the thorn. 'Press closer,
little Nightingale,' cried the Tree, 'or the Day will come before
the rose is finished.'So the Nightingale pressed closer against the
thorn, and the thorn touched her heart, and a fierce pang of pain
shot through her. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and
wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by
Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb.And the marvellous
rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was
the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart.But the
Nightingale's voice grew fainter, and her little wings began to
beat, and a film came over her eyes. Fainter and fainter grew her
song, and she felt something choking her in her throat.Then she
gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she
forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it,
and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the
cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills,
and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated
through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the
sea.'Look, look!' cried the Tree, 'the rose is finished now;' but
the Nightingale made no answer, for she was lying dead in the long
grass, with the thorn in her heart.And at noon the Student opened
his window and looked out.
'Why, what a wonderful piece of luck! he cried; 'here is a red
rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so
beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name;' and he leaned
down and plucked it.Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the
Professor's house with the rose in his hand.The daughter of the
Professor was sitting in the doorway winding blue silk on a reel,
and her little dog was lying at her feet.'You said that you would
dance with me if I brought you a red rose,' cried the Student. Here
is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it to-night
next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I
love you.'But the girl frowned.'I am afraid it will not go with my
dress,' she answered; 'and, besides, the Chamberlain's nephew has
sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far
more than flowers.''Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,'
said the Student angrily; and he threw the rose into the street,
where it fell into the gutter, and a cart-wheel went over
it.'Ungrateful!' said the girl. 'I tell you what, you are very
rude; and, after all, who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don't
believe you have even got silver buckles to your shoes as the
Chamberlain's nephew has;' and she got up from her chair and went
into the house.'What a silly thing Love is,' said the Student as he
walked away. 'It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not
prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not
going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.
In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be
practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study
Metaphysics.'
So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book,
and began to read.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro By: Ernest HemingwayTHE MARVELLOUS
THING IS THAT ITS painless," he said. "That's how you know when it
starts.""Is it really?""Absolutely. I'm awfully sorry about the
odor though. That must bother you.""Don't! Please don't.""Look at
them," he said. "Now is it sight or is it scent that brings them
like that?"The cot the man lay on was in the wide shade of a mimosa
tree and as he looked out past the shade onto the glare of the
plain there were three of the big birds squatted obscenely, while
in the sky a dozen more sailed, making quick-moving shadows as they
passed."They've been there since the day the truck broke down," he
said. "Today's the first time any have lit on the ground. I watched
the way they sailed very carefully at first in case I ever wanted
to use them in a story. That's funny now.""I wish you wouldn't,"
she said."I'm only talking," he said. "It's much easier if I talk.
But I don't want to bother you.""You know it doesn't bother me,"
she said. "It's that I've gotten so very nervous not being able to
do anything. I think we might make it as easy as we can until the
plane comes.""Or until the plane doesn't come.""Please tell me what
I can do. There must be something I can do."You can take the leg
off and that might stop it, though I doubt it. Or you can shoot me.
You're a good shot now. I taught you to shoot, didn't I?""Please
don't talk that way. Couldn't I read to you?""Read what?""Anything
in the book that we haven't read.""I can't listen to it," he said."
Talking is the easiest. We quarrel and that makes the time pass.""I
don't quarrel. I never want to quarrel. Let's not quarrel any more.
No matter how nervous we get. Maybe they will be back with another
truck today. Maybe the plane will come.""I don't want to move," the
man said. "There is no sense in moving now except to make it easier
for you.""That's cowardly.""Can't you let a man die as comfortably
as he can without calling him names? What's the use of clanging
me?""You're not going to die.""Don't be silly. I'm dying now. Ask
those bastards." He looked over to where the huge, filthy birds
sat, their naked heads sunk in the hunched feathers. A fourth
planed down, to run quick-legged and then waddle slowly toward the
others."They are around every camp. You never notice them. You
can't die if you don't give up.""Where did you read that? You're
such a bloody fool.""You might think about some one else.""For
Christ's sake," he said, "that's been my trade."He lay then and was
quiet for a while and looked across the heat shimmer of the plain
to the edge of the bush. There were a few Tommies that showed
minute and white against the yellow and, far off, he saw a herd of
zebra, white against the green of the bush. This was a pleasant
camp under big trees against a hill, with good water, and close by,
a nearly dry water hole where sand grouse flighted in the
mornings."Wouldn't you like me to read?" she asked. She was sitting
on a canvas chair beside his cot. "There's a breeze coming up."No
thanks.""Maybe the truck will come.""I don't give a damn about the
truck.""I do.""You give a damn about so many things that I
don't.""Not so many, Harry.""What about a drink?""It's supposed to
be bad for you. It said in Black's to avoid all alcohol.You
shouldn't drink.""Molo!" he shouted."Yes Bwana.""Bring
whiskey-soda.""Yes Bwana.""You shouldn't," she said. "That's what I
mean by giving up. It says it'sbad for you. I know it's bad for
you.""No," he said. "It's good for me."So now it was all over, he
thought. So now he would never have a chanceto finish it. So this
was the way it ended, in a bickering over a drink. Sincethe
gangrene started in his right leg he had no pain and with the pain
thehorror had gone and all he felt now was a great tiredness and
anger that this was the end of it. For this, that now was coming,
he had very little curiosity.For years it had obsessed him; but now
it meant nothing in itself. It wasstrange how easy being tired
enough made it.Now he would never write the things that he had
saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he
would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you
could never write them, and that was why you put them off and
delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now."I wish we'd
never come," the woman said. She was looking at him holding the
glass and biting her lip. "You never would have gotten anything
like this in Paris. You always said you loved Paris. We could have
stayed in Paris or gone anywhere. I'd have gone anywhere. I said
I'd go anywhere you wanted. If you wanted to shoot we could have
gone shooting in Hungary and been comfortable.""Your bloody money,"
he said."That's not fair," she said. "It was always yours as much
as mine. I left everything and I went wherever you wanted to go and
I've done what you wanted to do But I wish we'd never come
here.""You said you loved it.""I did when you were all right. But
now I hate it. I don't see why that had to happen to your leg. What
have we done to have that happen to us?""I suppose what I did was
to forget to put iodine on it when I first scratched it. Then I
didn't pay any attention to it because I never infect. Then, later,
when it got bad, it was probably using that weak carbolic solution
when the other antiseptics ran out that paralyzed the minute blood
vessels and started the gangrene." He looked at her, "What else'""I
don't mean that.""If we would have hired a good mechanic instead of
a half-baked Kikuyu driver, he would have checked the oil and never
burned out that bearing in the truck.""I don't mean that.""If you
hadn't left your own people, your goddamned Old Westbury Saratoga,
Palm Beach people to take me on " *'Why, I loved you. That's not
fair. I love you now. I'll always love you Don't you love me?""No,"
said the man. "I don't think so. I never have.""Harry, what are you
saying? You're out of your head.""No. I haven't any head to go out
of.""Don't drink that," she said. "Darling, please don't drink
that. We have to do everything we can.""You do it," he said. "I'm
tired."Now in his mind he saw a railway station at Karagatch and he
was standing with his pack and that was the headlight of the
Simplon-Offent cutting the dark now and he was leaving Thrace then
after the retreat. That was one of the things he had saved to
write, with, in the morning at breakfast, looking out the window
and seeing snow on the mountains in Bulgaffa and Nansen's Secretary
asking the old man if it were snow and the old man looking at it
and saying, No, that's not snow. It's too early for snow. And the
Secretary repeating to the other girls, No, you see. It's not snow
and them all saying, It's not snow we were mistaken. But it was the
snow all right and he sent them on into it when he evolved exchange
of populations. And it was snow they tramped along in until they
died that winter.It was snow too that fell all Christmas week that
year up in the Gauertal, that year they lived in the woodcutter's
house with the big square porcelain stove that filled half the
room, and they slept on mattresses filled with beech leaves, the
time the deserter came with his feet bloody in the snow. He said
the police were right behind him and they gave him woolen socks and
held the gendarmes talking until the tracks had drifted over.In
Schrunz, on Christmas day, the snow was so bright it hurt your eyes
when you looked out from theWeinstubeand saw every one coming home
from church. That was where they walked up the sleigh-smoothed
urine-yellowed road along the river with the steep pine hills, skis
heavy on the shoulder, and where they ran down the glacier above
the Madlenerhaus, the snow as smooth to see as cake frosting and as
light as powder and he remembered the noiseless rush the speed made
as you dropped down like a bird.They were snow-bound a week in the
Madlenerhaus that time in the blizzard playing cards in the smoke
by the lantern light and the stakes were higher all the time as
Herr Lent lost more. Finally he lost it all. Everything,
theSkischulemoney and all the season's profit and then his capital.
He could see him with his long nose, picking up the cards and then
opening,"Sans Voir."There was always gambling then. When there was
no snow you gambled and when there was too much you gambled. He
thought of all the time in his life he had spent gambling.But he
had never written a line of that, nor of that cold, bright
Christmas day with the mountains showing across the plain that
Barker had flown across the lines to bomb the Austrian officers'
leave train, machine-gunning them as they scattered and ran. He
remembered Barker afterwards coming into the mess and starting to
tell about it. And how quiet it got and then somebody saying, ''You
bloody murderous bastard.''Those were the same Austrians they
killed then that he skied with later. No not the same. Hans, that
he skied with all that year, had been in the Kaiser Jagers and when
they went hunting hares together up the little valley above the
saw-mill they had talked of the fighting on Pasubio and of the
attack on Perticara and Asalone and he had never written a word of
that. Nor of Monte Corona, nor the Sette Communi, nor of
Arsiero.How many winters had he lived in the Vorarlberg and the
Arlberg? It was four and then he remembered the man who had the fox
to sell when they had walked into Bludenz, that time to buy
presents, and the cherry-pit taste of good kirsch, the
fast-slipping rush of running powder-snow on crust, singing ''Hi!
Ho! said Rolly!' ' as you ran down the last stretch to the steep
drop, taking it straight, then running the orchard in three turns
and out across the ditch and onto the icy road behind the inn.
Knocking your bindings loose, kicking the skis free and leaning
them up against the wooden wall of the inn, the lamplight coming
from the window, where inside, in the smoky, new-wine smelling
warmth, they were playing the accordion."Where did we stay in
Paris?" he asked the woman who was sitting by him in a canvas
chair, now, in Africa."At the Crillon. You know that.""Why do I
know that?""That's where we always stayed.""No. Not always.""There
and at the Pavillion Henri-Quatre in St. Germain. You said you
loved it there.""Love is a dunghill," said Harry. "And I'm the cock
that gets on it to crow.""If you have to go away," she said, "is it
absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I
mean do you have to take away everything? Do you have to kill your
horse, and your wife and burn your saddle and your armour?""Yes,"
he said. "Your damned money was my armour. My Sword and my
Armour.""Don't.""All right. I'll stop that. I don't want to hurt
you.'"It's a little bit late now.""All right then. I'll go on
hurting you. It's more amusing. The only thing I ever really liked
to do with you I can't do now.""No, that's not true. You liked to
do many things and everything you wanted to do I did.""Oh, for
Christ sake stop bragging, will you?"He looked at her and saw her
crying."Listen," he said. "Do you think that it is fun to do this?
I don't know why I'm doing it. It's trying to kill to keep yourself
alive, I imagine. I was all right when we started talking. I didn't
mean to start this, and now I'm crazy as a coot and being as cruel
to you as I can be. Don't pay any attention, darling, to what I
say. I love you, really. You know I love you. I've never loved any
one else the way I love you."He slipped into the familiar lie he
made his bread and butter by."You're sweet to me.""You bitch," he
said. "You rich bitch. That's poetry. I'm full of poetry now. Rot
and poetry. Rotten poetry.""Stop it. Harry, why do you have to turn
into a devil now?""I don't like to leave anything," the man said.
"I dont like to leave things behind."* * *It was evening now and he
had been asleep. The sun was gone behind the hill and there was a
shadow all across the plain and the small animals were feeding
close to camp; quick dropping heads and switching tails, he watched
them keeping well out away from the bush now. The birds no longer
waited on the ground. They were all perched heavily in a tree.
There were many more of them. His personal boy was sitting by the
bed."Memsahib's gone to shoot," the boy said. "Does Bwana
want?""Nothing."She had gone to kill a piece of meat and, knowing
how he liked to watch the game, she had gone well away so she would
not disturb this little pocket of the plain that he could see. She
was always thoughtful, he thought. On anything she knew about, or
had read, or that she had ever heard.It was not her fault that when
he went to her he was already over. How could a woman know that you
meant nothing that you said; that you spoke only from habit and to
be comfortable? After he no longer meant what he said, his lies
were more successful with women than when he had told them the
truth.It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth to
tell. He had had his life and it was over and then he went on
living it again with different people and more money, with the best
of the same places, and some new ones.You kept from thinking and it
was all marvellous. You were equipped with good insides so that you
did not go to pieces that way, the way most of them had, and you
made an attitude that you cared nothing for the work you used to
do, now that you could no longer do it. But, in yourself, you said
that you would write about these people; about the very rich; that
you were really not of them but a spy in their country; that you
would leave it and write of it and for once it would be written by
some one who knew what he was writing of. But he would never do it,
because each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he
despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that,
finally, he did no work at all. The people he knew now were all
much more comfortable when he did not work. Africa was where he had
been happiest in the good time of his life, so he had come out here
to start again. They had made this safari with the minimum of
comfort. There was no hardship; but there was no luxury and he had
thought that he could get back into training that way. That in some
way he could work the fat off his soul the way a fighter went into
the mountains to work and train in order to burn it out of his
body.She had liked it. She said she loved it. She loved anything
that was exciting, that involved a change of scene, where there
were new people and where things were pleasant. And he had felt the
illusion of returning strength of will to work. Now if this was how
it ended, and he knew it was, he must not turn like some snake
biting itself because its back was broken. It wasn't this woman's
fault. If it had not been she it would have been another. If he
lived by a lie he should try to die by it. He heard a shot beyond
the hill.She shot very well this good, this rich bitch, this kindly
caretaker and destroyer of his talent. Nonsense. He had destroyed
his talent himself. Why should he blame this woman because she kept
him well? He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals
of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he
blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by
snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook. What was
this? A catalogue of old books? What was his talent anyway? It was
a talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on it. It
was never what he had done, but always what he could do. And he had
chosen to make his living with something else instead of a pen or a
pencil. It was strange, too, wasn't it, that when he fell in love
with another woman, that woman should always have more money than
the last one? But when he no longer was in love, when he was only
lying, as to this woman, now, who had the most money of all, who
had all the money there was, who had had a husband and children,
who had taken lovers and been dissatisfied with them, and who loved
him dearly as a writer, as a man, as a companion and as a proud
possession; it was strange that when he did not love her at all and
was lying, that he should be able to give her more for her money
than when he had really loved.We must all be cut out for what we
do, he thought. However you make your living is where your talent
lies. He had sold vitality, in one form or another, all his life
and when your affections are not too involved you give much better
value for the money. He had found that out but he would never write
that, now, either. No, he would not write that, although it was
well worth writing.Now she came in sight, walking across the open
toward the camp. She was wearing jodphurs and carrying her rifle.
The two boys had a Tommie slung and they were coming along behind
her. She was still a good-looking woman, he thought, and she had a
pleasant body. She had a great talent and appreciation for the bed,
she was not pretty, but he liked her face, she read enormously,
liked to ride and shoot and, certainly, she drank too much. Her
husband had died when she was still a comparatively young woman and
for a while she had devoted herself to her two just-grown children,
who did not need her and were embarrassed at having her about, to
her stable of horses, to books, and to bottles. She liked to read
in the evening before dinner and she drank Scotch and soda while
she read. By dinner she was fairly drunk and after a bottle of wine
at dinner she was usually drunk enough to sleep.That was before the
lovers. After she had the lovers she did not drink so much because
she did not have to be drunk to sleep. But the lovers bored her.
She had been married to a man who had never bored her and these
people bored her very much.Then one of her two children was killed
in a plane crash and after that was over she did not want the
lovers, and drink being no anaesthetic she had to make another
life. Suddenly, she had been acutely frightened of being alone. But
she wanted some one that she respected with her.It had begun very
simply. She liked what he wrote and she had always envied the life
he led. She thought he did exactly what he wanted to. The steps by
which she had acquired him and the way in which she had finally
fallen in love with him were all part of a regular progression in
which she had built herself a new life and he had traded away what
remained of his old life.He had traded it for security, for comfort
too, there was no denying that, and for what else? He did not know.
She would have bought him anything he wanted. He knew that. She was
a damned nice woman too. He would as soon be in bed with her as any
one; rather with her, because she was richer, because she was very
pleasant and appreciative and because she never made scenes. And
now this life that she had built again was coming to a term because
he had not used iodine two weeks ago when a thorn had scratched his
knee as they moved forward trying to photograph a herd of waterbuck
standing, their heads up, peering while their nostrils searched the
air, their ears spread wide to hear the first noise that would send
them rushing into the bush. They had bolted, too, before he got the
picture.Here she came now. He turned his head on the cot to look
toward her. "Hello," he said."I shot a Tommy ram," she told him.
"He'll make you good broth and I'll have them mash some potatoes
with the Klim. How do you feel?""Much better.""Isn't that lovely?
You know I thought perhaps you would. You were sleeping when I
left.""I had a good sleep. Did you walk far?""No. Just around
behind the hill. I made quite a good shot on the Tommy.""You shoot
marvellously, you know.""I love it. I've loved Africa. Really. If
you're all right it's the most fun that I've ever had. You don't
know the fun it's been to shoot with you. I've loved the
country.""I love it too.""Darling, you don't know how marvellous it
is to see you feeling better. I couldn't stand it when you felt
that way. You won't talk to me like that again, will you? Promise
me?""No," he said. "I don't remember what I said.""You don't have
to destroy me. Do you? I'm only a middle-aged woman who loves you
and wants to do what you want to do. I've been destroyed two or
three times already. You wouldn't want to destroy me again, would
you?""I'd like to destroy you a few times in bed," he said."Yes.
That's the good destruction. That's the way we're made to be
destroyed. The plane will be here tomorrow.""How do you know?""I'm
sure. It's bound to come. The boys have the wood all ready and the
grass to make the smudge. I went down and looked at it again today.
There's plenty of room to land and we have the smudges ready at
both ends.""What makes you think it will come tomorrow?""I'm sure
it will. It's overdue now. Then, in town, they will fix up your leg
and then we will have some good destruction. Not that dreadful
talking kind.""Should we have a drink? The sun is down.""Do you
think you should?""I'm having one.""We'll have one together.
Molo,lettidui whiskey-soda!" she called."You'd better put on your
mosquito boots," he told her."I'll wait till I bathe . . ."While it
grew dark they drank and just before it was dark and there was no
longer enough light to shoot, a hyena crossed the open on his way
around the hill."That bastard crosses there every night," the man
said. "Every night for two weeks.""He's the one makes the noise at
night. I don't mind it. They're a filthy animal though."Drinking
together, with no pain now except the discomfort of lying in the
one position, the boys lighting a fire, its shadow jumping on the
tents, he could feel the return of acquiescence in this life of
pleasant surrender. She was very good to him. He had been cruel and
unjust in the afternoon. She was a fine woman, marvellous really.
And just then it occurred to him that he was going to die.It came
with a rush; not as a rush of water nor of wind; but of a sudden,
evil-smelling emptiness and the odd thing was that the hyena
slipped lightly along the edge of it."What is it, Harry?" she asked
him."Nothing," he said. "You had better move over to the other
side. To windward.""Did Molo change the dressing?""Yes. I'm just
using the boric now.""How do you feel?""A little wobbly.""I'm going
in to bathe," she said. "I'll be right out. I'll eat with you and
then we'll put the cot in."So, he said to himself, we did well to
stop the quarrelling. He had never quarrelled much with this woman,
while with the women that he loved he had quarrelled so much they
had finally, always, with the corrosion of the quarrelling, killed
what they had together. He had loved too much, demanded too much,
and he wore it all out.He thought about alone in Constantinople
that time, having quarrelled in Paris before he had gone out. He
had whored the whole time and then, when that was over, and he had
failed to kill his loneliness, but only made it worse, he had
written her, the first one, the one who left him, a letter telling
her how he had never been able to kill it ... How when he thought
he saw her outside the Regence one time it made him go all faint
and sick inside, and that he would follow a woman who looked like
her in some way, along the Boulevard, afraid to see it was not she,
afraid to lose the feeling it gave him. How every one he had slept
with had only made him miss her more. How what she had done could
never matter since he knew he could not cure himself of loving her.
He wrote this letter at the Club, cold sober, and mailed it to New
York asking her to write him at the of fice in Paris. That seemed
safe. And that night missing her so much it made him feel hollow
sick inside, he wandered up past Maxim's, picked a girl up and took
her out to supper. He had gone to a place to dance with her
afterward, she danced badly, and left her for a hot Armenian slut,
that swung her belly against him so it almost scalded. He took her
away from a British gunner subaltern after a row. The gunner asked
him outside and they fought in the street on the cobbles in the
dark. He'd hit him twice, hard, on the side of the jaw and when he
didn't go down he knew he was in for a fight. The gunner hit him in
the body, then beside his eye. He swung with his left again and
landed and the gunner fell on him and grabbed his coat and tore the
sleeve off and he clubbed him twice behind the ear and then smashed
him with his right as he pushed him away. When the gunner went down
his head hit first and he ran with the girl because they heard the
M.P. 's coming. They got into a taxi and drove out to Rimmily Hissa
along the Bosphorus, and around, and back in the cool night and
went to bed and she felt as over-ripe as she looked but smooth,
rose-petal, syrupy, smooth-bellied, big-breasted and needed no
pillow under her buttocks, and he left her before she was awake
looking blousy enough in the first daylight and turned up at the
Pera Palace with a black eye, carrying his coat because one sleeve
was missing.That same night he left for Anatolia and he remembered,
later on that trip, riding all day through fields of the poppies
that they raised for opium and how strange it made you feel,
finally, and all the distances seemed wrong, to where they had made
the attack with the newly arrived Constantine officers, that did
not know a god-damned thing, and the artillery had fired into the
troops and the British observer had cried like a child.That was the
day he'd first seen dead men wearing white ballet skirts and
upturned shoes with pompons on them. The Turks had come steadily
and lumpily and he had seen the skirted men running and the of
ficers shooting into them and running then themselves and he and
the British observer had run too until his lungs ached and his
mouth was full of the taste of pennies and they stopped behind some
rocks and there were the Turks coming as lumpily as ever. Later he
had seen the things that he could never think of and later still he
had seen much worse. So when he got back to Paris that time he
could not talk about it or stand to have it mentioned. And there in
the cafe as he passed was that American poet with a pile of saucers
in front of him and a stupid look on his potato face talking about
the Dada movement with a Roumanian who said his name was Tristan
Tzara, who always wore a monocle and had a headache, and, back at
the apartment with his wife that now he loved again, the quarrel
all over, the madness all over, glad to be home, the office sent
his mail up to the flat. So then the letter in answer to the one
he'd written came in on a platter one morning and when he saw the
hand writing he went cold all over and tried to slip the letter
underneath another. But his wife said, ''Who is that letter from,
dear?'' and that was the end of the beginning of that.He remembered
the good times with them all, and the quarrels. They always picked
the finest places to have the quarrels. And why had they always
quarrelled when he was feeling best? He had never written any of
that because, at first, he never wanted to hurt any one and then it
seemed as though there was enough to write without it. But he had
always thought that he would write it finally. There was so much to
write. He had seen the world change; not just the events; although
he had seen many of them and had watched the people, but he had
seen the subtler change and he could remember how the people were
at different times. He had been in it and he had watched it and it
was his duty to write of it; but now he never would."How do you
feel?" she said. She had come out from the tent now after her
bath."All right.""Could you eat now?" He saw Molo behind her with
the folding table and the other boy with the dishes."I want to
write," he said."You ought to take some broth to keep your strength
up.""I'm going to die tonight," he said. "I don't need my strength
up.""Don't be melodramatic, Harry, please," she said."Why don't you
use your nose? I'm rotted half way up my thigh now. What the hell
should I fool with broth for? Molo bring whiskey-soda.""Please take
the broth," she said gently."All right."The broth was too hot. He
had to hold it in the cup until it cooled enough to take it and
then he just got it down without gagging."You're a fine woman," he
said. "Don't pay any attention to me."She looked at him with her
well-known, well-loved face fromSpurandTown & Country,only a
little the worse for drink, only a little the worse for bed,
butTown & Countrynever showed those good breasts and those
useful thighs and those lightly small-of-back-caressing hands, and
as he looked and saw her well-known pleasant smile, he felt death
come again.in.This time there was no rush. It was a puff, as of a
wind that makes a candle flicker and the flame go tall."They can
bring my net out later and hang it from the tree and build the fire
up. I'm not going in the tent tonight. It's not worth moving. It's
a clear night. There won't be any rain."So this was how you died,
in whispers that you did not hear. Well, there would be no more
quarrelling. He could promise that. The one experience that he had
never had he was not going to spoil now. He probably would. You
spoiled everything. But perhaps he wouldn't."You can't take
dictation, can you?""I never learned," she told him."That's all
right."There wasn't time, of course, although it seemed as though
it telescoped so that you might put it all into one paragraph if
you could get it right.There was a log house, chinked white with
mortar, on a hill above the lake. There was a bell on a pole by the
door to call the people in to meals. Behind the house were fields
and behind the fields was the timber. A line of lombardy poplars
ran from the house to the dock. Other poplars ran along the point.
A road went up to the hills along the edge of the timber and along
that road he picked blackberries. Then that log house was burned
down and all the guns that had been on deer foot racks above the
open fire place were burned and afterwards their barrels, with the
lead melted in the magazines, and the stocks burned away, lay out
on the heap of ashes that were used to make lye for the big iron
soap kettles, and you asked Grandfather if you could have them to
play with, and he said, no. You see they were his guns still and he
never bought any others. Nor did he hunt any more. The house was
rebuilt in the same place out of lumber now and painted white and
from its porch you saw the poplars and the lake beyond; but there
were never any more guns. The barrels of the guns that had hung on
the deer feet on the wall of the log house lay out there on the
heap of ashes and no one ever touched them.In the Black Forest,
after the war, we rented a trout stream and there were two ways to
walk to it. One was down the valley from Triberg and around the
valley road in the shade of the trees that bordered the white road,
and then up a side road that went up through the hills past many
small farms, with the bigSchwarzwaldhouses, until that road crossed
the stream. That was where our fishing began.The other way was to
climb steeply up to the edge of the woods and then go across the
top of the hills through the pine woods, and then out to the edge
of a meadow and down across this meadow to the bridge. There were
birches along the stream and it was not big, but narrow, clear and
fast, with pools where it had cut under the roots of the birches.
At the Hotel in Triberg the proprietor had a fine season. It was
very pleasant and we were all great friends. The next year came the
inflation and the money he had made the year before was not enough
to buy supplies to open the hotel and he hanged himself. You could
dictate that, but you could not dictate the Place Contrescarpe
where the flower sellers dyed their flowers in the street and the
dye ran over the paving where the autobus started and the old men
and the women, always drunk on wine and bad mare; and the children
with their noses running in the cold; the smell of dirty sweat and
poverty and drunkenness at the Cafe' des Amateurs and the whores at
the Bal Musette they lived above. The concierge who entertained the
trooper of the Garde Republicaine in her loge, his
horse-hair-plumed helmet on a chair. The locataire across the hall
whose husband was a bicycle racer and her joy that morning at
thecremeriewhen she had openedL'Autoand seen where he placed third
in Paris-Tours, his first big race. She had blushed and laughed and
then gone upstairs crying with the yellow sporting paper in her
hand. The husband of the woman who ran the Bal Musette drove a taxi
and when he, Harry, had to take an early plane the husband knocked
upon the door to wake him and they each drank a glass of white wine
at the zinc of the bar before they started. He knew his neighbors
in that quarter then because they all were poor.Around that Place
there were two kinds; the drunkards and thesportifs.The drunkards
killed their poverty that way; thesportifstook it out in exercise.
They were the descendants of the Communards and it was no struggle
for them to know their politics. They knew who had shot their
fathers, their relatives, their brothers, and their friends when
the Versailles troops came in and took the town after the Commune
and executed any one they could catch with calloused hands, or who
wore a cap, or carried any other sign he was a working man. And in
that poverty, and in that quarter across the street from a
Boucherie Chevaline and a wine cooperative he had written the start
of all he was to do. There never was another part of Paris that he
loved like that, the sprawling trees, the old white plastered
houses painted brown below, the long green of the autobus in that
round square, the purple flower dye upon the paving, the sudden
drop down the hill of the rue Cardinal Lemoine to the River, and
the other way the narrow crowded world of the rue Mouffetard. The
street that ran up toward the Pantheon and the other that he always
took with the bicycle, the only asphalted street in all that
quarter, smooth under the tires, with the high narrow houses and
the cheap tall hotel where Paul Verlaine had died. There were only
two rooms in the apartments where they lived and he had a room on
the top floor of that hotel that cost him sixty francs a month
where he did his writing, and from it he could see the roofs and
chimney pots and all the hills of Paris.From the apartment you
could only see the wood and coal man's place. He sold wine too, bad
wine. The golden horse's head outside the Boucherie Chevaline where
the carcasses hung yellow gold and red in the open window, and the
green painted co-operative where they bought their wine; good wine
and cheap. The rest was plaster walls and the windows of the
neighbors. The neighbors who, at night, when some one lay drunk in
the street, moaning and groaning in that typical French ivresse
that you were propaganded to believe did not exist, would open
their windows and then the murmur of talk.''Where is the policeman?
When you don't want him the bugger is always there. He's sleeping
with some concierge. Get the Agent. " Till some one threw a bucket
of water from a window and the moaning stopped. ''What's that?
Water. Ah, that's intelligent." And the windows shutting. Marie,
hisfemme de menage,protesting against the eight-hour day saying,
''If a husband works until six he gets only a riffle drunk on the
way home and does not waste too much. If he works only until five
he is drunk every night and one has no money. It is the wife of the
working man who suffers from this shortening of hours. '"Wouldn't
you like some more broth?" the woman asked him now."No, thank you
very much. It is awfully good.""Try just a little.""I would like a
whiskey-soda.""It's not good for you.""No. It's bad for me. Cole
Porter wrote the words and the music. This knowledge that you're
going mad for me.""You know I like you to drink.""Oh yes. Only it's
bad for me."When she goes, he thought, I'll have all I want. Not
all I want but all there is. Ayee he was tired. Too tired. He was
going to sleep a little while. He lay still and death was not
there. It must have gone around another street. It went in pairs,
on bicycles, and moved absolutely silently on the pavements.No, he
had never written about Paris. Not the Paris that he cared about.
But what about the rest that he had never written?What about the
ranch and the silvered gray of the sage brush, the quick, clear
water in the irrigation ditches, and the heavy green of the
alfalfa. The trail went up into the hills and the cattle in the
summer were shy as deer. The bawling and the steady noise and slow
moving mass raising a dust as you brought them down in the fall.
And behind the mountains, the clear sharpness of the peak in the
evening light and, riding down along the trail in the moonlight,
bright across the valley. Now he remembered coming down through the
timber in the dark holding the horse's tail when you could not see
and all the stories that he meant to write.About the half-wit chore
boy who was left at the ranch that time and told not to let any one
get any hay, and that old bastard from the Forks who had beaten the
boy when he had worked for him stopping to get some feed. The boy
refusing and the old man saying he would beat him again. The boy
got the rifle from the kitchen and shot him when he tried to come
into the barn and when they came back to the ranch he'd been dead a
week, frozen in the corral, and the dogs had eaten part of him. But
what was left you packed on a sled wrapped in a blanket and roped
on and you got the boy to help you haul it, and the two of you took
it out over the road on skis, and sixty miles down to town to turn
the boy over. He having no idea that he would be arrested. Thinking
he had done his duty and that you were his friend and he would be
rewarded. He'd helped to haul the old man in so everybody could
know how bad the old man had been and how he'd tried to steal some
feed that didn't belong to him, and when the sheriff put the
handcuffs on the boy he couldn't believe it. Then he'd started to
cry. That was one story he had saved to write. He knew at least
twenty good stories from out there and he had never written one.
Why?"You tell them why," he said."Why what, dear?""Why nothing."She
didn't drink so much, now, since she had him. But if he lived he
would never write about her, he knew that now. Nor about any of
them. The rich were dull and they drank too much, or they played
too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He
remembered poor Julian and his romantic awe of them and how he had
started a story once that began, "The very rich are different from
you and me." And how some one had said to Julian, Yes, they have
more money. But that was not humorous to Julian. He thought they
were a special glamourous race and when he found they weren't it
wrecked him just as much as any other thing that wrecked him.He had
been contemptuous of those who wrecked. You did not have to like it
because you understood it. He could beat anything, he thought,
because no thing could hurt him if he did not care.All right. Now
he would not care for death. One thing he had always dreaded was
the pain. He could stand pain as well as any man, until it went on
too long, and wore him out, but here he had something that had hurt
frightfully and just when he had felt it breaking him, the pain had
stopped.He remembered long ago when Williamson, the bombing
officer, had been hit by a stick bomb some one in a German patrol
had thrown as he was coming in through the wire that night and,
screaming, had begged every one to kill him. He was a fat man, very
brave, and a good officer, although addicted to fantastic shows.
But that night he was caught in the wire, with a flare lighting him
up and his bowels spilled out into the wire, so when they brought
him in, alive, they had to cut him loose. Shoot me, Harry. For
Christ sake shoot me. They had had an argument one time about our
Lord never sending you anything you could not bear and some one's
theory had been that meant that at a certain time the pain passed
you out automatically. But he had always remembered Williamson,
that night. Nothing passed out Williamson until he gave him all his
morphine tablets that he had always saved to use himself and then
they did not work right away.Still this now, that he had, was very
easy; and if it was no worse as it went on there was nothing to
worry about. Except that he would rather be in better company.He
thought a little about the company that he would like to have.No,
he thought, when everything you do, you do too long, and do too
late, you can't expect to find the people still there. The people
all are gone. The party's over and you are with your hostess
now.I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he
thought."It's a bore," he said out loud."What is, my
dear?""Anything you do too bloody long."He looked at her face
between him and the fire. She was leaning back in the chair and the
firelight shone on her pleasantly lined face and he could see that
she was sleepy. He heard the hyena make a noise just outside the
range of the fire."I've been writing," he said. "But I got
tired.""Do you think you will be able to sleep?""Pretty sure. Why
don't you turn in?""I like to sit here with you.""Do you feel
anything strange?" he asked her."No. Just a little sleepy.""I do,"
he said.He had just felt death come by again."You know the only
thing I've never lost is curiosity," he said to her."You've never
lost anything. You're the most complete man I've ever
known.""Christ," he said. "How little a woman knows. What is that?
Your intuition?"Because, just then, death had come and rested its
head on the foot of the cot and he could smell its breath."Never
believe any of that about a scythe and a skull," he told her. "It
can be two bicycle policemen as easily, or be a bird. Or it can
have a wide snout like a hyena."It had moved up on him now, but it
had no shape any more. It simply occupied space."Tell it to go
away."It did not go away but moved a little closer."You've got a
hell of a breath," he told it. "You stinking bastard."It moved up
closer to him still and now he could not speak to it, and when it
saw he could not speak it came a little closer, and now he tried to
send it away without speaking, but it moved in on him so its weight
was all upon his chest, and while it crouched there and he could
not move or speak, he heard the woman say, "Bwana is asleep now.
Take the cot up very gently and carry it into the tent."He could
not speak to tell her to make it go away and it crouched now,
heavier, so he could not breathe. And then, while they lifted the
cot, suddenly it was all right and the weight went from his
chest.It was morning and had been morning for some time and he
heard the plane. It showed very tiny and then made a wide circle
and the boys ran out and lit the fires, using kerosene, and piled
on grass so there were two big smudges at each end of the level
place and the morning breeze blew them toward the camp and the
plane circled twice more, low this time, and then glided down and
levelled off and landed smoothly and, coming walk