A Goodman is Hard to Find.docx

1、A Goodman is Hard to FindA Goodman is Hard to Find by Flannery O Conner The grandmother didnt want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Baileys mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sit

2、ting 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 a

3、loose 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 wouldnt take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldnt answer to my conscience if I did. Bailey didnt look up from his reading so she w

4、heeled around then and faced the childrens 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 rabbits ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar. The

5、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 childrens mother didnt seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a

6、stocky child with glasses, said, If you dont 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 wouldnt stay at home to be queen for a day, June Star said without raising her yellow head. Yes and what would you do if th

7、is fellow, The Misfit, caught you? the grandmother asked. Id smack his face, John Wesley said. She wouldnt stay at home for a million bucks, June Star said. Afraid shed miss something. She has to go everywhere we go. All right, Miss, the grandmother said. Just remember that the next time you want me

8、 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

9、it. She didnt 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 her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didnt like to arrive at a motel with a cat. She sat in the middle of

10、 the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the childrens 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 m

11、iles 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 childrens mother still had on slacks and

12、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

13、 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 fi

14、fty-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

15、highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that 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 and gone back to sleep

16、. Lets go through Georgia fast so we wont have to look at it much, John Wesley said. If I were a little boy, said the grandmother, I wouldnt 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

17、 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 pointe

18、d to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. Wouldnt 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 didnt have any britches on, June Star said. He probably didnt have any, the grandmother explained. Little riggers in

19、the country dont have things like we do. If I could paint, Id paint that picture, she said. The children exchanged comic books. The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the childrens mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the thin

20、gs 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 fix graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. Look at the graveyard! th

21、e grandmother said, pointing it out. That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation. Wheres 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.

22、The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let the 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

23、 of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didnt 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 wave

24、d 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.

25、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

26、 John Wesleys funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didnt think it was any good. She said she wouldnt 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 gentle man and had bought Coca-Cola st

27、ock 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 sand- wiches. 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 th

28、ere were signs stuck here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED SAMMYS FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMYS! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMYS YOUR MAN! Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his

29、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 the 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 counte

30、r 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 Sams wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The childrens mother put a dime in the machine and played

31、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 didnt have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmothers brown eyes were very bright. She swayed h

32、er head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the childrens mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap routine. Aint she cute? Red Sams wife said, leaning over the counter. Would you like to come be my little girl? No I certainly wouldnt, June Star said. I wouldnt live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks! and she ran back to the table. Aint she cute?