by Lorrie Moore
“You can curse and swear, Missis O’Toole, but the whole countryside knows about you!” cried the other, brandishing her stick like a spear.
“Much good they’ll get out of it!” shouted Rosaleen, striding away in a roaring fury. “Dyed, is it?” She raised her clinched fist and shook it at the world. “Oh, the liar!” and her rage was like a drum beating time for her marching legs. What was happening these days that everybody she met had dirty minds and dirty tongues in their heads? Oh, why wasn’t she strong enough to strangle them all at once? Her eyes were so hot she couldn’t close her lids over them, but went on staring and walking, until almost before she knew it she came in sight of her own house, sitting like a hen quietly in a nest of snow. She slowed down, her thumping heart eased a little, and she sat on a stone by the roadside to catch her breath and gather her wits before she must see Dennis. As she sat, it came to her that the Evil walking the roads at night in this place was the bitter lies people had been telling about her, who had been a good woman all this time when many another would have gone astray. It was no comfort now to remember all the times she might have done wrong and didn’t. What was the good if she was being scandalized all the same? That lad in Boston now—the little whelp. She spat on the frozen earth and wiped her mouth. Then she put her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, and thought, “So that’s the way it is here, is it? That’s what my life has come to, I’m a woman of bad fame with the neighbors.”
Dwelling on this strange thought, little by little she began to feel better. Jealousy, of course, that was it. “Ah, what wouldn’t that poor thing give to have my hair?” and she patted it tenderly. From the beginning it had been so, the women were jealous, because the men were everywhere after her, as if it was her fault! Well, let them talk. Let them. She knew in her heart what she was, and Dennis knew, and that was enough.
“Life is a dream,” she said aloud, in a soft easy melancholy. “It’s a mere dream.” The thought and the words pleased her, and she gazed with pleasure at the loosened stones of the wall across the road, dark brown, with the thin shining coat of ice on them, in a comfortable daze until her feet began to feel chilled.
“Let me not sit here and take my death at my early time of life,” she cautioned herself, getting up and wrapping her shawl carefully around her. She was thinking how this sad countryside needed some young hearts in it, and how she wished Kevin would come back to laugh with her at that woman up the hill; with him, she could just laugh in their faces! That dream about Honora now, it hadn’t come true at all. Maybe the dream about Kevin wasn’t true either. If one dream failed on you it would be foolish to think another mightn’t fail you too: wouldn’t it, wouldn’t it? She smiled at Dennis sitting by the stove.
“What did the native people have to say this morning?” he asked, trying to pretend it was nothing much to him what they said.
“Oh, we exchanged the compliments of the season,” said Rosaleen. “There was no call for more.” She went about singing; her heart felt light as a leaf and she couldn’t have told why if she died for it. But she was a good woman and she’d show them she was going to be one to her last day. Ah, she’d show them, the low-minded things.
In the evening they settled down by the stove, Dennis cleaning and greasing his boots, Rosaleen with the long tablecloth she’d been working on for fifteen years. Dennis kept wondering what had happened in Boston, or where ever she had been. He knew he would never hear the straight of it, but he wanted Rosaleen’s story about it. And there she sat mum, putting a lot of useless stitches in something she would never use, even if she ever finished it, which she would not.
“Dennis,” she said after a while. “I don’t put the respect on dreams I once did.”
“That’s maybe a good thing,” said Dennis, cautiously. “And why don’t you?”
“All day long I’ve been thinking Kevin isn’t dead at all, and we shall see him in this very house before long.”
Dennis growled in his throat a little. “That’s no sign at all,” he said. And to show that he had a grudge against her he laid down his meerschaum pipe, stuffed his old briar and lit it instead. Rosaleen took no notice at all. Her embroidery had fallen on her knees and she was listening to the rattle and clatter of a buggy coming down the road, with Richards’s voice roaring a song, “I’ve been working on the railroad, All the live-long day!” She stood up, taking hair pins out and putting them back, her hands trembling. Then she ran to the looking-glass and saw her face there, leaping into shapes fit to scare you. “Oh, Dennis,” she cried out as if it was that thought had driven her out of her chair. “I forgot to buy a looking-glass, I forgot it altogether!”
“It’s a good enough glass,” repeated Dennis. The buggy clattered at the gate, the song halted. Ah, he was coming in, surely! It flashed through her mind a woman would have a ruined life with such a man, it was courting death and danger to let him set foot over the threshold.
She stopped herself from running to the door, hand on the knob even before his knock sounded. Then the wheels creaked and ground again, the song started up; if he thought of stopping he changed his mind and went on, off on his career to the Saturday night dance in Winston, with his rapscallion cronies.
Rosaleen didn’t know what to expect, then, and then: surely he couldn’t be stopping? Ah, surely he couldn’t be going on? She sat down again with her heart just nowhere, and took up the tablecloth, but for a long time she couldn’t see the stitches. She was wondering what had become of her life; every day she had thought something great was going to happen, and it was all just straying from one terrible disappointment to another. Here in the lamplight sat Dennis and the cats, beyond in the darkness and snow lay Winston and New York and Boston, and beyond that were far-off places full of life and gaiety she’d never seen nor even heard of, and beyond everything like a green field with morning sun on it lay youth and Ireland as if they were something she had dreamed, or made up in a story. Ah, what was there to remember, or to look forward to now? Without thinking at all, she leaned over and put her head on Dennis’s knee. “Whyever,” she asked him, in an ordinary voice, “did ye marry a woman like me?”
“Mind you don’t turn over in that chair,” said Dennis. “I knew well I could never do better.” His bosom began to thaw and simmer. It was going to be all right with everything, he could see that.
She sat up and felt his sleeves carefully. “I want you to wrap up warm this bitter weather, Dennis,” she told him. “With two pair of socks and the chest protector, for if anything happened to you, whatever would become of me in this world?”
“Let’s not think of it,” said Dennis, shuffling his feet.
“Let’s not, then,” said Rosaleen. “For I could cry if you crooked a finger at me.”
1936
WILLIAM FAULKNER
That Will Be Fine
from the American Mercury
WILLIAM FAULKNER’S biography in the 1943 volume of The Best American Short Stories reads:
He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi, a descendant of a once-wealthy family. His schooling was intermittent and he spent most of his youth loafing around his father’s livery stable. He wrote poetry, strongly influenced by Omar Khayyam and Swinburne, but, he says, it was no good except as an aid to love-making. Jolted out of his lazy life by the First World War, he joined the Canadian air force. After the war he turned to earning a living at odd jobs such as house-painting, selling books in a department store, and shoveling coal into a factory furnace. He started writing fiction and suddenly, he explains, “I discovered that writing was a mighty fine thing. It enables you to make men stand on their hind legs and cast a shadow.”
Faulkner (1897–1962) published a book of poems, The Marble Faun, in 1924. He went to work for a newspaper in New Orleans, where he met and befriended Sherwood Anderson. After Anderson persuaded him to try writing fiction—and to write about the region he knew best—Faulkner published his first novel, Soldier’s Pay, in 1926. He went on to publish a se
ries of celebrated short stories, poems, and novels. Among his best-known books are Absalom, Absalom!, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and The Sound and the Fury.
In his writing, Faulkner portrayed a character’s subjective experience, his or her stream of consciousness, written in dialect. His work explored themes of race and class and featured a broad swath of characters of varying ages and backgrounds. His stories appeared six times in The Best American Short Stories during the 1930s alone. In 1949 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. William Faulkner died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-four.
★
I
We could hear the water running into the tub. We looked at the presents scattered over the bed where Mamma had wrapped them in the colored paper, with our names on them so Grandpa could tell who they belonged to easy when he would take them off the tree. There was a present for everybody except Grandpa because Mamma said that Grandpa is too old to get presents any more.
“This one is yours,” I said.
“Sho now!” Rosie said. “You come on and get in that tub like your mamma tell you.”
“I know what’s in it,” I said. “I could tell you if I wanted to.”
Rosie looked at her present. “I reckon I kin wait twell hit be handed to me at the right time,” she said.
“I’ll tell you what’s in it for a nickel,” I said.
Rosie looked at her present. “I ain’t got no nickel,” she said. “But I will have Christmas morning when Mr. Rodney give me that dime.”
“You’ll know what’s in it, anyway, then and you won’t pay me,” I said. “Go and ask Mamma to lend you a nickel.”
Then Rosie grabbed me by the arm. “You come on and get in that tub,” she said. “You and money! If you ain’t rich time you twenty-one, hit will be because the law done abolished money or done abolished you.”
So I went and bathed and came back, with the presents all scattered out across Mamma’s and Papa’s bed and you could almost smell it and tomorrow night they would begin to shoot the fireworks and then you could hear it too. It would be just tonight, and then tomorrow we would get on the train, except Papa, because he would have to stay at the livery stable until after Christmas Eve, and go to Grandpa’s, and then tomorrow night and then it would be Christmas and Grandpa would take the presents off the tree and call out our names, and the one from me to Uncle Rodney that I bought with my own dime and so after a while Uncle Rodney would prize open Grandpa’s desk and take a dose of Grandpa’s tonic and maybe he would give me another quarter for helping him, like he did last Christmas, instead of just a nickel, like he would do last summer while he was visiting Mamma and us and we were doing business with Mrs. Tucker before Uncle Rodney went home and began to work for the Compress Association, and it would be fine. Or maybe even a half a dollar and it seemed to me like I just couldn’t wait.
“Jesus, I can’t hardly wait,” I said.
“You which?” Rosie hollered. “Jesus?” she hollered. “Jesus? You let your mamma hear you cussing and I bound you’ll wait. You talk to me about a nickel! For a nickel I’d tell her just what you said.”
“If you’ll pay me a nickel I’ll tell her myself,” I said.
“Get into that bed!” Rosie hollered. “A seven-year-old boy, cussing!”
“If you will promise not to tell her, I’ll tell you what’s in your present and you can pay me the nickel Christmas morning,” I said.
“Get in that bed!” Rosie hollered. “You and your nickel! I bound if I thought any of you all was fixing to buy even a dime present for your grandpa, I’d put in a nickel of hit myself.”
“Grandpa don’t want presents,” I said. “He’s too old.”
“Hah,” Rosie said. “Too old, is he? Suppose everybody decided you was too young to have nickels: what would you think about that? Hah?”
So Rosie turned out the light and went out. But I could still see the presents by the firelight: the ones for Uncle Rodney and Grandma and Aunt Louisa and Aunt Louisa’s husband Uncle Fred, and Cousin Louisa and Cousin Fred and the baby and Grandpa’s cook and our cook, that was Rosie, and maybe somebody ought to give Grandpa a present only maybe it ought to be Aunt Louisa because she and Uncle Fred lived with Grandpa, or maybe Uncle Rodney ought to because he lived with Grandpa too. Uncle Rodney always gave Mamma and Papa a present but maybe it would be just a waste of his time and Grandpa’s time both for Uncle Rodney to give Grandpa a present, because one time I asked Mamma why Grandpa always looked at the present Uncle Rodney gave her and Papa and got so mad, and Papa began to laugh and Mamma said Papa ought to be ashamed, that it wasn’t Uncle Rodney’s fault if his generosity was longer than his pocketbook, and Papa said Yes, it certainly wasn’t Uncle Rodney’s fault, he never knew a man to try harder to get money than Uncle Rodney did, that Uncle Rodney had tried every known plan to get it except work, and that if Mamma would just think back about two years she would remember one time when Uncle Rodney could have thanked his stars that there was one man in the connection whose generosity, or whatever Mamma wanted to call it, was at least five hundred dollars shorter than his pocketbook, and Mamma said she defied Papa to say that Uncle Rodney stole the money, that it had been malicious persecution and Papa knew it, and that Papa and most other men were prejudiced against Uncle Rodney, why she didn’t know, and that if Papa begrudged having lent Uncle Rodney the five hundred dollars when the family’s good name was at stake to say so and Grandpa would raise it somehow and pay Papa back, and then she began to cry and Papa said “All right, all right,” and Mamma cried and said how Uncle Rodney was the baby and that must be why Papa hated him and Papa said “All right, all right; for God’s sake, all right.”
Because Mamma and Papa didn’t know that Uncle Rodney had been handling his business all the time he was visiting us last summer, any more than the people in Mottstown knew that he was doing business last Christmas when I worked for him the first time and he paid me the quarter. Because he said that if he preferred to do business with ladies instead of men it wasn’t anybody’s business except his, not even Mr. Tucker’s. He said how I never went around telling people about Papa’s business and I said how everybody knew Papa was in the livery-stable business and so I didn’t have to tell them, and Uncle Rodney said Well, that was what half of the nickel was for and did I want to keep on making the nickels or did I want him to hire somebody else? So I would go on ahead and watch through Mr. Tucker’s fence until he came out to go to town and I would go along behind the fence to the corner and watch until Mr. Tucker was out of sight and then I would put my hat on top of the fence post and leave it there until I saw Mr. Tucker coming back. Only he never came back while I was there because Uncle Rodney would always be through before then, and he would come up and we would walk back home and he would tell Mamma how far we had walked that day and Mamma would say how good that was for Uncle Rodney’s health. So he just paid me a nickel at home. It wasn’t as much as the quarter when he was in business with the other lady in Mottstown Christmas, but that was just one time and he visited us all summer and so by that time I had a lot more than a quarter. And besides the other time was Christmas and he took a dose of Grandpa’s tonic before he paid me the quarter and so maybe this time it might be even a half a dollar. I couldn’t hardly wait.
II
But it got to be daylight at last and I put on my Sunday suit, and I would go to the front door and watch for the hack and then I would go to the kitchen and ask Rosie if it wasn’t almost time and she would tell me the train wasn’t even due for two hours yet. Only while she was telling me we heard the hack, and so I thought it was time for us to go and get on the train and it would be fine, and then we would go to Grandpa’s and then it would be tonight and then tomorrow and maybe it would be a half a dollar this time and Jesus it would be fine. Then Mamma came running out without even her hat on and she said how it was two hours yet and she wasn’t even dressed and John Paul said “Yessum,” but Papa sent him and Papa said for John Paul to tell Mamma that Au
nt Louisa was here and for Mamma to hurry. So we put the basket of presents into the hack and I rode on the box with John Paul and Mamma hollering from inside the hack about Aunt Louisa, and John Paul said that Aunt Louisa had come in a hired buggy and Papa took her to the hotel to eat breakfast because she left Mottstown before daylight even. And so maybe Aunt Louisa had come to Jefferson to help Mamma and Papa get a present for Grandpa.
“Because we have one for everybody else,” I said, “I bought one for Uncle Rodney with my own money.”
Then John Paul began to laugh and I said, “Why?” and he said it was at the notion of me giving Uncle Rodney anything that he would want to use, and I said, “Why?” and John Paul said because I was shaped like a man, and I said, “Why?” and John Paul said he bet Papa would like to give Uncle Rodney a present without even waiting for Christmas, and I said, “What?” and John Paul said, “A job of work.” And I told John Paul how Uncle Rodney had been working all the time he was visiting us last summer, and John Paul quit laughing and said “Sho,” he reckoned anything a man kept at all the time, night and day both, he would call it work no matter how much fun it started out to be, and I said, “Anyway, Uncle Rodney works now, he works in the office of the Compress Association,” and John Paul laughed good then and said it would sholy take a whole association to compress Uncle Rodney. And then Mamma began to holler to go straight to the hotel, and John Paul said “Nome, Papa said to come straight to the livery stable and wait for him.” And so we went to the hotel and Aunt Louisa and Papa came out and Papa helped Aunt Louisa into the hack and Aunt Louisa began to cry and Mamma hollering, “Louisa! Louisa! What is it? What has happened?” and Papa saying, “Wait now. Wait. Remember the nigger,” and that meant John Paul, and so it must have been a present for Grandpa and it didn’t come.
