A Good Man Is Hard to Find

The name of this is "A Good Man

Is Hard to Find."

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 packed

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 fella

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 loose

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

toward 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 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 don't you 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 fella 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." "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.

[audience laughing] 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.

[audience laughing] 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 five five

eight nine O.

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 20 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'd 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.

[audience laughing] She said,

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 55 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 the both sides

of the highway, the

brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked

with purple, and the

various crops that made rows of green

lacework 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." [audience laughing] "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 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 Negroes in the country don't have

nice 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 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 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.

[laughing] 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 Peagoden 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. [laughing] E-A-T.

"Well, one Saturday," she said, "Mr.

Peagoden 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 colored 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.

Peagoden because he was a gentleman

and had bought Coca-Cola

stock when it first came out.

[laughing] 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," "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 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 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 in 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 growled 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.

[laughing] "I wouldn't live in a broken,

ran-down place like this

for a million bucks,"

and she ran back to the table.

"Ain't she cute?" the woman asked.

[laughing] Stretching her mouth

politely. "Aren'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 the 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 hand.

"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 fellows 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 worked at a mill. And you know,

I let them fellas

charge the gas they bought. Now,

why did I do that?"

"Because you're a good man," the

grandmother said at once.

"Yuckum, I suppose so," Red Sam said,

as if he was

struck with this answer.

His wife brought the order,

carrying the four 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 Sam.

[laughing] "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 attack this place right

here," said the woman.

"If he hears about it being here,

I wouldn't

be none surprised a single.

If he hears it's two cent in the

cash register,

I wouldn't be a tile surprised

if he-" "That'll

do," Red Sam said.

"Go bring these people their Coca-Cola,"

and the woman went off to get the rest of

the order.

"A good man is hard to find," Red Sam

said.

"Everything's getting terrible.

I remember the day you could go off

and leave your screen door unlatched.

Not no more."

He and the grandmother discussed Beltane.

The old lady said that in her opinion,

Europe was

entirely to blame for the way things

were now.

[laughing] She said the way Europe acted,

you would think we were all

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 lacey

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 grandmother took cat naps

and woke up every few minutes with her

own snoring.

Outside of Toonsboro, 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 trellis arbors on

either side and 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,

though." "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 screamed.

"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 20 minutes." Bailey

was looking

straight ahead. [laughing] 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 kidneys.

[laughing] "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.

[laughing] "All right," Bailey said,

"but get this.

This is the only time we're going to stop

for anything like

this. This is the once and only time."

"The dirt road that you have to turn down

is about a mile back," the

grandmother directed.

[laughing] "I marked it when we passed."

"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 30 mile

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 at

the blue tops of

trees for miles around,

and 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 am

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 the valise in the corner.

The instant the valise moved,

the newspaper top she had over the

basket under it rose with a snarl,

and Pittypat 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 stripes 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!"

[laughing] The grandmother

was curled up under the

dashboard, 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 remembered so vividly

was not in Georgia,

but in Tennessee. [laughing]

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 with the broken front brim standing

up at a jaunty angle

and a 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 sports shirt

with bright blue parrots behind it,

and his face was as yellow

as the shirt. The grandmother decided

that she would not

mention that the house was in Tennessee.

[laughing] The road was about 10 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 the 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 his head

and muttered something to the other two,

and they got

out.

One was a fat boy in black trousers

and a red sweatshirt 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 with two tights on

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 spectacled man was

someone she knew.

His face was as familiar to her as

if she had known him all 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 that car

and see will it run,

Harlan," he said quietly to the boy with

the gray hat.

"What you got that gun for?" John Wesley

asked.

"What you gonna do with that gun?"

"Lady," the man said to the children's

mother, "would you mind telling them

children to sit down by you?

Children make me nervous.

I want all you all to sit down right there

together where you're

at." "What are you telling us what to do

for?" June Star

asked. Behind them

was a line of woods deep

like a dark open mouth.

"Come here," said their mother.

"Lookie here, now," Bailey began.

"We're in a predicament.

We're in-- " The 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 recognized 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 read it. "Lady," he said,

"don't you get upset.

Sometimes a man says things

that he don't mean.

I don't reckon he meant to talk to you

that way." "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, 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 common

blood.

I know you must come from nice people."

"Yes, ma'am," 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

sweatshirt 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.

"I appreciate that,

lady," the Misfit said, and drew a

little circle in the ground with his,

the butt of his gun.

"It'll take a half 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 ask you something," 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,

Mama.

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." "No, ma'am,

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 latter.

He's going to be into everything.'"

He put on his black hat

and looked up suddenly, and then away

deep into the woods as if, 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 just making 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," Terrell, 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.

He 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 somebody chasing

you all the time."

The Misfit kept scratching 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.

"No," 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 intake of breath.

"Bailey boy," she

called.

"I was a gospel singer for a while," the

Misfit said.

"I been most everything.

Been in the armed service,

both land and sea, at home in a barn.

Been twice married, been an undertaker,

been with the

railroad, plowed Mother Earth,

been in a tornado,

seen a man burn alive once." He looked up

at the children's

mother and the little girl who

were sitting close together, their faces

white and their eyes glassed.

"I even seen one flogged,"

he said. "Pray!

Pray," the grandmother began.

"Pray!"

"I never was a bad boy

that I remember," the Misfit

said, in an almost dreamy voice.

"But somewhere 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. "That's

when you should have started to pray," she

said.

"What did you do to get sent to the

penitentiary that first time?" "Turning

to the right was a wall," the Misfit said,

looking up again at the

cloudless sky. "Turning 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 sat there and sat there trying to

remember what

it was I done,

and I ain't recalled it to this day.

Once 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.

"Nah," he said, "it wasn't no mistake.

They had the papers on me." "You must have

stolen something," she said.

The Misfit smiled 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 19-aught-19 of 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 need no help," 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. "Throw 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 the tire off

his car, because sooner or later,

you're gonna forget what it was you

done and just be punished for it." The

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 as she

was holding the baby, who had

gone to sleep, in the other. "Help

that lady up, Hiram," the

Misfit said as she struggled to climb out

of the ditch.

"And Bobby Lee, you hold on to

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

was praised.

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, as if

she might be cursing.

"Yes'm," the Misfit said as if he

agreed.

"Jesus thrown 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 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 nice 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 thrown everything off balance.

If he did what he said,

then it's nothing for you to do

but throw 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 wished I had been there," he said,

hitting the ground with his fist.

"It ain't right I wasn't there because

if I had been there, I would've known.

Listen, lady," he said in a high voice.

"If I had been there, I would've 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

and her face smiling up at the cloudless

sky.

Without his glasses,

the Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and

pale and defenseless looking.

"Take her off and throw her where you

thrown 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 have 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."