A Circle in the Fire

By Flannery O’ Connor

1955

SOMETIMES the last line of trees was a solid gray-blue wall a little
darker than the sky but this afternoon it was almost black and
behind it the sky was a livid glaring white. "You know that woman
that had that baby in that iron lung?" Mrs. Pritchard said. She and
the child's mother were underneath the window the child was
looking down from. Mrs. Pritchard was leaning against the chimney,
her arms folded on a shelf of stomach, one foot crossed and the
toe pointed into the ground. She was a large woman with a small
pointed face and steady ferreting eyes. Mrs. Cope was the opposite,
very small and trim, with a large round face and black eyes that
seemed to be enlarging all the time behind her glasses as if she were
continually being astonished. She was squatting down pulling grass
out of the border beds around the house. Both women had on sunhats
that had once been identical but now Mrs. Pritchard's was
faded and out of shape while Mrs. Cope's was still stiff and bright
green.
  "I read about her," she said.
  "She was a Pritchard that married a Brookins and so's kin to me--about
my seventh or eighth cousin by marriage."
  "Well, well," Mrs. Cope muttered and threw a large clump of nut
grass behind her. She worked at the weeds and nut grass as if
they were an evil sent directly by the devil to destroy the place.
"Beinst she was kin to us, we gone to see the body," Mrs. Pritchard
said. "Seen the little baby too."
  Mrs. Cope didn't say anything. She was used to these calamitous
stories; she said they wore her to a frazzle. Mrs. Pritchard would
go thirty miles for the satisfaction of seeing anybody laid away.
Mrs. Cope always changed the subject to something cheerful but
the child had observed that this only put Mrs. Pritchard in a bad
humor.
  The child thought the blank sky looked as if it were pushing
against the fortress wall, trying to break through. The trees across the
near field were a patchwork of gray and yellow greens. Mrs. Cope
was always worrying about fires in her woods. When the nights
were very windy, she would say to the child, "Oh Lord, do pray
there won't be any fires, it's so windy," and the child would grunt
from behind her book or not answer at all because she heard it so
often. In the evenings in the summer when they sat on the porch,
Mrs. Cope would say to the child who was reading fast to catch the
last light, "Get up and look at the sunset, it's gorgeous. You ought
to get up and look at it," and the child would scowl and not answer
or glare up once across the lawn and two front pastures to the
gray-blue sentinel line of trees and then begin to read again with no
change of expression, sometimes muttering for meanness, "It looks
like a fire. You better get up and smell around and see if the woods
ain't on fire."
  "She had her arm around it in the coffin," Mrs. Pritchard went
on, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of the tractor that
the Negro, Culver, was driving up the road from the barn. The
wagon was attached and another Negro was sitting in the back,
bouncing, his feet jogging about a foot from the ground. The one on
the tractor drove it past the gate that led into the field on the left.
Mrs. Cope turned her head and saw that he had not gone through
the gate because he was too lazy to get off and open it. He was
going the long way around at her expense. "Tell him to stop and
come here!" she shouted.
  Mrs. Pritchard heaved herself from the chimney and waved her
arm in a fierce circle but he pretended not to hear. She stalked to
the edge of the lawn and screamed, "Get off, 1 toljer! She wants
you!"
  He got off and started toward the chimney, pushing his head
and shoulders forward at each step to give the appearance of hurrying.
His head was thrust up to the top in a white cloth hat streaked
with different shades of sweat. The brim was down and hid all but
the lower parts of his reddish eyes.
  Mrs. Cope was on her knees, pointing the trowel into the ground.
"Why aren't you going through the gate there?" she asked and
waited, her eyes shut and her mouth stretched flat as if she were
prepared for any ridiculous answer.
  "Got to raise the blade on the mower if we do," he said and his
gaze bore just to the left of her. Her Negroes were as destructive
and impersonal as the nut grass.
  Her eyes, as she opened them, looked as if they would keep on
enlarging until they turned her wrongsideout. "Raise it," she said
and pointed across the road with the trowel.
  He moved off.
  "It's nothing to them," she said. "They don't have the responsibility.
  I thank the Lord all these things don't come at once. They'd
destroy me."
  "Yeah, they would," Mrs. Pritchard shouted against the sound of
the tractor. He opened the gate and raised the blade and drove
through and down into the field; the noise diminished as the wagon
disappeared. "I don't see myself how she had it in it," she went on
in her normal voice.
  M rs. Cope was bent over, digging fiercely at the nut grass again.
"We have a lot to be thankful for," she said. "Every day you should
say a prayer of thanksgiving. Do you do that?"
  "Yes'm," Mrs. Pritchard said. "See she was in ill four months before
she even got thataway. Look like to me if I was in one of them,
I would leave off ... how you reckun they ...?” 
  "Every day I say a prayer of thanksgiving,” Mrs. Cope said.
  "Think of all we have. Lord." she said and sighed, "we have everything,"
and she looked around at her rich pastures and hills heavy
with timber and shook her head as if it might all he a burden she was
trying to shake off her back.
  Mrs. Pritchard studied the woods. "All I got is four abscess teeth,"
she remarked.
  "Well, be thankful you don 't have five," Mrs. Cope snapped
and threw back a clump of grass. "We might all be destroyed by
a hurricane. I can always find something to be thankful for."
  Mrs. Pritchard took up a hoe resting against the side of the house
and struck lightly at a weed that had come up between two bricks
in the chimney. "I reckon you can," she said, her voice a little more
nasal than usual with contempt.
  "Why, think of all those poor Europeans," Mrs. Cope went on,
"that they put in boxcars like cattle and rode them to Siberia. Lord,"
she said, "we ought to spend half our time on our knees."
  "I know if I was in an iron lung there would be some things I
wouldn't do," Mrs. Pritchard said, scratching her bare ankle with
the end of the hoe.
  "Even that poor woman had plenty to be thankful for," Mrs.
Cope said.
  "She could be thankful she wasn't dead."
  "Certainly," Mrs. Cope said, and then she pointed the trowel up
at Mrs. Pritchard and said, "I have the best kept place in the county
and do you know why? Because I work. I've had to work to save
this place and work to keep it." She emphasized each word with
the trowel. "I don't let anything get ahead of me and I'm not always
looking for trouble. I take it as it comes."
  "If it all come at oncet sometime," Mrs. Pritchard began.
  "It doesn't all come at once," Mrs. Cope said sharply.
The child could see over to where the dirt road joined the highway.
She saw a pick-up truck stop at the gate and let off three boys
who started walking up the pink dirt road. They walked single file,
the middle one bent to the side carrying a black pig-shaped valise.
"Well, if it ever did," Mrs. Pritchard said, "it wouldn't be nothing
you could do but fling up your hands."
  Mrs. Cope didn't even answer this. Mrs. Pritchard folded her arms
and gazed down the road as if she could easily enough see all these
fine hills flattened to nothing. She saw the three boys who had
almost reached the front walk by now. "Lookit yonder," she said.
"Who you reckon they are?"
  Mrs. Cope leaned back and supported herself with one hand behind
her and looked. The three' came toward them but as if they were
going to walk on through the side of the house. The one with the
suitcase was in front now. Finally about four feet from her, he
stopped and set it down. The three boys looked something alike
except that the middle-sized one wore silver-rimmed spectacles and
carried the suitcase. One of his eyes had a slight cast to it so that his
gaze seemed to be coming from two directions at once as if it had
them surrounded. He had on a sweat shirt with a faded destroyer
printed on it but his chest was so hollow that the destroyer was
broken in the middle and seemed on the point of going under. His
hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat. He looked to be about
thirteen. All three boys had white penetrating stares. "I don't reckon
you remember me, Mrs. Cope," he said.
  "Your face is certainly familiar," she murmured, scrutinizing him.
"Now let's see ... "
  "My daddy used to work here," he hinted.
  "Boyd?" she said. "Your father was Mr. Boyd and you're I.e.?"
  "Nome, I'm Powell, the secant one, only I've growed some since
then and my daddy he's daid now. Done died."
  "Dead. Well I declare," Mrs. Cope said as if death were always
an unusual thing. "What was Mr. Boyd's trouble?"
  One of Powell's eyes seemed to be making a circle of the place,
examining the house and the white water tower behind it and the
chicken houses and the pastures that rolled away on either side
until they met the first line of woods. The other eye looked at her.
  "Died in Florda," he said and began kicking the valise.
  "Well I declare," she murmured. After a second she said, "And
how is your mother?"
  "Mah'd again." He kept watching his foot kick the suitcase.
  The other two boys stared at her impatiently.
  "And where do you all live now?" she asked.
  "Atlanta," he said. "You know, out to one of them developments."
  "Well I see," she said, "I see." After a second she said it again.
Finally she asked, "And who are these other boys ~" and smiled at
them.
"Garfield Smith him, and W. T. Harper him," he said, nodding
his head backward first in the direction of the large boy and then
the small one.
  "How do you boys do?" Mrs. Cope said. "This is Mrs. Pritchard.
Mr. and Mrs. Pritchard work here now."
  They ignored Mrs. Pritchard who watched them with steady
beady eyes. The three seemed to hang there, waiting, watching
Mrs. Cope.
  "Well well," she said, glancing at the suitcase, "it's nice of you
to stop and see me. I think that was real sweet of you."
Powell's stare seemed to pinch her like a pair of tongs. "Come
back to see how you was doing," he said hoarsely.
  "Listen here," the smallest boy said, "all the time we been knowing
him he's been telling us about this here place. Said it was everything
here. Said it was horses here. Said he had the best time of his entire
life right here on this here place. Talks about it all the time."
  "Never shuts his trap about this place," the big boy grunted,
drawing his arm across his nose as if to muffle his words.
  "Always talking about them horses he rid here," the small one
continued, "and said he would let us ride them too. Said it was
one name Gene."
  Mrs. Cope was always afraid someone would get hurt on her place
and sue her for everything she had. "They aren't shod," she said
quickly. "There was one named Gene but he's dead now but I'm
afraid you boys can't ride the horses because you might get hurt.
They're dangerous," she said, speaking very fast.
  The large boy sat down on the ground with a noise of disgust
and began to finger rocks out of his tennis shoe. The small one
darted looks here and there and Powell fixed her with his stare and
didn't say anything.
  After a minute the little boy said, "Say, lady, you know what
he said one time? He said when he died he wanted to come
here!"
  For a second Mrs. Cope looked blank; then she blushed; then a
peculiar look of pain came over her face as she realized that these
children were hungry. They were staring because they were
hungry! She almost gasped in their faces and then she asked them
quickly if they would have something to eat. They said they would
but their expressions, composed and unsatisfied, didn't lighten any.
They looked as if they were used to being hungry and it was no
business of hers.
  The child upstairs had grown red in the face with excitement.
She was kneeling down by the window so that only her eyes and
forehead showed over the sill. Mrs. Cope told the boys to come
around on the other side of the house where the lawn chairs were
and she led the way and Mrs. Pritchard followed. The child moved
from the right bedroom across the hall and over into the left bedroom
and looked down on the other side of the house where there
were three white lawn chairs and red hammock strung between
two hazelnut trees. She was a pale fat girl of twelve with a frowning
squint and a large mouth full ur silver bands. She knelt down at
the window.
  The three boys came around the corner of the house and the
large one threw himself into the hammock and lit a stub of cigarette.
The small boy tumbled down on the grass next to the black suitcase
and rested his head on it and Powell sat down on the edge of one
of the chairs and looked as if he were trying to enclose the whole
place in one encircling stare. The child heard her mother and Mrs.
Pritchard in a muted conference in the kitchen. She got up and went
out into the hall and leaned over the banisters.
  Mrs. Cope's and Mrs. Pritchard's legs were facing each other in
the back hall. "Those poor children are hungry." Mrs. Cope said in
a dead voice.
  "You seen that suitcase?" Mrs. Pritchard asked. "What if they
intend to spend the night with you?"
  Mrs. Cope gave a slight shriek. "I can't have three boys in here
with only me and Sally Virginia," she said. "I 'm sure they'll go
when I feed them."
  "I only know they got a suitcase." Mrs. Pritchard said.
The child hurried back to the window, The large boy was
stretched out in the hammock with his wrists crossed under his
head and the cigarette stub in the center of his mouth. He spit it
out in an arc just as Mrs. Cope came around the corner of the
house with a plate of crackers. She stopped instantly as if a snake
had been slung in her path. "Ashfield!' she said. "Please pick
that up. I'm afraid of fires."
  "Gawfield!" the little boy shouted indignantly. "Gawfield!"
  The large boy raised himself without a word and lumbered for
the butt. He picked it up and put it in his pocket and stood with
his back to her, examining a tattooed heart on his forearm. Mrs.
Pritchard came up holding three Coca-Colas by the necks in one
hand and gave one to each of them.
  "I remember everything about this place," Powell said, looking
down the opening of his bottle.
  "Where did you all go when you left here?" Mrs. Cope asked
and put the plate of crackers on the arm of his chair.
  He looked at it but didn't take one. He said, "I remember it was
one name Gene and it was one name George, We gone to Florda
and my daddy he, you know, died, and then we gone to my sister's
and then my mother she, you know, mah'd, and we been there
ever since. "
  "There are some crackers," Mrs. Cope said and sat down in the
chair across from him.
  "He don't like it in Atlanta," the little boy said, sitting up and
reaching indifferently for a cracker. "He ain't ever satisfied with
where he's at except this place here. Lemme tell you what he'll do,
lady. We'll be playing ball, see, on this here place in this development
we got to play ball on, see, and he'll quit playing and say,
  'Goddam, it was a horse down there name Gene and if I had him
here I'd bust this concrete to hell riding him!'"
  "I'm sure Powell doesn't use words like that, do you, Powell?"
Mrs. Cope said.
  "No, mam," Powell said. His head was turned completely to the
side as if he were listening for the horses in the field,
  "I don't like them kind of crackers," the little boy said and returned
his to the plate and got up.
  Mrs. Cope shifted in her chair. "So you boys live in one of those
nice new developments," she said,
  "The only way you can tell your own is by smell," the small boy
volunteered. "They're four stories high and there's ten of them,
one behind the other. Let's go see them horses," he said.
  Powell turned his pinching look on Mrs, Cope. "We thought we
would just spend the night in your barn," he said. "My uncle
brought us this far on his pick-up truck and he's going to stop for
us again in the morning."
  There was a moment in which she didn't say a thing and the child
in the window thought: she's going to fly out of that chair and hit
the tree.
  "Well, I'm afraid you can't do that," she said, getting up suddenly,
  "The barn's full of hay and I'm afraid of fire from your cigarettes."
  "We won't smoke," he said.
  "I'm afraid you can't spend the night in there just the same," she
repeated as if she were talking politely to a gangster.
  "Well, we can camp out in the woods then," the little boy said.
  "We brought our own blankets anyways. That's what we got in
theter suitcase. Come on."
  "In the woods!" she said. "Oh no! The woods are very dry now,
I can't have people smoking in my woods. You'll have to camp out
in the field, in this field here next to the house, where there aren't
any trees."
  "Where she can keep her eye on you," the child said under her
breath.
  "Her woods," the large boy muttered and got out of the hammock.
  "We'll sleep in the field," Powell said but not particularly as if
he were talking to her. "This afternoon I'm going to show them
about this place." The other two were already walking away and he
got up and bounded after them and the two women sat with the
black suitcase between them.
  "Not no thank you, not no nothing," Mrs. Pritchard remarked.
  "They only played with what we gave them to eat," Mrs. Cope
said in a hurt voice.
  Mrs. Pritchard suggested that they might not like soft drinks.
  "They certainly looked hungry," Mrs. Cope said.
  About sunset they appeared out of the woods, dirty and sweating,
and came to the back porch and asked for water. They did not
ask for food but Mrs. Cope could tell that they wanted it. "All I
have is some cold guinea," she said. "Would you boys like some
guinea and some sandwiches?"
  "I wouldn't eat nothing bald-headed like a guinea," the little boy
said. "I would eat a chicken or a turkey but not no guinea."
  "Dog wouldn't eat one of them," the large boy said. He had
taken off his shirt and stuck it in the hack of his trousers like a
tail. Mrs. Cope carefully avoided looking at him. The little boy
had a cut on his arm.
  "You boys haven't been riding the horses when I asked you not
to, have you?" she asked suspiciously and they all said, "No mam!"
at once in loud enthusiastic voices like the Amens are said in country
churches.
She went into the house and made them sandwiches and, while
she did it, she held a conversation with them from inside the kitchen,
asking what their fathers did and how many brothers and sisters
they had and where they went to school. They answered in short
explosive sentences, pushing each other's shoulders and doubling up
with laughter as if the questions had meanings she didn't know
about. "And do you have men teachers or lady teachers at your
schoo1?" she asked.
  "Some of both and some you can't tell which," the big boy
hooted.
  "And does your mother work, Powell?" she asked quickly.
  "She ast you does your mother work!" the little boy yelled. "His
mind's affected by them horses he only looked at," he said. "His
mother she works at a factory and leaves him to mind the rest of
them only he don't mind them much. Lemme tell you, lady, one
time he locked his little brother in a box and set it on fire."
  ''I'm sure Powell wouldn't do a thing like that." she said, coming
out with the plate of sandwiches and setting it down on the step.
They emptied the plate at once and she picked it up and stood
holding it, looking at the sun which was going down in front of
them, almost on top of the tree line. It was swollen and flame-colored
and hung in a net of ragged cloud as if it might burn through any
second and fall into the woods. From the upstairs window the child
saw her shiver and catch both arms to her sides. "We have so much
to be thankful for," she said suddenly in a mournful marveling
tone. "Do you boys thank God every night for all He's done for
you? Do you thank Him for everything)"
  This put an instant hush over them. They bit into the sandwiches
as if they had lost all taste for food.
  "Do you?" she persisted.
  They were as silent as thieves hiding. They chewed without a
sound.
  "Well, I know I do," she said at length and turned and went
back to the house and the child watched their shoulders drop.
The large one stretched his legs out as if he were releasing himself
from a trap. The sun burned so fast that it seemed to be trying to
set everything in sight on fire. The white water tower was glazed
pink and the grass was an unnatural green as if it were turning to
glass. The child suddenly stuck her head far out the window and
said, "Ugggghhrhh," in a loud voice, crossing her eyes and hanging
her tongue out as far as possible as if she were going to vomit.
The large boy looked up and stared at her. "Jesus," he growled,
"another woman."
  She dropped back from the window and stood with her back
against the wall, squinting fiercely as if she had been slapped in
the face and couldn't see who had done it. As soon as they left
the steps, she came down into the kitchen where Mrs. Cope was
washing the dishes. "If I had that big boy down I'd beat the
daylight out of him," she said.
  "You keep away from those boys," Mrs. Cope said, turning
sharply. "Ladies don't beat the daylight out of people. You keep
out of their way. They'll be gone in the morning."
  But in the morning they were not gone.
  When she went out on the porch after breakfast, they were standing
around the back door, kicking the steps. They were smelling
the bacon she had had for her breakfast. "Why boys!" she said. "I
thought you were going to meet your uncle." They had the same
look of hardened hunger that had pained her yesterday but today
she felt faintly provoked.
  The big boy turned his back at once and the small one squatted
down and began to scratch in the sand. "We ain't, though," Powell
said.
  The big boy turned his head just enough to take in a small section
of her and said, "We ain't bothering nothing of yours."
  He couldn't see the why her eyes enlarged but he could take note
of the significant silence. After a minute she said in an altered voice,
  "Would you boys care for some breakfast?"
  "We got plenty of our own food," the big boy said. "We don't
want nothing of yours."
  She kept her eyes on Powell. His thin while face seemed to
confront but not actually to see her. "You boys know that I'm
glad to have you," she said, "but I expect you to behave. I expect you
to act like gentlemen." They stood there, each looking in a different direction, as if they were waiting for her to leave. "After all," she said in a suddenly high voice, "this is my place."
  The big boy made some ambiguous noise and they turned and
walked off toward the barn, leaving her there with a shocked look
as if she had had a searchlight thrown on her in the middle of the
night.
  In a little while Mrs. Pritchard came over and stood in the kitchen
door with her cheek against the edge of it. "I reckon you know
they rode them horses all yesterday afternoon," she said. "Stole a
bridle out the saddleroom and rode bareback because Hollis seen
them. He runnum out the barn at nine o'clock last night and then
he runnum out the milk room this morning and there was milk all
over their mouths like they had been drinking out the cans."
  "I cannot have this," Mrs Cope said and stood at the sink with
both fists knotted at her sides. "I cannot have this," and her expression
was the same as when she tore at the nut grass.
  "There ain't a thing you can do about it," Mrs. Pritchard said.
  "What I expect is you'll have them for a week or so until school
begins. They just figure to have themselves a vacation in the country
and there ain't nothing you can do but fold your hands."
  "I do not fold my hands," Mrs. Cope said. "Tell Mr. Pritchard
to put the horses up in the stalls."
  "He's already did that. You take a boy thirteen year old is equal
in meanness to a man twict his age. It's no telling what he'll think
up to do. You never know where he'll strike next, This morning
Hollis seen them behind the bull pen and that big one ast if it
wasn't some place they could wash at and Hollis said no it wasn't
and that you didn't want no boys dropping cigarette butts in your
woods and he said, 'She don't own them woods,' and Hollis said,
'Shes does too,' and that there little one he said, 'Man, Gawd owns
them woods and her too,' and that there one with the glasses said,
'I reckon she owns the sky over this place too,' and that there
littlest one says, 'Owns the sky and can't no airplane go over here
without she says so,' and then the big one says, 'I never seen a place
with so many damn women on it, how do you stand it here?' and
Hollis said he had done had enough of their big talk by then and he
turned and walked off without giving no reply one way or the
other."
  "I'm going out there and tell those boys they can get a ride away
from here on the milk truck," Mrs. Cope said and she went out the
back door, leaving Mrs. Pritchard and the child together in the
kitchen.
  "Listen," the child said. "I could handle them quicker than that."
  "Yeah?" Mrs. Pritchard murmured, giving her a long leering
look. "How'd you handle them?"
  The child gripped both hands together and made a contorted face
as if she were strangling someone.
  "They'd handle you," Mrs. Pritchard said with satisfaction.
  The child retired to the upstairs window to get out of her way
and looked down where her mother was walking off from the three
boys who were squatting under the water tower eating something
out of a cracker box. She heard her come in the kitchen door and
say, "They say they'll go on the milk truck, and no wonder they
aren't hungry-they have that suitcase half full of food."
  "Likely stole every bit of it too," Mrs. Pritchard said.
When the milk truck came, the three boys were nowhere in sight,
but as soon as it left without them their three faces appeared,
looking out of the opening in the top of the calf barn. "Can you
beat this?" Mrs. Cope said, standing at one of the upstairs windows
with her hands at her hips. "It's not that 1 wouldn't be glad to have
them--it's their attitude."
  "You never like nobody's attitude," the child said. "I'll go tell
them they got five minutes to leave here in."
  "You are not to go anywhere near those boys, do you hear me?"
Mrs. Cope said.
  "Why?" the child asked,
  ''I'm going out there and give them a piece of my mind," Mrs.
Cope said.
  The child took over the position in the window and in a few
minutes she saw the stiff green hat catching the glint of the sun
as her mother crossed the road toward the calf barn, The three faces
immediately disappeared from the opening, and in a  second the large
boy dashed across the lot, followed in instant later by the other two.
Mrs. Pritchard came out and the two women started for the grove
of trees the boys had vanished into. Presently the two sunhats disappeared in the woods and the three boys came out at the left side
of it and ambled across the field and into another patch of woods.
By the time Mrs. Cope and Mrs. Pritchard reached the field, it
was empty and there was nothing for them to do but come home
again.
  Mrs. Cope had not been inside long before Mrs. Pritchard came
running toward the house, shouting something. "They've let out
the bull!" she hollered. "Let out the bull!" And in a second she was
followed by the bull himself, ambling, black and leisurely, with four
geese hissing at his heels. He was not mean until hurried and it took
Mr. Pritchard and the two Negroes a half-hour to ease him back
to his pen. While the men were engaged in this, the boys let the
oil out of the three tractors and then disappeared again into the
woods.
  Two blue veins had come out on either side of Mrs. Cope's forehead
and Mrs. Pritchard observed them with satisfaction. "Like I
toljer," she said, "there ain't a thing you can do about it."
  Mrs. Cope ate her dinner hastily, not conscious that she had her
sunhat on. Every time she heard a noise, she jumped up. Mrs.
Pritchard came over immediately after dinner and said, "Well, you
want to know where they are now?" and smiled in an omniscient
rewarded way.
  "I want to know at once," Mrs. Cope said, coming to an almost
military attention.
  "Down to the road, throwing rocks at your mailbox," Mrs.
Pritchard said, leaning comfortably in the dour. "Done already
about knocked it off its stand."
  "Get in the car," Mrs. Cope said.
  The child got in too and the three of them drove down the road
to the gate. The boys were sitting on the embankment on the other
side of the highway, aiming rocks across the road at the mailbox.
Mrs. Cope stopped the car almost directly beneath them and looked
up out of her window. The three of them stared at her as if they
had never seen her before, the large boy with a sullen glare, the
small one glint-eyed and unsmiling, and Powell with his two-sided
glassed gaze hanging vacantly over the crippled destroyer on his
shirt.
  "Powell," she said, "I'm sure your mother would be ashamed of
you," and she stopped and waited for this to make its effect. His
face seemed to twist slightly but he continued to look through her at
nothing in particular.
  "Now I've put up with this as long as I can," she said. "I've
tried to be nice to you boys. Haven't I been nice to you boys?"
They might have been three statues except that the big one,
barely opening his mouth, said, "We're not even on your side the
road, lady."
  "There ain't a thing you can do about it," Mrs. Pritchard hissed
loudly. The child was sitting on the back seat close to the side. She
had a furious outraged look on her face but she kept her head drawn
back from the window so that they couldn't see her.
  Mrs. Cope spoke slowly, emphasizing every word. "I think I have
been very nice to you boys. I've fed you twice. Now I'm going into
town and if you're still here when I come back, I'll call the sheriff,"
and with this, she drove off. The child, turning quickly so that
she could see out the back window, observed that they had not
moved; they had not even turned their heads.
  "You done angered them now," Mrs. Pritchard said, "and it ain't
any telling what they'll do."
  "They'll be gone when we get back," Mrs. Cope said.
  Mrs. Pritchard could not stand an anticlimax. She required the
taste of blood from time to time to keep her equilibrium. "I known
a man oncet that his wife was poisoned by a child she had adopted
out of pure kindness," she said. When they returned from town,
the boys were not on the embankment and she said, "I would
rather to see them than not to see them. When you see them you
know what they're doing."
  "Ridiculous," Mrs. Cope muttered. "I've scared them and they've
gone and now we can forget them."
  "I ain't forgetting them," Mrs. Pritchard said. "I wouldn't be
none surprised if they didn't have a gun in that there suitcase."
  Mrs. Cope prided herself on the way she handled the type of mind
that Mrs. Pritchard had. When Mrs. Pritchard saw signs and omens,
she exposed them calmly for the figments of imagination that they
were, but this afternoon her nerves were taut and she said, "Now
I've had about enough of this. Those boys are gone and that's that."
  "Well, we'll wait and see," Mrs. Pritchard said.
  Everything was quiet for the rest of the afternoon but at supper
time, Mrs. Pritchard came over to say that she had heard a high
vicious laugh pierce out of the bushes near the hog pen. It was an
evil laugh, full of calculated meanness, and she had heard it come
three times, herself, distinctly.
  "I haven't heard a thing," Mrs. Cope said.
  "I look for them to strike just after dark," Mrs. Pritchard said.
  That night Mrs. Cope and the child sat on the porch until nearly
ten o'clock and nothing happened. The only sounds came from tree
frogs and from one whippoorwill who called faster and faster from
the same spot of darkness, "They've gone," Mr. Cope said, "poor
things," and she began to tell the child how milch they had to be
thankful for, for she said they might have had to live in a development
themselves or they might have been Negroes or they might
have been in iron lungs or they might have been Europeans ridden
in boxcars like cattle, and she began a litany of her blessings, in a
stricken voice, that the child, straining her attention for a sudden
shriek in the dark, didn't listen to.
  There was no sign of them the next morning either. The fortress
line of trees was a hard granite blue, the wind had risen overnight
and the sun had come up a pale gold. The sea ion was changing.
Even a small change in the weather made Mrs. Cope thankful, but
when the seasons changed she seemed almost frightened at her good
fortune in escaping whatever it was that pursued her. As she sometimes
did when one thing was finished and another about to begin,
she turned her attention to the child who had put on a pair of overalls
over her dress and had pulled a man's old felt hat down as far
as it would go on her head and was arming herself with two pistols
in a decorated holster that she had fastened around her waist. The
hat was very tight and seemed to be squeezing the redness into her
face. It came down almost to the tops of her glasses. Mrs. Cope
watched her with a tragic look. "Why do you have to look like an
idiot?" she asked. "Suppose company were to cone? When are you
going to grow up? What's going to become of you? I look at you
and I want to cry! Sometimes you look like you might belong to
Mrs. Pritchard!"
  "Leave me be," the child said in a high irritated voice. "Leave me
be. Just leave me be. I ain't you," and she went  into the woods as
if she were stalking out an enemy, her head thrust forward and
each hand gripped on a gun.
  Mrs. Pritchard came over, sour-humored, because she didn't have
anything calamitous to report. "I got the misery in my face today,"
she said, holding on to what she could salvage. "Theseyer teeth.
They each one feel like an individual boil."

  The child crashed through the woods, making the fallen leaves
sound ominous under her feet. The sun had risen a little and was
only a white hole like an opening for the wind to escape through
in a sky a little darker than itself, and the tops of the trees were
black against the glare. "I'm going to get you one by one and beat
you black and blue. Line up. LINE UP!" she said and waved one
of the pistols at a cluster of long bare-trunked pines, four times her
height, as she passed them. She kept moving, muttering and growling
to herself and occasionally hitting out with one of the guns at a
branch that got in her way. From time to time she stopped to remove
the thorn vine that caught in her shirt and she would say,
"Leave me be, I told you. Leave me be," and give it a crack with
the pistol and then stalk on.
  Presently she sat down on a stump to cool off but she planted
both feet carefully and firmly on the ground. She lifted them and
put them down several times, grinding them fiercely into the dirt
as if she were crushing something under her heels. Suddenly she
heard a laugh.
  She sat up, prickle-skinned. It came again. She heard the sound
of splashing and she stood up, uncertain which way to run. She
was not far from where this patch of woods ended and the back
pasture began. She eased toward the pasture, careful not to make a
sound, and coming suddenly to the edge of it, she saw the three
boys, not twenty feet away, washing in the cow trough. Their
clothes were piled against the black valise out of reach of the water
that flowed over the side of the tank. The large boy was standing
up and the small one was trying to climb onto his shoulders. Powell
was sitting down looking straight ahead through glasses that were
splashed with water. He was not paying any attention to the other
two. The trees must have looked like green waterfalls through his
wet glasses. The child stood partly hidden behind a pine trunk, the
side of her face pressed into the bark.
  "I wish I lived here!" the little boy shouted, balancing with his
knees clutched around the big one's head.
  "I'm goddam glad 1 don't," the big boy panted, and jumped up
to dislodge him.
  Powell sat without moving, without seeming to know that the
other two were behind him, and looked straight ahead like a ghost
sprung upright in his coffin. "If this place was not here any more,"
he said, "you would never have to think of it again."
  "Listen," the big boy said, sitting down quietly in the water with
the little one still moored to his shoulders, "it don't belong to
nobody."
  "It's ours," the little boy said.
  The child behind the tree did not move.
  Powell jumped out of the trough and began to run. He ran all
the way around the field as if something were atter him and as he
passed the tank again, the other two jumped out and raced with
him, the sun glinting on their long wet bodies. The big one ran the
fastest and was the leader. They dashed around the field twice and
finally dropped down by their clothes and lay there with their
ribs moving up and down. After a while, the big one said hoarsely,
"Do you know what I would do with this place if I had the chance?"
  "No, what?" the little boy said and sat up to give him his full
attention.
  "I'd build a big parking lot on it, or something," he muttered.
They began to dress. The sun made two white spots an Powell's
glasses and blotted out his eyes. "I know what let's do," he said. He
took something small from his pocket and showed it to them. For
almost a minute they sat looking at what he had til his hand. Then
without any more discussion, Powell picked up the suitcase and
they got up and moved past the child and entered the woods not ten
feet from where she was standing, slightly away from the tree now,
with the imprint of the bark embossed red and white on the side of
her face.
  She watched with a dazed stare as they stopped and collected all
the matches they had between them and began to, set the brush on
fire. They began to whoop and holler and beat their hands over
their mouths and in a few seconds there was a narrow line of fire
widening between her and them. While she watched, it reached up
from the brush, snatching and biting at the lowest branches of the
trees. The wind carried rags of it higher and the boys disappeared
shrieking behind it.
  She turned and tried to run across the field but her legs were
too heavy and she stood there, weighted down with some new unplaced
misery that she had never felt before. But finally she began
to run.
  Mrs. Cope and Mrs. Pritchard were in the field behind the barn
when Mrs. Cope saw smoke rising from the woods across the
pasture. She shrieked and Mrs. Pritchard pointed up the road to
where the child came loping heavily, screaming, "Mama, Mama,
they're going to build a parking lot here!"
  Mrs. Cope began to scream for the Negroes while Mrs. Pritchard,
charged now, ran down the road shouting. Mr. Pritchard came out
of the open end of the barn and the two Negroes stopped filling the
manure spreader in the lot and started toward Mrs. Cope with
their shovels. "Hurry, hurry!" she shouted. "Start throwing dirt on
it!" They passed her almost without looking at her and headed off
slowly across the field toward the smoke. She ran after them a little
way, shrilling, "Hurry, hurry, don't you see it! Don't you see it!"
  "It'll be there when we git there," Culver said and they thrust
their shoulders forward a little and went on at the same pace.
The child came to a stop beside her mother and stared up at her
face as if she had never seen it before. It was the face of the new
misery she felt, but on her mother it looked old and it looked as if
it might have belonged to anybody, a Negro or a European or to
Powell himself. The child turned her head quickly, and past the
Negroes' ambling figures she could see the column of smoke rising
and widening unchecked inside the granite line of trees. She stood
taut, listening, and could just catch in the distance a few wild high
shrieks of joy as if the prophets were dancing in the fiery furnace, in
the circle the angel had cleared for them.

End