|
The Life You Save May Be Your Own Flannery O'Connor THE old woman
and her daughter were sitting on their porch when Mr. Shiftlet came up their road
for the first time. The old woman slid to the edge of her chair and leaned
forward, shading her eyes from the piercing sunset with her hand. The
daughter could not see far in front of her and continued to play with her
fingers. Although the old woman lived in this desolate spot with only her
daughter and she had never seen Mr. Shiftlet before, she could tell, even
from a distance, that he was a tramp and no one to be afraid of. His left coat sleeve was folded up to show
there was only half an arm in it and his gaunt figure listed slightly to the
side as if the breeze were pushing him. He had on a black town suit and a
brown felt hat that was turned up in the front and down in the back and he
carried a tin tool box by a handle. He came on, at an amble, up her road, his
face turned toward the sun which appeared to be balancing itself on the peak
of a small mountain. The old woman didn't change her position until he was
almost into her yard; then she rose with one hand fisted on her hip. The
daughter, a large girl in a short blue organdy dress, saw him all at once and
jumped up and began to stamp and point and make excited speechless sounds. Mr. Shiftlet stopped just inside the yard and set his
box on the ground and tipped his hat at her as if she were not in the least
afflicted; then he turned toward the old woman and swung the hat all the way
off. He had long black slick hair that hung flat from a part in the middle to
beyond the tips of his ears on either side. His face descended in forehead
for more than half its length and ended suddenly with his features just
balanced over a jutting steel‑trap jaw. He seemed to be a young man but
he had a look of composed dissatisfaction as if he understood life
thoroughly. "Good evening," the old woman said. She was
about the size of a cedar fence post and she had a man's gray hat pulled down
low over her head. The tramp stood looking at her and didn't answer. He
turned his back and faced the sunset. He swung both his whole and his short
arm up slowly so that they indicated an expanse of sky and his figure formed
a crooked cross. The old woman watched him with her arms folded across her
chest as if she were the owner of the sun, and the daughter watched, her head
thrust forward and her fat helpless hands hanging at the wrists. She had long
pink‑gold hair and eyes as blue as a peacock's neck. He held the pose for almost fifty seconds and then he
picked up his box and came on to the porch and dropped down on the bottom
step. "Lady," he said in a firm nasal voice, "I'd give a
fortune to live where I could see me a sun do that every evening." "Does it every evening," the old woman said
and sat back down. The daughter sat down too and watched him with a cautious
sly look as if he were a bird that had come up very close. He leaned to one
side, rooting in his pants pocket, and in a second he brought out a package
of chewing gum and offered her a piece. She took it and unpeeled it and began
to chew without taking her eyes off him. He offered the old woman a piece but
she only raised her upper lip to indicate she had no teeth. Mr. Shiftlet's pale sharp glance had already passed
over everything in the yard‑the pump near the comer of the house and
the big fig tree that three or four chickens were preparing to roost in‑and
had moved to a shed where he saw the square rusted back of an automobile.
"You ladies drive?" he asked. "That car ain't run in fifteen year," the old
woman said. "The day my husband died, it quit running." "Nothing is like it used to be, lady," he
said. "The world is almost rotten." "That's right," the old woman said. "You
from around here?" "Name Tom T. Shiftlet," he murmured, looking
at the tires. "I'm pleased to meet you," the old woman
said. "Name Lucynell Crater and daughter Lucynell Crater. What you doing
around here, Mr. Shiftlet?" He judged the car to be about a 1928 or '29 Ford.
"'Lady," he said, and turned and gave her his full attention,
"lemme tell you something. There's one of these doctors in Atlanta
that's taken a knife and cut the human heart‑the human heart," he
repeated, leaning forward, "out of a man's chest and held it in his
hand," and he held his hand out, palm up, as if it were slightly
weighted with the human heart, "and studied it like it was a day‑old
chicken, and lady," he said, allowing a long significant pause in which
his head slid forward and his clay‑colored eyes brightened, "he
don't know no more about it than you or me." "That's right," the old woman said. "Why, if he was to take that knife and cut into
every corner of it, he still wouldn't know no more
than you or me. What you want to bet?" "Nothing," the old woman said wisely.
"Where you come from, Mr. Shiftlet?" He didn't answer. He reached into his pocket and
brought out a sack of tobacco and a package of cigarette papers and rolled
himself a cigarette, expertly with one hand, and attached it in a hanging
position to his upper lip. Then he took a box of wooden matches from his
pocket and struck one on his shoe. He held the burning match as if he were
studying the mystery of flame while it traveled dangerously toward his skin.
The daughter began to make loud noises and to point to his hand and shake her
finger at him, but when the flame was just before touching him, he leaned
down with his hand cupped over it as if he were going to set fire to his nose
and lit the cigarette. He flipped away the dead match and blew a stream of
gray into the evening. A sly look came over his face. "Lady," he
said, "nowadays, people'll do anything anyways. I can tell you my name
is Tom T. Shiftlet and I come from "I don't know nothing
about you," the old woman muttered, irked. "Lady," he said, "people don't care how
they lie. Maybe the best I can tell you is, I'm a man; but listen
lady," he said and paused and made his tone more ominous still,
"what is a man?" The old woman began to gum a seed. "What you carry
in that tin box, Mr. Shiftlet?" she asked. "Tools," he said, put back. "I'm a
carpenter." "Well, if you come out here to work, I'll be able
to feed you and give you a place to sleep but I can't pay. I'll tell you that
before you begin," she said. There was no answer at once and no particular
expression on his face. He leaned back against the two‑by‑four
that helped support the porch roof. "Lady," he said slowly, "there's some men that some things mean more to them than
money." The old woman rocked without comment and the daughter watched
the trigger that moved up and down in his neck. He told the old woman then
that all most people were interested in was money, but he asked what a man
was made for. He asked her if a. man was made for money, or what. He asked
her what she thought she was made for but she didn't answer, she only sat
rocking and wondered if a one‑armed man could put a new roof on her
garden house. He asked a lot of questions that she didn't answer. He told her
that he was twenty‑eight years old and had lived a varied life. He had
been a gospel singer, a foreman on the railroad, an assistant in an
undertaking parlor, and he had come over the radio for three months with
Uncle Roy and his Red Creek Wranglers. He said he had fought and bled in the
Arm Service of his country and visited every foreign land and that everywhere
he had seen people that didn't care if they did a thing one way or another.
He said he hadn't been raised thataway. A fat yellow moon appeared in the branches of the fig
tree as if it were going to roost there with the chickens. He said that a man
had to escape to the country to see the world whole and that he wished he
lived in a desolate place like this where he could see the sun go down every
evening like God made it to do. "Are you married or are you single?" the old
woman asked. There was a long silence. "Lady," he asked
finally, "where would you find you an innocent woman today'? I wouldn't
have any of this trash I could just pick up." The daughter was leaning very far down, hanging her
head almost between her knees, watching him through a triangular door she had
made in her overturned hair; and she suddenly fell in a heap on the floor and
began to whimper. Mr. Shiftlet straightened her out and helped her get back
in the chair. "Is she your baby girl?" he asked. "My only," the old woman said, "and she's the sweetest girl in the world. I wouldn't give her
up for nothing on earth. She's smart too. She can sweep the floor, cook,
wash, feed the chickens, and hoe. I wouldn't give her up for a casket of
jewels." "No," he said kindly, "don't ever let
any man take her away from you." "Any man come after her," the old woman said, " 'll have to stay around the place." Mr. Shiftlet's eye in the darkness was focused on a
part of the automobile bumper that glittered in the distance.
"Lady," he said, jerking his short arm up as if he could point with
it to her house and yard and pump, "there ain't a broken thing on this
plantation that I couldn't fix for you, one‑arm jackleg or not. I'm a
man," he said with a sullen dignity, "even if I ain't a whole one.
I got," he said, tapping his knuckles on the floor to emphasize the
immensity of what he was going to say, "a moral intelligence!" and
his face pierced out of the darkness into a shaft of doorlight and he stared
at her as if he were astonished himself at this impossible truth. The old woman was not impressed with the phrase.
"I told you you could hang around and work for food," she said,
"if you don't mind sleeping in that car yonder." "Why listen, Lady," he said with a grin of
delight, "the monks of old slept in their coffins!" "They wasn't as advanced
as we are," the old woman said. The next morning he began on the roof of the garden
house while Lucynell, the daughter, sat on a rock and watched him work. He
had not been around a week before the change he had made in the place was
apparent. He had patched the front and back steps, built a new hog pen,
restored a fence, and taught Lucynell, who was completely deaf and had never said a word in her life, to say the word
"bird." The big rosy‑faced girl followed him everywhere,
saying "Burrttddt ddbirrrttdt," and clapping her hands. The old
woman watched from a distance, secretly pleased. She was ravenous for a son‑in‑law. Mr. Shiftlet slept on the hard narrow back seat of the
car with his feet out the side window. He had his razor and a can of water on
a crate that served him as a bedside table and he put up a piece of mirror
against the back glass and kept his coat neatly on a hanger that he hung over
one of the windows. In the evenings he sat on the steps and talked while
the old woman and Lucynell rocked violently in their chairs on either side of
him. The old woman's three mountains were black against the dark blue sky and
were visited off and on by various planets and by the moon after it had left
the chickens. Mr. Shiftlet pointed out that the reason he had improved this
plantation was because he had taken a personal interest in it. He said he was
even going to make the automobile run. He had raised the hood and studied the mechanism and he
said he could tell that the car had been built in the days when cars were
really built. “You take now,” he said, “one man puts in one bolt and another
man puts in another bolt and another man puts in another bolt so that it's a
man for a bolt. That's why you have to 'pay so much for a car: you’re paying
all those men. Now if you didn't have to pay but one man, you could get you a
cheaper car and one that had had a personal interest taken in it, and it
would be a better car.” The old woman agreed with him that this was so. Mr. Shiftlet said that the trouble with the world was
that nobody cared, or stopped and took any trouble. He said he never would
have been able to teach Lucynell to say a word if he hadn't cared and stopped
long enough. "Teach her to say something else," the old
woman said. "What you want her to say next?" Mr. Shiftlet
asked. The old woman's smile was broad and toothless and
suggestive. "Teach her to say 'sugarpie,'" she said. Mr. Shiftlet already knew what was on her mind. The next day he began to tinker with the automobile and
that evening he told her that if she would buy a fan belt, he would be able
to make the car run. The old woman said she would give him the money.
"You see that girl yonder?" she asked, pointing to Lucynell who was
sitting on the floor a foot away, watching him, her eyes blue even in the
dark. "If it was ever a man wanted to take her away, I would say, 'No
man on earth is going to take that sweet girl of mine away from me!' but if
he was to say, 'Lady, I don't want to take her away, I want her right here,'
I would say, 'Mister, I don't blame you none. I wouldn't pass up a chance to
live in a permanent place and get the sweetest girl in the world myself. You
ain't no fool,' I would say.” "How old is she?" Mr. Shiftlet asked
casually. "Fifteen, sixteen," the old woman said. The
girl was nearly thirty but because of her innocence it was impossible to
guess. "It would be a good idea to paint it too,"
Mr. Shiftlet remarked. "You don't want it to rust out." "We'll see about that later," the old woman
said. The next day he walked into town and returned with the
parts he needed and a can of gasoline. Late in the afternoon, terrible noises
issued from the shed and the old woman rushed out of the house, thinking
Lucynell was somewhere having a fit. Lucynell was sitting on a chicken crate,
stamping her feet and screaming, "Burrddttt! bddurrddtttt!"
but her fuss was drowned out by the car. With a volley of blasts it emerged
from the shed, moving in a fierce and stately way. Mr. Shiftlet was in the
driver's seat, sitting very erect. He had an expression of serious modesty on
his face as if he had just raised the dead. That night, rocking on the porch, the old woman began
her business at once. "You want you an innocent woman, don't you?"
she asked sympathetically. "You don't want none
of this trash." "No'm, I don't," Mr. Shiftlet said. "One that can't talk," she continued,
"can't sass you back or use foul language. That's the kind for you to
have. Right there," and she pointed to Lucynell
sitting cross‑legged in her chair, holding both feet in her hands. "That's right," he admitted. "She
wouldn't give me any trouble." "Saturday," the old woman said, "you and
her and me can drive into town and get married." Mr. Shiftlet eased his position on the steps. "I can't get married right now," he said.
"Everything you want to do takes money and I ain't got any." "What you need with money?" she asked. "It takes money," he said. "Some
people'll do anything anyhow these days, but the way I think, I wouldn't
marry no woman that I couldn't take on a trip like
she was somebody. I mean take her to a hotel and treat her. I wouldn't marry
the Duchesser Windsor," he said firmly, "unless I could take her to
a hotel and give her something good to eat. "I was raised thataway and there ain't a thing I
can do about it. My old mother taught me how to do." "Lucynell don't even know what a hotel is,"
the old woman muttered. "Listen here, Mr. Shiftlet," she said,
sliding forward in her chair, "you'd be getting a permanent house and a
deep well and the most innocent girl in the world. You don't need no money. Lemme tell you something: there ain't any place
in the world for a poor disabled friendless drifting man." The ugly words settled in Mr. Shiftlet's head like a
group of buzzards in the top of a tree. He didn't answer at once. He rolled
himself a cigarette and lit it and then he said in an even voice, "Lady,
a man is divided into two parts, body and spirit." The old woman clamped her gums together. "A body and a spirit," he repeated. "The
body, lady, is like a house: it don't go anywhere; but the spirit, lady, is
like a automobile: always on the move, always . . ." "Listen, Mr. Shiftlet," she said, "my
well never goes dry and my house is always warm in the winter and there's no
mortgage on a thing about this place. You can go to the courthouse and see
for yourself And yonder under that shed is a fine automobile." She laid
the bait carefully. "You can have it painted by Saturday. I'll pay for
the paint." In the darkness, Mr. Shiftlet's smile stretched like a
weary snake waking up by a fire. After a second he recalled himself and said,
"I'm only saying a man's spirit means more to him than anything else. I would have
to take my wife off for the week end without no
regards at all for cost. I got to follow where my spirit says to go." "I'll give you fifteen dollars for a week‑end
trip," the old woman said in a crabbed voice. "That's the best I
can do." "That wouldn't hardly pay
for more than the gas and the hotel," he said. "It wouldn't feed
her." "Seventeen‑fifty," the old woman said.
"That's all I got so it isn't any use you trying to milk me. You can
take a lunch." Mr. Shiftlet was deeply hurt by the word
"milk." He didn't doubt that she had more money sewed up in her
mattress but he had already told her he was not interested in her money.
"I'll make that do," he said and rose and walked off without
treating with her further. On Saturday the three of them drove into town in the
car that the paint had barely dried on and Mr. Shiftlet and Lucynell were
married in the Ordinary's office while the old woman witnessed. As they came
out of the courthouse, Mr. Shiftlet began twisting his neck in his collar. He
looked morose and bitter as if he had been insulted while someone held him.
"That didn't satisfy me none," he said. "That was just
something a woman in an office did, nothing but paper work and blood tests.
What do they know about my blood? If they was to
take my heart and cut it out," he said, "they wouldn't know a thing
about me. It didn't satisfy me at all." "It satisfied the law," the old woman said
sharply. 'The law," Mr. Shiftlet said and spit. "It's
the law that don't satisfy me." He had painted the car dark green with a yellow band
around it just under the windows. The three of them climbed in the front seat
and the old woman said, "Don't Lucynell look pretty? Looks like a baby
doll." Lucynell was dressed up in a white dress that her mother had
uprooted from a trunk and there was a Panama hat on her head with a bunch of
red wooden cherries on the brim. Every now and then her placid expression was
changed by a sly isolated little thought like a shoot of green in the desert.
"You got a prize!" the old woman said. Mr. Shiftlet didn't even look at her. They drove back to the house to let the old woman off
and pick up the lunch. When they were ready to leave, she stood staring in
the window of the car, with her fingers clenched around the glass. Tears
began to seep sideways out of her eyes and run along the dirty creases in her
face. "I ain't ever been parted with her for two days before," she
said. Mr. Shiftlet started the motor. "And I wouldn't let no man have her but you
because I seen you would do right. Good‑by, Sugarbaby," she said,
clutching at the sleeve of the white dress. Lucynell looked straight at her
and didn't seem to see her there at all. Mr. Shiftlet eased the car forward
so that she had to move her hands. The early afternoon was clear and open and surrounded
by pale blue sky. Although the car would go only thirty miles an hour, Mr.
Shiftlet imagined a terrific climb and dip and swerve that went entirely to
his head so that he forgot his morning bitterness. He had always wanted an
automobile but he had never been able to afford one before. He drove very
fast because he wanted to make Occasionally he stopped his thoughts long enough to
look at Lucynell in the seat beside him. She had eaten the lunch as soon as
they were out of the yard and now she was pulling the cherries off the hat
one by one and throwing them out the window. He became depressed in spite of
the car. He had driven about a hundred miles when he decided that she must be
hungry again and at the next small town they came to, he stopped in front of
an aluminum‑painted eating place called The Hot Spot and took her in
and ordered her a plate of ham and grits. The ride had made her sleepy and as
soon as she got up on the stool, she rested her head on the counter and shut
her eyes. There was no one in The Hot Spot but Mr. Shiftlet and the boy
behind the counter, a pale youth with a greasy rag hung over his shoulder.
Before he could dish up the food, she was snoring gently. "Give it to her when she wakes up," Mr.
Shiftlet said. "I'll pay for it now." The boy bent over her and stared at the long pink‑gold
hair and the half‑shut sleeping eyes. Then he looked up and stared at
Mr. Shiftlet. "She looks like an angel of Gawd," he murmured. "Hitch‑hiker," Mr. Shiftlet explained.
"I can't wait. I got to make The boy bent over again and very carefully touched his
finger to a strand of the golden hair and Mr. Shiftlet left. He was more depressed than ever as he drove on by
himself. The late afternoon had grown hot and sultry and the country had
flattened out. Deep in the sky a storm was preparing very slowly and without
thunder as if it meant to drain every drop of air from the earth before it
broke. There were times when Mr. Shiftlet preferred not to be alone. He felt
too that a man with a car had a responsibility to others and he kept his eye
out for a hitch‑hiker. Occasionally he saw a sign that warned:
"Drive carefully. The life you save may be your own." The narrow road dropped off on either side into dry
fields and here and there a shack or a filling station stood in a clearing. The
sun began to set directly in front of the automobile. It was a reddening ball
that through his windshield was slightly flat on the bottom and top. He saw a
boy in overalls and a gray hat standing on the edge of the road and he slowed
the car down and stopped in front of him. The boy didn't have his hand raised
to thumb the ride, he was only standing there, but he had a small cardboard
suitcase and his hat was set on his head in a way to indicate that he had
left somewhere for good. "Son," Mr. Shiftlet said, "I see you
want a ride." The boy didn't say he did or he didn't but he opened
the door of the car and got in, and Mr. Shiftlet started driving again. The
child held the suitcase on his lap and folded his arms on top of it. He
turned his head and looked out the window away from Mr. Shiftlet. Mr.
Shiftlet felt oppressed. "Son," he said after a minute, "I got
the best old mother in the world so I reckon you only got the second
best." The boy gave him a quick dark glance and then turned
his face back out the window. "It's nothing so sweet," Mr. Shiftlet
continued, "as a boy's mother. She taught him his first prayers at her
knee, she give him love when no other would, she told him what was right and
what wasn't, and she seen that he done the right thing. Son," he said,
"I never rued a day in my life like the one I rued when I left that old
mother of mine." The boy shifted in his seat but he didn't look at Mr.
Shiftlet. He unfolded his arms and put one hand on the door handle. "My mother was a angel of
Gawd," Mr. Shiftlet said in a very strained voice. "He took her
from heaven and giver to me and I left her." His eyes were instantly
clouded over with a mist of tears. The car was barely moving. The boy turned angrily in the seat. "You go to the
devil!" he cried. "My old woman is a flea bag and yours is a
stinking pole cat!" and with that he flung the door open and jumped out
with his suitcase into the ditch. Mr. Shiftlet was so shocked that for about a hundred
feet he drove along slowly with the door stiff open. A cloud, the exact color
of the boy's hat and shaped like a turnip, had descended over the sun, and
another, worse looking, crouched behind the car. Mr. Shiftlet felt that the
rottenness of the world was about to engulf him. He raised his arm and let it
fall again to his breast. "Oh Lord!" he prayed. "Break forth
and wash the slime from this earth!" The turnip continued slowly to descend. After a few
minutes there was a guffawing peal of thunder from behind and fantastic
raindrops, like tin‑can tops, crashed over the rear of Mr. Shiftlet's
car. Very quickly he stepped on the gas and with his stump sticking out the
window he raced the galloping shower into |