Flannery O'Connor Complete Short Stories Read Free Page B

eyes.
    He shuffled to the chair by the window and sank down in it. His throat was going to pop. His throat was going to pop on account of a nigger—a damn nigger that patted him on the back and called him “old-timer.” Him that knew such as that couldn’t be. Him that had come from a good place. A good place. A place where such as that couldn’t be. His eyes felt strange in their sockets, They were swelling in them and in a minute there wouldn’t be any room left for them there. He was trapped in this place where niggers could call you “old-timer.” He wouldn’t be trapped. He wouldn’t be. He rolled his head on the back of the chair to stretch his neck that was too full.
    A man was looking at him. A man was in the window across the alley looking straight at him. The man was watching him cry. That was where the geranium was supposed to be and it was a man in his undershirt, watching him cry, waiting to watch his throat pop. Old Dudley looked back at the man. It was supposed to be the geranium. The geranium belonged there, not the man. “Where is the geranium?” he called out of his tight throat.
    â€œWhat you cryin’ for?” the man asked. “I ain’t never seen a man cry like that.”
    â€œWhere is the geranium?” Old Dudley quavered. “It ought to be there. Not you.”
    â€œThis is my window,” the man said. “I got a right to set here if I want to.”
    â€œWhere is it?” Old Dudley shrilled. There was just a little room left in his throat.
    â€œIt fell off if it’s any of your business,” the man said.
    Old Dudley got up and peered over the window ledge. Down in the alley, way six floors down, he could see a cracked flower pot scattered over a spray of dirt and something pink sticking out of a green paper bow. It was down six floors. Smashed down six floors.
    Old Dudley looked at the man who was chewing gum and waiting to see the throat pop. “You shouldn’t have put it so near the ledge,” he murmured. “Why don’t you pick it up?”
    â€œWhy don’t you, pop?”
    Old Dudley stared at the man who was where the geranium should have been.
    He would. He’d go down and pick it up. He’d put it in his own window and look at it all day if he wanted to. He turned from the window and left the room. He walked slowly down the dog run and got to the steps. The steps dropped down like a deep wound in the floor. They opened up through a gap like a cavern and went down and down. And he had gone up them a little behind the nigger. And the nigger had pulled him up on his feet and kept his arm in his and gone up the steps with him and said he hunted deer, “old-timer,” and seen him holding a gun that wasn’t there and sitting on the steps like a child. He had shiny tan shoes and he was trying not to laugh and the whole business was laughing. There’d probably be niggers with black flecks in their socks on every step, pulling down their mouths so as not to laugh. The steps dropped down and down. He wouldn’t go down and have niggers pattin’ him on the back. He went back to the room and the window and looked down at the geranium.
    The man was sitting over where it should have been. “I ain’t seen you pickin’ it up,” he said.
    Old Dudley stared at the man.
    â€œI seen you before,” the man said. “I seen you settin’ in that old chair every day, starin’ out the window, looking in my apartment. What I do in my apartment is my business, see? I don’t like people looking at what I do.”
    It was at the bottom of the alley with its roots in the air.
    â€œI only tell people once,” the man said and left the window.

The Barber
    It is trying on liberals in Dilton.
    After the Democratic White Primary, Rayber changed his barber. Three weeks before it, while he was shaving him, the barber asked, “Who you gonna vote