Free SSC (2004) The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote

things.
    It began six months ago when I married Marge. That was the first thing I did wrong. We were married in Mobile after an acquaintance of only four days. We were both sixteen and she was visiting my cousin Georgia. Now that I’ve had plenty of time to think it over, I can’t for the life of me figure how I fell for the likes of her. She has no looks, no body and no brains whatsoever. But Marge is a natural blonde and maybe that’s the answer. Well, we were married going on three months when Marge ups and gets pregnant; the second thing I did wrong. Then she starts hollering that she’s got to go home to Mama—only she hasn’t got no mama, just these two aunts. Eunice and Olivia-Ann. So she makes me quit my perfectly swell positionclerking at the Cash ’n’ Carry and move here to Admiral’s Mill, which is nothing but a damn gap in the road any way you care to consider it.
    The day Marge and I got off the train at the L&N depot it was raining cats and dogs and do you think anyone came to meet us? I’d shelled out forty-one cents for a telegram, too! Here my wife’s pregnant and we have to tramp seven miles in a downpour. It was bad on Marge, as I couldn’t carry hardly any of our stuff on account of I have terrible trouble with my back. When I first caught sight of this house I must say I was impressed. It’s big and yellow and has real columns out in front and japonica trees, both red and white, lining the yard.
    Eunice and Olivia-Ann had seen us coming and were waiting in the hall. I swear I wish you could get a look at these two. Honest, you’d die! Eunice is this big old fat thing with a behind that must weigh a tenth of a ton. She troops around the house, rain or shine, in this real old-fashioned nightie, calls it a kimono, but it isn’t anything in this world but a dirty flannel nightie. Furthermore she chews tobacco and tries to pretend so ladylike, spitting on the sly. She keeps gabbing about what a fine education she had, which is her way of attempting to make me feel bad, although, personally, it never bothers me so much as one whit, as I know for a fact she can’t even read the funnies without she spells out every single, solitary word. You’ve got to hand her one thing, though—she can add and subtract money so fast that there’s no doubt but what she could be up in Washington, D.C., working where they make the stuff. Not that she hasn’t got plenty of money! Naturally she says she hasn’t but I know she has because one day, accidentally, I happened to find close to a thousand dollars hidden in a flowerpot on the side porch. I didn’t touch one cent, only Eunice says I stole a hundred-dollar bill, which is a venomous lie from start to finish. Of course anything Eunice says is an order from headquarters, as not a breathing soul in Admiral’s Mill can stand up and say he doesn’t owe her money and if she said Charlie Carson (a blind ninety-year-old invalid who hasn’t taken a stepsince 1896) threw her on her back and raped her, everybody in this county would swear the same on a stack of Bibles.
    Now, Olivia-Ann is worse, and that’s the truth! Only she’s not so bad on the nerves as Eunice, for she is a natural-born half-wit and ought really to be kept in somebody’s attic. She’s real pale and skinny and has a mustache. She squats around most of the time whittling on a stick with her fourteen-inch hog knife, otherwise she’s up to some devilment, like what she did to Mrs. Harry Steller Smith. I swore not ever to tell anyone that, but when a vicious attempt has been made on a person’s life, I say the hell with promises.
    Mrs. Harry Steller Smith was Eunice’s canary named after a woman from Pensacola who makes home-made cure-all that Eunice takes for the gout. One day I heard this terrible racket in the parlor and upon investigating, what did I find but Olivia-Ann shooing Mrs. Harry Steller Smith out an open window with a broom and the door to the birdcage wide. If I hadn’t