Free The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor Page B

stuttered.
    â€œI said how about your going to the grocery this time? I’ve been every morning this week and I’m busy now.”
    Miss Willerton pushed back from the typewriter. “Very well,” she said sharply. “What do you want there?”
    â€œA dozen eggs and two pounds of tomatoes—ripe tomatoes—and you’d better start doctoring that cold right now. Your eyes are already watering and you’re hoarse. There’s Empirin in the bathroom. Write a check on the house for the groceries. And wear your coat. It’s cold.”
    Miss Willerton rolled her eyes upward. “I am forty-four years old,” she announced, “and able to take care of myself.”
    â€œAnd get ripe tomatoes,” Miss Lucia returned.
    Miss Willerton, her coat buttoned unevenly, tramped up Broad Street and into the supermarket. “What was it now?” she muttered. “Two dozen eggs and a pound of tomatoes, yes.” She passed the lines of canned vegetables and the crackers and headed for the box where the eggs were kept. But there were no eggs. “Where are the eggs?” she asked a boy weighing snapbeans.
    â€œWe ain’t got nothin’ but pullet eggs,” he said, fishing up another handful of beans.
    â€œWell, where are they and what is the difference?” Miss Willerton demanded.
    He threw several beans back into the bin, slouched over to the egg box and handed her a carton. “There ain’t no difference really,” he said, pushing his gum over his front teeth. “A teen-age chicken or somethin’, I don’t know. You want ’em?”
    â€œYes, and two pounds of tomatoes. Ripe tomatoes,” Miss Willerton added. She did not like to do the shopping. There was no reason those clerks should be so condescending. That boy wouldn’t have dawdled with Lucia. She paid for the eggs and tomatoes and left hurriedly. The place depressed her somehow.
    Silly that a grocery should depress one—nothing in it but trifling domestic doings—women buying beans—riding children in those grocery go-carts—higgling about an eighth of a pound more or less of squash—what did they get out of it? Miss Willerton wondered. Where was there any chance for self-expression, for creation, for art? All around her it was the same—sidewalks full of people scurrying about with their hands full of little packages and their minds full of little packages—that woman there with the child on the leash, pulling him, jerking him, dragging him away from a window with a jack-o’-lantern in it; she would probably be pulling and jerking him the rest of her life. And there was another, dropping a shopping bag all over the street, and another wiping a child’s nose, and up the street an old woman was coming with three grandchildren jumping all over her, and behind them was a couple walking too close for refinement.
    Miss Willerton looked at the couple sharply as they came nearer and passed. The woman was plump with yellow hair and fat ankles and muddy-colored eyes. She had on high-heel pumps and blue anklets, a too-short cotton dress, and a plaid jacket. Her skin was mottled and her neck thrust forward as if she were sticking it out to smell something that was always being drawn away. Her face was set in an inane grin. The man was long and wasted and shaggy. His shoulders were stooped and there were yellow knots along the side of his large, red neck. His hands fumbled stupidly with the girl’s as they slumped along, and once or twice he smiled sickly at her and Miss Willerton could see that he had straight teeth and sad eyes and a rash over his forehead.
    â€œUgh,” she shuddered.
    Miss Willerton laid the groceries on the kitchen table and went back to her typewriter. She looked at the paper in it. “Lot Motun called his dog,” it read. “The dog pricked up its ears and slunk over to him. He pulled the animal’s short,