Flannery O'Connor Complete Short Stories by Flannery O’Connor Read Free Book Online Page B

sharecroppers but, she reflected, they would make as arty a subject as any, and they would give her that air of social concern which was so valuable to have in the circles she was hoping to travel! “I can always capitalize,” she muttered, “on the hookworm.” It was coming to her now! Certainly! Her fingers plinked excitedly over the keys, never touching them. Then suddenly she began typing at great speed.
    â€œLot Motun,” the typewriter registered, “called his dog.” “Dog” was followed by an abrupt pause. Miss Willerton always did her best work on the first sentence. “First sentences,” she always said, “came to her—like a flash! Just like a flash!” she would say and snap her fingers, “like a flash!” And she built her story up from them. “Lot Motun called his dog” had been automatic with Miss Willerton, and reading the sentence over, she decided that not only was “Lot Motun” a good name for a sharecropper, but also that having him call his dog was an excellent thing to have a sharecropper do. “The dog pricked up its ears and slunk over to Lot.” Miss Willerton had the sentence down before she realized her error—two “Lots” in one paragraph. That was displeasing to the ear. The typewriter grated back and Miss Willerton applied three x’s to “Lot.” Over it she wrote in pencil, “him.” Now she was ready to go again. “Lot Motun called his dog. The dog pricked up its ears and slunk over to him.” Two dogs, too, Miss Willerton thought. Ummm. But that didn’t affect the ears like two “Lots,” she decided.
    Miss Willerton was a great believer in what she called “phonetic art.” She maintained that the ear was as much a reader as the eye. She liked to express it that way. “The eye forms a picture,” she had told a group at the United Daughters of the Colonies, “that can be painted in the abstract, and the success of a literary venture” (Miss Willerton liked the phrase, ‘literary venture’) “depends on the abstract created in the mind and the tonal quality” (Miss Willerton also liked ‘tonal quality’) “registered in the ear.” There was something biting and sharp about “Lot Motun called his dog”; followed by “the dog pricked up its ears and slunk over to him,” it gave the paragraph just the send-off it needed.
    â€œHe pulled the animal’s short, scraggy ears and rolled over with it in the mud.” Perhaps, Miss Willerton mused, that would be overdoing it. But a sharecropper, she knew, might reasonably be expected to roll over in the mud. Once she had read a novel dealing with that kind of people in which they had done just as bad and, throughout three-fourths of the narrative, much worse. Lucia found it in cleaning out one of Miss Willerton’s bureau drawers and after glancing at a few random pages took it between thumb and index finger to the furnace and threw it in. “When I was cleaning your bureau out this morning, Willie, I found a book that Garner must have put there for a joke,” Miss Lucia told her later. “It was awful, but you know how Garner is. I burned it.” And then, tittering, she added, “I was sure it couldn’t be yours.” Miss Willerton was sure it could be none other’s than hers but she hesitated in claiming the distinction. She had ordered it from the publisher because she didn’t want to ask for it at the library. It had cost her $3.75 with the postage and she had not finished the last four chapters. At least, she had got enough from it, though, to be able to say that Lot Motun might reasonably roll over in the mud with his dog. Having him do that would give more point to the hookworm, too, she decided. “Lot Motun called his dog. The dog pricked up its ears and slunk over to him. He pulled the animal’s short,