Text of short stories below: Hemingway, Poe, and O'conner

      ERNEST HEMINGWAY

      The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

      It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly 
      of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.

      “Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?” Macomber asked.

      “I’ll have a gimlet,” Robert Wilson told him.

      “I’ll have a gimlet too. I need something,” Macomber’s wife said.

      “I suppose it’s the thing to do,” Macomber agreed. “Tell him to make three 
      gimlets.”

      The mess boy had started them already, lifting the bottles out of the 
      canvas cooling bags that sweated wet in the wind that blew through the 
      trees that shaded the tents.

      “What had I ought to give them?” Macomber asked.

      “A quid would be plenty,” Wilson told him. “You don’t want to spoil them.”

      “Will the headman distribute it?”

      “Absolutely.”

      Francis Macomber had, half an hour before, been carried to his tent from 
      the edge of the camp in triumph on the arms and shoulders of the cook, the 
      personal boys, the skinner and the porters. The gun-bearers had taken no 
      part in the demonstration. When the native boys put  him down at the door 
      of his tent, he had shaken all their hands, received their 
      congratulations, and then gone into the tent and sat on the bed until his 
      wife came in. She did not speak to him when she came in and he left the 
      tent at once to wash his face and hands in the portable wash basin outside 
      and go over to the dining tent to sit in a comfortable canvas chair in the 
      breeze and the shade.

      “You’ve got your lion,” Robert Wilson said to him, “and a damned fine one 
      too.” 

      Mrs. Macomber looked at Wilson quickly. She was an extremely handsome and 
      well kept woman of the beauty and social position which had, five years 
      before, commanded five thousand dollars as the price of endorsing, with 
      photographs, a beauty product which she had never used. She had been 
      married to Francis Macomber for eleven years.

      “He is a good lion, isn’t he?” Macomber said. His wife looked at him now. 
      She looked at both these men as though she had never seen them before.

      One, Wilson, the white hunter, she knew she had never truly seen before. 
      He was about middle height with sandy hair, a stubby mustache, a very red 
      face and extremely cold blue eyes with faint white wrinkles at the corners 
      that grooved merrily when he smiled. He smiled at her now and she looked 
      away from his face at the way his shoulders sloped in the loose tunic he 
      wore with the four big cartridges held in loops where the left breast 
      pocket should have been, at his big brown hands, his old slacks, his very 
      dirty boots and back to his red face again. She noticed where the baked 
      red of his face stopped in a white line that marked the circle left by his 
      Stetson hat that hung now from one of the pegs of the tent pole.

      “Well, here’s to the lion,” Robert Wilson said. He smiled at her again 
      and, not smiling, she looked curiously at her husband.

      Francis Macomber was very tall, very well built if you did not mind that 
      length of bone, dark, his hair cropped like an oarsman, rather 
      thin-lipped, and was considered handsome. He was dressed in the same sort 
      of safari clothes that Wilson wore except that his were new, he was 
      thirty-five years old, kept himself very fit, was good at court games, had 
      a number of big-game fishing records, and had just shown himself, very 
      publicly, to be a coward.

      “Here’s to the lion,” he said. “I can’t ever thank you for what you did.”

      Margaret, his wife, looked away from him and back to Wilson.

      “Let’s not talk about the lion,” she said.

      Wilson looked over at her without smiling and now she smiled at him.

      “It’s been a very strange day,” she said. “Hadn’t you ought to put your 
      hat on even under the canvas at noon? You told me that, you know.”

      “Might put it on,” said Wilson.

      “You know you have a very red face, Mr. Wilson,” she told him and smiled 
      again.

      “Drink,” said Wilson.

      “I don’t think so,” she said. “Francis drinks a great deal, but his face 
      is never red.”

      “It’s red today,” Macomber tried a joke.

      “No,” said Margaret. “It’s mine that’s red today. But Mr. Wilson’s is 
      always red.

      “Must be racial,” said Wilson. “I say, you wouldn’t like to drop my beauty 
      as a topic, would you?”

      “I’ve just started on it.”

      “Let’s chuck it,” said Wilson.

      “Conversation is going to be so difficult,” Margaret said.

      “Don’t be silly, Margot,” her husband said.

      “No difficulty,” Wilson said. “Got a damn fine lion.”

      Margot looked at them both and they both saw that she was going to cry. 
      Wilson had seen it coming for a long time and he dreaded it. Macomber was 
      past dreading it.

      “I wish it hadn’t happened. Oh, I wish it hadn’t happened,” she said and 
      started for her tent. She made no noise of crying but they could see that 
      her shoulders were shaking under the rose-colored, sun-proofed shirt she 
      wore.

      “Women upset,” said Wilson to the tall man. “Amounts to nothing. Strain on 
      the nerves and one thing’n another.”

      “No,” said Macomber. “I suppose that I rate that for the rest of my life 
      now.”

      “Nonsense. Let’s have a spot of the giant killer,” said Wilson. “Forget 
      the whole thing. Nothing to it anyway.”

      “We might try,” said Macomber. “I won’t forget what you did for me 
      though.” 

      “Nothing,” said Wilson. All nonsense.”

      So they sat there in the shade where the camp was pitched under some 
      wide-topped acacia trees with a boulder-strewn cliff behind them, and a 
      stretch of grass that ran to the bank of a boulder-filled stream in front 
      with forest beyond it, and drank their just-cool lime drinks and avoided 
      one another’s eyes while the boys all knew about it now and when he saw 
      Macomber’s personal boy looking curiously at his master while he was 
      putting dishes on the table he snapped at him in Swahili. The boy turned 
      away with his face blank.

      “What were you telling him?” Macomber asked.

      “Nothing. Told him to look alive or I’d see he got about fifteen of the 
      best.”

      “What’s that? Lashes?”

      “It’s quite illegal,” Wilson said. “You’re supposed to fine them.”

      “Do you still have them whipped?”

      “Oh, yes. They could raise a row if they chose to complain. But they 
      don’t. They prefer it to the fines.”

      “How strange!” said Macomber.

      “Not strange, really,” Wilson said. “Which would you rather do? Take a 
      good birching or lose your pay?”

      Then he felt embarrassed at asking it and before Macomber could answer he 
      went on, “We all take a beating every day, you know, one way or another.”

      This was no better. “Good God,” he thought. “I am a diplomat, aren’t I?”

      “Yes, we take a beating,” said Macomber, still not looking at him. “I’m 
      awfully sorry about that lion business. It doesn’t have to go any further, 
      does it? I mean no one will hear about it, will they?”

      “You mean will I tell it at the Mathaiga Club?” Wilson looked at him now 
      coldly. He had not expected this. So he’s a bloody four-letter man as well 
      as a bloody coward, he thought. I rather liked him too until today. But 
      how is one to know abut an American?

      “No,” said Wilson. “I’m a professional hunter. We never talk about our 
      clients. You can be quite easy on that. It’s supposed to be bad form to 
      ask us not to talk though.”

      He had decided now that to break would be much easier. He would eat, then, 
      by himself and could read a book with his meals. They would eat by 
      themselves. He would see them through the safari on a very formal 
      basis—what was it the French called it? Distinguished consideration—and it 
      would be a damn sight easier than having to go through this emotional 
      trash. He’d insult him and make a good clean break. Then he could read a 
      book with his meals and he’d still be drinking their whisky.  That was the 
      phrase for it when a safari went bad. You ran into another while hunter 
      and you asked, “How is everything going?” and he answered, “Oh, I’m still 
      drinking their whisky,” and you knew everything had gone to pot.

      “I’m sorry,” Macomber said and looked at him with his American face that 
      would stay adolescent until it became middle-aged, and Wilson noted his 
      crew-cropped hair, fine eyes only faintly shifty, good nose, thin lips and 
      handsome jaw. “I’m sorry I didn’t  realize that. There are lots of things 
      I don’t know.”

      So what could he do, Wilson thought. He was all ready to break it off 
      quickly and neatly and here the beggar was apologizing after he had just 
      insulted him. He made one more attempt. “Don’t worry about me talking,” he 
      said. “I have a living to make. You know in Africa no woman ever misses 
      her lion and no white man ever bolts.

      “I bolted like a rabbit,” Macomber said.

      Now what in hell were you going to do about a man who talked like that, 
      Wilson wondered.

      Wilson looked at Macomber with his flat, blue, machinegunner’s eyes and 
      the other smiled back at him. He had a pleasant smile if you did not 
      notice how his eyes showed when he was hurt.

      “Maybe I can fix it up on buffalo,” he said. “We’re after them next, 
      aren’t we?

      “In the morning if you like,” Wilson told him. Perhaps he had been wrong. 
      This was certainly the way to take it. You most certainly could not tell a 
      damned thing about an American. He was all for Macomber again. If you 
      could forget the morning. But, of course, you couldn’t. The morning had 
      been about as bad as they come.

      “Here comes the Memsahib,” he said. She was walking over from her tent 
      looking refreshed and cheerful and quite lovely. She had a very perfect 
      oval face, so perfect that you expected her to be stupid. But she wasn’t 
      stupid, Wilson thought, no, not stupid.

      “How is the beautiful red-faced Mr. Wilson?  Are you feeling better, 
      Francis, my pearl?”

      “Oh, much,” said Macomber.

      “I’ve dropped the whole thing,” she said, sitting down at the table. “What 
      importance is there to whether Francis is any good at killing lions? 
      That’s not his trade. That’s Mr. Wilson’s trade. Mr. Wilson is really very 
      impressive killing anything. You do kill anything, don’t you?”

      “Oh, anything,” said Wilson. “Simply anything.” They are, he thought, the 
      hardest in the world; the hardest, the cruelest, the most predatory and 
      the most attractive and their men have softened or gone to pieces 
      nervously as they have hardened. Or is it that they pick men they can 
      handle? They can’t know that much at the age they marry, he thought. He 
      was grateful that he had gone through his education on American women 
      before  now because this was a very attractive one.

      “We’re going after buff in the morning,” he told her.

      “I”m coming,” she said.

      “No, you’re not.”

      “Oh, yes, I am. Mayn’t I, Francis?”

      “Why not stay in camp”

      “Not for anything,” she said. “I wouldn’t miss something like today for 
      anything.

      When she left, Wilson was thinking, when she went off to cry, she seemed a 
      hell of a fine woman. She seemed to understand, to realize, to be hurt to 
      him and for herself and to know how things really stood. She is away for 
      twenty minutes and now she is back, simply enameled in that American 
      female cruelty. They are the damnedest women. Really the damnedest.

      “We’ll put on another show for you tomorrow,” Francis Macomber said.

      “You’re not coming,” Wilson said.

      “You’re very mistaken,” she told him. “And I want so to see you perform 
      again. You were lovely this morning. That is if blowing things’ heads of 
      is lovely.”

      “Here’s the lunch,” said Wilson. “You’re very merry, aren’t you?”

      “Why not? I didn’t come out here to be dull.”

      “Well, it hasn’t been dull,” Wilson said. He could see the boulders in the 
      river and the high bank beyond with the trees and he remembered the 
      morning.

      “Oh, no,” she said. “It’s been charming. And tomorrow. You don’t know how 
      I look forward to tomorrow.”

      “That’s eland he’s offering you,” Wilson said.

      “They’re the big cowy things that jump like hares, aren’t they?”

      “I suppose that describes them,” Wilson said.

      “It’s very good meat,” Macomber said.

      “Yes.”

      They’re not dangerous, are they?”

      “Only if they fall on you,” Wilson told her.

      “I’m so glad.”

      “Why not let up on the bitchery just a little, Margot,” Macomber said, 
      cutting the eland steak and putting some mashed potato, gravy and carrot 
      on the down=-turned fork that tined through the piece of meat.

      “I suppose I could,” she said, “since you put it so prettily.”

      “Tonight we’ll have champagne for the lion,” Wilson said. “It’s a bit too 
      hot at noon.”

      “Oh, the lion,” Margot said. “I’d forgotten the lion!”

      So, Robert Wilson thought to himself, she is giving him a ride, isn’t she? 
      Or do you suppose that’s her idea of putting up a good show? How should a 
      woman act when she discovers her husband is a bloody coward? She’s damn 
      cruel but they’re all cruel. They govern, of course, and to govern one has 
      to be cruel sometimes. Still, I’ve seen enough of their damn terrorism.

      “Have some more eland,” he said to her politely.

      That afternoon, late, Wilson and Macomber went out in the motor car with 
      the native driver and the two gun-bearers. Mrs. Macomber stayed in the 
      camp. It was too hot to go out, she said, and she was going with them in 
      the early morning. As they drove off Wilson saw her standing under the the 
      big tree, looking pretty rather than beautiful in her faintly rosy khaki, 
      her dark hair drawn back off her forehead and gathered in a knot low on 
      her neck, her face as fresh, he thought, as though she were in England. 
      She waved to them as the car went off through the swale of high grass and 
      curved around through the trees into the small hills of orchard bush.

      In the orchard bush they found a herd of impala, and leaving the car they 
      stalked one old ram with long, wide-spread horns and Macomber killed it 
      with a very creditable shot that knocked the buck down at a good two 
      hundred yards and sent the herd off bounding wildly and leaping over one 
      another’s backs in long, leg-drawn-up leaps as unbelievable and as 
      floating as those one makes sometimes in dreams.

      “That was a good shot,” Wilson said. “They’re a small target.”

      “Is it a worth-while head?” Macomber asked.

      “It’s excellent,” Wilson told him. “You shoot like that and you’ll have no 
      trouble.”

      “Do you think we’ll find buffalo tomorrow?”

      “There’s good chance of it. They feed out early in the morning and with 
      luck we may catch them in the open.”

      I’d like to clear away that lion business,” Macomber said.

      “It’s not very pleasant to have your wife see you do something like that.”

      I should think it would be even more unpleasant to do it, Wilson thought, 
      wife or no wife, or the talk about it having done it. But he said, “I 
      wouldn’t think about that any more. Any one could be upset by his first 
      lion. That’s all over.”

      But that night after dinner and a whisky and soda by the fire before going 
      to bed, as Francis Macomber lay on his cot with the mosquito bar over him 
      and listened to the night noises it was not all over. It was neither all 
      over nor was it beginning. It was there exactly as it happened with some 
      parts of it indelibly emphasized and he was miserably ashamed at it. But 
      more than shame he felt cold, hollow fear in him. The fear was still there 
      like a cold slimy hollow in all the emptiness where once his confidence 
      had been and it made him feel sick. It was still there with him now.

      It had started the night before when he had wakened and heard the lion 
      roaring somewhere up along the river. It was a deep sound and at the and 
      there were sort of coughing grunts that made him seem just outside the 
      tent, and when Francis Macomber woke in the night to hear it he was 
      afraid. He could hear his wife breathing quietly, asleep. There was no one 
      to tell he was afraid, nor to be afraid with him, and, lying alone, he did 
      not know the Somali proverb that says a brave man is always frightened 
      three times by a lion; when he first sees his track, when he first hears 
      him roar and when he first confronts him. Then while they were eating 
      breakfast by lantern light out in the dining tent, before the sun was up, 
      the lion roared again and Francis thought he was just at the edge of camp.

      “Sounds like an old-timer,” Robert Wilson said, looking up from his 
      kippers and coffee. “Listen to him cough.”

      “Is he very close?”

      “A mile or so up the stream.”

      “Will we see him?”

      “We’ll have a look.”

      “Does his roaring carry that far? It sounds as though he were right in 
      camp.”

      “Carries a hell of a long way,” said Robert Wilson. “It’s strange the way 
      it carries. Hope he’s a shootable cat. The boys said there was a very big 
      one about here.”

      “If I get a shot, where should I hit him,” Macomber asked. “to stop him?”

      “In the shoulders,” Wilson said. “In the neck if you can make it. Shoot 
      for bone. Break him down.”

      “I hope I can place it properly,” Macomber said.

      “You shoot very well, “Wilson told him. “Take your time. Make sure of him. 
      The first one in is the one that counts.”

      “What range will it be?”

      “Can’t tell. Lion has something to say about that. Won’t shoot unless it’s 
      close enough so you can make sure.”

      “At under a hundred yards?” Macomber asked.

      Wilson looked at him quickly.

      “Hundred’s about right. Might have to take him a bit under. Shouldn’t 
      chance a shot at much over that. A hundred’s a decent range. You can hit 
      him wherever you want at that. Here comes the Memsahib.”

      “Good morning,” she said. “Are we going after that lion?”

      “As soon as you deal with your breakfast,” Wilson said.

      “How are you feeling?”

      “Marvelous,” she said. “I’m very excited.”

      “I’ll just go and see that everything is ready,” Wilson went off. As he 
      left the lion roared again.   

      “Noisy beggar,” Wilson said. “We’ll put a stop to that.”

      “What’s the matter, Francis?” his wife asked him.

      “Nothing,” Macomber said.

      “Yes, there is,” she said. “What are you upset about?”

      “Nothing,” he said.

      “Tell me,” she looked at him. “Don’t you feel well?”

      “It’s that damned roaring,” she said. “It’s been going on all night, you 
      know.”

      “Why didn’t you wake me, she said. I’d love to heard it.

      “I’ve got to kill the damned thing,” Macomber said, miserably.

      “Well, that’s what you’re out here for, isn’t it?”

      “Yes. But I’m nervous. Hearing the thing roar gets on my nerves.”

      “Well then, as Wilson said, kill him and stop his roaring.”

      “Yes, darling,” said Francis Macomber. “It sounds easy, doesn’t it?”

      “You’re not afraid, are you?”

      “Of course not. But I’m nervous from hearing him roar all night.”

      “You’ll kill him marvelously,” she said. “I know you will. I’m awfully 
      anxious to see it.”

      “Finish your breakfast and we’ll be starting.”

      It’s not light yet,” she said. “This is a ridiculous hour.”

      Just then as the lion roared in a deep-chested moaning, suddenly guttural, 
      ascending vibration that seemed to shake the air and ended in a sigh and a 
      heavy, deep-chested grunt.

      “He sounds almost here,” Macomber’s wife said.

      “My God,” said Macomber. “I hate that damned noise.”

      “It’s very impressive.”

      “Impressive. It’s frightful.”

      Robert Wilson came up then carrying his short, ugly, shockingly big-bored 
      .505 Gibbs and grinning.

      “Come on,” he said. “Your gun-bearer has your Springfield and the big gun. 
      Everything’s in the car. Have you solids?”

      “Yes.”

      “I’m ready,” Mrs. Macomber said.

      “Must make him stop that racket,” Wilson said. “You got in front. The 
      Memsahib can sit back here with me.”

      They climbed into the motor car and, in the gray first day-light, moved 
      off up the river through the trees. Macomber opened the breech of his 
      rifle and saw had metal-cased bullets, shut the bolt and put the rifle on 
      safety. He saw his hand was trembling. He felt in his pocket for more 
      cartridges and moved his fingers over the cartridges in the loops of his 
      tunic front. He turned back to where Wilson sat in the rear seat of the 
      doorless, box-bodied motor car beside his wife, them both grinning  with  
      excitement, and Wilson leaned forward and whispered, “See the birds 
      dropping. Means the old boy has left his kill.”

      On the far bank of the stream Macomber  could see, above the trees, 
      vultures circling and plummeting down.

      “Chances are he’ll come to drink along here,” Wilson whispered. Before he 
      goes to lay up. Keep an eye out.”

      They were driving slowly along the high bank of the stream which here cut 
      deeply to its boulder-filled bed, and they wound in and out through big 
      trees as they drove. Macomber was watching the opposite bank when he felt 
      Wilson take hold of his arm. The car stopped.

      “There he is,” he heard the whisper. “Ahead and to the right. Get out and 
      take him. He’s marvelous lion.”

      Macomber saw the lion now. He was standing almost broadside, his great 
      head up and turned toward them. The early morning breeze that blew toward 
      them was just stirring his dark mane, and the lion looked huge, 
      silhouetted on the rise of bank in the gray morning light, his shoulders 
      heavy, his barrel of a body bulking smoothly.

      “How far is he?” asked Macomber, raising his rifle.

      “About seventy-five. Get out and take him.”

      “Why not shoot from where I am?”

      “You don’t shoot them from cars,” he heard Wilson saying in his car. “Get 
      out. He’s not going to stay there all day.”

      Macomber stepped out of the curved opening at the side of the front seat, 
      onto the step and down onto the ground. The lion still stood looking 
      majestically and coolly toward this object that his eyes only showed in 
      silhouette, bulking like some superrhino. There was no man smell carried 
      toward his and he watched the object, moving his great head a little from 
      side to side. Then watching the object, not afraid, but hesitating before 
      going down the bank to drink with such a thing opposite him, he saw a man 
      figure detach itself from it and he turned his heavy head and swung away 
      toward the cover for the trees as he heard a cracking crash and felt the 
      slam of a .30-06 220-grain solid bullet that bit his flank and ripped in 
      sudden hot scalding nausea through his stomach. He trotted, heavy, 
      big-footed, swinging wounded lull-bellied, the trees toward the tall grass 
      and cover, and the crash came again to go past him ripping the air apart. 
      Then it crashed again and he felt the blow as it hit his lower ribs and 
      ripped on through, blood sudden hot and frothy in his mouth, and he 
      galloped toward the high grass where he could crouch and not be seen and 
      make them bring the crashing thing close enough so he could make a rush 
      and get the man that held it.

      Macomber had not thought how the lion felt as he got out of the car. He 
      only knew his hands were shaking and as he walked away from the car it was 
      almost impossible for him to make his legs move. They were stiff in the 
      thighs, but he could feel the muscles fluttering. He raised the rifle, 
      sighted on the junction of the lion’s head and shoulders and pulled the 
      trigger. Nothing happened though he pulled until he thought his finger 
      would break. Then he knew he had the safety on and as he lowered the rifle 
      to move the safety over he moved another frozen pace forward, and the lion 
      seeing his silhouette now clear of the silhouette of the car, turned an 
      started off at a trot, and, as Macomber fired, he heard a whunk that meant 
      that the bullet was home;  but the lion kept on going. Macomber shot again 
      and every one saw the bullet throw a spout of dirt beyond the trotting 
      lion. He shot again, remembering to lower his aim, and they all heard the 
      bullet hit, and the lion went into a gallop and was in the tall grass 
      before he had the bolt pushed forward.

      Macomber stood there feeling sick at his stomach, his hands that held the 
      springfield still cocked, shaking, and his wife and Robert Wilson were 
      standing by him. Beside him too were the two gun-bearers chattering in 
      Wakamba.

      “I hit him,” Macomber said. “I hit him twice.”

      “You gut-shot him and you hit him somewhere forward,” Wilson said without 
      enthusiasm. The gun-bearers looked very grave. They were silent now.

      “You may have killed him” Wilson went on. “We’ll have to wait a while 
      before we go in to find out.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Let him get sick before we follow him up.”

      “Oh,” said Macomber.

      “He’s a hell of a fine lion,” Wilson said cheerfully. “He’s gotten into a 
      bad place though.”

      “Why is it bad?”

      “Can’t see him until you’re on him.”

      “Oh,” said Macomber.

      “Come on,” said Wilson. “The Memsahib can stay here in the car. We’ll go 
      to have a look at the blood spoor.”

      “Stay here, Margot,” Macomber said to his wife. His mouth was very dry and 
      it was hard for him to talk.

      “Why?” she asked.

      “Wilson says to.”

      “We’re going to have a look,” Wilson said. “You stay her. You can see even 
      better from here.”

      “All right.”

      Wilson spoke in Swahili to the driver. He nodded and said, “Yes, Bwana.”

      Then they went down the steep bank and across the stream, climbing over 
      and around the boulders and up the other bank, pulling up by some 
      projecting roots, and along it until they found where the lion had been 
      trotting when Macomber first shot. There was dark blood on the short grass 
      that the gun-bearers pointed out with grass stems, and that ran away 
      behind the river bank trees.

      “What do we do?” asked Macomber.

      “Not much choice,” said Wilson. “We can’t bring the car over. Bank’s too 
      steep. We’ll let him stiffen up a bit and then you and I’ll go in and have 
      a look for him.”

      “Can’t we set the grass on fire?” Macomber asked.

      “Too green.”

      “Can’t we send beaters?”

      Wilson looked at him appraisingly. “Of course we can,” he said. “But it’s 
      just a touch murderous. You see we know the lion’s wounded. You can drive 
      an unwounded lion—he’ll move on ahead of a noise—but a wounded lion’s 
      going to charge. You can’t see him until you’re right on him. He’ll make 
      himself perfectly flat in cover you wouldn’t think would hide a hare. You 
      can’t very well send boys in there to that sort of a show. Somebody bound 
      to get mauled.”  

      “What about the gun-bearers?”

      “Oh, they’ll go with us. It’s their shauri. You see, they signed on for 
      it. They don’t look too happy though, do they?”

      “I don’t want to go in there,” said Macomber. It was out before he knew 
      he’d said it.

      “Neither do I,” said Wilson very cheerily. “Really no choice though.” 
      Then, as an afterthought, he glanced at Macomber and saw suddenly how he 
      was trembling and the pitiful look on his face.

      “You don’t have to go in, of course,” he said. “that’s what I’m hired for, 
      you know. That’s why I’m so expensive.”

      “You mean you’d go in by yourself? Why not leave him there?”

      Robert Wilson, whose entire occupation had been with the lion ands the 
      problem he presented, and who had not been thinking about Macomber except 
      to note that he was rather windy, suddenly felt as though he had opened 
      the wrong door in a hotel and seen something shameful.

      “What do you mean?”

      “Why not just leave him?”

      “You mean pretend to ourselves he hasn’t been hit?”

      “No. Just drop it.

      “It isn’t done.”

      “Why not?”

      “For one thing, he’s certain to be suffering. For another, some one else 
      might run on to him.”

      “I see.”

      “But you don’t have to have anything to do with it.”

      “I’d like to,” Macomber said. “I’m just scared, you know.”

      “I’ll go ahead when we go in,” Wilson said, “with Kongoni tracking. You 
      keep behind me and a little to one side. Chances are we’ll hear him growl. 
      If we see him we’ll both shoot. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll keep you 
      backed up. As a matter of fact, you know, perhaps you’d better not go. It 
      might be much better. Why don’t you go over and join the Memsahib while I 
      just get it over with?”

      “No, I want to go.”

      “All right,” said Wilson. “But don’t go in if you don’t want to. This is 
      my shauri now, you know.”

      “I want to go,” said Macomber.

      They sat under a tree and smoked.

      “What to go back and speak to the Memsahib while we’re waiting?” Wilson 
      asked.

      “No.”

      “I’ll just step back and tell her to be patient.”

      “Good,” said Macomber. He sat there, sweating under his arms, his mouth 
      dry, his stomach hollow feeling, wanting to find courage to tell Wilson to 
      go on and finish off the lion without him. He could not know that Wilson 
      was furious because he had not noticed the state he was in earlier and 
      sent him back to his wife. While he sat there Wilson came up. “I have your 
      big gun,” he said. “Take it. We’ve given him time, I think. Come on.”

      Macomber took the big gun and Wilson said”

      “Keep behind me and about five yards to the right and do exactly as I tell 
      you.” Then he spoke in Swahili to the two gun-bearers who looked the 
      picture of gloom.

      “Let’s go,” he said.

      “Could I have a drink of water?” Macomber asked. Wilson spoke to the older 
      gun-bearer, who wore a canteen on his belt, and the man unbuckled it, 
      unscrewed the top and handed it to Macomber, who took it noticing how 
      heavy it seemed and how hairy and shoddy the felt covering was in his 
      hand. He raised it to drink and looked ahead at the high grass with the 
      flat-topped trees behind it. A breeze was blowing toward them and the 
      grass rippled gently in the wind. He looked at the gun-bearer and he could 
      see the gun-bearer was suffering too with fear.

      Thirty-five yards into the grass the big lion lay flattened out along the 
      ground. His ears where back and his only movement was a slight twitching 
      up and down of his long, black-tufted tail. He had turned at bay as soon 
      as he had reached this cover and he was sick with the wound through his 
      full belly, and weakening with the wound through his lungs that brought a 
      thin foamy red to his mouth each time he breathed. His flanks were wet and 
      hot and flies were on the little openings the solid bullets had made in 
      his tawny hide, and his big yellow eyes, narrowed with hate, looked 
      straight ahead, only blinking when the pain came as he breathed, and his 
      claws dug in the soft baked earth. All of him, pain, sickness, hatred and 
      all of his remaining strength, was tightening into an absolute 
      concentration for a rush. He could hear the men talking and he waited, 
      gathering all of himself into this preparation for a charge as soon as the 
      men would come into the grass. As he heard their voices his tail stiffened 
      to twitch up and down, and, as they came into the edge of the grass, he 
      made a coughing grunt and charged.

      Kongoni, the old gun-bearer, in the lead watching the blood spoor, Wilson 
      watching the grass for any movement, his big gun ready, the second 
      gun-bearer looking ahead and listening, Macomber close to Wilson, his 
      rifle cocked, they had just moved into the grass when Macomber hear the 
      blood-choked coughing grunt, and saw the swishing rush in the grass. The 
      next thing he knew he was running; running wildly, in panic in the open, 
      running toward the stream.

      He heard the ca-ra-wong! of Wilson’s big rifle, and again in a second 
      crashing carawong! and turning saw the lion, horrible-looking now, with 
      half his head seeming to be gone, crawling toward Wilson in the edge of 
      the tall grass while the red-faced man worked the belt on the short ugly 
      rifle and aimed carefully as another blasting carawong! came from the 
      muzzle, and the crawling, heavy, yellow bulk of the lion stiffened and the 
      huge, mutilated head slid forward and Macomber, standing by himself in the 
      clearing where he had run, holding a loaded rifle, while two black men and 
      a white man looked back at him in contempt, knew the lion was dead. He 
      came toward Wilson, his tallness all seeming a naked reproach, and Wilson 
      looked at him and said:

      “What to take pictures?”

      “No,” he said.

      That was all any one had said until they reached the motor car. Then 
      Wilson had said:

      “Hell of a fine lion. Boys will skin him out. We might as well stay here 
      in the shade.”

      Macomber’s wife had not looked at him nor he at her and he had sat by her 
      in the back seat with Wilson sitting in the front seat. Once he had 
      reached over and taken his wife’s hand without looking at her and she had 
      removed her hand from his. Looking across the stream to where the 
      gun-bearers were skinning out the lion he could see that she had been able 
      to see the whole thing. While they sat there his wife had reached forward 
      and put her hand  on Wilson’s shoulder. He turned and she had leaned 
      forward over the low seat and kissed him on the mouth.

      “Oh, I say,” said Wilson, going redder than his natural baked color.

      “Mr. Robert Wilson,” she said. “The beautiful red-faced Mr. Robert 
Wilson.”

      Then she sat down beside Macomber again and looked away across the stream 
      to where the lion lay, with uplifted, white-muscled, tendon-marked naked 
      forearms, and white bloating belly, as the black men fleshed away the 
      skin. Finally the gun-bearer brought the skin over, wet and heavy, and 
      climbed in behind with it, rolling it up before they got in, and the motor 
      car started. No one had said anything more until they were back in camp.

      That was the story of the lion. Macomber did not know how the lion had 
      felt before he started his rush, nor during it when the unbelievable smash 
      of the .505 with a muzzle velocity of two tons had hit him in the mouth, 
      nor what kept him coming after that, when the second ripping crash had 
      smashed his hind quarters and he had come crawling on toward the crashing, 
      blasting thing that had destroyed him. Wilson knew something about it and 
      only expressed it by saying, “Damned fine lion,” but Macomber did not know 
      how Wilson felt abut things either. He did not know how his wife felt 
      except that she was through with him.

      His wife had been through with him before but it never lasted. He was very 
      wealthy, and would be much wealthier, and he knew she would not leave him 
      ever now. That was one of the few things that he really knew. He knew 
      about that, about  motorcycles—that was earliest—about motor cars, about 
      duck-shooting, about fishing, trout, salmon and big-sea, about sex in 
      books, many books, too many books, about all court games, about dogs, not 
      much about horses, about hanging on to his money, abut most of the other 
      things his world dealt in, and about his wife not leaving him. His wife 
      had been a great beauty and she was still a great beauty in Africa, but 
      she was not a great enough beauty any more at home to be able to leave him 
      and better herself and she knew it and he knew it. She had missed the 
      chance to leave him and he knew it. If he had been better with women she 
      would probably have started to worry about him getting another new, 
      beautiful wife; but she knew too much about him to worry about him either. 
      Also he had always had a great tolerance which seemed the nicest thing 
      about him if it were not the most sinister.

      All in all they were known as a comparatively happily married couple, one 
      of those whose disruption is often rumored but never occurs, and as the 
      society columnist put it, they were adding more than a spice of adventure 
      to their much envied and ever enduring romance by a Safari in what was 
      known as Darkest Africa until the Martin Johnsons lighted it on so many 
      silver screens where they were pursuing Old Simba the lion, the buffalo, 
      Tembo the elephant and as well collecting specimens for the Museum of 
      Natural History. This same columnist had reported them on the verge as 
      least three times in the past and they had been. But they always made it 
      up. They had a sound basis of union. Margot was too beautiful for Macomber 
      to divorce her and Macomber had too much money for Margot ever to leave 
      him.

      It was now about three o’clock in the morning and Francis macomber, who 
      had been asleep a little while after he had stopped thinking about the 
      lion, wakened and then slept again, woke suddenly, frightened in a dream 
      of the bloody-headed lion standing over him, and listening while his heart 
      pounded, he realized that his wife was not in the other cot in the tent. 
      He lay awake with the knowledge of two hours.

      At the end of that time his wife came into the tent, lifted her mosquito 
      bar and crawled cozily into bed.

      “Where have you been?” Macomber asked in the darkness.

      “Hello,” she said. “Are you awake?”

      “Where have you been?”

      “I just went out to get a breath of air.”

      “You did, like hell.”

      “What do you want me to say, darling?”

      “Where have you been?”

      “Out to get a breath of air.”

      “That’s a new name for it. You are a bitch.”

      “Well, you’re coward.”

      “All right,” he said. “What of it?”

      “Nothing as far as I’m concerned. But please let’s not talk, darling, 
      because I’m very sleepy.”

      “You think that I’ll take anything.”

      “I know you will, sweet.”

      “Well, I won’t.”

      “Please, darling, let’s not talk. I’m so very sleepy.”

      “There wasn’t going to be any of that. You promised there wouldn’t be.”

      “Well, there is now,” she said sweetly.

      “You said if we made this trip that there would be none of that. You 
      promised.”

      “Yes, darling. That’s the way I meant it to be. But the trip was spoiled 
      yesterday. We don’t have to talk about it, do we?”

      “You don’t wait long when you have an advantage, do you?”

      “Please let’s not talk. I”m so sleepy, darling.”

      “I’m going to talk.”

      “Don’t mind me then, because I’m going to sleep.” And she did.

      At breakfast they were all three at the table before daylight and Francis 
      Macomber found that, of all the many men that he had hated, he hated 
      Robert Wilson the most.

      “Sleep well?” Wilson asked in his throaty voice, filling a pipe.

      “Did you?”

      “Topping,” the white hunter told him.

      You bastard, thought Macomber, you insolent bastard.

      So she woke him when she came in, Wilson thought, looking at them both 
      with his flat, cold eyes. Well, why doesn’t he keep his wife where she 
      belongs?” What does he think I am, a bloody plaster saint? Let him keep 
      her where she belongs. It’s his own fault.

      “Do you think we’ll find buffalo?” Margot asked, pushing away a dish of 
      apricots.”

      “Chance of it,” Wilson said and smiled at her. “Why don’t you stay in 
      camp?”

      “Not for anything,” she told him.

      “Why not order her to stay in camp?” Wilson said to Macomber.

      “Your order her,” said Macomber coldly.

      “Let’s not have any ordering, nor,” turning to Macomber, “any silliness, 
      Francis,” Margot said quite pleasantly.

      “Are you ready to start?” Macomber asked.

      “Any time,” Wilson told him. “Do you want the Memsahib to go?”

      “Does it make any difference whether I do or not?”

      The hell with it, thought Robert Wilson. The utter complete hell with it. 
      So this is what it’s going to be like. Well, this is what it’s going to be 
      like, then.

      “Makes no difference,” he said.

      “You’re sure you wouldn’t like to stay in camp with her yourself and let 
      me go out and hunt the buffalo? Macomber asked.

      “Can’t do that,” said Wilson. “Wouldn’t talk rot if I were you.”

      “I’m not talking rot. I’m disgusted.”

      “Bad word, disgusted.”

      “Francis, will you please try to speak sensibly!” his wife said.

      “I speak too damned sensibly,” Macomber said. “Did you ever eat such 
      filthy food?”

      “Something wrong with the food?” asked Wilson quietly.

      “No more than with everything else.”

      “I’d pull yourself together, laddybuck,” Wilson said very quietly. 
      “There’s a boy waits at table that understands a little English.”

      “The hell with him.”

      Wilson stood up and puffing on his pipe strolled away, speaking a few 
      words in Swahili to one of the gun-bearers who was standing waiting for 
      him. Macomber and his wife sat on at the table. He was staring at his 
      coffee cup.

      “If you make a scene I’ll leave you, darling,” Margot said quietly.

      “No, you won’t.”

      “You can try it and see.”

      “You won’t leave me.”

      “No,” she said. “I won’t leave you and you’ll behave yourself.”

      “Behave myself? That’s a way to talk. Behave myself.”

      “Yes. Behave yourself.”

      “Why don’t you try behaving?”

      “I’ve tried it so long. So very long.”

      “I hate that red-faced swine,” Macomber said. “I loathe the sight of him.”

      “He’s really very nice.”

      “Oh, shut up,” Macomber almost shouted. Just then the car came up and 
      stopped in front of the dining tent and the driver and the two gun-bearers 
      got out. Wilson walked over and looked at the husband and wife sitting 
      there at the table.

      “Going, shooting?” he asked.

      “Yes,” said Macomber, standing up. “Yes.”

      “Better bring a woolly. It will be cool in the car,” Wilson said.

      “I’ll get my leather jacket,” Margot said.

      “The boy has it,” Wilson told her. He climbed into the front with the 
      driver and Francis Macomber and his wife sat, not speaking, in the back 
      seat.

      Hope the silly beggar doesn’t take a notion to blow the back of my head 
      off, Wilson thought to himself. Women are a nuisance on safari.

      The car was grinding down to cross the river at a pebbly ford in the gray 
      daylight and then climbed, angling up the steep bank, where Wilson had 
      ordered a way shoveled out the day before so they could reach the parklike 
      wooded rolling country on the far side.

      It was a good morning, Wilson thought. There was a heavy dew and as the 
      wheels went through the grass and low bushes he could smell the odor of 
      the crushed fronds. It was an odor like verbena and he liked this early 
      morning smell of the dew, the crushed bracken and the look of the tree 
      trunks showing black through the early morning mist, as the car made its 
      way through the untracked, parklike country. He had put the two in the 
      back seat out of his mind now and was thinking about buffalo. The buffalo 
      that he was after stayed in the daytime in a thick swamp where it was 
      impossible to get a shot, but in the night they fed out into an open 
      stretch of country and if he could come between them and their swamp with 
      the car, Macomber would have a good chance at them in the open. He did not 
      want to hunt buff or anything else with Macomber at all, but he was a 
      professional hunter and he had hunted with some rare ones in his time. If 
      they got buff today there would only be rhino to come and the poor man 
      would have gone through his dangerous game and things might pick up. He’d 
      have nothing more to do with the woman and Macomber would get over that 
      too. He must have gone through plenty of that before by the look of 
      things. Poor beggar. He must have a way of getting over it. Well, it was 
      the poor sod’s own bloody fault.

      He, Robert Wilson, carried a double size cot on safari to accommodate any 
      windfalls he might receive. He had hunted for a certain clientele, the 
      international, fast, sporting set, where the women did not feel they were 
      getting their money’s worth unless they had shared that cot with the white 
      hunter. He despised them when he was away from them although he liked some 
      of them well enough at the time, but he made his living by them; and their 
      standards were his standards as long as they were hiring him.

      They were his standards in all except the shooting. He had his own 
      standards about the killing and they could live up to them or get some one 
      else to hunt them. He knew, too, that they all respected him for this. 
      This Macomber was an odd one though. Damned if he wasn’t. Now the wife. 
      Well, the wife. Yes, the wife. Hm, the wife. Well he’s dropped all that. 
      He looked around at them. Macomber sat grim and furious. Margot smiled at 
      him. She looked younger today, more innocent and fresher and not so 
      professionally beautiful. What’s in her heart God knows, Wilson thought. 
      She hadn’t talked much last night. At that it was a pleasure to see her.

      The motor car climbed up a slight rise and went on through the trees and 
      then out into a grassy prairie-like opening and kept in the shelter of the 
      trees along the edge, the driver going slowly and Wilson looking carefully 
      out across the prairie and all along its far side. He stopped the car and 
      studied the opening with his field glasses. Then he motioned to the driver 
      to go on and the car moved slowly along, the driver avoiding wart-hog 
      holes and driving around the mud castles ants had built. Then, looking 
      across the opening, Wilson suddenly turned and said,

      “By God, there they are!”

      And looking where he pointed, while the car jumped forward and Wilson 
      spoke in rapid Swahili to the driver, Macomber saw three huge, black 
      animals looking almost cylindrical in their long heaviness, like big black 
      tank cars, moving at a gallop across the far edge of the open prairie. 
      They moved at a stiff-necked, stiff bodied gallop and he could see the 
      upswept wide black horns on their heads as they galloped heads out; the 
      heads not moving.

      “They’re three old bulls,” Wilson said. “We’ll cut them off before they 
      get to the swamp.”

      The car was going a wild forty-five miles an hour across the open and as 
      Macomber watched, the buffalo got bigger and bigger until he could see the 
      gray, hairless, scabby look of one huge bull and how his neck was a part 
      of his shoulders and the shiny black of his horns as he galloped a little 
      behind the others that were strung out in that steady plunging gait; and 
      then, the car swaying as though it had just jumped a road, they drew up 
      close ands he could see the plunging hugeness of the bull, and the dust in 
      his sparsely haired hide, the wide boss of horn and his outstretched, 
      wide-nostrilled muzzle, and he was raising his rifle when Wilson shouted, 
      “Not from the car, you fool!” and he had no fear, only hatred of Wilson, 
      while the brakes clamped on and the car skidded, plowing sideways to an 
      almost stop and Wilson was out on one side and he on the other, stumbling 
      as his feet hit the still speeding-by of the earth, and then he was 
      shooting at the bull as he moved away, hearing the bullets whunk into him, 
      emptying his riffle at him as he moved steadily away, finally remembering 
      to get his shots forward into the shoulder, and as he fumbled to reload, 
      he saw the bull was down. Down on his knees, his big head tossing, and 
      seeing the other two still galloping he shot at the leader and hit him. He 
      shot again and missed and he heard the carawonging roar as Wilson shot and 
      saw the leading bull slide forward onto his nose.

      “Get that other,” Wilson said. “Now you’re shooting!”

      But the other bull was moving steadily at the same gallop and he missed, 
      throwing a spout of dirt, and Wilson missed and the dust rose in a cloud 
      and Wilson shouted, “Come on.” He’s too far!” and grabbed his arm and they 
      were in the car again, Macomber and Wilson hanging on the sides and 
      rocketing swayingly over the uneven ground, drawing up on the steady, 
      plunging, heavy-necked, straight-moving gallop of the bull.

      They were behind him and Macomber was filling his rifle, dropping shells 
      onto the ground, jamming it, clearing the jam, then they were almost up 
      with the bull when Wilson yelled “Stop,” and the car skidded so that it 
      almost swung over and Macomber fell forward as he aimed into the 
      galloping, rounded black back, aimed and shot again, then again, then 
      again, and the bullets, all of them hitting, had no effect on the buffalo 
      that he could see. Then Wilson shot, the roar deafening him, and he could 
      see the bull stagger. Macomber shot again, aiming carefully, and down he 
      came, onto his knees.

      “All right,” Wilson said. “Nice work. That’s the three.”

      Macomber felt a drunken elation.

      “How many times did you shoot?” he asked.

      “Just three,” Wilson said. “You killed the first bull. The biggest one. I 
      helped you finish the other two. Afraid they might have got into cover. 
      You had them killed. I was just mopping up a little. You shot damn well.

      “Let’s go to the car,” said Macomber. “I want a drink.”

      “Got to finish off that buff first,” Wilson told him. The buffalo was on 
      his knees and he jerked his head furiously and bellowed in pig-eyed, 
      roaring rage as they came toward him.

      “Watch he doesn’t get up,” Wilson said. Then, “Get a little broadside and 
      take him in the neck just behind the ear.”

      Macomber aimed carefully at the center of the huge, jerking, rage-driven 
      neck and shot. At the shot the head dropped forward.

      “That does it,” said Wilson. “Got the spine. They’re a hell of a 
      fine-looking thing, aren’t they?”

      “Let’s get the drink,” said Macomber. In his life he had never felt so 
      good.

      “In the car Macomber’s wife sat very white-faced. “You were marvelous, 
      darling,” she said to Macomber. “What a ride.”

      “Was it rough?” Wilson asked.

      “It was frightful. I’ve never been more frightened in my life.”

      “Let’s all have a drink,” Macomber said.

      “By all means,” said Wilson. “Give it to the Memsahib.” She drank the neat 
      whisky from the flask and  shuddered a little when she swallowed. She 
      handed the flask to Macomber who handed it to Wilson.

      “It was frightfully exciting,” she said. “It’s given me a dreadful 
      headache. I didn’t know you were allowed to shoot them from cars though.”

      “No one shot from cars,” said Wilson coldly.

      “I mean chase them from cars.”

      “Wouldn’t ordinarily,” Wilson said. “Seemed sporting enough to me though 
      while we were doing it. Taking more chance driving that way across the 
      plain full of holes and one thing and another than hunting on foot. 
      Buffalo could have charged us each time we shot if he liked.  Gave him 
      every chance. Wouldn’t mention it to anyone though. It’s illegal if that’s 
      what you mean.”

      “It seemed very unfair to me,” Margot said, “chasing those big helpless 
      things in a motor car.”

      “Did it?” said Wilson.

      “What would happen if they heard about it in Nairobi?”

      “I’d lose my license for one thing. Other unpleasantnesses,” Wilson said, 
      taking a drink from the flask. “I’d be out of business.”

      “Really?”

      “Well,” said Macomber, and he smiled for the first time all day.      “Now 
      she has something on you.”

      “You have such a pretty way of putting things, Francis,” Margot Macomber 
      said. Wilson looked at them both. If a four-letter man marries a 
      five-letter woman, he was thinking, what number of letters would their 
      children be? What he said was, “We lost a gun-bearer. Did you notice it?”

      “My God, no,” Macomber said.

      “Here he comes,” Wilson said. “He’s all right. He must have fallen off 
      when we left the first bull.”

      Approaching them was the middle-aged gun-bearer, limping along in his 
      knitted cap, khaki tunic, shorts and rubber sandals, gloomy-faced and 
      disgusted looking. As he came up he called out to Wilson in Swahili and 
      they all saw the change in the white hunter’s face.

      “What does he say?” asked Margot.

      “He says the first bull got up and went into the bush,” Wilson said with 
      no expression in his voice.

      “Oh,” said Macomber blankly.

      “Then it’s going to be just like the lion,” said Margot, full of 
      anticipation.

      “It’s not going to be a dammed bit like the lion,” Wilson told her. “Did 
      you want another drink Macomber?”

      “Thanks, yes, Macomber said. He expected the feeling he had had about the 
      lion to come back but it did not. For the first time in his life he rally 
      felt wholly without fear. Instead of fear he had a feeling of definite 
      elation.

      “We’ll go and have a look at the second bull,” Wilson said. “I’ll tell the 
      driver to put the car in the shade.”

      “What are you going to do?” asked Margaret Macomber.

      “Take a look at the buff,” Wilson said.

      “I’ll come.”

      “Come along.”

      The three of them walked over to where the second buffalo bulked blackly 
      in the open, head forward on the grass, the massive horns swung wide.

      “He’s a very good head,” Wilson said. “That’s close to a fifty-inch 
      spread.”

      Macomber was looking at him with delight.

      “He’s hateful looking,” said Margot. “Can‘t we go into the shade?”

      “Of course,” Wilson said. “Look,” he said to Macomber, and pointed. “See 
      that patch of bush?”

      “Yes.”

      “That’s where the first bull went in. The gun-bearer said when he fell off 
      the bull was down. He was watching us helling along and the other two buff 
      galloping. When he looked up there was the bull up and looking at him. 
      Gun-bearer ran like hell and the bull went off slowly into the bush.”

      “Can we go in after him now?” asked Macomber eagerly.

      Wilson looked at him appraisingly. Damned if this isn’t a strange one, he 
      thought. Yesterday he’s scared sick and today he’s a ruddy fire eater.

      “No, we’ll give him a while.”

      “Let’s please go into the shade,” Margot said. Her face was white and she 
      looked ill.

      They made their way to the car where it stood under a single, 
      wide-spreading tree and all climbed in.

      “Chances are he’s dead in there,” Wilson remarked. “After a little we’ll 
      have a look.”

      Macomber felt a wild unreasonable happiness that he had never known 
before.

      “By God, that was a chase,”  he said. “I’ve never felt any such feeling. 
      Wasn’t it marvelous, Margot?”

      “I hated it.”

      “Why?”

      “I hated it,” she said bitterly. “I loathed it.”

      “You know I don’t think I’d ever be afraid of anything again,” Macomber 
      said to Wilson. “Something happened in me after we first saw the buff and 
      started after him. Like a dam bursting. It was pure excitement.”

      “Cleans out your liver,” said Wilson.” Damn funny things happen to 
people.”

      Macomber’s face was shining. “You know something did happen to me,” he 
      said. “I feel absolutely different.”

      His wife said nothing and eyed him strangely. She was sitting far back in 
      the seat and Macomber was sitting forward talking to Wilson who turned 
      sideways talking over the back of the front seat.

      “You know, I’d like to try another lion,” Macomber said. “I’m really not 
      afraid of them now. After all, what can they do to you?”

      “That’s it,” said Wilson. “Worst one can do is kill you. How does it go? 
      Shakespeare. Damned good. See if I can remember. Oh, damned good. Used to 
      quote it to myself at one time. Let’s see. ‘By my troth, I care not; a man 
      can die but once; we owe God a death and let it go which way it will he 
      that dies this year is quit for the next.’ Damned fine, oh?”   

      He was very embarrassed, having brought out this thing he had lived by, 
      but he had seen men come of age before and it always moved him. It was not 
      a matter of their twenty-first birthday.

      It had taken a strange chance of hunting, a sudden precipitation into 
      action without opportunity for worrying beforehand, to bring this about 
      with Macomber, but regardless of how it had happened it had most certainly 
      happened. Look at the beggar now, Wilson thought. It’s that some of them 
      stay little boys so long, Wilson thought. Sometimes all their lives. Their 
      figures stay boyish when they’re fifty. The great American boy-men. Damned 
      strange people. But he like this Macomber now. Damned strange fellow. 
      Probably meant the end of cuckoldry too. Well, that would be a damned good 
      thing. Damned good thing. Beggar had probably been afraid all his life. 
      Don’t know what started it. But over now. Hadn’t had time to be afraid 
      with the buff. That and being angry too. Motor car too. Motor cars made it 
      familiar. Be a damn fire eater now. He’d seen it in the war work the same 
      way. More of a change than any loss of virginity. Fear gone like an 
      operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made 
      him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.

      From the far corner of the seat Margaret Macomber looked at the two of 
      them. There was no change in Wilson. She saw Wilson as she had seen him 
      the day before when she had first realized what his great talent was. But 
      she saw the change in Francis Macomber now.

      “Do you have that feeling of happiness about what’s going to happen?” 
      Macomber asked, still exploring his new wealth.

      “You’re not supposed to mention it,” Wilson said, looking in the other’s 
      face. “Much more fashionable to say you’re scared. Mind you, you’ll be 
      scared too, plenty of times.”

      But you have a feeling of happiness about action to come?”

      “Yes,” said Wilson. “There’s that. Doesn’t do to talk too much about all 
      this. Talk the whole thing away. No pleasure in anything if you mouth it 
      up too much.

      “You’re both talking rot,” said Margot. “Just because you’ve chased some 
      helpless animals in a motor car you talk like heroes.

      “Sorry,” said Wilson. “I have been gassing too much.” She’s worried about 
      it already, he thought.

      “If you don’t know what we’re talking about why not keep out of it?” 
      Macomber asked his wife.

      “You’ve gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly,” his wife said 
      contemptuously, but her contempt was not secure. She was very afraid of 
      something.

      Macomber laughed, a very natural hearty laugh. “You know I have,” he said. 
      “I really have.”

      “Isn’t it sort of late?” Margot said bitterly. Because she had done the 
      best she could for many years back and the way they were together now was 
      no one person’s fault.

      “Not for me,” said Macomber.

      Margot said nothing but sat back in the corner of the seat.

      “Do you think we’ve given him time enough?” Macomber asked Wilson 
      cheerfully.

      “We might have a look,” Wilson said. “Have you any solids left?”

      “The gun-bearer has some.”

      Wilson called in Swahili and the older gun-bearer, who was skinning out 
      one of the heads, straightened up, pulled a box of solids out of his 
      pocket end brought them over to Macomber, who filled his magazine and put 
      the remaining shells in his pocket.

      “You might as well shoot the Springfield,” Wilson said. “You’re used to 
      it. We’ll leave the Mannlicher in the car with the Memsahib.  Your 
      gun-bearer can carry your heavy gun. I’ve this damned cannon. Now let me 
      tell you about them.” He had saved this until the last because he did not 
      want to worry Macomber. “When a buff comes he comes with his head high and 
      thrust straight out. The boss of the horns covers any sort of a brain 
      shot. The only shot is straight into the nose. The only other shot is into 
      his chest or, if you’re to one side, into the neck or the shoulders. After 
      they’ve been hit once they take a hell of a lot of killing. Don’t try 
      anything fancy. Take the easiest shot there is. They’ve finished skinning 
      out that head now. Should we get started.?”

      He called to the gun-bearers, who came up wiping their hands, and the 
      older one got into the back.

      “I’ll only take Kongoni,” Wilson said. “The other can watch to keep the 
      birds away.”

      As the car moved slowly across the open space toward the island of brushy 
      trees that ran in a tongue of foliage along a dry water course that cut 
      the open swale, Macomber felt his heart pounding and his mouth was dry 
      again, but it was excitement, not fear.

      “Here’s where he went in,” Wilson said. Then to the gun-bearer in Swahili, 
      “Take the blood spoor.”

      The car was parallel to the patch of bush. Macomber, Wilson and the 
      gun-bearer got down. Macomber, looking back, saw his wife, with the rifle 
      by her side, looking at him. He waved to her and she did not wave back.

      The brush was very thick ahead and the ground was dry. The middle-aged 
      gun-bearer was sweating heavily and Wilson had his hat down over his eyes 
      and his red neck showed just ahead of Macomber. Suddenly the gun-bearer 
      said something in Swahili to Wilson and ran forward.

      “He’s dead in there,” Wilson said. “Good work,” and he turned to grip. 
      Macomber’s hand and as they shook hands, grinning at each other, the 
      gun-bearer shouted wildly and they saw him coming out of the bush 
      sideways, fast as a crab, and the bull coming, nose out, mouth tight 
      closed, blood dripping, missive head straight out, coming in a charge, his 
      little pig eyes bloodshot as he looked at them. Wilson who was ahead was 
      kneeling shooting, and Macomber, as he fired, unhearing his shot in the 
      roaring of Wilson’s gun, saw fragments like slate burst from the huge boss 
      of the horns, and the head jerked, he shot again at the wide nostrils and 
      saw the horns jolt again and fragment fly, and he did not see Wilson now 
      and, aiming carefully, shot again with the buffalo’s huge bulk almost on 
      him and his rifle almost level with the on-coming head, nose out, and he 
      could see the little wicked eyes and the head started to lower and he felt 
      a sudden white-hot, blinding flash explode inside his head and that was 
      all he ever felt.

      Wilson had ducked to one side to get in a shoulder shot. Macomber had 
      stood solid and shot for the nose, shooting a touch high each time and 
      hitting the heavy horns, splintering and chipping them like hitting a 
      slate roof, and Mrs. Macomber, in the car, had shot at the buffalo with 
      the 6.5 Mannlicher as it seemed about to gore Macomber and had hit her 
      husband about two inches up and a little to one side of the base of his 
      skull.

      Francis Macomber lay now, face down, not two yards from where the buffalo 
      lay on his side and his wife knelt over him with Wilson beside her.

      “I wouldn’t turn him over,” Wilson said.

      The woman was crying hysterically.

      “I’d get back in the car,” Wilson said. “Where’s the rifle?”

      She shook her head, her face contorted. The gun-bearer picked up the 
rifle.

      Leave it as it is,” said Wilson. Then, “Go get Abdulla so that he may 
      witness the manner of the accident.”

      He knelt down, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and spread it over 
      Francis Macomber’s crew-cropped head where it lay. The blood sank into the 
      dry, loose earth.

      Wilson stood up and saw the buffalo on his side, his legs out, his 
      thinly-haired belly crawling with ticks. “Hell of a good bull,” his brain 
      registered automatically. “A good fifty inches, or better. Better.” He 
      called to the driver and told him to spread a blanket over the body and 
      stay by it. Then he walked over to the motor car where the woman sat 
      crying in the corner.

      “That was a pretty thing to do,” he said in a toneless voice. “He would 
      have left you too.”

      “Stop it,” she said.

      “Of course it’s an accident,” he said. “I know that.”

      “Stop it,” she said.

      “Don’t worry,” he said. “There will be a certain amount of unpleasantness 
      but I will have some photographs taken that will be very useful at the 
      inquest. There’s the testimony of the gun-bearer and the driver too. 
      You’re perfectly all right.”

      “Stop it,” she said.

      “There’s a hell of a lot to be done,” he said. “And I’ll have to send a 
      truck off to the lake to wireless for a plane to take the three of us into 
      Nairobi. Why didn’t you poison him? That’s what they do in England.”

      “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it,” the woman cried.

      Wilson looked at her with his flat blue eyes.

      “I’m through now,” he said. “I was a little angry. I’d begun to like your 
      husband.”

      “Oh, please stop it,” she said. “Please, please stop it.”

      That’s better,” Wilson said. “Please is much better. Now I’ll stop.”
      

 		Hills Like White Elephants

			Ernest Hemingway

The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there 
was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the 
sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the 
building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open 
door into the bar, to keep out flies. The American and the girl with him sat at 
a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express from 
Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two 
minutes and went to Madrid.
'What should we drink?' the girl asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on 
the table.
'It's pretty hot,' the man said.
'Let's drink beer.'
'Dos cervezas,' the man said into the curtain.
'Big ones?' a woman asked from the doorway.
'Yes. Two big ones.'
The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads 
and the beer glass on the table and looked at the man and the girl. The girl was 
looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was 
brown and dry.
'They look like white elephants,' she said.
'I've never seen one,' the man drank his beer.
'No, you wouldn't have.'
'I might have,' the man said. 'Just because you say I wouldn't have doesn't 
prove anything.'
The girl looked at the bead curtain. 'They've painted something on it,' she 
said. 'What does it say?'
'Anis del Toro. It's a drink.'
'Could we try it?'
The man called 'Listen' through the curtain. The woman came out from the bar.
'Four reales.' 'We want two Anis del Toro.'
'With water?'
'Do you want it with water?'
'I don't know,' the girl said. 'Is it good with water?'
'It's all right.'
'You want them with water?' asked the woman.
'Yes, with water.'
'It tastes like liquorice,' the girl said and put the glass down.
'That's the way with everything.'
'Yes,' said the girl. 'Everything tastes of liquorice. Especially all the things 
you've waited so long for, like absinthe.'
'Oh, cut it out.'
'You started it,' the girl said. 'I was being amused. I was having a fine time.'
'Well, let's try and have a fine time.'
'All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. 
Wasn't that bright?'
'That was bright.'
'I wanted to try this new drink. That's all we do, isn't it - look at things and 
try new drinks?'
'I guess so.'
The girl looked across at the hills.
'They're lovely hills,' she said. 'They don't really look like white elephants. 
I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.'
'Should we have another drink?'
'All right.'
The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.
'The beer's nice and cool,' the man said.
'It's lovely,' the girl said.
'It's really an awfully simple operation, Jig,' the man said. 'It's not really 
an operation at all.'
The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
'I know you wouldn't mind it, Jig. It's really not anything. It's just to let 
the air in.'
The girl did not say anything.
'I'll go with you and I'll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in 
and then it's all perfectly natural.'
'Then what will we do afterwards?'
'We'll be fine afterwards. Just like we were before.'
'What makes you think so?'
'That's the only thing that bothers us. It's the only thing that's made us 
unhappy.'
The girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two of 
the strings of beads.
'And you think then we'll be all right and be happy.'
'I know we will. Yon don't have to be afraid. I've known lots of people that 
have done it.'
'So have I,' said the girl. 'And afterwards they were all so happy.'
'Well,' the man said, 'if you don't want to you don't have to. I wouldn't have 
you do it if you didn't want to. But I know it's perfectly simple.'
'And you really want to?'
'I think it's the best thing to do. But I don't want you to do it if you don't 
really want to.'
'And if I do it you'll be happy and things will be like they were and you'll 
love me?'
'I love you now. You know I love you.'
'I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like 
white elephants, and you'll like it?'
'I'll love it. I love it now but I just can't think about it. You know how I get 
when I worry.'
'If I do it you won't ever worry?'
'I won't worry about that because it's perfectly simple.'
'Then I'll do it. Because I don't care about me.'
'What do you mean?'
'I don't care about me.'
'Well, I care about you.'
'Oh, yes. But I don't care about me. And I'll do it and then everything will be 
fine.'
'I don't want you to do it if you feel that way.'
The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other 
side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, 
beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field 
of grain and she saw the river through the trees.
'And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every 
day we make it more impossible.'
'What did you say?'
'I said we could have everything.'
'We can have everything.'
'No, we can't.'
'We can have the whole world.'
'No, we can't.'
'We can go everywhere.'
'No, we can't. It isn't ours any more.'
'It's ours.'
'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.'
'But they haven't taken it away.'
'We'll wait and see.'
'Come on back in the shade,' he said. 'You mustn't feel that way.'
'I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.'
'I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to do -'
'Nor that isn't good for me,' she said. 'I know. Could we have another beer?'
'All right. But you've got to realize - '
'I realize,' the girl said. 'Can't we maybe stop talking?'
They sat down at the table and the girl looked across at the hills on the dry 
side of the valley and the man looked at her and at the table.
'You've got to realize,' he said, ' that I don't want you to do it if you don't 
want to. I'm perfectly willing to go through with it if it means anything to 
you.'
'Doesn't it mean anything to you? We could get along.'
'Of course it does. But I don't want anybody but you. I don't want anyone else. 
And I know it's perfectly simple.'
'Yes, you know it's perfectly simple.'
'It's all right for you to say that, but I do know it.'
'Would you do something for me now?'
'I'd do anything for you.'
'Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?'
He did not say anything but looked at the bags against the wall of the station. 
There were labels on them from all the hotels where they had spent nights.
'But I don't want you to,' he said, 'I don't care anything about it.'
'I'll scream,' the girl said.
The woman came out through the curtains with two glasses of beer and put them 
down on the damp felt pads. 'The train comes in five minutes,' she said.
'What did she say?' asked the girl.
'That the train is coming in five minutes.'
The girl smiled brightly at the woman, to thank her.
'I'd better take the bags over to the other side of the station,' the man said. 
She smiled at him.
'All right. Then come back and we'll finish the beer.'
He picked up the two heavy bags and carried them around the station to the other 
tracks. He looked up the tracks but could not see the train. Coming back, he 
walked through the bar-room, where people waiting for the train were drinking. 
He drank an Anis at the bar and looked at the people. They were all waiting 
reasonably for the train. He went out through the bead curtain. She was sitting 
at the table and smiled at him.
'Do you feel better?' he asked.
'I feel fine,' she said. 'There's nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.' 
Tornar. 

The Cask Of Amontillado                                      1846 
                            THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO 
                               by Edgar Allan Poe 
  THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, 
but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge. You, who so well 
know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that gave 
utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a 
point definitely, settled --but the very definitiveness with which 
it was resolved precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish but 
punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution 
overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger 
fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. 
  It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given 
Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my in to 
smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my to smile now was at 
the thought of his immolation. 
  He had a weak point --this Fortunato --although in other regards 
he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his 
connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. 
For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and 
opportunity, to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian 
millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, 
was a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this 
respect I did not differ from him materially; --I was skilful in the 
Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could. 
  It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the 
carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with 
excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore 
motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head 
was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see 
him that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. 
  I said to him --"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How 
remarkably well you are looking to-day. But I have received a pipe 
of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts." 
  "How?" said he. "Amontillado, A pipe? Impossible! And in the 
middle of the carnival!" 
  "I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the 
full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You 
were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain." 
  "Amontillado!" 
  "I have my doubts." 
  "Amontillado!" 
  "And I must satisfy them." 
  "Amontillado!" 
  "As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchresi. If any one has a 
critical turn it is he. He will tell me --" 
  "Luchresi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry." 
  "And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for 
your own. 
  "Come, let us go." 
  "Whither?" 
  "To your vaults." 
  "My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I 
perceive you have an engagement. Luchresi--" 
  "I have no engagement; --come." 
  "My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with 
which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably 
damp. They are encrusted with nitre." 
  "Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! 
You have been imposed upon. And as for Luchresi, he cannot distinguish 
Sherry from Amontillado." 
  Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm; and putting on 
a mask of black silk and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, 
I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. 
  There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry 
in honour of the time. I had told them that I should not return 
until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from 
the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure 
their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was 
turned. 
  I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to 
Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway 
that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding 
staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at 
length to the foot of the descent, and stood together upon the damp 
ground of the catacombs of the Montresors. 
  The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap 
jingled as he strode. 
  "The pipe," he said. 
  "It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white web-work which 
gleams from these cavern walls." 
  He turned towards me, and looked into my eves with two filmy orbs 
that distilled the rheum of intoxication. 
  "Nitre?" he asked, at length. 
  "Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?" 
  "Ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! 
--ugh! ugh! ugh!" 
  My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. 
  "It is nothing," he said, at last. 
  "Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is 
precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as 
once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We 
will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, 
there is Luchresi --" 
  "Enough," he said; "the cough's a mere nothing; it will not kill me. 
I shall not die of a cough." 
  "True --true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of 
alarming you unnecessarily --but you should use all proper caution. 
A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps. 
  Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row 
of its fellows that lay upon the mould. 
  "Drink," I said, presenting him the wine. 
  He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me 
familiarly, while his bells jingled. 
  "I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us." 
  "And I to your long life." 
  He again took my arm, and we proceeded. 
  "These vaults," he said, "are extensive." 
  "The Montresors," I replied, "were a great and numerous family." 
  "I forget your arms." 
  "A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a 
serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel." 
  "And the motto?" 
  "Nemo me impune lacessit." 
  "Good!" he said. 
  The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy 
grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through long walls of piled 
skeletons, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost 
recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold 
to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow. 
  "The nitre!" I said; "see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the 
vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle 
among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your 
cough --" 
  "It is nothing," he said; "let us go on. But first, another 
draught of the Medoc." 
  I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a 
breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the 
bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand. 
  I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement --a 
grotesque one. 
  "You do not comprehend?" he said. 
  "Not I," I replied. 
  "Then you are not of the brotherhood." 
  "How?" 
  "You are not of the masons." 
  "Yes, yes," I said; "yes, yes." 
  "You? Impossible! A mason?" 
  "A mason," I replied. 
  "A sign," he said, "a sign." 
  "It is this," I answered, producing from beneath the folds of my 
roquelaire a trowel. 
  "You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed 
to the Amontillado." 
  "Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak and again 
offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route 
in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, 
descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, 
in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow 
than flame. 
  At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less 
spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the 
vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. 
Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this 
manner. From the fourth side the bones had been thrown down, and lay 
promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some 
size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, 
we perceived a still interior crypt or recess, in depth about four 
feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been 
constructed for no especial use within itself, but formed merely the 
interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the 
catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of 
solid granite. 
  It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured 
to pry into the depth of the recess. Its termination the feeble 
light did not enable us to see. 
  "Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchresi --" 
  "He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped 
unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In 
niche, and finding an instant he had reached the extremity of the 
niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly 
bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In 
its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two 
feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the 
other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the 
work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to 
resist. Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess. 
  "Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling 
the nitre. Indeed, it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to 
return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first 
render you all the little attentions in my power." 
  "The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from 
his astonishment. 
  "True," I replied; "the Amontillado." 
  As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of 
which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a 
quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with 
the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of 
the niche. 
  I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I 
discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure 
worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning 
cry from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. 
There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, 
and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations 
of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that 
I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my 
labours and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking 
subsided, I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption 
the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly 
upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux 
over the mason-work, threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within. 
  A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from 
the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. 
For a brief moment I hesitated, I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I 
began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant 
reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, 
and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall; I replied to the yells of 
him who clamoured. I re-echoed, I aided, I surpassed them in volume 
and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still. 
  It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had 
completed the eighth, the ninth and the tenth tier. I had finished a 
portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single 
stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I 
placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came 
from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It 
was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognizing as 
that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said-- 
  "Ha! ha! ha! --he! he! he! --a very good joke, indeed --an excellent 
jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo --he! he! 
he! --over our wine --he! he! he!" 
  "The Amontillado!" I said. 
  "He! he! he! --he! he! he! --yes, the Amontillado. But is it not 
getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady 
Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone." 
  "Yes," I said, "let us be gone." 
  "For the love of God, Montresor!" 
  "Yes," I said, "for the love of God!" 
  But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew 
impatient. I called aloud -- 
  "Fortunato!" 
  No answer. I called again -- 
  "Fortunato!" 
  No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and 
let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of 
the bells. My heart grew sick; it was the dampness of the catacombs 
that made it so. I hastened to make an end of my labour. I forced 
the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new 
masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a 
century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat! 
                         -THE END- 
  

Good Country People 

By Flannery O'Connor
1925-1964

|Return to Short Stories Home Page|
 

Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman 
had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings.  
Her forward expression was steady and driving like the advance of a heavy truck. 
 Her eyes never swerved to left or right but turned as the story turned as if 
they followed a yellow line down the center of it.  She seldom used the other 
expression because it was not often necessary for her to retract a statement, 
but when she did, her face came to a complete stop, there was an almost 
imperceptible movement of her black eyes, during which they seemed to be 
receding, and then the observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she might 
stand there as real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each other, was no 
longer there in spirit.  As for getting anything across to her when this was the 
case, Mrs. Hopewell had given it up.  She might talk her head off.  Mrs. Freeman 
could never be brought to admit herself wrong to any point.  She would stand 
there and if she could be brought to say anything, it was something like, “Well, 
I wouldn’t of said it was and I wouldn’t of said it wasn’t” or letting her gaze 
range over the top kitchen shelf where there was an assortment of dusty bottles, 
she might remark, “I see you ain’t ate many of them figs you put up last 
summer.”

They carried on their most important business in the kitchen at breakfast.  
Every morning Mrs. Hopewell got up at seven o’clock and lit her gas heater and 
Joy’s.  Joy was her daughter, a large blonds girl who had an artificial leg.  
Mrs. Hopewell thought of her as a child though she was thirty-two years old and 
highly educated.  Joy would get up while her mother was eating and lumber into 
the bathroom and slam the door, and before long, Mrs. Freeman would arrive at 
the back door.  Joy would hear her mother call, “Come on in,” and then they 
would talk for a while in low voices that were indistinguishable in the 
bathroom.  By the time Joy came in, they had usually finished the weather report 
and were on one or the other of Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, Glynese or Carramae.  
Joy called them Glycerin and Caramel.  Glynese, a redhead, was eighteen and had 
many admirers; Carramae, a blonde, was only fifteen but already married and 
pregnant.  She could not keep anything on her stomach.  Every morning Mrs. 
Freeman told Mrs. Hopewell how many times she had vomited since the last report.

Mrs. Hopewell liked to tell people that Glynese and Carramae were two of the 
finest girls she knew and that Mrs. Freeman was a lady and that she was never 
ashamed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody they might meet.  Then 
she would tell how she had happened to hire the Freemans in the first place and 
how they were a godsend to her and how she had had them four years.  The reason 
for her keeping them so long was that they were not trash.  They were good 
country people.  She had telephoned the man whose name they had given as 
reference and he had told her that Mr. Freeman was a good farmer but that his 
wife was the nosiest woman ever to walk the earth.  “She’s got to be into 
everything,” the man said.  “If she don’t get there before the dust settles, you 
can bet she’s dead, that’s all.  She’ll want to know all your business.  I can 
stand him real good,” he had said, “but me nor my wife neither could have stood 
that woman one more minute on this place.”  That had put Mrs. Hopewell off for a 
few days.

She had hired them in the end because there were no other applicants but she had 
made up her mind beforehand exactly how she would handle the woman.  Since she 
was the type who had to be into everything, then, Mrs. Hopewell had decided, she 
would not only let her be into everything, she would see to it that she was into 
everything – she would give her the responsibility of everything, she would put 
her in charge.  Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able 
to use other people’s in such a constructive way that she had kept them four 
years.

Nothing is perfect.  This was one of Mrs. Hopewell’s favorite sayings.  Another 
was:  that is life!  And still another, the most important, was:  well, other 
people have their opinions too.  She would make these statements, usually at the 
table, in a tone of gentle insistence as if no one held them but her, and the 
large hulking Joy, whose constant outrage had obliterated every expression from 
her face, would stare just a little to the side of her, her eyes icy blue, with 
the look of someone who had achieved blindness by an act of will and means to 
keep it.

When Mrs. Hopewell said to Mrs. Freeman that life was like that, Mrs. Freeman 
would say, “I always said so myself.”  Nothing had been arrived at by anyone 
that had not first been arrived at by her.  She was quicker than Mr. Freeman.  
When Mrs. Hopewell said to her after they had been on the place for a while, 
“You know, you’re the wheel behind the wheel,” and winked, Mrs. Freeman had 
said, “I know it.  I’ve always been quick.  It’s some that are quicker than 
others.”

“Everybody is different,” Mrs. Hopewell said.

“Yes, most people is,” Mrs. Freeman said.

“It takes all kinds to make the world.”

“I always said it did myself.”

The girl was used to this kind of dialogue for breakfast and more of it for 
dinner; sometimes they had it for supper too.  When they had no guest they ate 
in the kitchen because that was easier.  Mrs. Freeman always managed to arrive 
at some point during the meal and to watch them finish it.  She would stand in 
the doorway if it were summer but in the winter she would stand with one elbow 
on top of the refrigerator and look down at them, or she would stand by the gas 
heater, lifting the back of her skirt slightly.  Occasionally she would stand 
against the wall and roll her head from side to side.  At no time was she in any 
hurry to leave.  All this was very trying on Mrs. Hopewell but she was a woman 
of great patience.  She realized that nothing is perfect and that in the 
Freemans she had good country people and that if, in this day and age, you get 
good country people, you had better hang onto them.

She had had plenty of experience with trash.  Before the Freemans she had 
averaged one tenant family a year.  The wives of these farmers were not the kind 
you would want to be around you for very long.  Mrs. Hopewell, who had divorced 
her husband long ago, needed someone to walk over the fields with her; and when 
Joy had to be impressed for these services, her remarks were usually so ugly and 
her face so glum that Mrs. Hopewell would say, “If you can’t come pleasantly, I 
don’t want you at all,” to which the girl, standing square and rigid-shouldered 
with her neck thrust slightly forward, would reply, “If you want me, here I am – 
LIKE I AM.”

Mrs. Hopewell excused this attitude because of the leg (which had been shot off 
in a hunting accident when Joy was ten).  It was hard for Mrs. Hopewell to 
realize that her child was thirty-two now and that for more than twenty years 
she had had only one leg.  She thought of her still as a child because it tore 
her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her thirties who had never 
danced a step or had any normal good times.  Her name was really Joy but as soon 
as she was twenty-one and away from home, she had had it legally changed.  Mrs. 
Hopewell was certain that she had thought and thought until she had hit upon the 
ugliest name in any language.  Then she had gone and had the beautiful name, 
Joy, changed without telling her mother until after she had done it.  Her legal 
name was Hulga.

When Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad blank hull 
of a battleship.  She would not use it.  She continued to call her Joy to which 
the girl responded but in a purely mechanical way.

Hulga had learned to tolerate Mrs. Freeman who saved her from taking walks with 
her mother.  Even Glynese and Carramae were useful when they occupied attention 
that might otherwise have been directed at her.  At first she had thought she 
could not stand Mrs. Freeman for she had found it was not possible to be rude to 
her.  Mrs. Freeman would take on strange resentments and for days together she 
would be sullen but the source of her displeasure was always obscure; a direct 
attack, a positive leer, blatant ugliness to her face – these never touched her. 
 And without warning one day, she began calling her Hulga.

She did not call her that in front of Mrs. Hopewell who would have been incensed 
but when she and the girl happened to be out of the house together, she would 
say something and add the name Hulga to the end of it, and the big spectacled 
Joy-Hulga would scowl and redden as if her privacy had been intruded upon.  She 
considered the name her personal affair.  She had arrived at it first purely on 
the basis of its ugly sound and then the full genius of its fitness had struck 
her.  She had a vision of the name working like the ugly sweating Vulcan who 
stayed in the furnace and to whom, presumably, the goddess had to come when 
called.  She saw it as the name of her highest creative act.  One of her major 
triumphs was that her mother had not been able to turn her dust into Joy, but 
the greater one was that she had been able to turn it herself into Hulga.  
However, Mrs. Freeman’s relish for using the name only irritated her.  It was as 
if Mrs. Freeman’s beady steel-pointed eyes had penetrated far enough behind her 
face to reach some secret fact.  Something about her seemed to fascinate Mrs. 
Freeman and then one day Hulga realized that it was the artificial leg.  Mrs. 
Freeman had a special fondness for the details of secret infections, hidden 
deformities, assaults upon children.  Of diseases, she preferred the lingering 
or incurable.  Hulga had heard Mrs. Hopewell give her the details of the hunting 
accident, how the leg had been literally blasted off, how she had never lost 
consciousness.  Mrs. Freeman could listen to it any time as if it had happened 
an hour ago.

When Hulga stumped into the kitchen in the morning (she could walk without 
making the awful noise but she made it – Mrs. Hopewell was certain – because it 
was ugly-sounding), she glanced at them and did not speak.  Mrs. Hopewell would 
be in her red kimono with her hair tied around her head in rags.  She would be 
sitting at the table, finishing her breakfast and Mrs. Freeman would be hanging 
by her elbow outward from the refrigerator, looking down at the table.  Hulga 
always put her eggs on the stove to boil and then stood over them with her arms 
folded, and Mrs. Hopewell would look at her – a kind of indirect gaze divided 
between her and Mrs. Freeman – and would think that if she would only keep 
herself up a little, she wouldn’t be so bad looking.  There was nothing wrong 
with her face that a pleasant expression wouldn’t help.  Mrs. Hopewell said that 
people who looked on the bright side of things would be beautiful even if they 
were not.

Whenever she looked at Joy this way, she could not help but feel that it would 
have been better if the child had not taken the Ph.D.  It had certainly not 
brought her out any and now that she had it, there was no more excuse for her to 
go to school again.  Mrs. Hopewell thought it was nice for girls to go to school 
to have a good time but Joy had “gone through.”  Anyhow, she would not have been 
strong enough to go again.  The doctors had told Mrs. Hopewell that with the 
best of care, Joy might see forty-five.  She had a weak heart.  Joy had made it 
plain that if it had not been for this condition, she would be far from these 
red hills and good country people.  She would be in a university lecturing to 
people who knew what she was talking about.  And Mrs. Hopewell could very well 
picture here there, looking like a scarecrow and lecturing to more of the same.  
Here she went about all day in a six-year-old skirt and a yellow sweat shirt 
with a faded cowboy on a horse embossed on it.  She thought this was funny; Mrs. 
Hopewell thought it was idiotic and showed simply that she was still a child.  
She was brilliant but she didn’t have a grain of sense.  It seemed to Mrs. 
Hopewell that every year she grew less like other people and more like herself – 
bloated, rude, and squint-eyed.  And she said such strange things!  To her own 
mother she had said – without warning, without excuse, standing up in the middle 
of a meal with her face purple and her mouth half full – “Woman!  Do you ever 
look inside?  Do you ever look inside and see what you are not?  God!” she had 
cried sinking down again and staring at her plate, “Malebranche  was right:  we 
are not our own light.  We are not our own light!”  Mrs. Hopewell had no idea to 
this day what brought that on.  She had only made the remark, hoping Joy would 
take it in, that a smile never hurt anyone. The girl had taken the Ph.D. in 
philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss.  You could say, “My 
daughter is a nurse,” or “My daughter is a school teacher,” or even, “My 
daughter is a chemical engineer.”  You could not say, “My daughter is a 
philosopher.”  That was something that had ended with the Greeks and Romans.  
All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading.  Sometimes she went for 
walks but she didn’t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice 
young men.  She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

One day Mrs. Hopewell had picked up one of the books the girl had just put down 
and opening it at random, she read, “Science, on the other hand, has to assert 
its soberness and seriousness afresh and declare that it is concerned solely 
with what-is.  Nothing – how can it be for science anything but a horror and a 
phantasm?  If science is right, then one thing stands firm:  science wishes to 
know nothing of nothing.  Such is after all the strictly scientific approach to 
Nothing.  We know it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing.”  These words had 
been underlined with a blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell like some 
evil incantation in gibberish.  She shut the book quickly and went out of the 
room as if she were having a chill.

This morning when the girl came in, Mrs. Freeman was on Carramae.  “She thrown 
up four times after supper,” she said, “and was up twict in the night after 
three o’clock.  Yesterday she didn’t do nothing but ramble in the bureau drawer. 
 All she did.  Stand up there and see what she could run up on.”

“She’s got to eat,” Mrs. Hopewell muttered, sipping her coffee, while she 
watched Joy’s back at the stove.  She was wondering what the child had said to 
the Bible salesman.  She could not imagine what kind of a conversation she could 
possibly have had with him.

He was a tall gaunt hatless youth who had called yesterday to sell them a Bible. 
 He had appeared at the door, carrying a large black suitcase that weighted him 
so heavily on one side that he had to brace himself against the door facing.  He 
seemed on the point of collapse but he said in a cheerful voice, “Good morning, 
Mrs. Cedars!” and set the suitcase down on the mat.  He was not a bad-looking 
young man though he had on a bright blue suit and yellow socks that were not 
pulled up far enough.  He had prominent face bones and a streak of 
sticky-looking brown hair falling across his forehead.

“I’m Mrs. Hopewell,” she said.

“Oh!” he said, pretending to look puzzled but with his eyes sparkling, “I saw it 
said ‘The Cedars’ on the mailbox so I thought you was Mrs. Cedars!” and he burst 
out in a pleasant laugh.  He picked up the satchel and under cover of a pant, he 
fell forward into her hall.  It was rather as if the suitcase had moved first, 
jerking him after it.  “Mrs. Hopewell!” he said and grabbed her hand.  “I hope 
you are well!” and he laughed again and then all at once his face sobered 
completely.  He paused and gave her a straight earnest look and said, “Lady, 
I’ve come to speak of serious things.”

“Well, come in,” she muttered, none too pleased because her dinner was almost 
ready.  He came into the parlor and sat down on the edge of a straight chair and 
put the suitcase between his feet and glanced around the room as if he were 
sizing her up by it.  Her silver gleamed on the two sideboards; she decided he 
had never been in a room as elegant as this.

“Mrs. Hopewell,” he began, using her name in a way that sounded almost intimate, 
“I know you believe in Chrustian service.”

“Well, yes,” she murmured.

“I know,” he said and paused, looking very wise with his head cocked on one 
side, “that you’re a good woman.  Friends have told me.”

Mrs. Hopewell never liked to be taken for a fool.  “What are you selling?” she 
asked.

“Bibles,” the young man said and his eye raced around the room before he added, 
“I see you have no family Bible in your parlor, I see that is the one lack you 
got!”

Mrs. Hopewell could not say, “My daughter is an atheist and won’t let me keep 
the Bible in the parlor.”  She said, stiffening slightly, “I keep my Bible by my 
bedside.”  This was not the truth.  It was in the attic somewhere.

“Lady,” he said, “the word of God ought to be in the parlor.”

“Well, I think that’s a matter of taste,” she began, “I think…”

“Lady,” he said, “for a Chrustian, the word of God ought to be in every room in 
the house besides in his heart.  I know you’re a Chrustian because I can see it 
in every line of your face.”

She stood up and said, “Well, young man, I don’t want to buy a Bible and I smell 
my dinner burning.”

He didn’t get up.  He began to twist his hands and looking down at them, he said 
softly, “Well lady, I’ll tell you the truth – not many people want to buy one 
nowadays and besides, I know I’m real simple.  I don’t know how to say a thing 
but to say it.  I’m just a country boy.”  He glanced up into her unfriendly 
face.  “People like you don’t like to fool with country people like me!”

“Why!” she cried, “good country people are the salt of the earth!  Besides, we 
all have different ways of doing, it takes all kinds to make the world go 
‘round.  That’s life!”

“You said a mouthful,” he said.

“Why, I think there aren’t enough good country people in the world!” she said, 
stirred.  “I think that’s what’s wrong with it!”

His face had brightened.  “I didn’t intraduce myself,” he said.  “I’m Manley 
Pointer from out in the country around Willohobie, not even from a place, just 
from near a place.”

“You wait a minute,” she said.  “I have to see about my dinner.”  She went out 
to the kitchen and found Joy standing near the door where she had been 
listening.

“Get rid of the salt of the earth,” she said, “and let’s eat.”

Mrs. Hopewell gave her a pained look and turned the heat down under the 
vegetables.  “I can’t be rude to anybody,” she murmured and went back into the 
parlor.

He had opened the suitcase and was sitting with a Bible on each knee.

“I appreciate your honesty,” he said.  “You don’t see any more real honest 
people unless you go way out in the country.”

“I know,” she said, “real genuine folks!”  Through the crack in the door she 
heard a groan.

“I guess a lot of boys come telling you they’re working their way through 
college,” he said, “but I’m not going to tell you that.  Somehow,” he said, “I 
don’t want to go to college.  I want to devote my life to Chrustian service.  
See,” he said, lowering his voice, “I got this heart condition.  I may not live 
long.  When you know it’s something wrong with you and you may not live long, 
well then, lady…”  He paused, with his mouth open, and stared at her.

He and Joy had the same condition!  She knew that her eyes were filling with 
tears but she collected herself quickly and murmured, “Won’t you stay for 
dinner?  We’d love to have you!” and was sorry the instant she heard herself say 
it.

“Yes mam,” he said in an abashed voice.  “I would sher love to do that!”

Joy had given him one look on being introduced to him and then throughout the 
meal had not glanced at him again.  He had addressed several remarks to her, 
which she had pretended not to hear.  Mrs. Hopewell could not understand 
deliberate rudeness, although she lived with it, and she felt she had always to 
overflow with hospitality to make up for Joy’s lack of courtesy.  She urged him 
to talk about himself and he did.  He said he was the seventh child of twelve 
and that his father had been crushed under a tree when he himself was eight 
years old.  He had been crushed very badly, in fact, almost cut in two and was 
practically not recognizable.  His mother had got along the best she could by 
hard working and she had always seen that her children went to Sunday School and 
that they read the Bible every evening.  He was now nineteen years old and he 
had been selling Bibles for four months.  In that time he had sold seventy-seven 
Bibles and had the promise of two more sales.  He wanted to become a missionary 
because he thought that was the way you could do most for people.  “He who 
losest his life shall find it,” he said simply and he was so sincere, so genuine 
and earnest that Mrs. Hopewell would not for the world have smiled.  He 
prevented his peas from sliding onto the table by blocking them with a piece of 
bread which he later cleaned his plate with.  She could see Joy observing 
sidewise how he handled his knife and fork and she saw too that every few 
minutes, the boy would dart a keen appraising glance at the girl as if he were 
trying to attract her attention.

After dinner Joy cleared the dishes off the table and disappeared and Mrs. 
Hopewell was left to talk with him.  He told her again about his childhood and 
his father’s accident and about various things that had happened to him.  Every 
five minutes or so she would stifle a yawn.  He sat for two hours until finally 
she told him she must go because she had an appointment in town.  He packed his 
Bibles and thanked her and prepared to leave, but in the doorway he stopped and 
wring her hand and said that not on any of his trips had he met a lady as nice 
as her and he asked if he could come again.  She had said she would always be 
happy to see him.

Joy had been standing in the road, apparently looking at something in the 
distance, when he came down the steps toward her, bent to the side with his 
heavy valise.  He stopped where she was standing and confronted her directly.  
Mrs. Hopewell could not hear what he said but she trembled to think what Joy 
would say to him.  She could see that after a minute Joy said something and that 
then the boy began to speak again, making an excited gesture with his free hand. 
 After a minute Joy said something else at which the boy began to speak once 
more.  Then to her amazement, Mrs. Hopewell saw the two of them walk off 
together, toward the gate.  Joy had walked all the way to the gate with him and 
Mrs. Hopewell could not imagine what they had said to each other, and she had 
not yet dared to ask.

Mrs. Freeman was insisting upon her attention.  She had moved from the 
refrigerator to the heater so that Mrs. Hopewell had to turn and face her in 
order to seem to be listening.  “Glynese gone out with Harvey Hill again last 
night,” she said.  “She had this sty.”

“Hill,” Mrs. Hopewell said absently, “is that the one who works in the garage?”

“Nome, he’s the one that goes to chiropractor school,” Mrs. Freeman said.  “She 
had this sty.  Been had it two days.  So she says when he brought her in the 
other night he says, ‘Lemme get rid of that sty for you,’ and she says, ‘How?’ 
and he says, ‘You just lay yourself down acrost the seat of that car and I’ll 
show you.’ So she done it and he popped her neck.  Kept on a-popping it several 
times until she made him quit.  This morning,” Mrs. Freeman said, “she ain’t got 
no sty.  She ain’t got no traces of a sty.”

“I never heard of that before,” Mrs. Hopewell said.

“He ast her to marry him before the Ordinary,”  Mrs. Freeman went on, “and she 
told him she wasn’t going to be married in no office.”

“Well, Glynese is a fine girl,” Mrs. Hopewell said.  “Glynese and Carramae are 
both fine girls.”

“Carramae said when her and Lyman was married Lyman said it sure felt sacred to 
him.  She said he said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars for being married 
by a preacher.”

“How much would he take?” the girl asked from the stove.

“He said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars,” Mrs. Freeman repeated.

“Well we all have work to do,” Mrs. Hopewell said.

“Lyman said it just felt more sacred to him,” Mrs. Freeman said.  “The doctor 
wants Carramae to eat prunes.  Says instead of medicine.  Says them cramps is 
coming from pressure.  You know where I think it is?”

“She’ll be better in a few weeks,” Mrs. Hopewell said.

“In the tube,” Mrs. Freeman said.  “Else she wouldn’t be as sick as she is.”

Hulga had cracked her two eggs into a saucer and was bringing them to the table 
along with a cup of coffee that she had filled too full.  She sat down carefully 
and began to eat, meaning to keep Mrs. Freeman there by questions if for any 
reason she showed an inclination to leave.  She could perceive her mother’s eye 
on her.  The first round-about question would be about the Bible salesman and 
she did not wish to bring it on.  “How did he pop her neck?” she asked.

Mrs. Freeman went into a description of how he had popped her neck.  She said he 
owned a ’55 Mercury but that Glynese said she would rather marry a man with only 
a ’36 Plymouth who would be married by a preacher.  The girl asked what if he 
had a ’32 Plymouth and Mrs. Freeman said what Glynese had said was a ’36 
Plymouth.

Mrs. Hopewell said there were not many girls with Glynese’s common sense.  She 
said what she admired in those girls was their common sense.  She said that 
reminded her that they had had a nice visitor yesterday, a young man selling 
Bibles.  “Lord,” she said, “he bored me to death but he was so sincere and 
genuine I couldn’t be rude to him.  He was just good country people, you know,” 
she said, “—just the salt of the earth.”

“I seen him walk up,” Mrs. Freeman said, “and then later – I seen him walk off,” 
and Hulga could feel the slight shift in her voice, the slight insinuation, that 
he had not walked off alone, had he?  Her face remained expressionless but the 
color rose into her neck and she seemed to swallow it down with the next 
spoonful of egg.  Mrs. Freeman was looking at her as if they had a secret 
together.

“Well, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go ‘round,” Mrs. Hopewell 
said.  “It’s very good we aren’t all alike.”

“Some people are more alike than others,” Mrs. Freeman said.

Hulga got up and stumped, with about twice the noise that was necessary, into 
her room and locked the door.  She was to meet the Bible salesman at ten o’clock 
at the gate.  She had thought about it half the night.  She had started thinking 
of it as a great joke and then she had begun to see profound implications in it. 
 She had lain in bed imagining dialogues for them that were insane on the 
surface but that reached below the depths that no Bible salesman would be aware 
of.  Their conversation yesterday had been of this kind.

He had stopped in front of her and had simply stood there.  His face was bony 
and sweaty and bright, with a little pointed nose in the center of it, and his 
look was different from what it had been at the dinner table.  He was gazing at 
her with open curiosity, with fascination, like a child watching a new fantastic 
animal at the zoo, and he was breathing as if he had run a great distance to 
reach her.  His gaze seemed somehow familiar but she could not think where she 
had been regarded with it before.  For almost a minute he didn’t say anything.  
Then on what seemed an insuck of breath, he whispered, “You ever ate a chicken 
that was two days old?”

The girl looked at him stonily.  He might have just put this question up for 
consideration at the meeting of a philosophical association.  “Yes,” she 
presently replied as if she had considered it from all angles.

“It must have been mighty small!” he said triumphantly and shook all over with 
little nervous giggles, getting very red in the face, and subsiding finally into 
his gaze of complete admiration, while the girl’s expression remained exactly 
the same.

“How old are you?” he asked softly.

She waited some time before she answered.  Then in a flat voice she said, 
“Seventeen.”

His smiles came in succession like waves breaking on the surface of a little 
lake.  “I see you got a wooden leg,” he said.  “I think you’re real brave.  I 
think you’re real sweet.”

The girl stood blank and solid and silent.

“Walk to the gate with me,” he said.  “You’re a brave sweet little thing and I 
liked you the minute I seen you walk in the door.”

Hulga began to move forward.

“What’s your name?” he asked, smiling down on the top of her head.

“Hulga,” she said.

“Hulga,” he murmured, “Hulga.  Hulga.  I never heard of anybody name Hulga 
before.  You’re shy, aren’t you, Hulga?” he asked.

She nodded, watching his large red hand on the handle of the giant valise.

“I like girls that wear glasses,” he said.  “I think a lot.  I’m not like these 
people that a serious thought don’t ever enter their heads.  It’s because I may 
die.”

“I may die too,” she said suddenly and looked up at him.  His eyes were very 
small and brown, glittering feverishly.

“Listen,” he said, “don’t you think some people was meant to meet on account of 
what all they got in common and all?  Like they both think serious thoughts and 
all?”  He shifted the valise to his other hand so that the hand nearest her was 
free.  He caught hold of her elbow and shook it a little.  “I don’t work on 
Saturday,” he said.  “I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is 
wearing.  O’er the hills and far away.  Picnics and things.  Couldn’t we go on a 
picnic tomorrow?  Say yes, Hulga,” he said and gave her a dying look as if he 
felt his insides about to drop out of him.  He had even seemed to sway slightly 
toward her.

During the night she had imagined that she seduced him.  She imagined that the 
two of them walked on the place until they came to the storage barn beyond the 
two back fields and there, she imagined, that things came to such a pass that 
she very easily seduced him and that then, of course, she had to reckon with his 
remorse.  True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind.  She 
imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper 
understanding of life.  She took all his shame away and turned it into something 
useful.

She set off for the gate at exactly ten o’clock, escaping without drawing Mrs. 
Hopewell’s attention.  She didn’t take anything to eat, forgetting that food is 
usually taken on a picnic.  She wore a pair of slacks and a dirty white shirt, 
and as an afterthought, she had put some Vapex  on the collar of it since she 
did not own any perfume.  When she reached the gate no one was there.

She looked up and down the empty highway and had the furious feeling that she 
had been tricked, that he only meant to make her walk to the gate after the idea 
of him.  Then suddenly he stood up, very tall, from behind a bush on the 
opposite embankment.  Smiling, he lifted his hat which was new and wide-brimmed. 
 He had not worn it yesterday and she wondered if he had bought it for the 
occasion.  It was toast-colored with a red and white band around it and was 
slightly too large for him.  He stepped from behind the bush still carrying the 
black valise.  He had on the same suit and the same yellow socks sucked down in 
his shoes from walking.  He crossed the highway and said, “I knew you’d come!”

The girl wondered acidly how he had known this.  She pointed to the valise and 
asked, “Why did you bring your Bibles?”

He took her elbow, smiling down on her as if he could not stop.  “You can never 
tell when you’ll need the word of God, Hulga,” he said.  She had a moment in 
which she doubted that this was actually happening and then they began to climb 
the embankment.  They went down into the pasture toward the woods.  The boy 
walked lightly by her side, bouncing on his toes.  The valise did not seem to be 
heavy today; he even swung it.  They crossed half the pasture without saying 
anything and then, putting his hand easily on the small of her back, he asked 
softly, “Where does your wooden leg join on?”

She turned an ugly red and glared at him and for an instant the boy looked 
abashed.  “I didn’t mean you no harm,” he said.  “I only meant you’re so brave 
and all.  I guess God takes care of you.”

“No,” she said, looking forward and walking fast, “I don’t even believe in God.”

At this he stopped and whistled.  “No!” he exclaimed as if he were too 
astonished to say anything else.

She walked on and in a second he was bouncing at her side, fanning with his hat. 
 “That’s very unusual for a girl,” he remarked, watching her out of the corner 
of his eye.  When they reached the edge of the wood, he put his hand on her back 
again and drew her against him without a word and kissed her heavily.

The kiss, which had more pressure than feeling behind it, produced that extra 
surge of adrenalin in the girl that enables one to carry a packed trunk out of a 
burning house, but in her, the power went at once to the brain.  Even before he 
released her, her mind, clear and detached and ironic anyway, was regarding him 
from a great distance, with amusement but with pity.  She had never been kissed 
before and she was pleased to discover that it was an unexceptional experience 
and all a matter of the mind’s control.  Some people might enjoy drain water if 
they were told it was vodka.  When the boy, looking expectant but uncertain, 
pushed her gently away, she turned and walked on, saying nothing as if such 
business, for her, were common enough.

He came along panting at her side, trying to help her when he saw a root that 
she might trip over.  He caught and held back the long swaying blades of thorn 
vine until she had passed beyond them.  She led the way and he came breathing 
heavily behind her.  Then they came out on a sunlit hillside, sloping softly 
into another one a little smaller.  Beyond, they could see the rusted top of the 
old barn where the extra hay was stored.

The hill was sprinkled with small pink weeds.  “Then you ain’t saved?” he asked 
suddenly, stopping.

The girl smiled.  It was the first time she had smiled at him at all.  “In my 
economy,” she said, “I’m saved and you are damned but I told you I didn’t 
believe in God.”

Nothing seemed to destroy the boy’s look of admiration.  He gazed at her now as 
if the fantastic animal at the zoo had put its paw through the bars and given 
him a loving poke.  She thought he looked as if he wanted to kiss her again and 
she walked on before he had the chance.

“Ain’t there somewheres we can sit down sometime?” he murmured, his voice 
softening toward the end of the sentence.

“In that barn,” she said.

They made for it rapidly as if it might slide away like a train.  It was a large 
two-story barn, cook and dark inside.  The boy pointed up the ladder that led 
into the loft and said, “It’s too bad we can’t go up there.”

“Why can’t we?” she asked.

“Yer leg,” he said reverently.

The girl gave him a contemptuous look and putting both hands on the ladder, she 
climbed it while he stood below, apparently awestruck.  She pulled herself 
expertly through the opening and then looked down at him and said, “Well, come 
on if your coming,” and he began to climb the ladder, awkwardly bringing the 
suitcase with him.

“We won’t need the Bible,” she observed.

“You never can tell,” he said, panting.  After he had got into the loft, he was 
a few seconds catching his breath.  She had sat down in a pile of straw.  A wide 
sheath of sunlight, filled with dust particles, slanted over her.  She lay back 
against a bale, her face turned away, looking out the front opening of the barn 
where hay was thrown from a wagon into the loft.  The two pink-speckled 
hillsides lay back against a dark ridge of woods.  The sky was cloudless and 
cold blue.  The boy dropped down by her side and put one arm under her and the 
other over her and began methodically kissing her face, making little noises 
like a fish.  He did not remove his hat but it was pushed far enough back not to 
interfere.  When her glasses got in his way, he took them off of her and slipped 
them into his pocket.

The girl at first did not return any of the kisses but presently she began to 
and after she had put several on his cheek, she reached his lips and remained 
there, kissing him again and again as if she were trying to draw all the breath 
out of him.  His breath was clear and sweet like a child’s and the kisses were 
sticky like a child’s.  He mumbled about loving her and about knowing when he 
first seen her that he loved her, but the mumbling was like the sleepy fretting 
of a child being put to sleep by his mother.  Her mind, throughout this, never 
stopped or lost itself for a second to her feelings.  “You ain’t said you loved 
me none,” he whispered finally, pulling back from her.  “You got to say that.”

She looked away from him off into the hollow sky and then down at a black ridge 
and then down farther into what appeared to be two green swelling lakes.  She 
didn’t realize he had taken her glasses but this landscape could not seem 
exceptional to her for she seldom paid any close attention to her surroundings.

“You got to say it,” he repeated.  “You got to say you love me.”

She was always careful how she committed herself.  “In a sense,” she began, “if 
you use the word loosely, you might say that.  But it’s not a word I use.  I 
don’t have illusions.  I’m one of those people who see through to nothing.”

The boy was frowning.  “You got to say it.  I said it and you got to say it,” he 
said.

The girl looked at him almost tenderly.  “You poor baby,” she murmured.  “It’s 
just as well you don’t understand,” and she pulled him by the neck, face-down, 
against her.  “We are all damned,” she said, “but some of us have taken off our 
blindfolds and see that there’s nothing to see.  It’s a kind of salvation.”

The boy’s astonished eyes looked blankly through the ends of her hair.  “Okay,” 
he almost whined, “but do you love me or don’tcher?”

“Yes,” she said and added, “in a sense.  But I must tell you something.  There 
mustn’t be anything dishonest between us.”  She lifted his head and looked him 
in the eye.  “I am thirty years old,” she said.  “I have a number of degrees.”

The boy’s look was irritated but dogged.  “I don’t care,” he said.  “I don’t 
care a thing about what all you done.  I just want to know if you love me or 
don’tcher?” and he caught her to him and wildly planted her face with kisses 
until she said, “Yes, yes.”

“Okay then,” he said, letting her go.  “Prove it.”

She smiled, looking dreamily out on the shifty landscape.  She had seduced him 
without even making up her mind to try.  “How?” she asked, feeling that he 
should be delayed a little.

He leaned over and put his lips to her ear.  “Show me where your wooden leg 
joins on,” he whispered.

The girl uttered a sharp little cry and her face instantly drained of color.  
The obscenity of the suggestion was not what shocked her.  As a child she had 
sometimes been subject to feelings of shame but education had removed the last 
traces of that as a good surgeon scrapes for cancer; she would no more have felt 
it over what he was asking than she would have believed in his Bible.  But she 
was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail.  No one 
ever touched it but her.  She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in 
private and almost with her own eyes turned away.  “No,” she said.

“I known it,” he muttered, sitting up.  “You’re just playing me for a sucker.”

“On no no!” she cried.  “It joins on at the knee.  Only at the knee.  Why do you 
want to see it?”

The boy gave her a long penetrating look.  “Because,” he said, “it’s what makes 
you different.  You ain’t like anybody else.”

She sat staring at him.  There was nothing about her face or her round 
freezing-blue eyes to indicate that this had moved her; but she felt as if her 
heart had stopped and left her mind to pump her blood.  She decided that for the 
first time in her life she was face to face with real innocence.  This boy, with 
an instinct that came from beyond wisdom, had touched the truth about her.  When 
after a minute, she said in a hoarse high voice, “All right,” it was like 
surrendering to him completely.  It was like losing her own life and finding it 
again, miraculously, in his.

Very gently, he began to roll the slack leg up.  The artificial limb, in a white 
sock and brown flat shoe, was bound in a heavy material like canvas and ended in 
an ugly jointure where it was attached to the stump.  The boy’s face and his 
voice were entirely reverent as he uncovered it and said, “Now show me how to 
take it off and on.”

She took it off for him and put it back on again and then he took it off 
himself, handling it as tenderly as if it were a real one.  “See!” he said with 
a delighted child’s face.  “Now I can do it myself!”

“Put it back on,” she said.  She was thinking that she would run away with him 
and that every night he would take the leg off and every morning put it back on 
again.  “Put it back on,” she said.

“Not yet,” he murmured, setting it on its foot out of her reach.  “Leave it off 
for awhile.  You got me instead.”

She gave a little cry of alarm but he pushed her down and began to kiss her 
again.  Without the leg she felt entirely dependent on him.  Her brain seemed to 
have stopped thinking altogether and to be about some other function that it was 
not very good at.  Different expressions raced back and forth over her face.  
Every now and then the boy, his eyes like two steel spikes, would glance behind 
him where the leg stood.  Finally she pushed him off and said, “Put it back on 
me now.”

“Wait,” he said.  He leaned the other way and pulled the valise toward him and 
opened it.  It had a pale blue spotted lining and there were only two Bibles in 
it.  He took one of these out and opened the cover of it.  It was hollow and 
contained a pocket flask of whiskey, a pack of cards, and a small blue box with 
printing on it.  He laid these out in front of her one at a time in an 
evenly-spaced row, like one presenting offerings at the shrine of a goddess.  He 
put the blue box in her hand.  THIS PRODUCT TO BE USED ONLY FOR THE PREVENTION 
OF DISEASE, she read, and dropped it.  The boy was unscrewing the top of the 
flask.  He stopped and pointed, with a smile, to the deck of cards.  It was not 
an ordinary deck but one with an obscene picture on the back of each card.  
“Take a swig,” he said, offering her the bottle first.  He held it in front of 
her, but like one mesmerized, she did not move.

Her voice when she spoke had an almost pleading sound.  “Aren’t you,” she 
murmured, “aren’t you just good country people?”

The boy cocked his head.  He looked as if he were just beginning to understand 
that she might be trying to insult him.  “Yeah,” he said, curling his lip 
slightly, “but it ain’t held me back none.  I’m as good as you any day in the 
week.”

“Give me my leg,” she said.

He pushed it farther away with his foot.  “Come on now, let’s begin to have us a 
good time,” he said coaxingly.  “We ain’t got to know one another good yet.”

“Give me my leg!” she screamed and tried to lunge for it but he pushed her down 
easily.

“What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?” he asked, frowning as he screwed 
the top on the flask and put it quickly back inside the Bible.  “You just a 
while ago said you didn’t believe in nothing.  I thought you was some girl!”

Her face was almost purple.  “You’re a Christian!” she hissed.  “You’re a fine 
Christian!  You’re just like them all – say one thing and do another.  You’re a 
perfect Christian, you’re…”

The boy’s mouth was set angrily.  “I hope you don’t think,” he said in a lofty 
indignant tone, “that I believe in that crap!  I may sell Bibles but I know 
which end is up and I wasn’t born yesterday and I know where I’m going!”

“Give me my leg!” she screeched.  He jumped up so quickly that she barely saw 
him sweep the cards and the blue box back into the Bible and throw the Bible 
into the valise.  She saw him grab the leg and then she saw it for an instant 
slanted forlornly across the inside of the suitcase with a Bible at either side 
of its opposite ends.  He slammed the lid shut and snatched up the valise and 
swung it down the hole and then stepped through himself.  When all of him had 
passed but his head, he turned and regarded her with a look that no longer had 
any admiration in it.  “I’ve gotten a lot of interesting things,” he said.  “One 
time I got a woman’s glass eye this way.  And you needn’t to think you’ll catch 
me because Pointer ain’t really my name.  I use a different name at every house 
I call at and don’t stay nowhere long.  And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga,” 
he said, using the name as if he didn’t think much of it, “you ain’t so smart.  
I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!” and then the toast-colored 
hat disappeared down the hole and the girl was left, sitting on the straw in the 
dusty sunlight.  When she turned her churning face toward the opening, she saw 
his blue figure struggling successfully over the green speckled lake.

Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging up onions, 
saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head across the meadow toward 
the highway.  “Why, that looks like that nice dull young man that tried to sell 
me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell said, squinting.  “He must have been 
selling them to the Negroes back in there.  He was so simple,” she said, “but I 
guess the world would be better off if we were all that simple.”

Mrs. Freeman’s gaze drove forward and just touched him before he disappeared 
under the hill.  Then she returned her attention to the evil-smelling onion 
shoot she was lifting from the ground.  “Some can’t be that simple,” she said.  
“I know I never could.”

Choose ONE idea/aspect of  literature to explore that is somehow related to works studied in this class (a single idea within one work, a single idea traced through multiple works, a single idea compared contrasted between two or more authors, etc.)

	Use MLA parenthetical citations and MLA general guidelines, including works cited page
	2 outside sources minimum (excluding your primary text, if you are analyzing one work)
	Paper should be 4-5 pages typed and double-spaced
	Make sure you have an analytical or persuasive angle to your discussion--no mere information summaries.  See critical essays included in your Tempest Bedford Critical Edition
	In general, your paper/thesis should explore/answer questions such as "What does X mean?" "Why is X written this way?" "How might audiences of that particular time have interpreted X?  Audiences of today?"  "Why has X continued to influence society today?" "How are X and Y related?" etc.
	TAKE CARE WITH YOUR LANGUAGE AND YOUR STYLE--this is an English class, and I am an English instructor, after all.  If your writing skills feel rusty, consult a style or writing manual from eng 101 or earlier writing courses.  I have little tolerance for distracting language/punctuation errors.  I can recommend some writing guidebooks, if you would like

Research Analysis final draft due Wednesday, August 6th (week 7 of quarter).

	As above, choose one aspect/one central idea of your work to focus on—again, no mere plot summaries—your audience will have read your work also
	Paper should be 2 ½-3 pages typed and double-spaced
	Though this paper focuses on YOUR opinion/response to the work, please support all claims with good reasoning and specific textual evidence
	Chosen work should be either a work covered in class, or a different work by an author covered in class (see attached list of future works)
	All other points above apply to this paper, with the exception of required outside sources; you may, however use sources if you’d like

	Response Paper final draft due Wednesday,  July 23rd (week 5 of quarter
	“W” students second response final draft due Monday, August 11th (week 8 of quarter)