"The Geranium"

• The geranium they would put in the window reminded him of the Grisby boy at home who had polio & had to be wheeled out every morning & left in the sun to blink.
• She moved out of the room, leaving an audible sigh, to crawl over him & remind him again of that one minute--that wasn't her fault at all--when suddenly he had wanted to go to New York to live with her.
• The window in that room showed him the river--thick & red as it struggled over rocks & around curves.
• Old Dudley would have liked to have explained New York to Rabie. If he could have showed it to Rabie, it wouldn't have been so big -- he wouldn't have felt so pressed down every time he went out in it.
• But they were. New York was swishing & jamming one minute and dirty & dead the next. His daughter didn't even live in a house. She lived in a building--the middle in a row of buildings all alike, all blackened-red & gray with rasp-mouthed people hanging out their windows looking at other windows & people just like them looking back.
• People boiled out of trains & up steps & over into the streets. They rolled off the street & down steps & into trains -- black & white & yellow all mixed up like vegetables in soup. Everything was boiling... Old Dudley wondered why people ever went out of their houses. He felt like his tongue had slipped down in his stomach. She held him by the coat sleeve & pulled him through the people.
• The apartment was too tight. There was no place to be where there wasn't somebody else. The kitchen opened into the bathroom & the bathroom opened into everything else & you were always where you started from. At home there was upstairs & the basement & the river & downtown in front of Fraziers... damn his throat.
• He didn't like flowers, but the geranium didn't look like a flower. It looked like the sick Grisby boy at home & it was the color of the drapes the old ladies had in the parlor & the paper bow on it looked like the one behind Lutish's uniform she wore on Sundays.
• She was so mad she burned the corn bread three days in a row.
• Everything tired him, looked like.
• ...an amused smile stretching his trimmed mustache.
• ...the Negro asked in a voice that sounded like a nigger's laugh & a white man's sneer.
• Old Dudley felt like a child with a pop-pistol. His mouth was open & his tongue was rigid in the middle of it. Right below his knees felt hollow. His feet slipped & he slid three steps & landed sitting down.
• The pain in his throat was all over his face now, leaking out his eyes.
• His eyes felt strange in their sockets. They were swelling in them & in a minute there wouldn't be any room left for them there. He was trapped in this place where niggers could call you "old-timer." He wouldn't be trapped. He wouldn't be. He rolled his head on the back of the chair to stretch his neck that was too full.
• A man was looking at him. A man was in the window across the alley looking straight at him. The man was watching him cry. That was where the geranium was supposed to be & it was a man in his undershirt, watching him cry, waiting to watch his throat pop. Old Dudley looked back at the man.
• It was at the bottom of the alley with its roots in the air.

"The Barber"

• As much rot as it was, the whole asinine conversation stuck with him the rest of the day & went through his mind in persistent detail after he was in bed that night.
• The day was hot & full of flies.
• ...the air was moving slightly. A group of men sauntered up the courthouse walk.
• Three colored boys in zoot suits strolled by on the sidewalk.
• He waited, hearing the noises flies make & the mumble of men talking in the back. The fat man turned another page. Rayber could hear George's broom slowly stroking the floor somewhere in the shop, then stop, then scrape, then...
• "He can hear," the barber repeated. "He can hear what he hears & he can hear two times that much. He can hear what you don't say as well as what you do."
• He heard the words drag out--"Well, the way I see it, men elect..." He felt them pull out of his mouth like freight cars, jangling, backing up on each other, grating to a halt, sliding, cinching back, jarring, and then suddenly stopping as roughly as they had begun. It was over. Rayber was jarred that it was over so soon. For a second--as if they were expected him to go on--no one said anything.
• The blood began pounding up Rayber's neck just under his skin. He turned & pushed quickly through the men around him to the door. Outside, the sun was suspending everything in a pool of heat, and before he had turned the first corner, almost running, lather began to drip inside his collar & down the barber's bib, dangling to his knees.

"The Crop"

• It was a relief to crumb the table. Crumbing the table gave one time to think, and if Miss Willerton were going to write a story, she had to think about it first.
• Men teachers made Miss Willerton feel as if she were going to mispronounce something. Teachers weren't timely anyhow. They weren't even a social problem.
• Her fingers plinked excitedly over the keys, never touching them.
• Lot would be tall, stooped, and shaggy but with sad eyes that made him look like a gentleman in spite of his red neck & big fumbling hands. He'd have straight teeth and, to indicate that he had some spirit, red hair. His clothes would hang on him but he'd wear them nonchalantly like they were part of his skin...
• She would get supper for him in the cabin & he'd sit there eating the lumpy grits she hadn't bothered to put salt in & thinking about something big, something way off--another cow, a painted house, a clean well, a farm of his own even.
• He'd lunge forward but she'd dart from him like a wild horse. Then they'd face each other again--their eyes brimming with hate--and sway back & forth. Miss Willerton could hear the seconds dropping on the tin roof outside.
• There was a profusion of petunias by the doorstep & a colony of snapdragons under the window. It had been a peaceful year.
• Wille awoke in the night with a conscious pain. It was a soft, green pain with purple lights running through it.
• Willie looked listlessly out at the dripping trees. "It's over."
• ...he said, pushing his gum over his front teeth.
• Silly that a grocery should depress one--nothing in it but trifling domestic doings--women buying beans--riding children in those grocery go-carts--higgling about an eighth of a pound more or less of squash--what did they get out of it? Miss Willerton wondered, Where was there any chance for self-expression, for creation, for art? All around her it was the same--sidewalks full of people scurrying about with their hands full of little packages & their minds full of little packages--that woman there with the child on the leash, pulling him jerking him, dragging him away from a window with a jack-o'-lantern in it; she would probably be pulling & jerking him the rest of her life. And there was another, dropping a shopping bag all over the street...
• Her skin was mottled & her neck thrust forward as if she were sticking it out to smell something that was always being drawn away. Her face was set in an inane grin. The man was long & wasted & shaggy... His hands fumbled stupidly with the girl's as they slumped along, and once or twice he smiled sickly at her.

"The Turkey"

• Hane had always been an unusual boy, she said. She said he would grow up to be an unusual man too.
• The ground was cool to his face.
• "Hell." He said it like Hane said it, pulling the e-ull out & trying to get the look in his eye that Hane got.
• He sat up & looked at his white ankles sticking out of his pants legs into his shoes. They looked like they didn't belong to him. He gripped a hand around each ankle & bent his knees up & rested his chin on a knee.
• He had never heard himself think that tone before. He wondered should he take the thought back... He wondered suddenly if he were going "bad."
• God could go around sticking things in your face & making you chase them all afternoon for nothing.
• Ruller wondered suddenly if he were an unusual child.
• He reckoned he were more unusual than Hane. He had to worry more than Hane because he knew more how things were.
• ...and the next day his father would go out early & his mother would have the blue veins out on her forehead.
• He guessed he was one of the most unusual children ever. Maybe that was why the turkey was there. He rubbed his hand along the neck. Maybe it was to keep him from going bad. Maybe God wanted to keep him from that. Maybe God had knocked it out right there where he'd see it when he got up. Maybe God was in the bush now, waiting for him to make up his mind. Ruller blushed. He wondered if God could think he was a very unusual child. He must.
• He felt warm all over & nice as if something very fine were going to be or had been... God must be wonderful, he felt suddenly. He wanted to do something for God.
• They were tenants' children & sometimes tenants' children just stared at you.
• God was interested in him because he was a very unusual child.
• She was a tall, long-faced old woman... Her face was the color of a dead chicken's skin.
• Slowly his heart calmed & he began to feel full of a new feeling--like being happy & embarrassed at the same time. Maybe, he thought, blushing, he would give all his money to her. He felt as if the ground did not need to be under him any longer.

"The Train"

• Haze leaned his head back on the seat & looked out the window, the yellow light of the train lukewarm on him.
• The way things happened, one thing right after another, it seemed like time went by so fast you couldn't tell if you were old or young. She looked as if it had been cheating her, going double quick when she was asleep & couldn't watch it.
• His mother had always started up a conversation with the other people on the train. She was like an old bird or dog just unpenned that raced, sniffing up every rock & stick & sucking in the air around everything she stopped at. There wasn't a person she hadn't spoken to by the time they were ready to get off. She remembered them too. Long years after, she would say she wondered where the lady who was going to Fort West, or she wondered if the man who was selling Bibles had ever got his wife out of the hospital. She had a hankering for people--as if what happened to the ones she talked to happened to her then. She was a Jackson. Annie Lou Jackson.
• Haze's mother never talked much on the train; she mostly listened. She was a Jackson.
• Haze & Mrs. Hosen stood in line for a half hour, rocking in the narrow passageway & every few minutes flattening themselves against the side to let a trickle of people through.
• ...and getting his hand wet with somebody's coffee.
• The people he was sitting with had finished and, he could tell, were waiting, watching him eat.
• When he got out of the diner he was weak & his hands were making small jittery movements by themselves. It seemed a year ago that he had seen the head man beckon to him to sit down. He stopped between two cars & breathed in the cold air to clear his head. It helped.
• When he got back to his car all the berths were made up & the aisles were dark & sinister, hung in heavy green.
• He could get into the berth now. He could lie down & raise the shade just enough to look out from & watch -- what he had planned to do -- and see how everything went by a train at night. He could look right into the night, moving.
• ...and the darkness sank down on him & then faded a little with light from the aisle that came in through the foot of space not closed. He wanted it all dark, he didn't want it diluted.
• He heard the porter's footsteps coming down the aisle, soft into the rug.
• The tracks curved & he fell back sick into the rushing stillness of the train.

"The Peeler"

• Her mouth was open & her eyes glittered on him like two chips of green bottle glass.
• He looked as if he were trying to move forward & backward at the same time.
• He skipped a step to get in line with Haze, then he said...
• He had a thin face & oval-shaped eyes.
• "Only objection I got to Taulkinham is there's too many people on the street," he said confidentially, "look like they ain't satisfied until they knock you down."
• All of a sudden he bumped into a little man lost in a pair of faded overalls.
• She had theseyer brown glasses & her hair was so thin it looked like ham gravy trickling over her skull.
• "Your jaw just crawls," he observed, watching the side of Haze's face. "You don't never laugh. I wouldn't be surprised if you wasn't a real wealthy man."
• She jumped back & looked as if she were going to swallow her face.
• "I followed her to say I ain't beholden for none of her fast eye like she gave me back yonder." He didn't look at her, he looked at the blind man.
• "He tore it up & sprinkled it over the ground like salt & wiped his hands on his pants."
• She had on men's shoes & black cotton stockings. The shoes were laced up tight & tied in precise bows.
• "You got a secret need," the blind man said. "Them that know Jesus once can't escape Him in the end."
• "That's enough. You know His name & you're marked. If Jesus has marked you there ain't nothing you can do about it. Them that have knowledge can't swap it for ignorance."
• "You're marked with knowledge... You know what sin is & only them that know what it is can commit it."
• "There ain't nothing for your pain but Jesus..." They strangled it with a silk stocking... Jesus made it beautiful to haunt her.
• He pushed through them with his elbows out like sharp wings
• ...but she looked at him for an instant with two bright flea eyes.
• ...felt something turning in his chest. The crowd was moving fast. It was like a big spread ravelling & the separate threads disappeared down the dark streets until there was nothing left of it & he was standing on the porch of the auditorium by himself. The tracts were speckled all over the steps & on the sidewalk & out into the street.
• He strode along at Haze's elbows, talking in a half mumble, half whine... [...], he said in a cracked voice. Haze looked at him & saw he was crying, his face seamed & wet & a purple-pink color.
• Haze looked straight ahead with his face set hard, and Enoch kept up the half mumble, half blubber.
• ...turned up a street full of brick houses, each alike in the darkness.
• Haze didn't answer him. He went on with his neck drawn close to his shoulder blades as if he were cold.
• "You don't know nobody neither," Enoch said. "You ain't got no woman or nothing to do. I knew when I first seen you you didn't have nobody or nothing. I seen you & I knew it."
• His eyes glinted through his tears & his face stretched in an evil crooked grin. Haze's mouth jerked but he didn't say anything. He stood there for an instant, small in the middle of the steps, and then he raised his arm & hurled the stack of tracts he had been carrying. It hit Enoch in the chest & knocked his mouth open. He stood looking, with his mouth hanging open, at where it had hit his front, and then he turned & tore off down the street and Haze went into the house.
• When he finished, he was like something washed ashore on her.
• He put his face into what he thought was an all-knowing expression but it was only stretched a little on one side.
• He began to move around the room examining this & that. His throat got dryer & his heart began to grip him like a little ape clutching the bars of its cage.
• Haze's head became so heavy he couldn't turn it away from her.
• She wore black all the time & her dresses were longer than other women's.
• "Jesus died to redeem you," she said. "I never ast Him," he muttered.
• He took them out of the box & filled the bottoms of them with stones & small rocks & then he put them on. He laced them up tight & walked in them through the woods what he knew to be a mile, until he came to a creek, and then he sat down & took them off & eased his feet in the wet sand. He thought, that ought to satisfy Him. Nothing happened.

"The Heart of the Park"

• ...a boy with a jutting shale-textured face & a toothpick in his mouth
• He went first to the swimming pool. He was afraid of the water but he liked to sit up on the bank above it if there were any women in the pool, and watch them.
• The water was bottle-green & motionless.