A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

by Flannery O'Connor

By now the sun was well forward in the sky. The odor of dinners cooking drifted out to them. The Negroes were all at their doors to see them pass. “Whyn’t you ast one of these niggers the way?” Nelson said. “You got us lost.” “This is where you were born,” Mr. Head said. “You can ast one yourself if you want to.” Nelson was afraid of the colored men and he didn’t want to be laughed at by the colored children. Up ahead he saw a large colored woman leaning in a doorway that opened onto the sidewalk. Her hair stood straight out from her head for about four inches all around and she was resting on bare brown feet that turned pink at the sides. She had on a pink dress that showed her exact shape. As they came abreast of her, she lazily lifted one hand to her head and her fingers disappeared into her hair. Nelson stopped. He felt his breath drawn up by the woman’s dark eyes. “How do you get back to town?” he said in a voice that did not sound like his own. After a minute she said, “You in town now,” in a rich low tone that made Nelson feel as if a cool spray had been turned on him. “How do you get back to the train?” he said in the same reedlike voice. “You can catch you a car,” she said. He understood she was making fun of him but he was too paralyzed even to scowl.