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A Good Man Is Hard To Find
《好人难寻》这篇宗教寓言小说，故事很简单，讲一位老太太随她儿子一家五口到佛罗里达州旅行，途中由于老太太想看看一个本应在田纳西州却莫名地以为在佐治亚州的种植园，路上因老太太这一糟糕念头而翻了车，这时那个从监狱里逃出来的叫不合时宜的人恰好经过，最后把她们一家六人全杀了，还包括那个婴儿。老太太与不合时宜的人之间的对话成了小说的高潮，也是理解小说主题和人物的重要依据。一个抛弃了上帝的人在一个被上帝抛弃的人面前装扮成上帝，结果只会这样。奥康纳一生信奉上帝，她一生中最大的困扰就是时间，她坚信上帝能给她足够的时间而不是短暂的39年，她是虔诚的。其实每个人心中都有自己的上帝，但上帝能给我们的是什么呢?上帝才知道。
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The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of
her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to
change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was
sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports
section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read
this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the
newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is
aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it
says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in
any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my
conscience if I did."
Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced
the children's mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and
innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had
two points on the top like rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding
the baby his apricots out of a jar. "The children have been to Florida before,"
the old lady said. "You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so
they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been
to east Tennessee."
The children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy,
John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to
Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" He and the little girl, June Star, were
reading the funny papers on the floor.
"She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day," June Star said without
raising her yellow head.
"Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" the
grandmother asked.
"I'd smack his face," John Wesley said.
"She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid
she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go."
"All right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just re- member that the next
time you want me to curl your hair."
June Star said her hair was naturally curly.
The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go.
She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one
corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in
it. She didn't intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days
because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one
of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't
like to arrive at a motel with a cat.
She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on
either side of her. Bailey and the children's mother and the baby sat in front
and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890.
The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to
say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes
to reach the outskirts of the city.
The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves
and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The
children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green
kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch
of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the
print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her
neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In
case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once
that she was a lady.
She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too
hot nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five
miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small
clumps of trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She
pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite
that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay
banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of
green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and
the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and
their mother and gone back to sleep.
"Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to look at it much," John
Wesley said.
"If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my
native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the
hills."
"Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and
Georgia is a lousy state too."
"You said it," June Star said.
"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers,
"children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and
everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!"
she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't
that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the
little Negro out of the back window. He waved
"He didn't have any britches on," June Star said.
"He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little riggers
in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that
picture," she said.
The children exchanged comic books.
The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children's mother passed
him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told
him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her
mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally
he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or fix
graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!"
the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old family burying ground.
That belonged to the plantation."
"Where's the plantation?" John Wesley asked.
"Gone With the Wind" said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha."
When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they
opened the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an
olive and would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the
window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud
and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the
shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an
automobile, and June Star said he didn't play fair, and they began to slap each
other over the grandmother.
The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet.
When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very
dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr.
Edgar Atkins Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking
man and a gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Saturday
afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday, she said,
Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it
on the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the
watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E.
A. T. ! This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he giggled and giggled
but June Star didn't think it was any good. She said she wouldn't marry a man
that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would
have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentle man and had bought
Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years
ago, a very wealthy man.
They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sand- wiches. The Tower was a part
stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of
Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here
and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED
SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH
THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S YOUR MAN!
Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head
under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small
chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got
on the highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run
toward him.
Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables
at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table
next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair
and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children's mother
put a dime in the machine and played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother
said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like
to dance but he only glared at her. He didn't have a naturally sunny disposition
like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother's brown eyes were very
bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in
her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the children's
mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out
onto the dance floor and did her tap routine.
"Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you
like to come be my little girl?"
"No I certainly wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a
broken-down place like this for a million bucks!" and she ran back to the
table.
"Ain't she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely.
"Arn't you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother.
Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry
up with these people's order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones
and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He
came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and
yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating red
face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he
said. "Ain't that the truth?"
"People are certainly not nice like they used to be," said the
grandmother.
"Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler.
It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right
to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the
gas they bought? Now why did I do that?"
"Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once.
"Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with this
answer.
His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a
tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. "It isn't a soul in this
green world of God's that you can trust," she said. "And I don't count nobody
out of that, not nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy.
"Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the
grandmother.
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't attack this place right here,"
said the woman. "If he hears about it being here, I wouldn't be none surprised
to see him. If he hears it's two cent in the cash register, I wouldn't be a tall
surprised if he . . ."
"That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their Co'-Colas," and
the woman went off to get the rest of the order.
"A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting
terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door
unlatched. Not no more."
He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in
her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said
the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it
was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside
into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He
was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his
teeth as if it were a delicacy. |
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发表于 2016-7-10 11:23:04