The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty Read online

  The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

  Eudora Welty

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Contents

  A Curtain of Green and Other Stories

  LILY DAW AND THE THREE LADIES

  A PIECE OF NEWS

  PETRIFIED MAN

  THE KEY

  KEELA, THE OUTCAST INDIAN MAIDEN

  WHY I LIVE AT THE P.O.

  THE WHISTLE

  THE HITCH-HIKERS

  A MEMORY

  CLYTIE

  OLD MR. MARBLEHALL

  FLOWERS FOR MARJORIE

  A CURTAIN OF GREEN

  A VISIT OF CHARITY

  DEATH OF A TRAVELING SALESMAN

  POWERHOUSE

  A WORN PATH

  The Wide Net and Other Stories

  FIRST LOVE

  THE WIDE NET

  A STILL MOMENT

  ASPHODEL

  THE WINDS

  THE PURPLE HAT

  LIVVIE

  AT THE LANDING

  The Golden Apples

  SHOWER OF GOLD

  JUNE RECITAL

  SIR RABBIT

  MOON LAKE

  THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS

  MUSIC FROM SPAIN

  THE WANDERERS

  The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories

  NO PLACE FOR YOU, MY LOVE

  THE BURNING

  THE BRIDE OF THE INNISFALLEN

  LADIES IN SPRING

  CIRCE

  KIN

  GOING TO NAPLES

  Uncollected Stories

  WHERE IS THE VOICE COMING FROM?

  THE DEMONSTRATORS

  By Eudora Welty

  A HARVEST BOOK

  HARCOURT BRACE & COMPANY

  SAN DIEGO NEW YORK LONDON

  Copyright © 1980, 1966, 1963, 1955 by Eudora Welty

  Copyright 1954, 1952, 1951, 1949, 1948, 1947, 1943, 1942, 1941, 1939, 1938,

  1937, 1936 by Eudora Welty

  Copyright renewed 1994, 1991, 1980, 1979, 1977, 1976, 1975, 1971, 1970, 1969,

  1967, 1966, 1965 by Eudora Welty

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

  system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to:

  Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace & Company,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  Some of the stories in this collection, a few in different form, first appeared in the

  following magazines: Accent, American Prefaces, Atlantic Monthly, Decision, Harper's

  Bazaar, Harper's Magazine, the Hudson Review, Levee Press of Greenville, Mississippi,

  Manuscript, New Directions, Prairie Schooner, Sewanee Review, Southern Review,

  Tomorrow, and Yale Review. "No Place for You, My Love," "The Bride of the Innisfallen,"

  "Kin," "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" and "The Demonstrators" first appeared in

  the New Yorker.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Welty, Eudora, 1909–

  The collected stories of Eudora Welty.

  PZ3.W4696Co [PS3545.E6] 813'.52 80-7947

  ISBN 0-15-618921-6 (Harvest: pbk.)

  Printed in the United States of America

  N P R S Q O

  To my nieces,

  Elizabeth Welty Thompson

  and

  Mary Alice Welty White

  Preface

  Without the love and belief my family gave me, I could not have become a writer to begin with. But all my stories brought together here speak with their own voice to me of a source of strength on which I leaned as well, and do lean. In the presence of the stories, taking in forty years of time, I feel the presences also of those whose support of my work made all the difference in its fate and in my life as a writer. For beyond their being written—I do know they would have been written—there is what happens to the writer's stories when they are submitted to the world of strangers.

  It happened for me that the strangers—the first readers of my first stories—included Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks, the editors of The Southern Review. This distinguished quarterly, between 1937 and 1939, gave space to six stories of mine. Katherine Anne Porter, when she read some of them there, sat down and wrote me a letter of encouragement. The generosity of these writers' openness to me, their critical regard when it mattered most, not to mention the long friendships that began by letter in those days, have nourished my life.

  Submitting stories to The Southern Review had needed its own encouragement. That had come about when John Rood published "Death of a Traveling Salesman," my first, in Manuscript, the "little" magazine he issued from Athens, Ohio. Following my good fortune with The Southern Review, other good things happened. John Woodburn, an editor with Doubleday, Doran (as it was then), who was driving through the South on a scouting trip, stopped on The Southern Review's suggestion to see me, and left carrying some of my manuscripts with him. As was to be expected, a book publisher was not interested in a collection of short stories by an obscure young writer. But when Diarmuid Russell was opening his literary agency of Russell and Volkening, John Woodburn offered him the names of some new young writers he'd come across who might need an agent, among them mine. I became his client (I believe, his first), a decisive event in my writing life.

  Diarmuid Russell's integrity was a clear stream proceeding undeflected and without a ripple on its own way through the fields of publishing. On his quick perception, his acute and steady judgment in regard to my work, as well as on his friendship, I relied without reservation. (When, presently, he sent back to me a story I'd written called "The Delta Cousins," saying that to him it looked like Chapter Two of a novel, I saw then where the story had come from and where it was going, and wrote my first novel, Delta Wedding.)

  It was Diarmuid Russell's own belief in my work, and his hardheaded persistence in sending it out again and again when it was rejected, that resulted after a year's time in the acceptance of a story of mine in a magazine of general circulation. Edward Weeks took "A Worn Path" for The Atlantic Monthly in 1941. He had opened the door. Mary Louise Aswell, the fiction editor of Harper's Bazaar, who was a passionate advocate of new young writers, was able to clear the way for "The Key," the first of many of my stories she later introduced.

  Diarmuid Russell was thus eventually able to interest a publisher in a first book of stories by a writer hardly known, true, but now in print. The publisher was Doubleday, Doran, and the book went straight into the shepherding of the same John Woodburn who a few years earlier had carried the manuscripts there. It was through his editorship that Katherine Anne Porter, once more to encourage me, out of her shining bounty introduced the book, A Curtain of Green.

  John Woodburn, one of the great editors in a time of great ones, was a true champion of young writers; others writing today have him to thank as I do. When he moved to Harcourt, Brace (as it was then), I moved along with him.

  The present collection holds all my published stories: those in A Curtain of Green and the three volumes that followed; and two that appear here for the first time in book form. In general, my stories as they've come along have reflected their own present time, beginning with the Depression in which I began; they came out of my response to it.
These two written in the changing sixties reflect the unease, the ambiguities, the sickness and desperation of those days in Mississippi. If they have any special virtue in this respect, it would lie in the fact that they, like the others, are stories written from within. They come from living here—they were part of living here, of my long familiarity with the thoughts and feelings of those around me, in their many shadings and variations and contradictions.

  "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" is unique, however, in the way it came about.

  That hot August night when Medgar Evers, the local civil rights leader, was shot down from behind in Jackson, I thought, with overwhelming directness: Whoever the murderer is, I know him: not his identity, but his coming about, in this time and place. That is, I ought to have learned by now, from here, what such a man, intent on such a deed, had going on in his mind. I wrote his story—my fiction—in the first person: about that character's point of view, I felt, through my shock and revolt, I could make no mistake. The story pushed its way up through a long novel I was in the middle of writing, and was finished on the same night the shooting had taken place. (It's only two pages long.) At The New Yorker, where it was sent and where it was taken for the immediately forthcoming issue, William Maxwell, who had already known on sight all I could have told him about this story and its reason for being, edited it over the telephone with me. By then, an arrest had been made in Jackson, and the fiction's outward details had to be changed where by chance they had resembled too closely those of actuality, for the story must not be found prejudicial to the case of a person who might be on trial for his life.

  I have been told, both in approval and in accusation, that I seem to love all my characters. What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high.

  EUDORA WELTY

  Jackson, Mississippi

  May 1980

  Contents

  Preface

  [>]

  A Curtain of Green and Other Stories

  Lily Daw and the Three Ladies

  [>]

  A Piece of News

  [>]

  Petrified Man

  [>]

  The Key

  [>]

  Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden

  [>]

  Why I Live at the P.O.

  [>]

  The Whistle

  [>]

  The Hitch-Hikers

  [>]

  A Memory

  [>]

  Clytie

  [>]

  Old Mr. Marblehall

  [>]

  Flowers for Marjorie

  [>]

  A Curtain of Green

  [>]

  A Visit of Charity

  [>]

  Death of a Traveling Salesman

  [>]

  Powerhouse

  [>]

  A Worn Path

  [>]

  The Wide Net and Other Stories

  First Love

  [>]

  The Wide Net

  [>]

  A Still Moment

  [>]

  Asphodel

  [>]

  The Winds

  [>]

  The Purple Hat

  [>]

  Livvie

  [>]

  At The Landing

  [>]

  The Golden Apples

  Shower of Gold

  [>]

  June Recital

  [>]

  Sir Rabbit

  [>]

  Moon Lake

  [>]

  The Whole World Knows

  [>]

  Music from Spain

  [>]

  The Wanderers

  [>]

  The Bride of the Innisfallen and Other Stories

  No Place for You, My Love

  [>]

  The Burning

  [>]

  The Bride of the Innisfallen

  [>]

  Ladies in Spring

  [>]

  Circe

  [>]

  Kin

  [>]

  Going to Naples

  [>]

  Uncollected Stories

  Where Is the Voice Coming From?

  [>]

  The Demonstrators

  [>]

  A Curtain of Green and Other Stories

  1941

  To Diarmuid Russell

  LILY DAW AND THE THREE LADIES

  Mrs. Watts and Mrs. Carson were both in the post office in Victory when the letter came from the Ellisville Institute for the Feeble-Minded of Mississippi. Aimee Slocum, with her hand still full of mail, ran out in front and handed it straight to Mrs. Watts, and they all three read it together. Mrs. Watts held it taut between her pink hands, and Mrs. Carson underscored each line slowly with her thimbled finger. Everybody else in the post office wondered what was up now.

  "What will Lily say," beamed Mrs. Carson at last, "when we tell her we're sending her to Ellisville!"

  "She'll be tickled to death," said Mrs. Watts, and added in a guttural voice to a deaf lady, "Lily Daw's getting in at Ellisville!"

  "Don't you all dare go off and tell Lily without me!" called Aimee Slocum, trotting back to finish putting up the mail.

  "Do you suppose they'll look after her down there?" Mrs. Carson began to carry on a conversation with a group of Baptist ladies waiting in the post office. She was the Baptist preacher's wife.

  "I've always heard it was lovely down there, but crowded," said one.

  "Lily lets people walk over her so," said another.

  "Last night at the tent show—"said another, and then popped her hand over her mouth.

  "Don't mind me, I know there are such things in the world," said Mrs. Carson, looking down and fingering the tape measure which hung over her bosom.

  "Oh, Mrs. Carson. Well, anyway, last night at the tent show, why, the man was just before making Lily buy a ticket to get in."

  "A ticket!"

  "Till my husband went up and explained she wasn't bright, and so did everybody else."

  The ladies all clucked their tongues.

  "Oh, it was a very nice show," said the lady who had gone. "And Lily acted so nice. She was a perfect lady—just set in her seat and stared."

  "Oh, she can be a lady—she can be," said Mrs. Carson, shaking her head and turning her eyes up. "That's just what breaks your heart."

  "Yes'm, she kept her eyes on—what's that thing makes all the commotion?—the xylophone," said the lady. "Didn't turn her head to the right or to the left the whole time. Set in front of me."

  "The point is, what did she do after the show?" asked Mrs. Watts practically. "Lily has gotten so she is very mature for her age."

  "Oh, Etta!" protested Mrs. Carson, looking at her wildly for a moment.

  "And that's how come we are sending her to Ellisville," finished Mrs. Watts.

  "I'm ready, you all," said Aimee Slocum, running out with white powder all over her face. "Mail's up. I don't know how good it's up."

  "Well, of course, I do hope it's for the best," said several of the other ladies. They did not go at once to take their mail out of their boxes; they felt a little left out.

  The three women stood at the foot of the water tank.

  "To find Lily is a different thing," said Aimee Slocum.

  "Where in the wide world do you suppose she'd be?" It was Mrs. Watts who was carrying the letter.

  "I don't see a sign of her either on this side of the street or on the other side," Mrs. Carson declared as they walked along.

  Ed Newton was stringing Redbird school tablets on the wire across the store.

  "If you're after Lily, she come in here while ago and tole me she was fixin' to git married," he said.

  "Ed Newton!" cried the ladies all toget
her, clutching one another. Mrs. Watts began to fan herself at once with the letter from Ellisville. She wore widow's black, and the least thing made her hot.

  "Why she is not. She's going to Ellisville, Ed," said Mrs. Carson gently. "Mrs. Watts and I and Aimee Slocum are paying her way out of our own pockets. Besides, the boys of Victory are on their honor. Lily's not going to get married, that's just an idea she's got in her head."

  "More power to you, ladies," said Ed Newton, spanking himself with a tablet.

  When they came to the bridge over the railroad tracks, there was Estelle Mabers, sitting on a rail. She was slowly drinking an orange Ne-Hi.

  "Have you seen Lily?" they asked her.

  "I'm supposed to be out here watching for her now," said the Mabers girl, as though she weren't there yet. "But for Jewel—Jewel says Lily come in the store while ago and picked out a two-ninety-eight hat and wore it off. Jewel wants to swap her something else for it."

  "Oh, Estelle, Lily says she's going to get married!" cried Aimee Slocum.

  "Well, I declare," said Estelle; she never understood anything.

  Loralee Adkins came riding by in her Willys-Knight, tooting the horn to find out what they were talking about.

  Aimee threw up her hands and ran out into the street. "Loralee, Loralee, you got to ride us up to Lily Daws'. She's up yonder fixing to get married!"

  "Hop in, my land!"

  "Well, that just goes to show you right now," said Mrs. Watts, groaning as she was helped into the back seat. "What we've got to do is persuade Lily it will be nicer to go to Ellisville."

  "Just to think!"

  While they rode around the corner Mrs. Carson was going on in her sad voice, sad as the soft noises in the hen house at twilight. "We buried Lily's poor defenseless mother. We gave Lily all her food and kindling and every stitch she had on. Sent her to Sunday school to learn the Lord's teachings, had her baptized a Baptist. And when her old father commenced beating her and tried to cut her head off with the butcher knife, why, we went and took her away from him and gave her a place to stay."

  The paintless frame house with all the weather vanes was three stories high in places and had yellow and violet stained-glass windows in front and gingerbread around the porch. It leaned steeply to one side, toward the railroad, and the front steps were gone. The car full of ladies drew up under the cedar tree.