Spicy And Short Stories Beautiful Spicy And Short Stories for Children, Horror, Humour, Religious, English Tales, Romance, Sci-Fi And Much More..

When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral:the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallenmonument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside ofher house, which no one save an old manservant--a combined gardenerand cook--had seen in at least ten years. It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white,decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in theheavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once beenour most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroachedand obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; onlyMiss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettishdecay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps--an eyesoreamong eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join therepresentatives of those august names where they lay in thecedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves ofUnion and Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sortof hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor--he who fathered the edictthat no Negro woman should appear on the streets without anapron--remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the deathof her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would haveaccepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to theeffect that Miss Emily's father had loaned money to the town, whichthe town, as a matter of business, preferred this way of repaying.Only a man of Colonel Sartoris' generation and thought could haveinvented it, and only a woman could have believed it.

When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayorsand aldermen, this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction.On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice. Februarycame, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter,asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her convenience. Aweek later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to sendhis car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of anarchaic shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to theeffect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was alsoenclosed, without comment.

They called a special meeting of the board of aldermen. Adeputation waited upon her, knocked at the door through which novisitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessonseight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negrointo a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still moreshadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. TheNegro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy,leather-covered furniture. When the Negro opened the blinds of onewindow, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when theysat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinningwith slow motes in the single sunray. On a tarnished gilt easelbefore the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily'sfather.

They rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with athin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into herbelt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Herskeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would havebeen merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She lookedbloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and ofthat pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face,looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of doughas they moved from one face to another while the visitors statedtheir errand.

She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door andlistened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Thenthey could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the goldchain.

Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. ColonelSartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access tothe city records and satisfy yourselves."

"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't youget a notice from the sheriff, signed by him?"

"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considershimself the sheriff.... I have no taxes in Jefferson."

"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see. We mustgo by the--"

"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."

"But, Miss Emily--"

"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost tenyears.) "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared."Show these gentlemen out."

So SHE VANQUISHED them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquishedtheir fathers thirty years before about the smell. That was twoyears after her father's death and a short time after hersweetheart--the one we believed would marry her--had deserted her.After her father's death she went out very little; after hersweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of theladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and theonly sign of life about the place was the Negro man --a young manthen--going in and out with a market basket.

"Just as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly," theladies said; so they were not surprised when the smell developed.It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the highand mighty Griersons.

A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eightyyears old.

"But what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.

"Why, send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there alaw?"

"I'm sure that won't be necessary, "Judge Stevens said. "It'sprobably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in theyard. I'll speak to him about it."

The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man whocame in diffident deprecation. "We really must do something aboutit, Judge. I'd be the last one in the world to bother Miss Emily,but we've got to do something." That night the board of aldermenmet--three greybeards and one younger man, a member of the risinggeneration.

"It's simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her placecleaned up. Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don't.. ."

"Damn it, sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to herface of smelling bad?"

So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily'slawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along thebase of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of themperformed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slungfrom his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and sprinkledlime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed thelawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat init, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as thatof an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadowof the locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smellwent away.

That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. Peoplein our town, remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, hadgone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons heldthemselves a little too high for what they really were. None of theyoung men were quite good enough to Miss Emily and such. We hadlong thought of them as a tableau; Miss Emily a slender figure inwhite in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in theforeground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two ofthem framed by the backflung front door. So when she got to bethirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, butvindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn't haveturned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.

When her father died, it got about that the house was all that wasleft to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they couldpity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had becomehumanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the olddespair of a penny more or less.

The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at thehouse and offer condolence and aid, as is our custom. Miss Emilymet them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of griefon her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She didthat for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and thedoctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body.Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down,and they buried her father quickly.

We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that.We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and weknew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that whichhad robbed her, as people will.

SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair wascut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance tothose angels in colored church windows--sort of tragic and serene.

The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, andin the summer after her father's death they began the work. Theconstruction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, anda foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee--a big, dark, ready man,with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boyswould follow in groups to hear him cuss the riggers, and theriggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soonhe knew everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughinganywhere about the square, Homer Barron would be in the center ofthe group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sundayafternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched teamof bays from the livery stable.

At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest,because the ladies all said, "Of course a Grierson would not thinkseriously of a Northerner, a day laborer." But there were stillothers, older people, who said that even grief could not cause areal lady to forget noblesse oblige--without calling it noblesseoblige. They just said, "Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come toher." She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father hadfallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazywoman, and there was no communication between the two families.They had not even been represented at the funeral.

And as soon as the old people said "Poor Emily," the whispering

began. "Do you suppose it's really so?" they said to one another."Of course it is. What else could . . ." This behind their hands;rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon thesun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of thematched team passed: "Poor Emily."

She carried her head high enough--even when we believed that shewas fallen. It was as if she demanded more than ever therecognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it hadwanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness.Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over ayear after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the twofemale cousins were visiting her.

"I want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirtythen, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold,haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained acrossthe temples and about the eye sockets as you imagine a lighthousekeeper's face ought to look. "I want some poison," she said.

"Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recoin--"

"I want the best you have. I don't care what kind."

The druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to anelephant. But what you want is--"

"Arsenic," Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"

"Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--"

"I want arsenic."

The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, herface like a strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "Ifthat's what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you aregoing to use it for."

Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order tolook him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got thearsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her thepackage; the druggist didn't come back. When she opened the packageat home, there was written on the box, under the skull and bones:"For rats."

SO THE NEXT DAY we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we saidit would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seenwith Homer Barron, we had said, "She will marry him." Then we said,"She will persuade him yet," because Homer himself had remarked--heliked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men inthe Elks Club--that he was not a marrying man. Later we said "PoorEmily" behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon inthe glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and HomerBarron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins and whipin a yellow glove.

Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to thetown and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want tointerfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister--MissEmily's people were Episcopal--to call upon her. He would neverdivulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to goback again. The next Sunday they again drove about the streets, andthe following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily'srelations in Alabama.

So she had blood kin under her roof again and we sat back to watchdevelopments . At first nothing happened. Then we were sure thatthey

were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily had been to thejeweler's and ordered a man's toilet set in silver, with theletters H.B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she hadbought a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a nightshirt,and we said, "They are married." We were really glad. We were gladbecause the two female cousins were even more Grierson than MissEmily had ever been.

So we were not surprised when Homer Barron--the streets had beenfinished some time since--was gone. We were a little disappointedthat there was not a public blowing-off, but we believed that hehad gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's coming, or to give her achance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, andwe were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.)Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we hadexpected all along, within three days Homer Barron was back intown. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door atdusk one evening.

And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily forsome time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket,but the front door remained closed. Now and then we would see herat a window for a moment, as the men did that night when theysprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not appear onthe streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as ifthat quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life somany times had been too virulent and too furious to die.

When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair wasturning gray. During the next few years it grew greyer and greyeruntil it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron gray, when it ceasedturning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was stillthat vigorous iron gray, like the hair of an active man.

From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a periodof six or seven years, when she was about forty, during which shegave lessons in china painting. She fitted up a studio in one ofthe downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters ofColonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent to her with the sameregularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to church onSundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate.Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.

Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of thetown, and the painting pupils grew up and fell away and did notsend their children to her with boxes of color and tedious brushesand pictures cut from the ladles' magazines. The front door closedupon the last one and remained closed for good. When the town gotfree postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fastenthe metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. Shewould not listen to them.

Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow greyer and morestooped, going in and out with the market basket. Each December wesent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the post officea week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one ofthe downstairs windows--she had evidently shut up the top floor ofthe house--like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking ornot looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed fromgeneration to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil,and perverse.

And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust andshadows, with only a doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did noteven know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to getany information from the Negro. He talked to no one, probably noteven to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if fromdisuse.

She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed witha curtain, her grey head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy withage and lack of sunlight.

The negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and letthem in, with their hushed, sibilant voices and their quick,curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right throughthe house and out the back and was not seen again.

The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on thesecond day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath amass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father musingprofoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; andthe very old men--some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--onthe porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been acontemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her andcourted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematicalprogression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not adiminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter everquite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck ofthe most recent decade of years.

Already we knew that there was one room in that region abovestairswhich no one had seen in forty years, and which would have to beforced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the groundbefore they opened it.

The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this roomwith pervading dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed tolie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal:upon the valence curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shadedlights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystaland the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver sotarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collarand tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left uponthe surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung thesuit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and thediscarded socks.

The man himself lay in the bed.

For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profoundand fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in theattitude of

an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, thatconquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was leftof him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had becomeinextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and uponthe pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient andbiding dust.

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of ahead. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, thatfaint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw along strand of iron-grey hair.