Flannery O'Connor: "The Barber"

Listen, he didn’t have to read nothin.’ All he had to do was think. That was the trouble with people these days—they didn’t think, they didn’t use their horse sense. Why wasn’t Rayber thinkin’? Where was his horse sense? Why am I straining myself? Rayber thought irritably. “Nossir!” the barber said. “Big words don’t do nobody no good. They don’t take the place of thinkin’.” “Thinking!” Rayber shouted. “You call yourself thinking?” “Listen,” the barber said, “do you know what Hawk told them people at Tilford?” At Tilford Hawk had told them that he liked niggers fine in their place and if they didn’t stay in that place, he had a place to put ’em. How about that? Rayber wanted to know what that had to do with thinking. The barber thought it was plain as a pig on a sofa what that had to do with thinking. He thought a good many other things too, which he told Rayber. He said Rayber should have heard the Hawkson speeches at Mullin’s Oak, Bedford, and Chickerville.