Flannery O'Connor: "The Displaced Person"

The priest had his hand on the screen door and he opened it, ready to make his escape. “Arrrr, I must be off,” he murmured. “I tell you if I had a white man who understood the Negroes, I’d have to let Mr. Guizac go,” she said and stood up again. He turned then and looked her in the face. “He has nowhere to go,” he said. Then he said, “Dear lady, I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t turn him out for a trifle!” and without waiting for an answer, he raised his hand and gave her his blessing in a rumbling voice. She smiled angrily and said, “I didn’t create this situation, of course.” The priest let his eyes wander toward the birds. They had reached the middle of the lawn. The cock stopped suddenly and curving his neck backwards, he raised his tail and spread it with a shimmering timbrous noise. Tiers of small pregnant suns floated in a green-gold haze over his head. The priest stood transfixed, his jaw slack. Mrs. McIntyre wondered where she had ever seen such an idiotic old man. “Christ will come like that!” he said in a loud gay voice and wiped his hand over his mouth and stood there, gaping. Mrs. McIntyre’s face assumed a set puritanical expression and she reddened. Christ in the conversation embarrassed her the way sex had her mother. “It is not my responsibility that Mr. Guizac has nowhere to go,” she said. “I don’t find myself responsible for all the extra people in the world.” The old man didn’t seem to hear her. His attention was fixed on the cock who was taking minute steps backward, his head against the spread tail. “The Transfiguration,” he murmured. She had no idea what he was talking about. “Mr. Guizac didn’t have to come here in the first place,” she said, giving him a hard look. The cock lowered his tail and began to pick grass. “He didn’t have to come in the first place,” she repeated, emphasizing each word. The old man smiled absently. “He came to redeem us,” he said and blandly reached for her hand and shook it and said he must go.