The Grave by Katherine Anne Porter, 1935
The magic trick:
Bringing up issues of community and manhood, but never getting outright didactic about things
This story expertly establishes a feeling of momentous menace. We’ve got two kids running around with rifles at their sides. They’re scoping out abandoned gravesites, rolling around in the old graves.
You just know something very bad is about to happen.
You aren’t wrong. But the thing that happens will surprise you. The way it affects the kids – even decades later in the epilogue – will surprise you even more.
And that’s quite a trick on Porter’s part.
The selection:
Miranda glanced at it without covetousness. She had the gold ring on her thumb; it fitted perfectly. “Maybe we ought to go now,” she said, “maybe one of the niggers’ll see us and tell somebody.” They knew the land had been sold, the cemetery was no longer theirs, and they felt like trespassers. They climbed back over the fence, slung their rifles loosely under their arms—they had been shooting at targets with various kinds of firearms since they were seven years old—and set out to look for the rabbits and doves or whatever small game might happen along.
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