The best short stories of 1919, and the yearbook of the American short story
General
The best short stories of 1919, and the yearbook of the American short story
American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories -- 20th century -- Bibliography; Short stories -- 20th century -- Indexes; Short stories, American
"Right there, in your brain, there, there, and _only_ there! I'm no more
flesh and blood than--than I _ever_ was, _because, you murderer, you and
your damned wife never would let me be_! Well, do you see through me
_now_?"
"No! No!" screamed Mr. Montagu. "I _don't_ see through you! I don't!"
But as he leaned forward to clutch at him in his terror, all that he
could see before him was a closed door beyond a dozen tables, a disused
entranceway diagonally opposite the one that had let them in. "I _don't_
believe you!" he wailed. "Oh, my God, my God, my God, _where are you_?"
He turned frantically to the men and women nearest him. "You saw him!
There _was_ a boy with me, wasn't there? Wasn't there? Yes, see, there,
isn't he going for that door? Oh, my boy, my boy!" And he dashed toward
it. He heard the terrible screams of women, and chairs and a table
crashed in his wake. He reached it. It was locked.
Desperately sobbing, he hurled himself against it.
It seemed to him as if all the men in the restaurant fell upon him.
Strong, merciless hands dragged down and pinioned the wrists with which
he had beaten against the door.
"GOVERNMENT GOAT"[11]
[Note 11: Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company.
Copyright, 1920, by Susan Glaspell Cook.]
BY SUSAN GLASPELL
From _The Pictorial Review_
Joe Doane couldn't get to sleep. On one side of him a family were crying
because their man was dead, and on the other side a man was celebrating
because he was alive.
When he couldn't any longer stand the wails of the Cadaras, Joe moved
from his bedroom to the lounge in the sitting-room. But the lounge in
the sitting-room, beside making his neck go in a way no neck wants to
go, brought him too close to Ignace Silva's rejoicings in not having
been in one of the dories that turned over when the schooner
_Lillie-Bennie_ was caught in the squall last Tuesday afternoon and
unable to gather all her men back from the dories before the sea
gathered them. Joe Cadara was in a boat that hadn't made it--hence the
wails to the left of the Doanes, for Joe Cadara left a wife and four
children and they had plenty of friends who could cry, too. But Ignace
Silva--more's the pity, for at two o'clock in the morning you _like_ to
wish the person who is keeping you awake was dead--got back to the
vessel. So to-night his friends were there with bottles, for when a man
_might_ be dead certainly the least you can do is to take notice of him
by getting him drunk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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