"A Good Man is Hard to Find," Misfit Perspective

   Hiram, Bobby Lee and I were making our escape across the red dirt road in the middle of nowhere when we saw something interesting. There was a car, strange enough, as cars never went by this area, but more than that, it went toppling over in a grand fashion. I slowed as we neared the area. The inhabitants — a family of five and an old woman, were resting in a ditch near the side of the road, the car busted a great deal. They looked harmless, and as we were surrounded by dense woods with our guns I figured we might as well check it out. As we got closer we could hear the children squealing with excitement. “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!”

    I stepped closer, eyeing them all carefully. None of them looked at all remarkable, cept for the old woman. She didn’t seem as anchored in the moment as the others, and had a daintiness to her that reminded me of someone I once knew, who I seldom liked to think about. I don’t do too much reminiscing with all the running around I do. “Good afternoon,” I said as I settled down in the ditch with them. “I see you all had you a little spill.” The old lady responded saying they’d flipped over twice, a lie, which I quickly corrected. Then their little boy asked me about my gun. Something in his curiosity and enthusiasm stirred up an old uneasiness within me, and I told the mother to gather her children next to her.

    The father started to explain how they were in some kind of predicament. It didn’t particularly interest me, so I was glad when the old woman stood up in horror. “You’re The Misfit!” she shouted. “I recognized you at once!” It felt good to be recognized, although in my state, it also meant these people had to die. Ain’t no way I’d let them tell people what they’d seen. The father got all angry when I admitted it was too bad the old woman identified me, and said something quite awful to her even I would of hesitated to say. I’m not too sure why, but I felt sorry for her, and tried to offer her some comfort as she cried. She only responded “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” I would, but not yet

     Anyhow, she went off saying she knew I came from good people and was a good man at heart. Course, I knew all of that already, but it was still nice to hear, and I couldn’t help but mention my folks. I hadn’t thought of them in a long while, and the more I thought about them, and what lead up to that moment, I realized that I wasn’t a good man, and I didn’t want to be one. I used to think of myself as one, but I still ended up there anyway. It didn’t really matter, so what was the use of it all anyway?

      I had Bobby Lee take the dad and his son over to the woods and shoot ‘em. The grandmother didn’t really like that, and went hollering about praying and Jesus or something. I told her all the places I’d been, all the things I’d done. Jesus hadn’t been there with me for all that, but that was okay. I was getting along just fine. I didn’t need him. I didn’t need anybody. All I needed was to keep running and be free from the world that always got me wrong. They said they had the papers to prove me wrong, that I’d never been a good man, that I’d done something terrible. But I’d never seen them, so I didn’t believe it. “I call myself the Misfit,” I told the old woman, “because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit with all I gone through in punishment.” By that point it was just the old lady left. I heard the screams of the other girls from the woods. “Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain’t punished at all?”

     She blabbered again on how I had good blood and wouldn’t shoot a lady. She said she’d give over all the money she had, but I didn’t want it. She tried a last time to save herself, shouting, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” and reached for my shoulder. I jumped back and shot her through the chest. She was delusional. She would’ve pulled me in with her if I hadn’t shot her. She had to die.

     “She would of been a good woman,” I told Bobby Lee later, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

     “Some fun!” he said.

     “Shut up, Bobby Lee. It’s no real pleasure in life.”