Read The Early Stories of Truman Capote for Free Online Page B

her foot and torn her silk stocking.
    And just when she had convinced herself that this was real romance her mother had gone and said that they were just children and after all children just couldn’t possibly know what real “affection” was, as she termed it.
    Then the girls in town, who were purple with envy, started a “We Don’t Like Grace Lee Campaign.” “Look at the little fool,” they would whisper, “just throwing herself at him.” “Why she’s no better than a—than a—harlot.” “I’d give a pretty penny to know what those two have been up to, but I suppose it would be too shocking for my ears.”
    Her pace quickened, she got mad just when she thought of it, those smug little prigs. She never would forget the fight she had had with Louise Beavers the time she had caught her reading a letter she had written aloud to a lot of laughing girls in the school wash room. Louise had stolen the letter out of one of Grace’s books and she was reading it aloud to them all with great, mocking gestures, and making a joke out of something that wasn’t funny at all.
    “Oh, well, that’s just a lot of trivial nonsense anyway,” she thought.
    The moon shone brightly in the sky, pale, wan little clouds hung around the surface like a fine lace shawl. She stared at it. She would soon be at his house. Just up this hill and down and there she would be. It was a fine little house, it was solid and substantial. It was just the perfect place for him to live, she thought.
    Sometimes she thought it was just a lot of sentiment, this puppy love, but now she was certain that it wasn’t. He was going to leave. He was going away to live with his aunt in New Orleans. His aunt was an artist, she did not like that very much. She had heard that artists were queer people.
    He had not told her until yesterday that he was leaving. He must have been a little afraid too, she thought, and now I’m the one that’s afraid. Oh, how happy everyone would be now that he was leaving and she wouldn’t have him anymore, she could just see their laughing faces.
    She brushed the light blonde hair out of her eyes. There was a cool wind blowing through the tree tops. She was nearing the crest of the hill, and suddenly she knew that he was coming up the other side and that they were going to meet at the top. She grew hot all over so sure was her premonition. She did not want to cry, she wanted to smile. She felt in her pocket for the picture of herself he had asked her to bring. It was a cheap snapshot that a man had taken of her at a carnival that had passed through the town. It didn’t even look much like her.
    Now that she was almost there she didn’t want to go any further. As long as she hadn’t actually said goodbye she still had him. She went and sat in the soft evening grass by the side of the road to wait for him.
    “All I hope for,” she said as she stared up into the dark, moon filled sky, “is that he doesn’t forget me, I suppose that’s all I have a right to hope for.”

The Moth in the Flame

All afternoon Em had lain on the steel-framed bed. She had a scrap quilt pulled over her legs. She was just lying there and thinking. The weather had turned cold, even for Alabama.
    George and all the other men from over the countryside were out looking for crazy old Sadie Hopkins. She had escaped from the jail. Poor old Sadie, thought Em, runnin’ all over in those swamps and fields. She used to be such a pretty girl—just got mixed up with the wrong folks, I guess. Gone plumb crazy.
    Em looked out the window of her cabin; the sky was dark and slate gray and the fields looked as if they had been frozen into furrows. She pulled the quilt closer about her. It certainly was lonesome out in this country, not another farm for four miles, fields on one side, swamp and woods on the other. She felt that maybe she had been born to be lonesome just as some people are born blind or deaf.
    She stared around the small room, the four walls