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Although the old woman lived in this desolate spot with only her daughter and she had never seen Mr. Shiftlet before, she could tell, even from a distance, that he was a tramp and no one to be afraid of.

In her pride and arrogance, the old woman does not consider Shiftlet to be worthy of fear or respect. He is both disabled and homeless, which puts him on some imagined cultural rung below her. She immediately sees him as someone from whom she can extract work, not only on her property, but potentially also as another set of hands to care for her daughter. She feels that these would be lucky circumstances for Shiftlet, in the face of the downtrodden life she perceives him to have. The reversal of the power relationship later will happen when Shiftlet abandons the Crater women. This immediate and undiminished sense of superiority will lead to the tragic end of her story.

“What do you want her to say next?” Mr. Shiftlet asked.

The old woman’s smile was broad and toothless and suggestive. “Teach her to say ‘sugarpie,’” she said.

Mr. Shiftlet already knew what was on her mind.

Very few of the dialogues between Shiftlet and the old woman are straightforward. Most of the time, they talk around each other, insinuating and implying, letting what they don’t say mean as much as the words they use. From the beginning, it is obvious that the old woman very much wants Shiftlet to stay around, as much for her sake as for her daughter’s. Rather than stating that idea directly, she skirts around it by extolling her daughter’s virtues and indicating that any man would be lucky to marry her and live with them. In this excerpt, Shiftlet’s question about what word the old woman would like Lucynell to learn next suggests that he may be considering her implied proposition. The old woman responds with a word Lucynell could use to indicate affection for Shiftlet, thus making her a good wife. Both Shiftlet and the old woman know if Lucynell were able to call Shiftlet “sugarpie,” she would likely do so without true understanding of what the pet name means or denotes. This ability, then, would be a mimicry of a good marriage, which is the old woman’s true aim.

He was more depressed than ever as he drove on by himself. . . . There were times when Mr. Shiftlet preferred not to be alone. He felt too that a man with a car had a responsibility to others and he kept his eye out for a hitch-hiker.

Shiftlet’s complicated psychology is evident throughout the story. He seems incapable of keeping himself satisfied, no matter where he is or what he is doing. He claims to know what is right and wrong, and yet he marries a woman who cannot properly consent only to get access to a car, which he then steals. He recognizes the stability and comforts of a home that is on offer, but he also sees the complications that would arise from it. After abandoning Lucynell at the diner, Shiftlet is briefly excited to be on the road, only to have that excitement tempered shortly after achieving his aims. He prefers not to be alone, even as his attitude demonstrates that having Lucynell for company was worse than being alone. Shiftlet seems to be a tragicomic object lesson of the adage, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

The boy turned angrily in the seat. “You go to the devil!” he cried. “My old woman is a flea bag and yours is a stinking pole cat!” and with that he flung the door open and jumped out with his suitcase into the ditch.

The final character Shiftlet encounters is the one that sees through him. The hitchhiking boy seems to have a similar attitude about life as Shiftlet does: he has to work through his life on his own, since he hasn’t received the love and support from his mother that he deserved. The boy seems to preternaturally understand that Shiftlet is a talker without any conviction behind his words. As Shiftlet tries out his patter with the boy, it doesn’t land. The boy seems to be pointing out to Shiftlet that for all his talk about loving his mother, either he is lying about what a good and loving mother he had, or he has wholly betrayed every principle she instilled in him. The boy seems to think that it is the former, mirroring his own experience that sent him to the side of the road. And even in a moment of desperation, the boy is unwilling to entertain Shiftlet’s overly sentimental pap.

Next section The Complications of Maternal Relationships

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