A Study on 'Place' In the Short Story

Stuart Hicks sat on the front porch of his parents' weathered plantation home, waiting. He fiddled with the strap of his grimy looking overalls where the buckle was starting to come loose from the denim. He scratched the ever-expanding bald spot in the middle of his sweaty head, smoothing down the remaining strands of thin black hair that barely knew what to do with themselves. He tapped his dusty work boots on the unswept porch. He did anything he could to pass the time, noting that there was a good deal of work to be done on the house, if only fall would go ahead and start falling. It had been a good two or three decades since anyone had decided to paint the house's yellow clapboard siding, and the sun had seen to bleaching it a funny looking eggshell hue. He stared out over the dusty landscape of the front lawn, long since abandoned by the care and keeping of leathery field hands. The southerly wind blew like air off a hot engine all around the place, kicking up dust and scattering it across the brittle veranda that surrounded the Hicks' place.

Stuart sat stared at all the rural desolation around him and waited for the postman to arrive. Normally, he would've been there by 1:00, but it was now 1:45, and Stuart was starting to think the postman might never arrive with his special invitation. It was probably because, as Stuart's mother said, "A watched pot never boils." Stuart's mother had been a good one, wise and fair; she had taught Stuart everything he ever needed to know, just like she always said she would.

"Stu," she'd say, just as she was about to show him how to work the plow or make dough rise, "this here's just another thing you gotta know before I leave this here Earth. Just do what Momma says, and you'll learn everything you ever need to know." She kept right on saying that until she was on her deathbed, and even then she'd said that dying was just another part of living that you had to learn about. "And that's all you ever need to know," she'd whispered, before closing her eyes and sighing like she'd just laid down for a well needed rest.

After that, Stuart started going into town less and less. The haunted reflection of his gaunt figure in the storefront windows unsettled him. The town became a looming specter with the whispering voices of townsfolk coming up between the alleys like echoes.