“A Piece of News”
A semi-literate, uneducated and isolated wife named Ruby Fisher manages to work out the words in a newspaper: “Mrs. Ruby Fisher had the misfortune to be shot in the leg by her husband this week.” Ignorance and backwoods superstition cause her to become frightened and confused.
“A Visit of Charity”
In the 1930’s, a teenage girl visits a nursing home in order to earn Campfire Girl points for acts of charity. She is led to a room shared by two old women residents in what turns into a nightmarish encounter from which the young girls runs screaming.
“The Petrified Man”
A conversation between beauty parlor worker and her customer erupts into a social firestorm when the worker accidentally mentions that someone has identified her customer as being pregnant. That someone turns out to be a new couple in town who have rented a room from the beauty parlor worker who have also identified a man wanted on four counts of rape as the “Petrified Man” from a traveling sideshow carnival.
“Why I Live at the P.O.”
An unreliable young woman’s first person account of the 4th of July when a sister she constantly complains is the family’s favorite returns home after running away with the man the narrator says she stole from her. In tow is a young girl of questionable parentage. At the eruption of yet another argument, she finally decides to leave the home and settle 24/7 at the local post office.
“No Room for You, My Love”
A man and a woman, unknown to each, but sharing the commonality of being from the North, meet in New Orleans and commence upon a strange tour that almost verges on the romantic, but gets only as far as one hesitant kiss. The crossroads of the tour seems to converge literally at the Arabi intersection and metaphorically at all the exotic romance suggested by the name.
“A Memory”
A young woman’s day on the beach takes off into a dreamlike fantasia intimately connected with a memory of touching the boy of her dreams in the briefest possible of way. This dream state is interrupted by a boorish family that sets up stakes on the beach right next to her, in the process intruding upon her memory so irreparably that it will now be forever tainted.
“The Hitch-Hikers”
A traveling salesman picks up two hitchhikers. Overnight, the two get into an argument resulting in one killing the other. Meanwhile, the salesman—unaffected by the violence—goes about his business as usual, revealing himself to be every bit as detached from genuine human closeness with friends and lovers as he is with the hitch-hikers he routinely picks up to keep him company on the road.
“Death of a Traveling Salesman”
The salesman in this story inhabits a more traditional Welty narrative; a metaphorical journey. Recovering from a bad bout of the flu, the salesman wrecks his car and attempts to make his way to the only house in view. Somewhat similar to a much more famous Welty story, the literal journey is really just an excuse for the far more symbolic one taking place primarily inside his mind.
That more famous story is “A Worn Path” which also happens to be one of her most anthologized and studies. The metaphors begin with the name of the old, black woman who is making her way across that literal and symbolic path: Phoenix Jackson. The story is a masterpiece of imagery and figurative language all working toward its multiple themes and dual level of meaning.
“Moon Lake”
Another dip into the deep metaphorical waters Welty’s short fiction, the title body of water is the central symbol of experience which both tantalizes and terrorizes young girls on the verge of blossoming into womanhood and the male lifeguard who saves one of them from drowning while at summer camp.
“The Wide Net”
In response to a message left behind by a young wife feeling neglected by her husband’s preference to spend time with his friends, the husband calls upon those very friends to help cast a dragnet for what he expects will be her dead body. Upon returning home, however, he discovers that she has not killed herself and she discovers that he is not as neglectful as he seemed.
“Livvie”
A story about a young black woman forced into a marriage with a much older man who is now in his death throes. This situation frees her to pursue the dream of the fast life with the raw emotional attraction she feels toward Cash McCord.
“Keela, the Outcast Indian Maiden”
An exercise in multiple perspectives in which the reader’s job is to piece together what actually happened when two white men decide to pay a visit to a clubfooted black man named Little Lee Roy in order to transform him into sideshow geek with bearing the name of the story’s title.
“Powerhouse”
An extraordinary break with tradition that reveals untapped depths of Welty’s talent, this experiment in writing jazz fiction is loosely based on Fats Waller and entirely different from any expectations gathered by reading Welty’s more famous stories.
“Where is the Voice Coming From?”
Another audacious tour de force of Welty’s perhaps bottomless wealth of talent, this is a fictional first-person account by the man who assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Actually composed well before the perpetrator of that shocking crime was actually apprehended, the most astonishing thing about the story is just exactly how close to the mark the author came in what was purely speculative fiction at the time she wrote it.
“The Demonstrators”
This more traditional story also reveal Welty’s uncommonly progressive attitude toward civil rights and racism in the South. The story of just another killing of a poor black man in Mississippi is used to underline the lack of meaning that black people had in the South during that time as individuals at all.
“First Love”
Equally audacious in its own way, “First Love” is the story of Aaron Burr’s conspiracy to commit treason against the United States following his duel with Alexander Hamilton as seen through the perspective of his most unlikely cohort: a 12 year old deaf mute who comes to worship the former Vice President.
“The Burning”
A late-career Faulknerian fantasia for the senses that takes the reader deeper than ever into the already densely written imagery and metaphorical world of Welty’s South. In a break with tradition and perhaps another nod to Faulkner, the reader is invited back into the South as the Civil War drags to its inevitable conclusion with Union soldiers burning down an old plantation and thus stimulating a narrative where death, lunacy and devastation of the past force the literal to collide with the metaphorical in literary conflagration as fiery as the burning manse.
