What caused a white man who lived and worked on Deacon Street in Thermopylae, Mississippi, to kill a black man who lives on the same street? Eudora Welty captures the tension of people living on the edge of a changing world. She shows why one might consider gunning down a forward looking brother. The story is a nod at the biblical story found in Genesis between Cain and Able. Am I my brothers keeper is the question that Welty posed.
So I reach me down my old guitar off the nail in the wall. 'Cause I've got my guitar, what I've held on to from way back when, and I never dropped that, never lost or forgot it, never hocked it but to get it again, never give it away, and I set in my chair, with nobody home but me, and I start to play, and sing a-Down. And sing a-down, down, down, down. Sing a-down, down, down, down. Down.
Eudora Welty on the Short Story.