Irene in today’s picture isn’t Mrs. Turpin… and she isn’t like Mrs. Turpin in the story, but the last paragraph mentions people who are “on key.”  Irene is on key… always.

I just this afternoon finished rereading “Revelation” by Flannery O’Connor.  The last two paragraphs:

“Until the sun slipped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. Turpin remained there with her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge.  At last she lifted her head.  There was only a purple streak in the sky cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk.  She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound.  A visionary light settled in her eyes.  She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire.  Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven…  They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior.  They alone were on key.  Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.  She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead.  In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was, immobile.”

At length she got down and turned off the faucet and made her slow way on the darkening path to the house.  In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up, but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upward into the starry field and shouting hallelujah.

——————

“Revelation” is a short story in the collection by O’Connor entitled Everything that Rises Must Converge.”