Tomorrow

by Horton Foote, William Faulkner (Adapted from a story by)

In a rural area of the Deep South, the action begins with the arrival of a young lawyer who has just tried, and lost, his first case. His client killed a young man who wanted to run off with his daughter; when they young man drew a gun, the girl's father killed him. To most of the jurors the killing was clearly justified, but one man, Jackson Fentry, voted against acquittal, hanging the jury. Convinced that the reason for Fentry's action must lie outside the immediate facts of the case, the lawyer comes to talk to the Fentry's neighbors, and the story they tell him becomes the continuing action of the play. It turns out that Fentry happened upon a young woman in her eighth month of pregnancy as, in a sickly and weakened state, she left home where her father and brothers disowned her and her husband left her. Fentry cares for her and is with her when she gives birth to a baby boy. He marries her just before she dies, and promises to raise the boy as his own. Knowing the girl's kin might one day find out about the boy and claim him, Fentry never lets the boy leave his side. When the boy turns three, however, the brothers of the young girl find Jackson and forcibly take the boy away. Heartbroken, Jackson leaves his family farm without a word, leaving his father to work it alone, for ten years. When Jackson returns, he hears word of the boy, now going under a different name and with a reputation of recklessness and indifference, the opposite of how Jackson tried to raise him. One day, he even observes the boy in town and sees a wild, selfish young man who no longer recognizes his first father. Even so, when the boy is killed by the girl's father, Jackson, still believing the little boy heraised was deep inside, does not acquit the man who killed him."

Genres: Fiction, Plays, Short Stories

72 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1996

About the author

Albert Horton Foote, Jr. was an American playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for his Academy Award-winning screenplays for the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird and the 1983 film Tender Mercies, and his notable live television dramas during the Golden Age of Television. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta.

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be the best short story I have ever read. Up until now, I would have named A Rose for Emily if asked for Faulkner's best short story, henceforth, my answer will be Tomorrow.

I cried at the end of this one. I cried for how cruel life can be and how the best instincts of a man can be used against him. And, I wondered if it was better to have loved and seen what Fentry had seen or never to have known love at all, for any other human being on earth.

Faulkner was in his best descriptive form:

We followed him to the gallery, where a plump, white-haired old lady in a clean gingham sunbonnet and dress and a clean white apron sat in a low rocking chair, shelling field peas into a wooden bowl.

Can you not just see both the woman and the gallery on which she sits?

And, he was at his best philosophically, as well:

But Uncle Gavin says it don’t take many words to tell the sum of any human experience; that somebody has already done it in eight: He was born, he suffered, and he died.

That might make a headstone for any of us.

[Patrick Lacher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the only Faulkner store I can say I really liked.