60 for 60: November Morning

By Natalie Bevilacqua

Joyce Carol Oates wrote herself into literary posterity with the 1966 release of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,“ a story told from the perspective of a teenager coaxed out of her house by a smooth-talking man and loosely inspired by the Pied Piper of Tucson murders. Likewise, this story—“November Morning”—boasts a young protagonist whose childhood is invaded by grim adult themes when his mother drags him and his siblings off to identify the dead body of her estranged husband.

Published in the second issue of Columbia Journal in 1978, the piece features a narrow scope confined to Davy’s observations and curiosities, such that the reader rides alongside the child and, for the majority of the story, inhabits a space of tension flowing from a source unknown mixed in with his usual frustrations toward his mother. As in all of her other works, Oates’s prose cuts close to the vein of the human experience, and her content follows suit. As such, “November Morning” ends not with a wailing widow or a screaming child, but instead with death shrouded in brown sugar donuts smacked between the lips of a now fatherless little boy.


November Morning

Joyce Carol Oates

Invemere, 1947. Before he was fully awake he saw in the door­ way the massive swaying figure, heard its guttural sobbing. There was a dim light in the hall behind it. Who was it, what was it, his teeth grated with fear, he wanted to call his mother but his eyes rolled back in his head and he was asleep again dreaming of the bushes scraping against his window. The storm was very loud.

The harsh overhead light was switched on.

Davy, said his mother. Get up. I called you.

He stared at her, blinking. She was in her flannel bathrobe and her hair was loose on her shoulders and her face was wet. He was very confused.

Nan started to whimper. She put her arm over her eyes.

Get up and get your sister dressed, his mother said. We don’t have much time.

His mouth was dry and the inside of his head seemed to hurt, he was so sleepy. His baby sister was starting to cry. When he went to shake her she kicked at him so he slapped her just once, curtly and smartly, on the cheek. But their mother was out in the kitchen and hadn’t seen.

Come on, he said. Don’t give me none of that fooling around!



Eat that cereal. Come on.

Where are we going?

Make Nan eat, will you, and hurry up. I got enough to do here.

She stood leaning against the stove with the baby against her shoulder, sucking at his bottle. Now her hair was in a long coarse braid hanging down her back and she wore overalls and one of Davy’s father’s old wool shirts. Her face was washed, the skin shone like dull metal.

Rain was hammering against the roof. Davy listened. He could hear people talking inside the rain. What were they saying? Who were they talking about? He could hear their shrill silly voices but he couldn’t make out the words….Then he caught himself, falling asleep at the table.

Nan was whining. Something about sugar.

There’s sugar on the cereal already, he said. He poured milk from a little can into both their bowls: it was condensed milk and he hated it because of its color. Yellowed. Like when they said over at the Kureliks’ farm that the cows had been bad in the milk.

Davy’s cereal bowl had a puppy on it. He had had it a long time.

It’s six-thirty already, his mother said.

Her voice came out flat and her eyes weren’t on him or Nan but wandering around the kitchen. So there was no danger of them being slapped. Davy tried to eat the cereal but the sweet sickish odor of the milk and the way it soaked into the cereal made his stomach close up. It was strange, he thought. What food was. How you were supposed to put it in your mouth and chew it and swallow it. You wouldn’t do that with newspaper, or wood chips, or clods of earth, so why should you try to do it with….He half-closed his eyes, feeling sick.

Are we going to town? Where are we going? Davy asked.

You know, his mother said.

To the Kureliks’? To get a ride to town?

They walked fast through the rain along the old sawmill lane by the creek. It was a nasty morning: wind and rain and no sun at all. Davy had hold of his sister’s hand, pulling her along, and his mother was carrying the baby wrapped in its new bright blanket.

The sawmill roof was just about rotted through. Someone had said it wouldn’t last another winter.

Davy’s father had said once, a long time ago, to watch out running in the grass around here. Because of nails and spikes. Don’t you run around here barefoot, his father had said. Step on a goddam rusty nail and you’re dead.

The Yew Creek was higher than it had been in months from all the rain. Davy could see the flat pale moss-covered rocks they played on in warmer weather and it was strange-how much higher the creek was now, how cold and nasty everything was. You would never want to squat on one of the rocks this morning.

By a stand of partly-burnt trees was the path to the Kureliks’, wet and muddy, but they had to take it. If they went all the way out to the road it would be a mile or more.

Where are we going, Davy said, whining.

You know. Now shut up.

His mother walked ahead. The path was wide enough for only one person at a time.

Davy tried to keep the wet grasses from slapping back in his face. He was still sleepy, and confused, and he hated his mother. She was always saying you know: you should know: I already told you. Sometimes she cuffed him for forgetting. The way she, and Davy’s father too, used to cuff the old dog to keep him away from the table. I already told you. But sometimes he thought she was wrong. She was wrong, she got things mixed up. When she sat in the kitchen or, in warm weather, out back, drinking, muttering and quarrelling and laughing to herself, she might have been telling Davy and Nan things they should know; but she never told them. So how could they know? Next time she slapped him he was going to slap her back.



It embarrassed him that his mother wouldn’t come inside when Mrs. Kurelik asked her. Sit in the kitchen and wait, he won’t be but five or ten minutes, he’s out in the barn right now loading up. Would you like some coffee? Some sweet rolls?

But Davy’s mother wouldn’t come inside. She stood on the veranda, out of the rain, staring toward the barn. Her broad pale bumpy face seemed to get smaller when Mrs. Kurelik talked to her, and her mouth got tiny and hard. We’re all right, she muttered. Davy was embarrassed, he didn’t think Mrs. Kurelik had even heard her. Nan pressed against their mother’s legs, her thumb jammed into her mouth, as if—stupid baby—she was afraid of Mrs. Kurelik and trying to hide.

Sure you don’t want to wait inside? Where it’s warm?

Once, a long time ago before the baby was born, Davy and his mother had been walking along the road, somewhere nearby, and it was very hot—so hot sweat ran down Davy’s back like little tickling bugs. But when a farmer stopped to ask them would they like a ride Davy’s mother had said no, without even looking at him she’d said no, her voice showing that she was embarrassed, and frightened, and Davy had wanted to protest-why couldn’t they climb into the truck, why couldn’t they accept a ride? Afterward his mother had said she didn’t want neighbors nosing into their business.

The Kureliks were different. Davy’s mother didn’t like them but she had known them a long time.

In the truck they sat crammed in the front seat, Davy in the middle with Nan on his lap. It smelled of wet clothing, and Mr. Kurelik’s tobacco, and milk from the big milk cans in the back of the truck. The baby started to fret.

Once they were on the highway to Invemere the rain lightened. For a while the sky was a queer glowering color, orangish gray. Then it got darker again. Mr. Kurelik kept turning the windshield wipers on, and then off. He turned them on for a few swipes, then turned them off. Davy wanted to ask him why he didn’t leave them on.

You’re still young, you ain’t even thirty, Mr. Kurelik said to Davy’s mother when he let them out.

She looked around at him, blinking. Her eyes were small and dark and threaded with blood: tiny hairs of blood. Davy squirmed with embarrassment because she was so slow, so sluggish, like a cow baffled by someone shouting at it or tossing mud-clods. She seemed to be just waking up from the long drive.

Is that what you think? she said.

Her voice was not angry, it seemed to show surprise.

Is that what people think? she giggled.

You’re not going to take those children in there, the woman said, standing at her desk. Why don’t you—

It’s my business what I do, Davy’s mother said.

Why don’t you leave the little girl with me.

Davy’s mother gave Nan a push toward the woman without looking at the woman. You sit quiet, she told Nan. No fussing around or crying.

They were taken along a hall by a man Davy had never seen before in a white coat. He wore cheap dark trousers and a white coat stained in front and on the sleeves. In his mouth there was a cigar, not lighted. He opened a door and Davy felt the surprise of sudden cold—not cold from the out-of-doors but a different cold, stale and sharp. It smelled of something he could not identify: maybe iodine or medicine.

How old is that boy, he asked Davy’s mother, working the cigar around in his mouth.

Davy’s mother ignored him and went to where someone was lying on a table.

Davy saw that it was a man: but something had happened to his face.

They really worked him over, all right, Davy’s mother said.

The man in the white coat made a gesture as if to pull Davy back. Why don’t you wait outside, he said. You can wait for your mother outside.

Leave him alone, Davy’s mother said. Her voice rose shrilly. She even turned to look at the man, to look him in the face. It’s up to him as well as me, she said. I’m not the only one.

The man stared at her, swallowing. Did he think, Davy wondered in shame, that his mother was crazy…would he tell everybody that she was crazy….

She turned back to the dead man. Davy stood just behind her, looking around her. He knew it was a dead man, of course: but it was nobody he had ever seen before. The face had been badly battered. It looked like part of the left cheek was missing, and the left eye, and the nose was broken. There should have been blood, Davy thought, but somebody had washed it away….But there was blood, caked in the nostrils, and in the creases of the neck. Blood or dirt or both mixed together.

Yeah, they really worked him over, Davy’s mother said wonderingly. She wiped her nose on the edge of the baby’s blanket. She giggled. You know, this one here, she said, half-turning so that the man could see the baby, he was sort of a Christmas present last year. The last one. He came back for a few weeks, just showed up on Christmas Day like there was nothing wrong and he hadn’t been missing for three months and what do you know, she said, grinning, I got me a fine surprise of a Christmas present nine months later.

Davy was peering around his mother’s arm. Trembling, he reached out to touch the dead man’s shoulder where the canvas didn’t quite cover him.

Get out in that other room, his mother said suddenly, savagely, slapping at his hand. What the hell are you doing!



Nan was eating a brown sugar donut, and the woman had one for Davy too. He snatched it from her and bit into it and began chewing without thanking her. He was so hungry his mouth hurt; saliva rushed into it.

Whatever the woman was saying he didn’t hear but pushed past her and ran outside and stood on the steps in the rain, eating the donut in big ravenous mouthfuls. He was trembling with hunger    He stared at cars passing by the square, some

Whatever the woman was saying he didn’t hear but pushed past her and ran outside and stood on the steps in the rain, eating the donut in big ravenous mouthfuls. He was trembling with hunger    He stared at cars passing by the square, some

with their headlights on. It was fascinating to watch them. Were they people who knew him and his mother, were they people who might give them a ride home? He stared, fascinated, licking sugar from his fingers.

Whatever the woman was saying he didn’t hear but pushed past her and ran outside and stood on the steps in the rain, eating the donut in big ravenous mouthfuls. He was trembling with hunger….He stared at cars passing by the square, some with their headlights on. It was fascinating to watch them. Were they people who knew him and his mother, were they people who might give them a ride home? He stared, fascinated, licking sugar from his fingers.