Death of a Traveling Salesman

Welty, in her Preface to The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1980), reports that she came to the attention of editors at The Southern Review—among them Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks and Katherine Anne Porter—after "Death of a Traveling Salesman" was accepted by a small Athens, Ohio journal, Manuscript. Consequently, The Southern Review quarterly carried six of her stories between 1936 and 1939.^[5]

Welty wrote her friend and former Columbia schoolmate Frank Lyell in May, 1936, exulting at the publication of the story.^[6]

That was a great day in my life because for the first time something was being looked at critically. This [the story] was from afar, an objective point of view, and they liked it and they were going to print it. I didn't give a hoot that they couldn't pay me anything. If they had paid me a million dollars it wouldn't have made any difference. I wanted acceptance and publication.^[7]

The story is presented from the third-person point-of-view.

The traveling salesman is the thirty-something R. J. Bowman, who has sold shoes door-to-door for fourteen years in Mississippi. After a severe bout of influenza, he has returned to his circuit, but has not yet fully recovered. Fatigued and disoriented, he loses control of his car on a rural road and exits it just before it slides over a shallow embankment. Bowman walks to a nearby cabin to seek help, his heart racing from the ordeal.

An elderly woman stands mute in the cabin doorway. He greets her courteously and begins "I wonder if you'd be interested"—then informs her he has had an accident and needs his car towed.^[8] The woman responds "Sonny he ain't here." Bowman assumes this is her son, and is informed that he will return soon. When he tells her he is recovering from an illness, she silently escorts him into the dimly lit home, that of the impoverished tenant farmer. Recovering momentarily, Bowman blurts out "I have a nice line women's low-priced shoes" and stops; the woman repeats that Sonny will soon return.^[9]

Sonny arrives home accompanied by two hounds. A robust young sharecropper, he is wearing an old but vintage Confederate military coat. The woman explains Bowman's predicament, and Sonny, after silently regarding the visitor, goes to harness his mule and haul the vehicle from the ravine. After he departs, Bowman experiences a powerful emotional impulse to embrace the elderly woman; his heart leaps with joy at her presence.

Though the room is plunged into darkness after sundown, the woman neglects to light the lamp. Sonny enters the darkened house and declares the vehicle is recovered. When Bowman offers Sonny cash for his service he replies: "We don't take money for such."^[10] Bowman protests, ready to burst into tears. Suspicious at his behavior, Sonny approaches him and runs his hands over the stranger's body, suspecting that he may be an armed prohibition agent. When Bowman assures him he is not, Sonny escorts him to his illegal prohibition-era still, and they share a jug of hard liquor. Intoxicated, Bowman's perception of the woman is transformed: he sees that she is actually young and shares an intimate relationship with Sonny; the couple are expecting a baby soon. The salesman secretly regrets that the child is not his own.

Bowman lies down to sleep in front of the fireplace, whispering to himself "There will be special reduced prices on all footwear during the month of January."^[11] In the middle of the night he absconds from the cabin by moonlight—after leaving all the money in his billfold under a lamp. Upon reaching the road, his heart begins throbbing. He collapses, alone and helpless.^[12][13]