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You can download the full text of McCullers’ short story from Green Mountain Writers, and, you can view the cover of the 1958 paperback edition of McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding here.
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There is a type of person who has a quality about him
that sets him apart from other and more ordinary human beings.
Such a person has an instinct which is usually found only in small children,
an instinct to establish immediate and vital contact
between himself and all things in the world.
Certainly the hunchback was of this type.
He had only been in the store half an hour
before an immediate contact had been established
between him and each other individual.
It was as though he had lived in the town for years,
was a well-known character,
and had been sitting and talking there on that guano sack for countless evenings.
This, together with the fact that it was Saturday night,
could account for the air of freedom and illicit gladness in the store.
There was a tension, also,
partly because of the oddity of the situation
and because Miss Amelia was still closed off in her office
and had not yet made her appearance.
She came out that evening at ten o’clock.
And those who were expecting some drama at her entrance were disappointed.
She opened the door and walked in with her slow, gangling swagger.
There was a streak of ink on one side of her nose,
and she had knotted the red handkerchief about her neck.
She seemed to notice nothing unusual.
Her gray, crossed eyes glanced over to the place where the hunchback was sitting,
and for a moment lingered there.
The rest of the crowd in her store she regarded with only a peaceable surprise.
“Does anyone want waiting on?” she asked quietly.
There were a number of customers, because it was Saturday night,
and they all wanted liquor.
Now Miss Amelia had dug up an aged barrel only three days past
and had siphoned it into bottles back by the still.
This night she took the money from the customers
and counted it beneath the bright light.
Such was the ordinary procedure.
But after this what happened was not ordinary.
Always before, it was necessary to go around to the dark back yard,
and there she would hand out your bottle through the kitchen door.
There was no feeling of joy in the transaction.
After getting his liquor the customer walked off into the night.
Or, if his wife would not have it in the home,
he was allowed to come back around to the front porch of the store
and guzzle there or in the street.
Now, both the porch and the street before it were the property of Miss Amelia,
and no mistake about it —
but she did not regard them as her premises;
the premises began at the front door and took in the entire inside of the building.
There she had never allowed liquor to be opened or drunk by anyone but herself.
Now for the first time she broke this rule.
She went to the kitchen,
with the hunchback close at her heels,
and she brought back the bottles into the warm, bright store.
More than that she furnished some glasses and opened two boxes of crackers
so that they were there hospitably in a platter on the counter
and anyone who wished could take one free.
She spoke to no one but the hunchback,
and she only asked him in a somewhat harsh and husky voice:
“Cousin Lymon, will you have yours straight,
or warmed in a pan with water on the stove?”
“If you please, Amelia,” the hunchback said.
(And since what time had anyone presumed to address Miss Amelia by her bare name,
without a title of respect? —
Certainly not her bridegroom and her husband of ten days.
In fact, not since the death of her father,
who for some reason had always called her Little,
had anyone dared to address her in such a familiar way.)
“If you please, I’ll have it warmed.”
Now, this was the beginning of the café.
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McCullers’s title story was adapted for film in 1991. Starring Vanessa Redgrave and Keith Carradine (see more at IMDB) you can view the movie. divided into two parts, at Daily Motion.
Here’s the trailer, at YouTube:
