Noon Wine

Noon Wine is a 1937 short novel by American author Katherine Anne Porter. It initially appeared in a limited numbered edition of 250, all signed by the author and published by Shuman's. It later appeared in 1939 as part of Pale Horse, Pale Rider (), a collection of three short novels by the author, including the title story and "Old Mortality." A dark tragedy about a farmer's futile act of homicide that leads to his own suicide, the story takes place on a small dairy farm in southern Texas during the 1890s. It has been filmed twice for television, in 1966 and 1985.

While Noon Wine and its companion pieces, "Old Mortality" and "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," have been described as novellas, Porter referred to them as short novels. Porter, in the preface "Go Little Book . . " to The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter, abjured the word "novella," calling it a "slack, boneless, affected word that we do not need to describe anything." She went on to say, "Please call my works by their right names. We have four that cover every division: short stories, long stories, short novels, novels."

Royal Earle Thompson owns a dairy farm in southern Texas during the late 1890s. His farm is fairly unproductive, due in part to Thompson's laziness and distaste for most of the required labor on a dairy farm, which he considers "women's work." Thompson lives with his wife, Ellie, and two small sons, Arthur and Herbert. Ellie is continually ill, though she does her best to perform her domestic duties around the house. The two boys, aged about six and eight when the story opens, are generally well-behaved.

One day, a man named Olaf Helton presents himself at the farm. The remarkably taciturn Swede asks Farmer Thompson for a job. Thompson agrees to employ Helton, offering him a small monthly wage, plus room and board. It is clear that Thompson views Helton as somewhat beneath him because he is a foreigner. Even though the wage is far below what Helton reports having earned in the wheat fields of North Dakota, he nonetheless sets to work immediately and proves himself to be an efficient farmhand, single-handedly transforming Thompson's run-down dairy farm into a productive, profitable enterprise.

Though he is unable to figure out anything about Helton's personal life or origins, Thompson grows to appreciate his mysterious, silent farmhand. He increases his pay and entrusts him with much responsibility. Ellie also values Helton for the prosperity he brings to the farm. She is troubled by him just once, in a bizarre event in which she sees Helton silently shake her two boys in a terrifying manner after they had snatched his harmonica. She asks her husband to tell Helton that in the future he is to leave the discipline of the boys to their parents. The family quickly moves past the event.

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