A Small Good Thing

“A Small, Good Thing” is one of Raymond Carver’s most decorated short stories. It was first printed in heavily edited form as “The Bath” in a 1981 edition of Columbia. When Carver reworked the story for his 1983 collection Cathedral, he titled this more complete version “A Small, Good Thing.” In this form, the story won the coveted O. Henry award and appeared in the year’s Pushcart Prize Annual. A work of literary realism, “A Small, Good Thing” was part of a body of Carver’s work credited with revitalizing the American short story in the 1980s.

The page numbers used in this guide refer to the posthumous anthology of Carver’s stories Where I’m Calling From (Vintage Contemporaries, 1989).

Ann Weiss orders a birthday cake at a local baker for her son, Scotty. Although the baker, an older man, is somewhat abrupt with her, she arranges to pick up the cake the following Monday. However, on that Monday, a car hits Scotty as he’s walking to school, and the driver doesn’t stop but leaves him in the gutter. When Scotty arrives home, he slips into a stupor. Ann forgets about his birthday (and the cake) and calls an ambulance to take Scotty to the hospital.

There, Dr. Francis diagnoses Scotty with a concussion. Dr. Francis tells Ann and Howard (Scotty’s father) that their son has gone into a deep sleep (though not a coma) as his body heals. Ann stays at the hospital, while Howard briefly goes home.

At home, panic grips Howard. He senses that his otherwise well-ordered life is on the brink of chaos or tragedy. He berates himself for leaving the hospital, but before he can return, the phone rings. It’s the baker, telling Howard that no one picked up the cake. Howard, in his agitation, has no idea what the baker is talking about and brusquely ends the conversation. The phone rings a second time, but this time the caller says nothing.

When Howard returns to the hospital around midnight, Scotty’s condition hasn’t improved. Howard urges Ann to go home and rest but warns her that a prank caller has been ringing their number. Ann, however, wants to wait to hear what Dr. Francis has to say next. The doctor drops in to check on Scotty and remains reluctant to call his condition a coma, despite Ann’s fears. He concedes, though, that Scotty has a hairline fracture to the skull. The doctor says that Scotty seems to be in shock and that he’s sure the child will wake up in the morning. Nonetheless, another doctor takes Scotty away for X-rays and a brain scan. Both parents are rattled and keep up their vigil through the night.

Scotty doesn’t wake up the following morning. That afternoon, Dr. Francis again assures the Weisses that Scotty will wake soon. The nurses tend to the boy, and one draws blood for more samples. Still, Scotty doesn’t wake. Ann becomes increasingly frustrated and wants answers from the medical staff. Dr. Francis concedes that Scotty might now be in a coma—but can’t detect anything wrong with him. The diagnosis continues to eat away at Ann; Howard again urges her to go home and freshen up, feed the dog, and take a short break from the situation.

Ann leaves in a daze. Trying to find her way out of the hospital, she encounters a Black family in a waiting room. They mistake her for a doctor or nurse and ask after their son, Franklin. Ann explains their mistake and tells them about Scotty. The father says that Franklin was dragged into a fight at a party and stabbed and that he’s undergoing emergency surgery. Ann wishes that they could connect more over their family turmoil. However, the moment passes, and she leaves the family, eventually finding her way out of the hospital.

At home, a phone call shatters Ann’s rest. It’s five o’ clock in the morning. She and the baker talk at cross-purposes, as the whirr of the baker’s machines in the background is too loud for Ann to grasp who’s on the line. They can only agree that he’s calling about Scotty before the irate baker hangs up.

Ann calls Howard, as she assumes that the man must have phoned from the hospital due to a change in Scotty’s condition. Howard tells her that little has changed, but Ann is beside herself. Howard suggests that the caller might have been the driver from the accident and that he may be a “psychopath.” He convinces Ann to bathe and return to the hospital in time for Dr. Francis’s next visit at eight o’ clock.

Ann arrives back at the hospital in an anxious state. On her way to rejoin her family, she stops at the nurses’ station to ask after Franklin, the Black youngster who was hurt in a fight. A nurse tells Ann that he died. Ann moves on quickly.

Back in Scotty’s room, Howard tells her that she missed Dr. Francis, who this time visited with a neurologist. Howard is tense. The doctors realized that Scotty has more than a concussion, and they plan to operate because of a complication from his skull fracture.

As Howard breaks the news to Ann, though, something miraculous occurs: Scotty opens his eyes and seems to wake up. His parents rush to his bedside. Howard squeezes his hand; Ann leans over him, kissing his forehead. However, Scotty looks at them blankly and then scrunches his eyes shut and howls. The breath that escapes this way is his last, and he dies in his parents’ arms.

Dr. Francis says that Scotty had a “hidden occlusion,” a vanishingly rare condition. Nothing showed up in his tests or X-rays. The doctor apologizes profusely to Scotty’s parents and does his best to comfort them. They’re distraught to hear that the doctor will perform an autopsy on their son’s corpse, and they leave the hospital in shock.

At home, Ann and Howard try to busy themselves, calling relatives and packing away some of Scotty’s belongings. A phone call interrupts their halting efforts. The baker and Ann again talk at cross-purposes, and Ann screams insults into the phone. When the baker hangs up, Ann weeps at the table.

He calls again just before midnight. Howard answers this time, but the baker hangs up without saying anything. When Howard says that he heard a radio in the background, Ann realizes who it is. Furious, she orders Howard to drive them to the bakery.

The baker is working through the night to make his goods for the next morning. Ann and Howard barge in the back door and confront him. The baker recognizes Ann, and they argue over the cake until Ann blurts out the news about Scotty’s death. The baker falls over himself to apologize for his behavior. He cleans off a table, finds seats for the Weisses, pours them coffee, and urges them to eat some freshly baked cinnamon rolls. He confides in them that he’s lonely and over-worked and has lost the habit of talking to other people. He begs their forgiveness and feeds them more bread. The trio sits together, talking and sampling baked goods, long into the night.