After the family gets into a car accident on their road trip while arguing, O’Connor describes how each character fared. Her description of Bailey includes a simile, as seen in the following passage:

Bailey’s teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt.

In noting that the father’s face is “as yellow as the shirt” he is wearing, O’Connor communicates that Bailey is nauseous or otherwise unwell after their car flipped over and fell into a ditch. Additionally, while she could have described his “yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it” earlier in the story (such as when she noted what Bailey’s mother and wife were wearing at the beginning of the trip), O'Connor notes it here, likely in order to juxtapose the overly bright and playful shirt with the disturbing and demoralizing moment in which the family finds themselves.

O’Connor uses a second simile in reference to Bailey and his shirt later in the story, just before the Misfit’s henchmen take him away to kill him, writing, “His eyes were as blue and intense as the parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still.” Here again the shirt reveals something important about Bailey’s internal state—his parrot-like “blue and intense" eyes communicate just how afraid he is for his life (and rightly so).