“Nealy Harlan ought to be horsewhipped for letting it go like this,” Granny said. Everywhere there were all kinds of weeds and picker bushes growing. Dandelion fuzz balls. Gawky dead cottonwood claws reaching down from above.
“I want you just to look!” Granny pointed along where there was a busted out place in the fence. “All the time after us and won’t even fix his own fence line.” On the other side of the busted out place stood a weeping willow tree, its umbrella of leaves drooped and withering in the sun.
Granny pointed again. “They’re over that way, near where that break is. Your other Granny and Granpaw. Granny and Granpaw Ray.”
“And Daddy,” I said.
“That’s right. Dead people needs to be took care of too, you know. Not left around like this.” Granny motioned her hand out over the graves. “All growed over with weeds.”
We made our way through picker bushes, around crosses and gravestones, toward the busted out place where a few slats of the fence still lay broken on the ground. Something inside the weeping willow tree’s umbrella of leaves startled me, a dim shape of something or somebody hunched over in there, breathing and alive. It caused the hairs on my neck to stand.
“I declare!” Granny shouted. “Bird! What you doing in there?”
The shape parted the leaves with a gnarled cane and waddled out in the sun. It was Bird Pruitt – Old Man Harlan’s hunchback cousin – bent under a lopsided hump and wearing a thick purple dress that drooped dead to the ground.
“Ain’t you hot in that?” Granny said.
“Ain’t nobody’s business if I am,” Bird said as she waddled up closer. On her head sat a purple pillbox hat, its wiry net bent up in the air like frozen smoke, only purple colored. She reached out with the gnarled cane and poked me in the chest. “You! Ruby’s boy! I never did get to whip you.”
Missy and me had stayed once with Bird when Momma and Victor went off to Circle Stump with Granny – the first and only other time Victor had been down. Bird had said then that Victor ought to whip me more because my real Daddy never. Said all my real Daddy ever did was spoil me. I told her to shut her old mouth and she came at me with her cane.
“Leave him alone,” Granny said.
Bird took her cane away. “You are Ruby’s boy, ain’t you?”
“His names Orbie,” Granny said. “You know who he is.”
Bird kept her eyes on me. “You awful skinny, Ruby’s boy. Have to fatten you up.” She reached out for one of my arms.
“Don’t,” I said, backing away.
Half her teeth were gone, and I could almost see the bone of her skull, just beneath her skin, gray bleached out skin that looked cold and watery even in the sunlight.
“Stop it Bird,” Granny said. “He’s just down here a little while. Ruby and that man of her’s went off to Floridy.”
Still not taking her eyes off me, Bird said, “Daddy’s in the ground now, hain’t he? You will be too, soon. It’s awful to be in the ground. Awful.” She grinned again and looked around at all the graves. “Awful, awful,” she said, shaking her head. Then, breathing and heaving up under that hump, she began a slow spidery walk around the graves out toward the gate.
“She ain’t easy to figure, that one ain’t,” Granny said.
I shivered at the thought of her skull. “She’s crazy, ain’t she Granny?”
“Some will say she is,” Granny said. “Wanders all over everywhere. Nealy don’t know where she is half the time.”
“I didn’t like what she said about Daddy. About him being in the ground.”
“Your Daddy ain’t in the ground, hon; he’s in heaven. Look over here.” Granny pointed to some graves near the fence. “They’re not as bad as I thought they’d be. Grass needs trimming is all.”
Crumbling white slabs of stone marked Granny and Granpaw Ray’s graves — ‘Louis Jefferson Ray’ on Granpaw’s and ‘Pearl Anne Ray’ on Granny’s – and that was all. Daddy’s gravestone looked almost new, shiny gray with a curved top. It said “Jessie Louis Ray, Born May 6th, 1931, Died August 15th, 1956. Loved By All.” There were some dead roses piled at the bottom.
Granny reached down with one hand, grabbed up the roses and pitched them over the fence. She set the remaining bucket of blackberries down and stood there, looking over the graves.
A sad feeling came over me then. I remembered Daddy’s bird claw hand, the one with the baby and ring fingers missing, how it moved through the air when he led singing at church. I remembered when they buried him, how it had rained – a cold misty rain you could feel all the way to the inside of your bones. How Momma had leaned against Granny, Granpaw holding an umbrella over their heads. I remembered the wet light on the stones. The Lord’s Prayer. The red clay around the soles of my shoes. I got all heartbroken then and started to cry. “Some man poured fire on Daddy. A colored man.”
“They Lord,” breathed Granny. “They told you that?”
“Victor did,” I sobbed. “It burned him alive.”
Granny shook her head. “Lord A Mighty.”
I had so many tears I could hardly see the gravestones.
Granny put her arm around me. “Cry all you want to, hon; Granny don’t mind.”
We stood in front of the graves. I cried till I couldn’t cry anymore. Birds hopped and chirped in the cottonwoods overhead, happy, like to say there never was – nor ever would be – anything to be sad about.
“Did Granny and Granpaw Ray freeze to death?” I asked.
“Nobody knows that for sure, hon. They had fever. I reckon it was fever and the cold both what killed them. Poor Jessie was just a baby. Now he’s gone on to be with them.”
It was peaceful by the weeping willow tree. Daddy was gone to be with Granny and Granpaw Ray. I wondered where that could be, if it was really heaven or if it was like Bird said, under the ground, down in some dark place where dead people walk around – like the zombie-people in my body snatcher book.
I wished Daddy could come back alive again – but not like that. I wished he could come back for real.
4
Victor
1955-1956
After I was born Momma and Daddy moved from Circle Stump north – all the way to Detroit, Michigan. That was in 1950. Daddy got a job in the steel mill there. Our house, a yellow single story Daddy got on the GI Bill, was the last one on a dead end street called Leroy. All the houses there looked alike. Pointy tops and picture windows with little front porches and forty foot yards. Some nice yards and some with just old burned up grass and weeds like ours had.
There were lots of kids in our neighborhood too. Yankee kids and kids like Missy and me who came up from the South – from places like Circle Stump and Hazard and Old Mulky – kids whose fathers had come up looking for work in the car factories and the steel mills. These were the ones we played with, not those others, not the Yankee kids. The Yankee kids spit on us and called us ‘white trash’ and ‘pinko’. ‘Pinko Commies and Hillbilly Trouble Makers,’ they called us, talking all jagged-edged like their words was broke glass.
“Ain’t no music in the way they talk,” Daddy would say. “They just saying that cause of the Unions anyhow. Ya’ll ought to try and get along.”
Course we never did.
Me, Daddy, Momma and Missy all went to the Detroit Zoo one day – I think it was in June of 1955 – a year before Daddy’s accident and the day I first met Victor. Momma was pushing Missy in a baby carriage. I was walking next to Daddy, keeping an eye out for colored kids.
The other day a gang of colored kids had jumped me at the schoolyard. They’d been throwing a basketball at one another, whacking each other with it, pushing, laughing and cussing at one another, and then this one big colored kid knocked into me.
“Watch out nigger!” I yelled.
They all jumped in on me then, held me on the gravels by the teeter-totters and yanked my pants down. They spat on me there and laughed and made fun of my thing. One colored boy rubbed it with the small end of a stick.
Look dat piss ant worm. You put dat in yo Momma, boy? Hey boy?
It made me feel all tingly and nice and mean and bad too, all at the same time – like the time I had poison ivy and Mrs. Profit, our baby sitter, rubbed lotion on me down there.
The kid that ran into me put a knife blade cold against my belly button.
Cut his dick off, Lawrence! Cut Whitey’s dick!
I kicked and screamed but there were too many of what I thought of then as little gorilla hands, pink monkey-nails digging in. They would have cut me – I was sure they would have – but then Daddy came with his baseball bat and chased them all away.
At the zoo we were going around, looking at all the animals – the giraffes, the elephants, the zebras and baboons – when I saw this flat-nosed colored boy standing next to the water fountain, mouthing a big red Popsicle. Red Popsicle-lips. Red inside his mouth too – pinky-red – like a baboon’s butt.
I sidled in closer to Daddy.
“You can’t measure everybody by the likes of a few,” Daddy said.
While I owned that this was probably true, I stayed close to Daddy just the same. After while we came in front of a building with steps going up to a giant sized double door.
“Now, this here’s a Cat House,” Daddy said.
Momma said, “Don’t be talking that way.”
“Well it is,” Daddy laughed. “Ought to have a sign out here a saying so. Ought to have a red light over the door.”
“It’s that kind of talk I don’t like,” Momma said. The way she said it I knew it would be trouble to ask her why. Inside, there were big cages with tigers and lions and leopards that moaned and growled so loud the floor trembled under our feet – a great big stinky-breath place with giant echoes like in a cave.
“I told you it was a cat house,” Daddy said.
“Look at’em all!” I shouted. “Goddamn!”
“Orbie!” Momma hard-whispered.
“What?”
“You know what.”
“God don’t care,” I said.
“You just think he don’t.”
We came to a big cage with a white tiger that was walking around in circles. Yellow fangs, knives, hung out his mouth. He went with his head down, looking at the floor, making hot-breath sounds, going “Huh… Huh… Huh… Huh…”, just walking round and round, muscles rolling over in big white shoulders.
“He looks lonesome, don’t he? Sad,” Momma said. She bent down to fix Missy’s straps. “Maybe he’s got a momma and daddy too. Maybe he’s got kids.”
“He’ll eat you guts and all,” I said.
“Hush that talk!” Momma said. She looked at Daddy. “See how he talks? That’s your doing.”
Daddy smiled.
“I seen it on TV, Momma,” I said. “First they scare you. Then they make you so you can’t move. Then they eat you. And your eyes are still open and everything!”
Missy pointed at the tiger and shouted, “Dat!” Her white hair, white as the tiger’s almost, made an upside-down bowl around her head.
“Everyone of God’s creatures got a family. Ain’t that right, Missy-Two-Shoes?” Momma said.
Missy smiled and put all her fingers in her mouth.
“He used to work for Fords,” Daddy said, all serious like.
“He was a foreman there. A good foreman too. Must have run a foul of the law though. Be in a cage like that. Look at him. Why, he’s even wearing stripes.”
“Probably he robbed a bank!” I said.
“Probably,” Daddy winked. “Probably he did.”
“Ya’ll make fun if you want to. I know what I’m talking about.” Momma looked her usual pretty self, wearing that curvy blue dress, the one Daddy said showed off her legs.
“He was a foreman though,” a man said in back of us. He was fine looking and tall, way taller than Daddy, dressed nicer too, with silvery pants and a short-sleeved shirt that was black with silvery diamond shapes up the front. “The foreman of the jungle.” He was wearing thick black-framed eyeglasses. They slid down his nose as he talked and nodded toward the tiger. “I imagine he’s worrying about production. That and the cost of living, of course.” A thick new cigar, unlit, stuck out between the man’s fingers. “Our Mr. Foreman here would like to balance the books, if you know what I mean. But he’s in a bit of a fix.” He put the cigar in his shirt pocket and looked at Momma. “It is sad, Ma’am. I agree.”
Daddy shook hands with the man and looked at Momma. “This here’s Mr. Denalsky, Ruby. From the picnic.”
Momma put on a company smile. “Real nice to see you again Mr. Denalsky.”
“Nice to see you as well, Ma’am.” Mr. Denalsky shook Momma’s hand. He gently put his other hand, the left hand, on top of hers. There was a clean tattoo on the back of the hand – a sharp red heart with a beige-colored snake coiled around it. Green letters were written across the snake’s body.
“‘Born To Lose’,” Momma read. “You believe that Mr. Denalsky?”
Mr. Denalsky pulled his hand back a little and smiled. “I got that when I was younger. When I was in the army. Back then I was more cynical.”
“You’ve changed your mind since then,” Momma said.
“I’ve come to see things a little differently, yes. You see; every living thing eventually loses. Suffers and dies.” His voice was like a man I heard on the radio once, all deep and smooth like. When he smiled, he glowed, and the glow made all his good looks come out at you like a friend. He kept holding Momma’s hand. “That we lose is not a cause for despair. It inspires tenderness, Ma’am. Kindness.”
“Why, that’s so purdy,” Momma said, gently pulling her hand away. “And so spiritual too.”
A little curl of black hair had fallen across Mr. Denalsky’s forehead. “Victor Ma’am. Call me Victor.” He looked at Daddy too. “Both of you; please.” He said it straight out; like there was nothing in the world he would like more. A little red mole gleamed at the side of his nose.
“Victor,” Momma said and smiled.
He slapped Daddy on the shoulder. “Your husband is one hell of a worker Ma’am. I don’t care if he is a Union Man.” He said this jokingly but nobody laughed.
“Much obliged,” Daddy said.
“That’s so nice,” Momma said. “Ain’t it Jessie? Ain’t it so nice?”
Victor opened his eyes at Daddy. “I’ll bet the Local appreciates the work you’re doing.”
“I’m just a volunteer,” Daddy said.
“Still it could lead to something, you know.” Victor looked at Missy then, then at me, soft eyes floating over big muscled shoulders. “That your little sister?”
“Her name’s Missy,” I said.
Victor reached in his pants pocket, brought out a piece of caramel candy, unwrapped it and gave it to Missy. Missy put it right away inside her mouth and began to chew. Caramel colored spit bubbled at the corner of her mouth.
“She can talk when she wants to,” Momma said.
“I have no doubt about that at all,” Victor said, his smile somehow too smooth. Still, I wanted him to pay me some attention too.
“My name’s Orbie,” I said. “I like army men. My Daddy used to be in the army.”
Victor reached up and touched his glasses, pushing them back along the bridge of his nose, his eyes going on Daddy. “What theater?”
“Two years in London,” Daddy said. “Didn’t see much action.”
“A damn good thing too,” Victor said. “I was at Normandy. All but three men in my platoon died.”
“Lord A Mighty,” Daddy said.
“Golly!” I yelled. “Was you shot?”
Victor laughed.
“He can be polite when he wants to be,” Momma said.
“I’m sure he can,” Victor said; still laughing.
I didn’t see what was so funny though. “Did your guts hang out?”
“Orbie!” Momma shouted.
“That’s enough, son,” Daddy said.
“That’s
all right.” Victor squatted down in front of me. His hair was black, shiny with hair oil and combed straight from the front to the back. “Want to see where I got hit?”
“I guess so,” I said, not sure if I did or not.
Victor turned his shoulder and pulled his shirt away so I could see the back of his neck. At the bottom was an ugly white dug-out-place, a gash that looked like somebody took a knife and cut.
“That from a real bullet?”
“Shrapnel,” Victor said. “A piece of mortar shell hit me there, right at the base of my neck. Any higher and it would have taken my head.”
“God.”
“I spent six weeks in the hospital. That was it. They sent me home after that.” Victor stood up. “I used to believe in war. Anymore, I’m not so sure.”
It got a quiet time between all of us there, even with the noise of all the big cats and the people walking around. Out the corner of my eye I could still see the white tiger, going from one end to the other of his cage. Victor got a faraway look about his eyes. Then his chin started to quiver.
“Lord have mercy,” Momma whispered.
Victor was sad, but I wasn’t sure why. To me, you had to have battles. So the good people could win. You had to have blood and guts and bombs. That was the fun part.
Victor blinked and a tear slid down the side of his face. He wiped at his eyes with a hankie. “Forgive me. I didn’t expect this.”
“War’s a terrible thing,” Momma said.
Daddy nodded. “Yes it is.”
Later, when Victor was gone Momma said, “Such a sad, good person he is. And so kind too. He’s got spiritual ideas, don’t he? I liked what he had to say, didn’t you like what he had to say, Jessie?”
“Sure did,” Daddy said. “He ain’t like them other foremen over there. At Ford’s, I mean. Them fellers’ll look at you one way and you’ll think that’s it, but then when they walk off, you’ll see more eyes popping out the back of their heads. Staring at you in ways you didn’t expect.”
THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN: Orbie's Story Page 4
