THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens Wegela

  I wasn’t sure what Daddy was talking about, but what he said about Victor was true. All I saw when he walked off was just hair, black hair – and no eyes.

  “Huh… Huh… Huh… Huh…,” the tiger went. Circling. Going round and round in its cage.

  Shortly after that, Daddy started fixing things on Victor’s truck. The first time was spark plugs. The second, a broken mirror. Then brakes and a door handle. Sometimes Victor would help. Other times he went in the house and talked to Momma.

  “How come you’re all the time fixing on his old truck?” I asked Daddy one day.

  Daddy was leaning up with a can; pouring water in the radiator. “I thought you liked Victor.”

  I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not.

  Daddy set the water can down.

  “You like Victor?” I said.

  “Yes I do.”

  “You think he’d get mad if you didn’t work on his truck?”

  “He might be disappointed some. It don’t pay to disappoint people, son.”

  “How come?”

  Daddy banged the hood closed. “It just don’t is all.”

  “What about the other day?” I said.

  “What other day?”

  “When them men came. When you was washing the car.”

  “You heard that?”

  “Some of it. The window was down. They were from the Union,” I said. “They wanted you to do something but you said ‘no’.”

  “That’s right. I thought you were coloring.”

  “I was,” I said. “That man with the pushed in face smiled at me.”

  “Lord God,” Daddy said.

  A couple days ago I was coloring in my coloring book, sitting in the back seat of Momma’s Ford. Daddy had been going around outside the car, washing it down with a hose when another car pulled up in the driveway, a shiny red Mercury with a Davy Crockett coon tail tied to the aerial.

  Two men got out of the car and came up to Daddy. Daddy was holding a sponge in one hand and a hose in the other. One of the men was big as two men put together. His thick wrists stuck out the sleeves of a white sports coat that looked two sizes too small. He wore white-framed sunglasses over a face that was sunk in on one side like a balloon loosing air. The other man was tiny, shorter even than Daddy. He wore a gray suit and a slantwise hat like Dick Tracy’s. He even looked a little bit like Dick Tracy, all high-cheek-boned and sharp-eyed. He came up to Daddy with his hand out, wanting Daddy to shake. Daddy couldn’t though, because of the hose and the sponge. The Dick Tracy man saw this and grinned.

  “What did they want?” I asked.

  “Nothing much. Wanted me to help them.” Daddy pulled a rag out of his back pocket and began to wipe his hands. “Said they was Inspectors; said they was hired by the Union. Even had badges.”

  “You disappointed them,” I said.

  Daddy looked at me straight on. “That’s right son. I told them ‘no’.”

  When Victor went in to talk to Momma, sometimes I’d go on the floor by the table in the kitchen with my coloring books and listen. I heard Victor tell Momma how his parents had to get a divorce. How he had to live with his mother, then with his father. How his parents had come overseas from the Old Country on a boat and didn’t have any money and had to work hard and stand in a bunch of soup lines. He talked about his grandparents too. How they lived on a farm in Poland where they raised pigs and cows and grew cabbages and carrots and still they almost starved.

  He was obliged to live with his father, he said, because his mother did bad things. He never said what the bad things were, but every time he talked about his mother his voice would go all soft and low. Then a sad still quiet would come over the kitchen.

  Momma would drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and listen. She liked Victor. I could tell. I think she liked his glow. She even let him bring his beer in, something she never allowed Daddy to do.

  “There’s very little alcohol in beer,” Victor said.

  “I reckon if you’ve got to have it, you’ve got to have it,” Momma said. “My church don’t allow it though.”

  “I don’t have to drink, if it offends you.”

  “It don’t,” Momma said. “They’s folks where I come from drinks moonshine. Good Christian folk, some of them. I’d rather you was honest than slipping around.”

  “Thank you,” Victor said. “My own parents were Catholics. They both drank. Like fish, you might say. Maybe that’s why Catholics and Protestants don’t get along, generally speaking.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Momma said. “Born again folk don’t drink unless they taking Communion. Then it’s just that Mogen David wine.”

  Victor held up his beer. “Sangre de Cristo!”

  “Excuse me?” Momma said.

  “Sangre de Cristo. The Blood of Christ.”

  “We don’t believe that way,” Momma said. “It’s just a remembrance. That’s what the Bible says. ‘This do in remembrance of me.’ Sometimes we’ll use grape juice.”

  “I’d like to go with you sometime,” Victor said all of a sudden. “With you and Jessie, I mean. To church.”

  Momma smiled. “It’s just a store-front church Victor. Folks there, well, they’re just like me.”

  “If that’s the case, I definitely want to go,” Victor said. He took a sip off his beer.

  Momma giggled. “Oh now Victor, I told you. I didn’t get no farther than the eighth grade.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Victor said. “When I talk, you listen. You understand. That’s what counts.” Victor took another sip. “Formal education is overrated anyway. My father, he worked hard to get me two years of college. Then there was the war and I got drafted. What I’ve learned since, I’ve learned on my own. I read. I write a little. That doesn’t make me better than you, or anybody else for that matter. Farmers? Tillers of the soil? I’m from that stock too.”

  Momma got up to wipe the table.

  Victor’s eyes followed her. “Ruby? Do you remember when we first met?”

  Momma wiped harder at the table. “Why yes. It was at that picnic Fords put on.”

  “You were the finest looking woman there.”

  Momma hopped like a bird to the other side of the table. She picked up the saltshaker and set it next to the pepper. “Oh Victor, go on now. Ain’t no truth in that.” She went on with her work, wiping where she had already wiped before. “It’s sweet of you to say so though.”

  “Go on yourself. I know a good looking woman when I see one.” Victor emptied his beer, got up and put it down next to the sink. His good looks sparkled out at Momma. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cup of coffee, would you?”

  “I always got coffee. You want cream?”

  “Just sugar,” Victor smiled. “Just stick your finger in it.”

  Momma knocked over the salt and looked at me, her face glowing bright red.

  I looked at the floor.

  Victor did come to church, first with us – then all by himself – though he always would sit close by to us. People at the church liked Victor. Even when he used high-sounding words they did. He was always willing to go over things again – for people who didn’t understand. He was good that way.

  “Why, he’s just an old hillbilly in northern clothes,” Momma said. “I never seen nobody with so much patience.”

  “I reckon,” Daddy said.

  “It’s a shame what he went through though. I mean, with his family and all.”

  “He had a hard row,” Daddy said.

  “But look how good he turned out. Why, it’s almost like he’s found another home here at our little church.”

  “He shore got a way with people,” Daddy said.

  “Don’t he now?”

  One time The Lane Sisters sung a song for Victor. Mary, Elsie Mae and Loretta. They liked Victor more than anybody. Daddy said they were sweet on him; said all they wanted was to be his girl friend. They got up one Sunday and Loretta, she was the pretty one, said her and her sister
s had practiced up a song special for Brother Denalsky. ‘We’ll Understand It Better By and By’, she called it; and it was their prayer, she said, that Brother Denalsky, and all God’s beloved children would someday come to understand better the pain and sorrow of this world. She stepped back then and the piano lady played the starting in part, and then all the sisters started in singing together. When they got through the first verse they started on the chorus.

  By and by, when the morning comes,

  When the saints of God are gathered home,

  We’ll tell the story how we’ve overcome,

  For we’ll understand it better by and by.

  Victor listened for a while, and then he started to cry. He wiped his eyes with a clean white handkerchief. He leaned over and put his whole face in the handkerchief. He cried and blew his nose. Preacher Hilly walked over – probably he was going to talk to him about Jesus – but before he could get there Victor got up, walked straight to the back of the church and out the door.

  “Thank you Jesus,” Momma said.

  After church The Lane Sisters came up to Momma and Daddy. “That man’s under conviction,” Loretta said. She always sounded like somebody with a cold, all stuffy nosed and sniffling.

  “If ever one was,” Momma said.

  “I hope we didn’t embarrass him none,” Elsie Mae said.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Daddy said.

  “He’s real good looking,” Loretta said, smiling. “A real gentleman.”

  “Well,” Daddy said. “You know he isn’t married.”

  Mary and Elsie Mae giggled. They were fat girls. Loretta was slim and pretty, like Momma. She had a red dress on. Red shoes.

  “Got a good high paying job too,” Daddy said. “You want his phone number? I’ll give it to you, if you wannit.”

  Mary and Elsie Mae went all bug-eyed.

  “Brother Ray, you stop teasing,” Loretta said.

  “I’d be glad to put in a good word. I work for the man.” Daddy looked around at Mary and Elsie Mae. “I could put in a word for the three of you, if you’d like. I could say I know three girls would like to kiss him all over.”

  The Lane sisters stood there now with their mouths dropped open.

  “Jessie stop it,” Momma said.

  The Lane sisters broke out in a three-girl giggle.

  “Brother Ray!” Loretta laughed. “You the sorriest thang I ever laid eyes on. And you a Christian.”

  “That’s right, I am a Christian! You think I’m gonna dry up and blow away ‘cause of it? Naw sir. Christians need lovin’ too. Not just talk-about-it love either.” Daddy smoothed the little hair left at the side of his head and twinkled his eyes at The Lane Sisters. “Ya’ll better get to kissing on somebody, you don’t wanna blow away.”

  Everybody laughed then, even Momma.

  When I wanted, Victor would let me look at the gash on his neck. Or sit in his lap and trace a finger around the heart with the snake on the back of his hand. One time he showed Momma and me another heart, which was the medal he got from the war, purple with a gold picture of George Washington on the front.

  “It’s bronze, not gold,” Victor said. “It’s The Purple Heart. I got it because I was wounded. A consolation prize.”

  “You must be proud though,” Momma said.

  “Not really. It takes more stupidity than bravery to catch a little shrapnel.”

  “It took a lot more than that,” Momma said. “I’ll tell you what’s the truth. I’m glad Jessie never had to go into battle. And I’m glad for men like you, that did.”

  Victor was good in a whole bunch of ways. Going to church. Bringing Missy and me presents for Christmas. A bag of army men. A new baby doll that could pee in its own diaper. Taking Missy and me to the zoo. To the picture show. The carnival at Fun Park. The Merry-Go-Round there.

  He made Daddy his ‘right hand man’ at Fords – even with him being in the Union. Daddy would talk to Victor about what the worker-men needed. Victor bragged on Daddy. He even tried to get Daddy on Management’s bowling team, but the Union wouldn’t allow it. Said Daddy rolled a mean bowling ball missing fingers and all.

  They would ride home together on bowling nights, him and Daddy would. One time Daddy came in smelling like beer. Momma got mad. Later on, I heard her talking to Daddy, telling him how they should be strong and not bend to Victor’s ways. Then Victor might have a chance to be saved, have a chance to find a good girl – Loretta Lane maybe – settle down and be happy in the Lord.

  Victor wrote things on little notepads and scraps of paper. Poetry, he called it. Impressions of the day. All I knew about poetry was just nursery rhymes and the rhymes on cards at Christmas time.

  “He writes in that book,” Daddy said one night, as he and Momma were getting ready for bed. I was in my room with the door open unable to sleep.

  “It ain’t right to spy around on a person,” Momma said.

  “I wasn’t spying around. He was sitting up in the cab of that truck, writing. He wasn’t even trying to hide it. I climbed in; he never even looked up. We were supposed to be going bowling.”

  “He told me he writes. He likes words,” Momma said.

  “He’s got a whole book full of writing,” Daddy said. “I found this today.”

  I could hear paper rattle. Something Daddy had.

  “A letter?” Momma said.

  “Something come from his book.”

  “Jessie, you know it ain’t right snooping in another person’s business.”

  “I reckon if you find something on the ground you can read it, can’t you? This was in the driveway.”

  “How do you know it’s his?”

  “Wrote in his hand, that’s how. I ain’t seen no handwriting finer than Victor’s.”

  “You ought to give it back.”

  “Well, I reckon I will give it back,” Daddy said. “In good time. You wanna hear what it says? It’s kindly sad and strange at the same time.”

  “It ain’t my business.”

  “Well, you ought to hear it anyhow. It tells something about him. That we didn’t know about, I mean.”

  “Sounds like you’re bound to read it no matter what I say,” Momma said.

  Daddy didn’t answer. I heard him and Momma moving around in there, getting ready for bed. It was Momma that spoke up first. “Read it if you aim to.”

  “You sure?” Daddy said.

  “No. But it ain’t the first time I haven’t been.”

  Daddy rattled the paper. He was a slow reader. Some words he stretched out longer than others. Words he didn’t know he had to spell out loud.

  “And it is through him,” he read. “I bring the a-b-y-s-s. I don’t know what that is.”

  Momma laughed. “A rotten tooth, maybe. One a dentist has to pull.”

  “That’s abscess,” Daddy said. “This is a-b-y-s-s. Abiss, I reckon. I don’t know.”

  “Read,” Momma said.

  The paper rattled, then Daddy’s voice came again. “And it is through him I bring the abiss into my own heart and ask if I am any better. And how life might become worthy, though steeped in this barroom darkness, this gray plastered wall, which has cracked so p-i-t-i, pitifully. And how we might take it along with us, this death, this alcoholic death and its untended women and children to the final s-t-o-i-c – stoik, I reckon is what it says – stoik end of these worlds.”

  It got quiet in there a while. Then with tears in her voice Momma said, “I believe he’s talking about his daddy there, Jessie. One killed himself.”

  5

  Something You couldn’t Do Anything With

  It was summertime when Daddy got killed. Then came fall. Dark rainy days and leaves on the ground. It was sad not having Daddy around, kissing on Momma, laughing and talking up things from the factory. I missed his big light-bulb head, his big ears, his hands on Sunday morning, all scrubbed for church, work hands like claws too big for the arms, scrubbed red but still dirty, black lines, factory grease in the
knuckle cracks. And how he smelled – I missed that too – like Lava soap and gasoline and cigarettes all mixed in together.

  Momma kept to herself; got that purple skin under her eyes. Blood eyes. She wouldn’t put on make up, and she wouldn’t fix up her hair. The house got a gray time. Even the yellow gloss on the kitchen wall had lost its shine. Some of it was ‘cause of gray skies and rainy weather. The rest was just old cigarette smoke and ashtrays that never got dumped.

  Momma would lie up in bed or sit in the rocking chair in the living room in front of the TV, smoking one cigarette after another. Sometimes she stayed up late and rocked herself in the rocking chair with the TV set off. It was kind of like she was waiting on Daddy to come home. I would be in the kitchen drawing or playing with my army men and hear her rocking in there with the lights all off. I’d see her cigarette glowing and the shape of her head moving with the rocking chair backlit by the living room window. I would go crawl up in her lap and lay my head against her shoulder. She would put her arm around me then, and I would just be there with her, rocking back and forth, listening to her heartbeat.

  One day it snowed so hard they closed all the schools. I was in the living room with Momma and Missy, sitting on the floor with a blanket wrapped about my shoulders. Missy had crawled under the coffee table, and was bashing at her doll’s face with one of Daddy’s old shoes. We were watching one of Momma’s TV programs. A man in a white chef’s hat was chopping celery and talking all serious about chicken salad sandwiches. I thought it was stupid. He put the celery in a bowl with pieces of chicken and mixed in mayonnaise and spices and set it off on the side and started in talking about all the different kinds of bread you could use. I got up with the blanket still around me and went to the front window. Outside was a big man in sunglasses and an orange snowsuit, shoveling snow off the sidewalk in front of our house. The snow was higher than the man’s knees – white and sparkling under a sharp blue cloudless sky.