THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens Wegela

  I was already pressed right up against him. Skinny black arms. Black monkey arms.

  Granny was grinning from ear to ear. “How do you feel up there?”

  “Good!” I almost shouted. I was way tall, way taller than Granny and almost as tall as the Jesus Tree.

  “I told you didn’t I?” She handed me up a jug of water. “Take this out to Granpaw. He’ll be wanting something cold.”

  Chester turned toward the road. He smelled like hot pee and shoe leather. His back – warm from being in the hot sun – bulged big as a barrel between my legs. I had to grab around Willis’s waist with one hand and hold the jar with the other. Willis laughed. Chester’s feet pounded and scraped over rocks and weeds, past the well, out to the road. The big bones of his rump lifted and sank. I sat up tall like Willis, stretched my head over Willis’s shoulder and rubbernecked the road. I felt like a giant with big giant mule legs, stomping over the world.

  We rode out to where Granpaw was hoeing out tobacco. Tobacco leaves brushed over our legs. Granpaw came up the row, limping like a whiskery old pirate, a white rag tied over his head. I handed down the water jug. Granpaw unscrewed the lid and turned the jug up to drink. Water curled over his chin down the front of his shirt. When he was done, he set the jug on the ground. “Where you boys off to?”

  “Nowheres,” Willis said.

  Granpaw cocked his head to one side and looked up at Willis. “Nowheres? Reckon it’s any cooler there than it is here? I’d like to go there if it is!”

  Willis grinned.

  “I bet it is, ain’t it? That nowheres place.” Granpaw grabbed a hankie out from his back pocket and wiped his mouth. “Phew, it’s hot.” He put the hankie back in his pocket and brought out his tobacco pouch. Tobacco leaves waved in the sunlight all the way out to the road. Granpaw bit off a piece of chewing tobacco and handed the pouch up to me. “Get you some in there boy. Make a man out of you.”

  “I don’t want any, Granpaw!” I said too loud.

  “You seen air’y black snake since you been down here?”

  “No, and I don’t want to!”

  Granpaw threw his head back, hee-hawing, but that soon turned into coughing. Tobacco juice and blood spewed out of his mouth.

  Willis looked around at me.

  “You got blood Granpaw,” I said.

  Granpaw ran his hand over his chin and looked. “Why that ain’t nothin’,” he said, “You coming to the Fourth Willis?” He pushed his open hand along the thigh of his pant leg, leaving a reddish-brown stain.

  “Yessah.”

  “Moses coming?”

  “Don’t know. He gone.”

  “Gone?” Granpaw said.

  “Two day. Don’t know where.”

  “He’ll do that, won’t he?” Granpaw stared out across the field toward Moses Mashbone’s place. It was like his eyes were going out to meet something up the hill. He did that a while; then he hawked up another gob and spat. “Why ain’t you boys out to the swimming hole? I was you and had time, that’s right where I’d be.”

  “I don’t know how to swim, Granpaw,” I said.

  “You can wade,” Granpaw said. “It ain’t deep enough to swim in no way. Been too dry. There’s still snake up around there though. Have to get ya’ll some rocks first. Scare them old water snakes away.”

  “Uh huh.” Willis smiled. “I knows how.”

  I stared at the back of Willis’ head. He might could sing chickens out of their eggs, but I doubted he could scare snakes away. Anybody skinny as he was would be more like to run off from something like a snake.

  Granpaw turned and ditch-walked himself back down the row, growling over his shoulder. “Mind how you turn that mule around in here!”

  We sat next to the swimming hole, drying off in the sun. There hadn’t been any snakes, but we’d thrown a few rocks in anyway. Big tree branches drooped over the water. There was a tire on a rope over the water Willis and me earlier had taken turns jumping from. I sat in my underwear. Willis was naked. He leaned back on his hands with his legs stretched out in front of him. His thing peaked out between his legs – a little black tadpole I tried not to stare at. I looked at his potato foot instead. “How did you get that?”

  “Ba-Bawn with it,” Willis said. “Mammy die right after.”

  “After you were born?”

  “Pappy run off.”

  “I thought Moses was your Daddy.”

  “Mo look after me. Sa-Sometime he take me in da wood. Sh-show me things. Snake. Flower.”

  “Flowers?”

  “Uh huh. All kind. I sangs to’em. Snake too.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of,” I said.

  Willis smiled sideways.

  After while I said, “It’d be awful if my own Momma was to die.”

  We rode Chester back up Kingdom Creek toward the road.

  “What did Granpaw mean back there Willis? About the Fourth?”

  “Fourth of July,” Willis said. “Thursday. Gone be mmmeeting at da Kingdom Church.”

  “Moses bring his snakes?”

  “Might.”

  There were bushes full of red and green berries growing on the other side of the creek. Skinny white trees – poplar trees, Willis called them – went up the hill behind the bushes.

  “Gooseberry,” Willis said, pointing at the bushes.

  “Them are sour,” I said. “Granpaw said they were the sorriest fruit he ever ate. You ever hear of Old Gooseberry?”

  “He da Devil,” Willis said. “Look dare.”

  “What?”

  Willis made Chester stop. “On da other sa-side dare!” He was pointing toward the ground at something on the other side of the creek.

  At first, I couldn’t see anything but the gooseberry bushes.

  Then a breeze rattled the poplars and I saw a spooky shadow disappearing along the ground. It came into view again further up – disappearing and reappearing with the shifting light, with the breeze. “There’s a path Willis. I can see a path.”

  “Mo place up dat way. In dem wood. Talk to da rain up dare.” Willis smacked Chester with the rope and we went on.

  I wondered how a person could talk to the rain, or to any thing that didn’t have a mouth and couldn’t talk back. “Moses talk to trees too?”

  “Say he do.”

  “Don’t you know? Haven’t you never seen him?”

  “I seen him talk to da sa-sky.”

  “How’s he do it?”

  “Smoke. And a broom.”

  “A broom?”

  “Uh huh. He smoke da sky. Den sa-sa-sweep it. Make da rain be good.”

  I wondered what might happen if Moses and Victor were to get in a fight. Victor had those Superman muscles, but Moses had magic. At least, it seemed like he did. I bet he was strong too. He looked strong. Maybe he could beat Victor. “Let’s go up there Willis. Let’s go see Moses!”

  “See him at da house. He painting.”

  “I know, but he ain’t never there when I look. He’s always sneaking up. Like you. Then he goes.” It was true. Granny and Granpaw’s house was getting painted, but, except for that one time, I’d never seen Moses do any work. “Let’s go up there Willis.”

  “Na uh,” Willis said. “Not ‘less Mo say.”

  We went down a hill and up another. Then we found a path through the woods and turned off.

  “This ain’t the way home,” I said.

  “Ain’t goin’ home,” Willis said.

  In a while we came onto a field of yellow grass that went over a low hill with a church house near the top. It was a white cinder block rectangle with yellow stained glass windows along the sides and a silver cross, sticking out bent-wise from the roof over the main doors. A dirt road curved down from the church and went off in the woods on the other side.

  “Dat Kingdom Church. Fourth of July be dare,” Willis said. “Ra-Road go Kingdom Town.” He reached around with the rope and smacked Chester’s rump. We went up the hill right up to the c
hurch house doors. There was a porch there with a little roof and a sign above the doors that read, KINGDOM CHURCH / WELCOME TO GOD’S HOUSE.

  Willis slid off Chester first, then me. I followed Willis around the side of the church to where there was a junk car sitting up in the weeds, nudged up against the cinder block wall of the church house – a rusty old Buick – faded milky blue with flat white-wall tires and no glass in the windows at all.

  Willis tied Chester to the door handle and gave me his walking stick. Then he grabbed himself up the front of the car, dragging his potato foot over the hood and up onto the roof to a place just under one of the windows. I could see someone had left the window open a crack. As Willis raised himself to a standing position, the roof of the car made a bunch of loud banging noises.

  I reached the walking stick up. “Somebody sees you, we’ll both be in trouble.”

  Willis pushed the window up with his stick and crawled in. A breeze whooshed through the trees behind me, bringing the sound of voices. “Goddamn it, Willis!” I whispered.

  Willis stuck his head out. “What ya’ll be waitin’ on boy?”

  “There’s somebody out here,” I whispered. “Out there in the woods!”

  “Ain’t nnnobody.”

  “Is too! Willis? Willis!” Willis had ducked back inside. I looked around again at the woods. Another breeze whooshed in through the trees. “Shit,” I said, and climbed up onto the roof of the car. I tried to move careful but the roof made another bunch of loud banging noises. Through the window I could see Willis, standing on a little stage next to a preacher’s stand. Down the front was draped a silk flag – purple with flowing gold letters that read: They Shall Take Up Serpents.

  “What you ’fraid of, boy?” Willis said.

  “Don’t be calling me that, Willis.” I pulled myself inside and around and down on the floor next to a row of benches, plain long planks nailed together with high plank backs.

  “Dis here Kingdom Church,” Willis said.

  “You already said that.”

  “Mo preach here. Bring da snakes.”

  It was pitiful – the hall of the church house was – more worn out and crack-walled than our store front church in Detroit, used up, plain as bones, strewn with tattered red songbooks and cast off bibles. Kerosene lamps, ugly with oily green dust, gawked pot bellied from the windowsills. Some stood guard on little tables off to the sides.

  “We fixing to get in a whole heap of trouble,” I said.

  Willis walked himself to the front part of the little stage, looked at me and smiled. Then he looked up at the ceiling; his eyes all big and smiley like they were seeing something good. And then he closed his eyes. And then he started to sing – just like he did with the chickens – real high and pretty like a girl.

  Amazing grace how sweet the sound

  That saved a wretch like me!

  I sat back on one of the benches and felt my own eyes close. Suddenly I was on top of a hill, looking out over an ocean of white clouds, nothing but blue peaceful spaces and the sun overhead. The sound of Willis’s singing was everywhere, peaceful, filling up the sky, filling up me.

  I once was lost but now I’m found

  Was blind but now I see.

  I wasn’t mad any more. Nor was I afraid. I couldn’t even remember how I got to be afraid in the first place. Or why I’d become mad. The whole world had gone to some deep quiet place. I opened my eyes and saw Willis at the preacher’s stand, looking way off somewhere, I thought, with his eyes closed. We could’ve stayed that way a long time, but then came the sound of somebody laughing.

  “Willis!” I whispered. “There’s somebody out there!”

  Willis came down from the stage, went over and unlocked one of the windows. He pushed it up a crack.

  “They’ll see somebody’s here Willis. They’ll see Chester.”

  “He on da otha side.” Willis looked out the window. I went over and looked too. There were six or seven white boys out there, laughing, playing around, pushing at each other. A couple of them looked our age, the others older. Bigger. The littlest boy was without a shirt. He had a thick piece of rope in his hand; holding it away from him and shaking it, making it wiggle. “Lordy, Lordy, don’t let this here snake bite me! Please Jesus! Don’t let it!” The other boys laughed. I laughed too.

  “Shhh!” Willis said.

  Another boy started talking funny, shaking himself all spastic like. “Blah! Blah blah! Blah! Glah glah! Glah glah blah!” He got down on the ground and started rolling around, all the other boys laughing.

  One boy stood away from the rest. A fat boy – so fat his cheeks made little bellies under his eyes. He had a gray ball cap with a winged horse on the front.

  “That boy’s wearing my hat!” I said.

  “Shh,” Willis said. “Dem Circle Stump boys.”

  Right then a rock smashed through one of the windows. Glass splashed all over the floor with one of the kerosene lamps.

  “Holy rollers!” one of the boys shouted.

  “Niggers! Jungle Monkeys!”

  Another rock splashed through the window.

  “Goddamn,” I said.

  “Be still,” Willis whispered.

  I looked out again. The boys were all running off up the road now; laughing and yelling. The fat boy was last. He had one hand on top his head; trying to keep the ball cap from falling off.

  Willis walked himself over to where the glass was and started picking it up – sharp splinters of yellow glass.

  “They’ll know somebody’s been in here, if you do that,” I said. He went on picking up the glass anyway. He picked up the kerosene lamp and set it on a bench. Its top was cracked, half the kerosene spilled. I found a cardboard box and a broom. Together we cleaned up the rest of the mess. In the window two ugly holes looked out on the day.

  “What if it rains?” I said.

  “It never rain.” Willis looked sad. All the quiet from his song gone now. I put the cardboard box with the glass on the bench next to the lamp. Willis walked himself over to the window where we’d come in.

  “What about them boys?” I said.

  “Dey gone,” Willis said.

  “They might’ve heard you singing.”

  Willis shook his head, turned and climbed out the window. I followed after. On the way home I tried to talk. I tried to talk about his song, about my hat and the fat boy. Willis stayed quiet. When we came to Granny and Granpaw’s, I got down. Willis rode off without even saying goodbye.

  15

  New Creatures

  Granny and Granpaw walked in front. Granny carried a lantern: Granpaw, a Bible. From the back Granpaw looked like a gorilla, a gorilla with a Bible and a hat and one arm swung out like a bow. The sun was going down. I had me a tree limb, busting up dandelion puffballs by the side of the road.

  “What’s he mad about?” Granpaw said.

  “Got another card from Ruby today,” Granny said. “No telling when they’ll be back.”

  “Hell fire! How long’s it take to see about a job?”

  “Hush now; he’ll hear you.” Granny’s hips worked under her dress.

  “Quit swinging that and come on,” Granpaw said to me.

  I was tiptoeing over the gravels, trying not to hurt my feet.

  Granpaw stopped. “Where’s your shoes at?”

  “Left them,” I said.

  “Left them?”

  “Uh huh. Back the house.”

  “How come?”

  “He’s trying to do like Willis,” Granny said. “Trying to make them calluses.”

  “You’ll think calluses them feet start to bleed,” Granpaw said.

  Granny reached down in her bag and brought out my tennis shoes. “Yes, I brought them. We won’t never get to church you picking along that a way.”

  “Look how red his feet is,” Granpaw said. “He’s pert near a hillbilly already. Better hurry up you want to see them fireworks. This here’s Eisenhower’s birthday!”

  “It ain
’t got nothing to do with Eisenhower,” Granny said.

  All kind of colored people stood around inside Kingdom Church. Except for times at the Detroit Zoo, it was more colored people than I’d ever seen in one place. Nigger shadows jumping over each other. Shaking hands. Mixing in. Jigaboos. Negroes. The whole church house was full of them.

  As we’d walked up to the church house, I’d seen firecrackers exploding and orange sparks skittering over the ground. I’d seen a United States flag on a pole next to the front porch. People eating corn on the cob. Black-eyed peas. Ham and sweet potatoes. Colored boys were running around, waving sparklers over their heads. Granny tried to get me to join in, but I was afraid. After while we went inside.

  The kerosene lamps stood like before – in the windowsills and off to the sides – only now they were all lit up. The little stage was there too with its preacher’s stand and the purple flag with its They Shall Take Up Serpents written in flowing gold letters across the front.

  I stayed close to Granny.

  “Howdy Miss Alma,” Granny said. “You lookin’ mighty fine this Fourth of July.”

  Miss Alma walked up to us; her dress ballooned out big as a tent, orange with white flowers and a shiny black belt. “Good as can be!” she laughed. When she saw me, she put on a frown. “Your Granmammy done told on you. You know what she say?” Blobs of fat hung off her arms. “She say you ‘bout the sweetest thing she evah lay eyes on. Sweet as shuga she say. I bet you is too! Hmmm hmmm. I bet you is.” She laughed again, a big deep belly laugh like a man’s.

  “I won’t never tell you another thing Miss Alma,” Granny said. “Come on Orbie. Let’s go find us a place to sit. I’ll tend to you later, girl.”

  Miss Alma laughed.

  Granny took me to one of the benches in back. “You and Willis can sit back here. Will you be all right?”

  I wasn’t sure if I would be or not. “Where’s Granpaw?”

  “Up front a praying. Stand up there, where you can see.”

  I climbed up on the bench and stood, leaning against the plank back. Up front I could see a bunch of coloreds kneeling around the altar. I couldn’t see Granpaw anywhere.