THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens Wegela

  There were more boys scattered out around the swimming hole. Circle Stump Boys. None wore shirts. They stood around on the bank, laughing, sniggering, throwing rocks at each other and at the coveralls in the water.

  The Skeleton Boy’s hair was also orange colored, combed straight down around his head like an upside-down bowl. His upper lip looked like a night crawler somebody had cut in two and sown back together. Whenever he opened his mouth, it would give a little spasm and try to jerk itself apart. “Lose something, nigger-boy?”

  That littlest boy, the one that had pretended the rope was a snake, stood on the other side of the swimming hole, throwing rocks at Willis’s coveralls. A purple birthmark clung like a bent hand to the rib bones over his heart. “Throw him in too Raymond! We need us a better target.”

  “Yeah throw Sambo in!” another boy shouted.

  A sheet of white light flashed over the trees.

  “It’s coming up a storm, you boys! We’d best be going!” It was the fat boy. He stood up a ways from the bank, shouting at the others, the gray ball cap planted so the bill stuck out sideways atop his head. The boy with the birthmark skipped a rock off the fat boy’s arm. “I hope you get the shit shocked out of you, Neddy!” the fat boy shouted.

  “You go to hell, Sow Face!” Neddy said. The other boys laughed. Neddy threw another rock; Sow Face jumped to one side, twisting away but the rock hit him in the back.

  “Goddamn you Neddy!” Sow Face blew his cheeks up with air, made a little run at Neddy, stopped, stood with his fists balled. “I’ll stomp you till your nose bleeds!”

  “Come on then!” Neddy raised his little fists.

  Sow Face was twice his size, but he didn’t do anything, just stayed where he was, a fat boy statue with a gray sideways ball cap, his eyes all red and glaring.

  “You jest a pussy,” Neddy said.

  The other boys he-hawed. Willis tried to get up. Raymond, the Skeleton Boy, pushed him right back down. “Whoa there, nigger-boy! Where ya’ll off to?”

  “Come on Raymond,” Neddy yelled. “Throw his naked ass in!”

  Willis tried to crawl away but Raymond grabbed him by his potato foot and pulled him back. More thunder dropped out of the sky.

  da Doom! Doom! Boom!

  “Do it, Raymond! Pitch him in!”

  “Na uh!” Willis cried.

  “Let’s get away from here!” Sow Face hollered. “They’s lightning!”

  Raymond turned suddenly and kicked Willis in the stomach. Willis let out a rush of breath and curled up in a ball, his potato foot jerking as if trying to run off on its own.

  Raymond pried up the foot with the toe of his work boot. “I want you just to look at this boys. That ain’t a goddamn freak, I don’t know what is.”

  Willis lay there, whimpering. I wanted to help him, but there were too many boys. More sheets of light flashed overhead – white, then blue, then white again. A gust of wind bent the tree-tops, hissing down through the leaves. Raymond grabbed Willis by his potato foot, pulled him screaming to the edge of the water and threw him in. I squeezed the handle on Granny’s butcher knife, its blade dark like the sky.

  Cut him Lawrence! Cut his dick off!

  Stones whizzed through the air, split the water around Willis’s head. He tried to swim away but one of the stones cut him over the top of the eye. He flipped over backwards, got a mouthful of water and tried to spit.

  Sow Face threw his ball cap at Raymond. The red winged horse turned over and over and landed in the water; the hat floated there in front of Raymond upside down like a boat with a gray flapper-tail, sticking out behind.

  “Uh huh,” Raymond said. “You done it that time.” The other boys laughed and started throwing at the hat.

  “Come on boys,” Sow Face begged. “Don’t be doing that.”

  Willis flopped around in the water. Raymond picked up a rock so big he had to hold it with both hands.

  “Smash his head in Raymond!” Neddy yelled.

  Raymond stepped to the bank.

  I thought of Jesus in the temple with all the money changers. Of David and Goliath. The US Army and the Alamo. Momma throwing her magazine at Victor. Daddy with his baseball bat. I thought of the copperhead snake. How it had reared back in my hand, slicking its tongue out at all the colored people. How they all held back, looking at me, a scared little white boy that had come all the way down from Detroit just to hold a snake in the dark church of Kentucky.

  Raymond raised the rock over his head, looking down at Willis.

  I held up the knife. “Hold it right there! You skinny ass mother fucker!” It was the meanest thing I could think of to say. I pushed myself back and away and jumped down from the tree. Raymond looked even bigger from the ground – a giant skeleton with a sunken in chest and a rock – me standing there just by myself with Granny’s old butcher knife. I pointed it at Raymond and tried to make my voice sound big. “You leave him alone!”

  Raymond smiled. “You that Detroit boy, ain’t ye?” He held the rock in both hands against his stomach. It looked like Granpaw’s anvil, narrow on one end, thick on the other. Raymond made his voice go friendly, a friendly neighbor boy, passing the time of day. “Pappy told me about ya’ll. Said ya’ll was staying up there to Harlan’s with old Mattie Wood and Strode.” His lip tried to pull itself in two. “You Jessie’s boy, ain’t ye?”

  Granny’s knife blade trembled. “You just stay right where you are.”

  “I know all about you,” Raymond said, his voice all of a sudden sad. “I heard about Jessie too. That was a shame, wasn’t it? The way he died and all.”

  “You don’t know anything about it,” I said.

  “You wrong there Honey Pie,” Raymond smiled. “Everybody down here knows.” The other boys giggled. I could see Willis moving now toward the little waterfall on the opposite side. Raymond went all friendly again. “Your Daddy’s folks went to Circle Stump. You knowed that didn’t ye?”

  “Don’t call me Honey Pie.”

  “Everybody knowed Jessie. They still talk about him too.” Raymond made a half step closer. “That’s a mean looking knife you got there. The point’s bent though.”

  “Stand back!”

  “You know that fire boiled your Daddy’s eyes? I didn’t know fire could do that, did you?” Raymond moved a little to one side. I kept the knife blade shaking between us. He was right about its point. Even if I managed to stab him, it wouldn’t go in. His voice oozed with false sympathy. “His eyes was still in his head. All rubbery and white – like boiled eggs, they said – flesh burned black as pitch. Did you know they had to scoop all that up with a shovel?”

  Something whizzed past my ear. A rock. It landed in the trees in back of me. I could see Willis out in the swimming hole – back peddling – trying to get to the other side.

  Sow Face was down to the bank, trying to fish his hat out with a stick. “You better quit torturing them Kingdom Boys Raymond. Pappy’ll hide you!”

  I was surprised and proud too to be counted as one of the Kingdom Boys. Maybe Granny was wrong about me after all.

  Raymond said to Sow Face, “How’d you like this here rock up your ass?”

  “Go on! You thank you man enough!” Sow Face turned around; pushed his butt out at Raymond and farted.

  Everybody laughed. Even I did, a little. Raymond didn’t though. He tossed the rock off in the swimming hole on top the gray hat. A big splash of water went up all over Sow Face.

  “Goddamn you to hell Raymond!”

  Everybody laughed.

  I stood there with the knife. All of a sudden Raymond turned and swiped at me with his empty hand, smiled that friendly neighbor boy’s smile of his. Another rock cut through the leaves. Raymond picked up a dead tree limb. It was long and thick around as a baseball bat, rotten through and through. He swished it at me and the end broke off. “What’s the matter Honey Pie? I bet you miss your Momma now, don’t ye?”

  I backed up a step, two steps; looking for a way out. I did
n’t feel like Jesus in the temple anymore. Raymond swung the tree limb again, almost knocked the knife out of my hand. Another rock buzzed my head, then another and another. One hit me square in the chest, sharp as a bullet. “Bastards!” I yelled. Then I saw Willis, trying to pull himself up by the waterfall. That little boy Neddy, his birthmark swollen into something like a purple fire, stood over Willis, throwing rocks at his bare back, one after another, cutting him, making welts.

  “Orbie!” Willis screamed.

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run away and I couldn’t stay where I was. Sheets of blue light, a bunch of them, flashed overhead. A black gust of wind slashed through the trees.

  “I told you,” Sow Face said.

  Before anybody could answer him, a thick bolt of white static crackled and spat; it hummed and arced like something out of a Frankenstein movie, electrical and snaping over the swimming hole. There was a smell of burnt hair and sulphur. One of the boys began waving his hands wildly, pointing at the cottonwood tree. “Jesus in hell boys! Look!”

  A spooky blue line of glowing light had begun to draw itself up and around the branches of the tree. We were all of us rooted to the ground, watching the mysterious light trace itself up and down and around the trunk, around all the branches, every little leaf and twig, the tire and the rope. When it had finished, it stayed awhile – a neon sign glowing in the middle of the woods – then it just popped like a log in a fire and went out. The smell of rotten eggs and burning hair was everywhere.

  I almost dropped the knife, its blade glowing with blue light. There came a roll of thunder. Then for some seconds I seemed to lose track of who and where I was – I seemed to go down, or down went up – like with the pass out game, and then something or someone took hold of me on the inside, someone that wasn’t me at all but was me too, like Geronimo or Davy Crockett, way mightier than me but me at the same time, its voice, my voice, strong and true. “In thy blood!” it shouted, I shouted, the same words Moses used on Granpaw. It raised, I raised the knife, blue and burning toward the sky.

  Raymond backed away.

  “In thy blood, live!” boomed the voice.

  Neddy dropped the stones he’d been throwing.

  There was an explosion and a flash of light and a crack went up the side of the cottonwood tree. The branch with the tire swayed to one side, moaned and then crashed into the swimming hole. Raymond and all the other boys high-tailed it off through the woods.

  Willis had pulled himself out of the water and had come around to where I was standing. He held in his hand the gray ball cap. It was heavy with water. He reached it out to me.

  “What happened Willis?” I said.

  “You standing right dare boy! You see dat tree branch fall!”

  “I reckon I did,” I said. “I don’t know. I feel funny Willis. Are you all right?”

  Willis nodded. He had a gash over his left eye where the rock had hit him, but it had stopped bleeding. “Dey say you a witch, Orbie. Dem boys.”

  I looked at the hat. It was a darker gray from being in the water. The red winged horse looked darker too. I turned it over and looked on the inside. There were the letters, just like before – ‘J C’ stitched in blue.

  19

  When a Cloud Changes Shape

  Granpaw yanked the steering wheel left, then right. “Good God A Mighty!”

  I slammed up against the door. The station wagon fishtailed, then pulled straight.

  “I never seen the like!” Granpaw yelled. “New gravel all up and down these roads! And for what?” He hawked up a gob and spit it out the window. Pink snot. “For somebody to get killed on I reckon.”

  “I thought it was fun Granpaw,” I said.

  “You’d think fun we was to slide off in that ditch by grabs!”

  “I would think it was fun! What’s ‘by grabs’ Granpaw? You’re always saying that.”

  Granpaw looked at the road. “It’s just something people say from time to time, like some folks will say ‘by God’.”

  “‘Grabs’ ain’t like ‘God’ Granpaw. You could be by ‘God’, but I don’t see how you could be by ‘grabs’. What’s that mean?”

  “Boy, you shore got you some questions!” Granpaw laughed. “I don’t know. Grabs is grabs is all. It’s just what it is.” After while he said, “I bet this old Buick’s got more rattles than that Ford of Victor’s.”

  “It’s Momma’s Ford!” I almost shouted. “It doesn’t belong to Victor!”

  “All right, all right,” Granpaw said. “How come you so contrary today?”

  “I ain’t contrary.”

  “Yes you are. Everything I’ve mentioned you’ve had to fuss about. You ain’t mad at me are you?”

  “No Granpaw.”

  Granpaw drove on down the road and up a hill. At the top was a barn, its big red doors almost on the road. We passed it and went down around a curve and then over a bridge. Below the bridge a skin-and-bones mule was drinking from a half dried out mud hole, the few hairs left in its tail flicking about like a wrecked broom. The smell was awful.

  “That down there’s Kingdom Creek,” Granpaw said. “What they is of it, this far up.”

  The sun made a star in the chrome next to the window.

  It turned itself into a smoky blue ball. I closed my eyes and there it came again, a blue ball of smoky light floating behind my eyelids.

  “You all right over there, Mr. Baseball Cap?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Granpaw reached over and pulled the bill of my ball cap down. I laughed and pushed it back up. “That hat’s bigger’n you are.”

  “Is not!”

  “It is too,” Granpaw laughed. “It’s a wonder it stays on at all.”

  “Granny fixed it,” I said. “She put a piece of quilt inside.” I took it off and held it over for him to see. Pieces of red quilt showed out from the inside. So did the letters ‘J C’.

  “What’s them letters stand for? Jesus?”

  “Jim Conlin. He’s the one give me this hat. He’s a gas station man, Granpaw.” I turned the hat to where he could see the red winged horse and the words that said, Mobilgas. The horse stood out like a champ.

  Granpaw smiled. “That’s a real one ain’t it?”

  “Uh huh.” I popped it back on; proud that Granpaw liked it, even if it was too big. It was strange how I’d got it back, that fat boy throwing it in the water, the blue light and the lightning, that tree branch crashing down.

  Granpaw took out his leather pouch, undid the string and skinned back the leather. A black twist of tobacco poked out. He bit off a piece, moved it around inside his mouth, and then let it go back to the back of his jaw.

  I looked over the seat at the back of the station wagon. A stack of boards rattled back there with a can of white paint and some brushes. Next to all that leaned three big bags full of groceries.

  “Can I open them Sugar Puffs, Granpaw?”

  “You just had a hamburger. At Grinestaff’s.”

  “Yeah, but I need me something sweet.”

  “No now. Mattie will pitch a fit.”

  “I don’t like Grinestaff.”

  “How come?”

  “He called me a City Slicker.”

  “Well you are, ain’t you?” Granpaw laughed. “Would you rather he said you was a hillbilly?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe. What you gonna do with all them boards?”

  “Make signs. Crosses, you know. Put them up and down the road. It’s the Lord’s work.”

  “If it’s His work how come you have to do it?” I remembered signs in Indiana – on the way down from Detroit – signs on the side of the road. White crosses with Bible words. John 3:16. Jesus Saves! Prepare to Meet GOD.

  “You can help me if you’ve a mind to,” Granpaw said.

  “I don’t have one, Granpaw. I don’t like Jesus anyway. I’m a witch. Witch’s don’t need Jesus.”

  Granpaw spit tobacco juice out the window and wiped his chin. “Where’d y
ou hear that at?”

  “Circle Stump Boys. I made a light come around a tree, Granpaw. I scared all’em Circle Stump Boys away. They said I was a witch.”

  “A light?”

  “Yeah Granpaw, like lightning. It came around a tree. Lightning knocked a branch off. That’s how I got my hat back. It was magic, Granpaw. Victor took my hat away and magic brought it back.”

  “Well,” Granpaw said. “It don’t matter what a person can or can’t do. Who’d you think protected you when you handled that snake?”

  “Moses. He’s a witch too.”

  Granpaw spit more tobacco juice. “The Lord protected you. Not Moses.”

  “You believe in magic Granpaw?”

  “Not like you do, I don’t.”

  “I mean like when a magician cuts a woman in half and she’s still alive? Or when she floats?”

  “Floats?”

  “Yeah, Granpaw! When she floats in the air and the magician shows you with his hoop!”

  “That’s just thinking something is when it ain’t,” Granpaw said. “They’s a power inside things though. Like in that snake you handled. I believe in that. Remember how you felt?”

  “I felt good,” I said. “I felt tall.” Right then a bug left a yellow splatter up the dirty windshield.

  “I know you did. I could feel you feeling it. That’s a natural thing. Like when the sun comes up of a morning. Or when a cloud changes shape.”