THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens Wegela

  I was excited. “I know those men, Granpaw! They talked to Daddy. They were from the Union.”

  “Say what?” Granpaw said.

  “Inspectors, Granpaw. Daddy told me. It was a long time ago!”

  “What they want with Jessie?”

  “I don’t know. Help them I reckon. Daddy told them ‘no’.”

  Willis looked at me wide eyed.

  “You shore it was them?” Granpaw said.

  “No, but they look like it. And they got a coon tail too.”

  “Coon tail?”

  “On the antenna.”

  “I seen it,” Willis said.

  “I never!” Granpaw growled. “God A Mighty!”

  We went on down the road. After a little while we drove past Moses’ house and over the hill to Harlan’s Crossroads.

  “Can the power kill people Granpaw?” I asked.

  “Kill people?”

  “Yeah. You know. That contrary power. Can it kill people?”

  Granpaw turned up into the yard. “It don’t work around that easy, son.”

  Next day Cecil came up in the yard, skinny arms fighting to keep the handlebars straight. His letter bag bulged with letters and magazines. Willis and me were standing out by the Jesus Tree, watching Elvis and Johnny catch pieces of loaf bread before they hit the ground.

  Cecil fought the handle-bars by us and out to the trailer. Victor was there, smoking one of his cigarettes. He frowned at Cecil, his hair all stuck up in back. He looked like he’d been sleeping in his clothes. The Cadillac was gone. Jimmy The Diamond and Zeek had taken it up to Detroit with them after dropping Victor off in front of the house before supper last night. Victor tried to let on like it didn’t bother him, but you could tell it did.

  “Armstrong needed it back, that’s all,” Victor said. “Hell. It was just a loaner anyway.”

  Cecil gave Victor a letter he had to sign for, hopped back on the bicycle and waggled off. Victor ripped open the envelope, slid the letter out and began to read. His face fell in around his eyes as he did. When he finished he looked around at the trailer, then out at the barn, then where Willis and me stood. He looked up at Old Man Harlan’s place. He folded the letter, stuffed it in his pocket and threw his lit cigarette over the fence. He walked past me and Willis as though we were invisible, crossed the road and went up to Old Man Harlan’s store. He tried the door, but it wouldn’t open. He cupped his hands and looked through the window. He rapped on the RC cola sign so loud it made me and Willis both jump.

  Most times the store would be locked, even in the daytime. Daddy and me used to go up to the house to get Old Man Harlan or Bird one to come down and open. I was thinking Victor would have to do the same when Old Man Harlan’s scarecrow face jumped up in the window, veined beak nose, eye sockets thrown open like in a surprise. When he saw Victor, he smiled his sad crooked smile and opened the door.

  Later that afternoon, me, Willis, Vern and Fable went down to the swimming hole. Fable and me and Vern sat on the tree branch that got struck by lightning. Vern and me sat on the good side of the break, closer to the main part of the tree. Fable had edged way out on the bad side, his feet dangling off in the water.

  Granny’s butcher knife stuck out my belt, inside the sock lined with paper. The pouch with the Rain Skull hung around my neck. We had been out in the field next to Kingdom Church trying to melt clouds. We had taken turns with the Rain Skull. I tried to do like Granpaw said. I tried to love the clouds. I tried to send warm rays up to the clouds, to think of the people I loved, but it didn’t work. It didn’t work for Vern. It didn’t work for Fable. It didn’t even work for Willis. We’d come down to the swimming hole to cool off.

  Willis sat on the creek bank, telling the story again about me and the knife and the blue light, what all happened that day with the white boys. “Dat knife ga-ga-glow just like da tree,” Willis said. “And dem boys, dey all run away. Say Orbie a witch.”

  “You done tole dat fib a thousand time boy,” Fable said.

  “He’s telling the truth.” I picked off a twig from the tree branch and threw it in the water. “Can I tell Fable and Vern about Moses, Willis?”

  “Don’t care,” Willis said.

  “You won’t get in no trouble?”

  “Na uh. Don’t tell Miss Alma dough. She be mad.”

  “Ya’ll keep a secret?” I said to Fable and Vern.

  Vern looked at Willis and crossed his heart. “I won’t tell nobody Willis.”

  “I won’t neither,” Fable said.

  “I don’t care,” Willis said. “Ain’t no secret, no way. Not like da one I got on ya’ll.”

  “What?” Fable said.

  “Miss Alma’s jam.”

  “That wasn’t us,” Vern said.

  “I seen ya’ll take it.”

  “Nobody’s going to tell on nobody,” I said. “Ya’ll want to hear this or not?”

  They all nodded their heads that they did.

  I started by telling them about the dream. I told them how I wasn’t sure Victor killed Daddy, and how I had to find out, and that was why I went up to see Moses. Then I told them all about the pool, about the woman and the little boy.

  “You say dat little boy, Victa?” Fable asked.

  “Yeah, Fable. I thought Moses was going to help me. I thought he could see things. Like Superman.”

  “Supaman?” Fable said.

  “Yeah, you know, like in comic books and on TV. You know about Superman, don’t you?”

  “I does,” Willis grinned. “In dem comic book. He see through things.”

  “What you talkin’ ‘bout?” Fable said.

  “X-rays,” I said. “That’s how he sees through things. Like walls. That’s how he knows things.”

  “Jesus know things,” Vern said.

  “Jesus don’t know shit.” I broke off another twig and threw it in the water. “Armstrong’s men took Victor’s Cadillac away.”

  Willis nodded.

  “I seen’em before,” I said. “In Detroit. They said they were from the Union. They lied.”

  “Why dey lie?” Fable said.

  “I don’t know. It was something about money. They wanted Daddy to keep his eye on it.” I grabbed out a wrinkled envelope from my butt-pocket and showed it around. I was excited again but I wasn’t sure why. “I found this, this morning, after Victor went up to Old Man Harlan’s. Look in the corner there.” Over the address in pale pink squiggly letters it said, The Pink Flamingo Hotel, and under that, St. Petersburg’s Best. “Victor’s letter was in this enevelope. I bet you anything it was from Armstrong!”

  Vern and Fable looked at me like I was crazy.

  “I think Victor’s mixed up in something. I think he’s in trouble.”

  “You in trouble, you ask me,” Fable said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But if I knew for sure Victor was the one, I might could do something.”

  “Stab him,” Vern said. “I would.”

  25

  Darkness Going Darker

  Thinking we might try to melt more clouds after supper, I put the shoe box with the Rain Skull and Granny’s butcher knife in a bucket by the well. Victor had come back from Old Man Harlan’s. He’d been drinking. We all saw that he had been. He was trying to be nice about everything, rubbing Momma’s shoulders, smiling, talking to Momma and Granny.

  Supper was almost ready. The afternoon thunderheads had already come and gone. There was a smell of baked ham, taters and sweet corn all through the house. Willis sat with his back against the wall in the front room, drawing a picture he didn’t want anybody to see. Vern and Fable were over on the couch, thumb-wrestling. I tried to look at Willis’s picture but he jerked it away.

  Fable pinned Vern’s thumb under his. “Dat make three time.”

  “Damn you!” Vern said.

  Fable punched Vern hard three times on the arm.

  “Damn you!”

  “Ah, you boys in there!” Granny called from the kitchen. “Don’t be
cussing around that a way!”

  Fable and Vern looked at each other and sniggered.

  I was trying to read the Body Snatcher book. Body Snatchers from outer space were snatching away people’s bodies, making copies and walking around like zombies. Victor had snatched away Daddy’s body. Now he was trying to snatch away Momma’s. I could see him standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

  He’d put on a fresh shirt since coming back from Old Man Harlan’s, long sleeved with the cuffs rolled back. He’d also put on his glasses – the first time I saw them since he came back from Florida. He looked good – part Clark Kent, part Dean Martin. Still you could tell he had been drinking. He stood with his hand raised over his head against the doorframe, looking in at the kitchen. Stuck between the fingers of his raised right hand was a cigar, not like his others but long and skinny with a red band around one end. Smoke curled up from it – golden doll hair curls – carried to the ceiling with the rising heat.

  I could hear Momma and Granny walking around in the kitchen, putting things on the table, dishes, forks, knives clinking together. Granpaw was in there too, in his wheelchair. Yesterday, after we got back from putting up signs and melting clouds, he’d limped off to bed without saying a word. This morning he’d got up in another one of his spells.

  “Mr. Harlan’s a good man,” Victor said. “He’s got spirit.” He took a pull off the cigar and blew a bomb of smoke toward the ceiling. “Yes indeed, a man to reckon with. Reverend Pennycall too.”

  Nobody said anything.

  “I like the way Mr. Harlan thinks,” Victor said. “He’s got a number of good ideas.”

  “Shoot!” Granny said. “That man wouldn’t know a good idee it was to jump up and bite him on the ass!”

  “Mamaw now,” Momma said.

  “He’s got idees all right but they ain’t none of them good. Not to my way of thinking. The kind of idees likely to keep a feller down.”

  “Mamaw.”

  “Don’t hush me, I know what I’m talking about.”

  “A working class sentiment if ever I heard one,” Victor laughed.

  “Humph!” Granny said.

  There was another little quiet time when nobody said anything.

  “Take this cigar, for example. It’s a Panatela.” Victor held it out for Granny to see. “Mr. Harlan has a cedar humidor full of these, wrapped in red velvet. Do you know what a humidor is Mrs. Wood?”

  “What makes you think I’d want to know?”

  “It’s a special box for cigars, keeps them fresh. Mr. Harlan gives these Panatelas out from time to time. It’s like his sig-nature. His way of acknowledging special occasions.”

  “Humph,” Granny said. “I don’t see nothing special ‘bout no occasions around here. What with Strode sick and the Devil to pay. Orbie, Willis, all you boys! Come on to the table now! Supper’s on!”

  “Okay Granny,” I said.

  We all stopped what we were doing and went in the kitchen. A moonshine smell floated in the air around Victor. He looked at me first, then at Willis. Then at Vern and Fable. “You boys wash your hands. We always wash our hands before we eat around here.”

  “Go on and wash up. Orbie, you too,” Momma said. “There’s a pan of warm water and a bar of soap out there on the porch.”

  Victor moved out of the way. He held the cigar over the place where we would have to walk through to get out to the porch. A piece of ash fell off onto the floor. “Looks like some little Jigaboo’s going to get burned.”

  Granny slammed a bowl of peas on the table.

  “Victor!” Momma said.

  Victor raised the cigar to his mouth and grinned. “Go on boys. Go wash up.”

  “You seen him,” Fable said to Vern. “What more you want boy?”

  “Don’t prove nothin’.”

  “Do.” Fable looked up from the pallet to the featherbed where Willis and me lay.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “It liked to,” Willis said.

  “Maybe Momma was right. Anybody would get mad.”

  Fable laughed. “You see how he look? Hot damn! I thought he gone shit hisself!”

  Vern started laughing too.

  Granny yelled up from the bottom of the ladder hole. “Put out that light, you boys! Go to sleep!” Vern went over to the little table next to the dresser and blew out the lamp. After while all the lights went out downstairs.

  What had happened after supper seemed like proof my dream was right, like Fable said, or almost proof. The sun had gone down, and we had all moved to the front yard except for Victor who went to the trailer, he said, to get another cigar.

  Granny had spread a blanket out next to the Jesus Tree. She brought out two kerosene lamps and a dinner plate. She set the dinner plate in the middle of the blanket as a platform for one of the lamps. The other lamp she kept with her and Granpaw on the front porch where Momma sat with Missy in her lap.

  Willis had brought his drawing pad out, and I had my comic books. Me and Vern and Fable laid out on the blanket, looking at the comic books. Willis sat, leaning against the Jesus Tree. Overhead bloody Jesus flickered in and out of the lamplight. After while Victor appeared, standing out by the rain barrel with his arms spread wide, looking up at the nighttime sky. “The soul looks out!” he said in a loud voice. “Breathes in the starry wonder of its own war and gratefully dies!” He staggered to the porch, arms still spread. The light from Granny’s lamp set his face off in yellow shadows. “Giving up the ghost as high as old office buildings! A new mown lawn sparkles off with a machine to be married with!”

  Fable and Vern sniggered.

  “Hush Victor!” Momma said. “You had too much to drink.”

  Victor looked at her and in a softer voice said, “But I can’t sleep with you anymore, she says.”

  “You’re making a fool of yourself,” Momma said.

  But Victor shouted, “The body aches out of disuse! Like a mind resting! Like a silvery saucer of light around darkness going darker!” He staggered sideways, fixed his eyes again on Momma and in another softer voice said, “There is no love anywhere, anymore, she says.”

  “Lord God,” Granny whispered.

  Victor tripped backward over the Jesus Tree, fell toward Willis but was able to grab onto one of the branches. Jesus rattled in the limbs. Willis dropped his drawing pad and scrambled out of the way as Victor crashed to the ground; lay there, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. “My, my, my. Oh my.”

  Fable looked at Vern. Vern looked at Fable.

  Victor tried to get up but fell backward onto his elbows. The ugly shrapnel scar gleamed at the base of his neck. Momma leaned forward, Missy clinging to her like a little white monkey. “Victor, you all right?”

  “I’m a long way from all right, Ruby baby.” Victor turned his head then and looked at me, then at Fable and Vern. His eyeglasses had slipped to the front of his nose.

  Fable and Vern sniggered.

  Victor sat up next to Willis’s drawing pad. “What the hell is this?” He picked up the pad. Everything about his face was lit in yellow light except his eyes. Crickets chirped by the well. “Orbie, what in hell have you been up to?”

  “What?” I said.

  “This! This is what!” Victor tossed the drawing pad my way. It was a picture of Daddy. A good one too. And of another man. A giant. The giant was pouring fire from a black pot on top of Daddy. The giant was drawn to look like Victor – complete with grin and cigar and the mole by his nose. Victor lurched forward but as he got to his feet the blanket gathered about his shoe. In a fit of sudden rage he kicked it away. Comic books went flying. The kerosene lamp turned over. Fire whooshed over the blanket. I jumped away. Victor began stomping at the fire. Vern and Fable had run up onto the porch. Willis stood on one leg with his walking stick drawn back.

  I got Granny’s butcher knife from the shoebox by the well. The fire went out. Victor stood bow armed and smoking, staring around at the yard. I held the knife but
couldn’t think what to do. Victor grabbed it away. “Now. You tell me! What’s this about?”

  Granny jumped down off the porch and stepped in between us. “Put that knife away Victor! This is still my house!”

  “It is for the moment, old woman,” Victor said. “Get out of the way!”

  “Over my dead body!” Granny stood up to him. She was big but not nearly as big as he was.

  “Victor!” Momma yelled. “Put that knife away!” She was standing up with Missy now.

  I could feel my heart beating almost up in my neck. The light from the porch, from the other kerosene lamp and from the light bulb in the front room cast a strange glow over the yard. Victor frowned, tried to smile, and then frowned again. He held the knife pointed toward Granny, its blade dimly catching up the light.

  Granny stayed put.

  “Are you crazy!” Momma yelled from the porch. “Put it away! Put it away before somebody gets hurt!”

  Granny made a fist.

  Missy hugged herself tighter around Momma’s neck.

  “Whoremongers!” Granpaw yelled from his wheelchair. “Pharisees!”

  “This isn’t over, old woman,” Victor finally said. “Not by any stretch of the imagination. Least of all that boy’s.” Then, knife still in hand, he stormed off around the house toward the trailer.

  The whole yard smelled of kerosene. Kerosene and burned blanket. Lightning bugs blinked in the crown of the Jesus Tree. Crickets chirped by the well. Momma sat back in the rocking chair with Missy, her face half in shadow. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Mamaw. He gets that way when he’s upset.”

  “When he’s drunk you mean,” Granny said. “What was he going on about anyway?”

  I picked up the drawing pad and handed it to Granny.

  “This is what.” Granny looked at the picture, then walked it over to Momma. I told them all about the dream I had. “He killed Daddy, Momma! He poured fire on him!”

  “Reckon there’s anything to this?” Granny asked.

  “No,” Momma said. “Anybody would be upset. I mean if they was accused of something like that. You ought to be ashamed Orbie.”