THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens Wegela

  “Ruby, mash up some of them eggs, would you?” Granny said. “Granpaw can’t eat them they ain’t mashed.”

  Momma fixed Granpaw’s eggs. She handed them to Granny and sat down in my old chair next to Victor, a sad little smile on her face. She looked at him and her eyes went soft. She reached out and touched him on the arm.

  “Ruby, Sweetness, you look awful,” Granny said.

  Momma started to cry.

  Granny said to Victor, “I appreciate what you said just now Victor. We all sad over losing Jessie.”

  Momma reached out again and touched Victor’s arm. She slipped her hand in his.

  The room turned quiet. I listened to all the quiet sounds. Granpaw slurping eggs from the spoon Granny held. A fly bouncing along the screen on the door behind Victor. The Dark Thing was going in places it’d never gone before. Granny took off Granpaw’s dishtowel and wiped his mouth. “There’s one thing I don’t understand though.”

  Victor blew his nose in a hankie. “What’s that Mrs. Wood?”

  All of a sudden the room perked up. “Well, I never said anything about no eviction. Alls I said was a court order. Now, them papers Reverend Pennycall gave me, they did mention eviction, but I haven’t said a word about that. Not to nobody. So… How did you know about it?”

  Momma and Victor both looked at Granny. Victor let go of Momma’s hand. “Ruby explained your problem to me. I just assumed eviction was part of the package.”

  “Because I was letting them colored fellers work my land?”

  “No. But if you didn’t abide by the order, you could be.”

  “And how would you know that?”

  “I told you, I just assumed it. What is this anyway?”

  “How’d you know Nealy Harlan was our landlord then? I don’t recollect ever telling you.”

  Victor picked his coffee cup up and set it back down. “Of course I knew. Ruby’s told me everything about your situation.” He looked at Momma. “Haven’t you Baby.”

  Momma sniffled and looked up. “What? Well, yes. I reckon I did. If you say so hon.”

  “Sure you told me.”

  “If you say so. I reckon that’s right Mamaw.”

  Victor threw his eyes back on Granny. “I don’t like where this is going. A minute ago you seemed sympathetic. I could’ve guessed your situation from the nature of the court order alone. I didn’t need anybody to tell me. I could have…”

  “You could have talked to Old Man Harlan!” Granny slapped the table with the palm of her hand, not hard, just enough you knew she was mad. I almost slapped the table myself.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute! Even if I had, so what?”

  “You and Old Man Harlan could have got this up between the two of you is so what!” Granny was fuming now.

  “That’s ridiculous! What would I gain by doing such a thing?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s something. I can feel there is.”

  Granny and Victor looked at each other over the table. If I closed my eyes I could see a black cloud, twirling over the table inside the room – full of wind and sparks. Granny stood up. “You been nothing but a burden since you been down here. A sight more on my daughter here and her younguns.”

  “There’s no need in stirring things up again,” Momma said.

  “There is too!” Granny snapped. “I want you to stop this whatever you’re doing and wake up girl! Can’t you see what he’s up to? Poor little Missy, why, she ain’t said two words since she been down here, and all cause of this man here, or whatever you want to call him!”

  “You’re full of shit,” Victor said, dry-eyed now.

  “I’m not through yet!” Granny stretched herself taller over the table. Her flowered housedress caught some of the light from the window. “I’ll tell you what’s the truth, I don’t know whether you played a part in what happened to Jessie or not, I hope for your own soul’s salvation you didn’t have anything to do with that. If I were you though, I would humble myself. I would get down on my knees in front of that woman there.” She pointed to Momma. “And I would ask her to forgive me what I done to her and to her kids.”

  Victor, red faced, stood up out of his chair.

  Granny didn’t flinch. “I want you out of my house, Victor, and the sooner the better! There’s a bus on Saturday. Ruby can ride you to town. Or Reverend Pennycall can. I don’t want to see you after that!”

  “Oh Mamaw, no,” Momma said.

  “You think you’re going to keep me from mine? You better think again, you old bitch!” Victor grabbed up his belt so fast from the table he flipped his plate over. He tried to catch hold of it but it fell to the floor and smashed into a gazillion pieces. “Sorry for the mess,” he said. “Maybe you can get one of your niggers to clean it up!” He looked at Momma one last time and threading the belt through a loop as he went, slammed through the screen door.

  27

  Chickens

  Victor staggered across the road from Old Man Harlan’s, his hand like a claw over the lid of a canning jar. I ducked behind the well and watched him come up in the yard. He was talking out loud to himself, his words running together, still fighting with Granny over what she had said. “Yes. We’ll see about that! Old woman!” He was all red in the face and glassy-eyed, shaking a finger at his thoughts. “We’ll see who has to go!” He unscrewed the lid on the jar and took a drink, screwed it back and staggered on. I followed after.

  He grabbed onto the rain barrel and swatted at the air with the canning jar. “Think I don’t know what you’re up to? Armstrong? All you people? I’ll show all of you!” He pushed himself from the barrel; zigzagged across the yard out to the trailer, unlocked the door and went inside. He left the door standing open.

  I waited a little while before creeping up to the door. I saw Victor on his knees in there by the sofa bed, praying. “Forgive me Father! I didn’t know. I didn’t! I didn’t!” He sucked tears up his nose and wiped at his eyes. “If I could make things right. If only I could.” He kept on like that, praying, mumbling about letters and what all some people had said, bits of stories, shreds of things that had happened I could make neither heads nor tails of, asking God over and over to forgive him without ever really saying what he’d done. Finally he crawled up on the bed and lay over on his back, crosswise with his feet on the floor. In a minute he was sound asleep.

  I kicked my tennis shoes off and tiptoed barefoot up the steps. I stood just inside the door on the dirty gray carpet. The little egg shaped room of the trailer closed in around me, hot and stuffy, even with the door and all the windows open. I could feel grainy little pieces of dirt in the carpet under my feet. On a table next to the bed sat the coil of Victor’s belt and a wind up alarm clock, white with black hands – the big hand on the twelve, the little on the two. Tomorrow would be Friday. Then Saturday, the day Victor was supposed to leave. I knew he wouldn’t though, not without a fight. I had to find the knife.

  He lay with his eyeglasses pushed up to the top of his head, snoring inside a cloud of moonshine smell and body odor. Past the bed on the other side of the room were shelves that went up the wall on one side of a little stainless steel sink. The sink had no faucet but was piled high with dishes Momma had brought over from the house. There was a jalousie window over the sink, its slats filled with smoky white sunlight. The sunlight threw a lumpy white square across the bed. The clock ticked in the corner. Victor took in a deep breath and slowly let it out; then he went on snoring.

  I tiptoed to the sink and pulled at a drawer under the counter. It made a screeching sound. “Come to bed baby,” Victor muttered. I waited, the blood building, pounding drumlike in my head. Again I tried the drawer, pulling it out a little at a time. Inside were pencils and pens and other odds and ends – two wrapped cigars, a tin of Band-Aids, a lidless half-used jar of Vaseline. Other things were arranged on the shelves beside the sink – Pamolive Aftershave Lotion, a tube of Pepsodent, combs and brushes, razor blades, a can of Barbasol. There were magazin
es too, Popular Mechanics, Life Magazine and Reader’s Digest, and nail polish remover and aspirin and Brylcream – all organized in straight rows and neat little piles.

  On one of the upper shelves sat Victor’s green file box and a slotted stand full of envelopes and manila file folders, some with papers inside. I pulled the counter drawer out a little further and ran my hand into the shadows at the back. I found a tablespoon there; two bent forks and a rusty can opener but no knife.

  I got down on my hands and knees and looked under the bed. The mattress made a belly toward the floor. The carpet smelled like cigar ashes and spilled moonshine. There was a card table lying flat under there with a folding chair. Victor’s tan suitcase was there too along with his smiling alligator shoes.

  I stood up. The bed was now between me and the door. Victor’s head lay directly in front of me – almost at the edge – his face red and shiny with heat. I could see the chicken yard fence through the door. Beyond it was the chicken house, weather-blackened and baking in the sun.

  Victor moved his head. He placed a hand on his chest and yawned. The yawn turned into a groan. I pressed myself back against the wall. Victor closed his hands into fists and stretched them over his head. They were almost touching me. I felt beads of sweat pop out across my forehead. All at once Victor sat straight up on the bed.

  “Christ Almighty, it’s hot,” he whispered to the open door.

  All he had to do to see me was turn around. I looked along on the floor up to the little table where the clock sat. There underneath the table lay the knife. I held my breath.

  Again, he made fists, stretching them this time toward the ceiling. I thought for sure he was going to turn around, but then it was like all the air went out of him and he dropped back on the bed. I waited for the longest time, not daring to move or hardly even to breathe until I again heard the sound of his snoring. The big hand on the clock had gone down to the three.

  I edged along the wall to the little table, reached down under there and got the knife. When I got back to Victor, I stopped. His eyeglasses had fallen onto the floor.

  I could kill him now if I wanted. I could stab him in the neck. Punch a hole in one of his big veins there.

  I lifted the knife, the straightened-out-point pointing directly at Victor’s head.

  We wouldn’t have to worry about him, ever again. We would be free.

  The thought seemed simple enough, sensible even, but somehow I knew the truth of it wouldn’t be. The truth would be bloody, the truth would be real – something I could never take back.

  I let the knife go down by my side, trembling, remembering now the little boy of my vision, his horse-faced mother and the three sniggering factory workers, remembering the question I asked Granpaw about the Rain Skull and the contrary power – ‘Too late for what Granpaw?’ I had asked – and his answer coming back strong and clear – ‘To save what you was wanting to destroy, by grabs.’

  I wanted to destroy Victor, not the boy. How was that possible?

  There came a loud banging noise from outside – loud enough I thought it might wake Victor. I raised the knife, holding it as before directly over his head. The noise came again, louder this time. Still, Victor went on sleeping. I carefully tiptoed around the bed and out the door; pulled on my tennis shoes and looked out across the chicken yard. A dust bomb exploded out the chicken house door, chickens flying every which a way, running, bumping into each other, squawking, cackling over the yard. I thought maybe a fox had gotten in there.

  I hid the knife in some weeds by the fence and climbed over. Another noise came from inside the chicken house, wings flapping, the sound of something metal like a bucket banging across the floor. I found a good rock and ran toward the chicken house door, filled now with a bomb-cloud of smoky black dust. There was a smell of chicken poop and rotten feathers. A great big bird body flew out of the bombcloud, whooshing, flapping its wings, squawking over my head. It landed next to the water trough – Geronimo The Rooster – his green and black butt feathers shivered in the hot air.

  “Come out of there you old fox!” I shouted.

  Somebody inside the dust hollered back, “City boy? That you? You best get out away from here!” It was Old Man Harlan’s bad-tempered voice.

  I let the rock go down by my side. There were more squawks, more wings – another bucket-sound. Old Man Harlan hollered again. “I hope to God you two is worth the trouble! Thick as pitch in here!” He came in the doorway then, red eyed, almost no hair on his head at all. A black hankie covered his nose and mouth, making a little point below his chin like a bank robber’s mask. He had a hold of Elvis and Johnny, holding them upside down by their legs, one in each of his long bony hands. He stepped sideways over a busted plank, reached up the hand that held Elvis and pulled the hankie from his mouth, fixing his red blistery eyes on me.

  I wanted to say something but for the moment had lost my voice. Everything – my eyesight, the smell of chicken poop, the feel of the rock in my hand – became super sharp. I could even hear the dust settling in the doorway behind Old Man Harlan’s feet.

  “What are you doing with those chickens, Mr. Harlan?” I was finally able to say.

  “That ain’t none of your beeswax; now is it?” came Old Man Harlan’s reply.

  Johnny tried to reach up to peck Old Man Harlan but fell back, flapping her wings and squawking against his pant leg. Elvis hung quietly, her white wings open and still.

  “Those are my chickens, Mr. Harlan.”

  Old Man Harlan’s face seemed to gather up about his nose. “Who said they was?”

  “I been taking care of them. For Granny. I been getting them ready for the beauty contest. At the fair. That one there’s name is Johnny, and that one is Elvis.”

  “Beauty contest?” Old Man Harlan snorted. “We eat chickens down here son.”

  Johnny had stopped struggling, her wings fanning out now like Elvis’s, open and still.

  “Please don’t hurt Johnny and Elvis, Mr. Harlan. I’ve been training them. They’re my pets. You can eat those other chickens can’t you?”

  Old Man Harlan said nothing, stood there with a blank look pasted over his features.

  I tried again. “I said you can eat those others can’t you?”

  “I can eat these,” Old Man Harlan said.

  All the air went out of me then. I didn’t know what to do. I had the rock, which felt rough and dangerous, but I didn’t dare throw it at Old Man Harlan.

  He set the chickens down one at a time. They stayed right beside him, looking around at the yard. “Holding them upside down like that calms them,” Old Man Harlan said.

  I got an idea then and hauled off with the rock, throwing it over Old Man Harlan’s head. It came down with a loud bang on top the tin roof of the chicken house.

  “Run Johnny! Run Elvis!” I yelled, but they just stood there like fools. I stomped my feet at them. “Run, you stupid ass chickens!” Johnny turned her head sideways, trying to remember. The sunlight had changed her comb into a bright red saw-blade. “Run goddamn you!”

  Old Man Harlan grinned. “You want to see’em run?”

  Before I could find the breath to answer, he grabbed hold of Johnny and Elvis by their necks, both of them, jerking them up off the ground, their white wings flapping in a panic. He held them like that. “Watch here now,” he said and then he just twirled them – like you would the ends of a jump rope around and around until their snow-white bodies leaped away from his hands. They hit the ground running. I thought at first they had gotten away and for that brief moment I was glad. But then I saw what had happened, that blood was spurting everywhere.

  One bumped up against me and I tried to grab it, thinking crazily that if I could take hold of it, I could pet it, make it all better. It tore through my hands and made a wide looping dash neck first into the water trough. The other had run almost all the way out to the gate. It lay there on its side in a white bloody heap, one wing flapping.

  “Looky here, boy
.” Old Man Harlan held out Elvis and Johnny’s heads, the neck feathers wet with blood. “All she wrote for them buzzards.” He tossed the heads over the fence.

  He may as well have tossed me. Carrot colored puke exploded out my mouth all over my tennis shoes and onto the ground in front of me.

  Old Man Harlan stood, wiping his hands down the front of his vest. “Hell now boy, you’ll be all right. I told you to stay away. Didn’t I tell you?” He went over to the trough and pulled out the chicken that had run there, bloody water dripping from the headless neck. “This one’s good sized,” Old Man Harlan muttered. He went over and picked up the other, carried them both upside down like before with their wings flopped open.

  I ran after him, wiping my mouth and crying, “You Goddamn Chicken Buzzard, Old Man Harlan! I hope you rot in hell!”

  “What’s all the ruckus out here!” It was Victor, yelling from the doorway of the trailer, no shirt on now. No eyeglasses. “I’m trying to sleep in here!”

  Old Man Harlan pushed open the gate. “It’s this here boy a yorn! He’s mad about these chickens. Said I couldn’t kill these cause they was his. I never seen no little boy with as much sass. Like to hit me with a rock.”

  “Liar!” I cried.

  Old Man Harlan looked up at Victor.

  “Apologize to Mr. Harlan,” Victor said.

  “That rock would have hit me, it hadn’t gone wild,” Old Man Harlan said.

  “Liar!”

  Right then, Granny stepped out on the back porch. “What’s all this about?”