“Naw, I can’t do that. Besides, I ain’t got no way home. They pick me up and brought me here. I come to church last week and they offered me the job, and then they come and got me and brought me here and I made a mess of it. They’ll be back later and they won’t like it. They ain’t gonna give me my five dollars, I can see that and I can’t see nothing.”
“Hell, man,” Mr. Harold said, “that black fella mowed this lawn, you can bet he got more than five dollars.”
“You tryin’ to say I ain’t good as a nigger?”
“I’m not trying to say anything ’cept you’re not being paid enough. A guy ought to get five dollars an hour just for standing around in this heat.”
“People charge too much these days. Niggers especially will stick you when they can. It’s that civil rights business. It’s gone to their heads.”
“It ain’t got nothing to do with what color you are.”
“By the hour, I reckon I’m making ’bout what I got processing chicken heads,” the blind man said. “’Course, they had a damn fine company picnic this time each year.”
“Listen here. We’ll do what we were gonna do. Check the spots you’ve missed. I’ll lead you around to bad places, and you chop ’em.”
“That sounds all right, but I don’t want to share my five dollars. I was gonna get me something with that. Little check I get from the government just covers my necessities, you know?”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
Mr. Harold took the blind man by the elbow and led him around to where the grass was missed or whacked high, which was just about everywhere you looked. After about fifteen minutes, the blind man said he was tired.They went over to the house and leaned on a tree in the front yard. The blind man said, “You seen them shows about those crop circles, in England, I think it is?”
“No,” said Mr. Harold.
“Well, they found these circles in the wheat. Just appeared out there. They think it’s aliens.”
“Oh yeah, I seen about those,” Mr. Harold said, suddenly recalling what it was the man was talking about. “There ain’t no mystery to that It’s some guys with a stick and a cord. We used to do that in tall weed patches when we were kids. There’s nothing to it. Someone’s just making jackasses out of folks.”
The blind man took a defiant posture. “Not everything like that is a bunch of kids with a string.”
“I wasn’t saying that”
“For all I know, what’s wrong with that patch there’s got nothing to do with me and my work. It could have been alien involvement.”
“Aliens with weed-eaters?”
“It could be what happened when they landed, their saucers messin’ it up like that”
“If they landed, why didn’t they land on you? You was out there with the weed-eater. How come nobody saw or heard them?”
“They could have messed up the yard while I was coming to get you.”
“Kind of a short visit, wasn’t it?”
“You don’t know everything, Mister-I-Got-Eyeballs. Those that talk the loudest know less than anybody.”
“And them that believe every damn thing they hear are pretty stupid, Mister Weed-Eater. I know what’s wrong with you now. You’re lazy. It’s hot out there and you don’t want to be here, so you’re trying to make me feel sorry for you and do the job myself, and it ain’t gonna work. I don’t feel sorry for you cause you’re blind. I ain’t gonna feel sorry at all. I think you’re an asshole.”
Mr. Harold went across the road and back to the house and called his son inside. He sat down in front of the TV. Wheel of Fortune wasn’t on anymore. Hell, it was a rerun anyway. He changed the channel looking for something worth watching but all that was on was midget wrestling, so he watched a few minutes of that.
Those little guys were fast and entertaining and it was cool inside with the air-conditioner cranked up, so after a couple minutes Mr. Harold got comfortable watching the midgets sling each other around, tumble up together and tie themselves in knots.
However, time eroded Mr. Harold’s contentment. He couldn’t stop thinking about the blind man out there in the heat. He called to his son and told him to go outside and see if the blind man was still there.
The boy came back a minute later. He said, “He’s out there, Daddy. He said you better come on out and help him. He said he ain’t gonna talk about crop circles no more.”
Mr. Harold thought a moment. You were supposed to help the blind, the hot and the stupid. Besides, the old boy might need someone to pour gas in that weed-eater. He did it himself he was liable to pour it all over his shoes and later get around someone who smoked and wanted to toss a match. An accident might be in the making.
Mr. Harold switched the channel to cartoons and pointed them out to his son. The boy sat down immediately and started watching. Mr. Harold got the boy a glass of Kool-Aid and a stack of chocolate cookies. He went outside to find the blind man.
The blind man was in Mr. Harold’s yard. He had the weed-eater on and was holding it above his head whacking at the leaves on Mr. Harold’s red-bud tree; his wife’s favorite tree.
“Hey, now stop that,” Mr. Harold said. “Ain’t no call to be malicious.”
The blind man cut the weed-eater and cocked his head and listened. “That you, Mister-I-Know-There-Ain’t-No-Aliens?”
“Now come on. I want to help you. My son said you said you wasn’t gonna get into that again.”
“Come on over here,” said the blind man.
Mr. Harold went over, cautiously. When he was just outside of weed-eater range, he said, “What you want?”
“Do I look all right to you? Besides being blind?”
“Yeah. I guess so. I don’t see nothing wrong with you. You found the leaves on that tree good enough.”
“Come and look closer.”
“Naw, I ain’t gonna do it. You just want to get me in range. Hit me with that weed-eater. I’ll stay right here. You come at me, I’ll move off. You won’t be able to find me.”
“You saying I can’t find you cause I’m blind?”
“Come after me, I’ll put stuff in front of you so you trip.” The blind man leaned the weed-eater against his leg. His cane was on a loop over his other hand, and he took hold of it and tapped it against his tennis shoe.
“Yeah, well you could do that,” the blind man said, “and I bet you would too. You’re like a guy would do things to the handicapped. I’ll tell you now, sir, they take roll in heaven, you ain’t gonna be on it.”
“Listen here. You want some help over there, I’ll give it, but I ain’t gonna stand here in this heat and take insults. Midget wrestling’s on TV and it’s cool inside and I might just go back to it.”
The blind man’s posture straightened with interest. “Midget wrestling? Hell, that’s right. It’s Saturday. Was it Little Bronco Bill and Low Dozer McGuirk?”
“I think it was. They look alike to me. I don’t know one midget from another, though one was a little fatter and had a haircut like he’d got out of the barber chair too soon.”
“That’s Dozer. He trains on beer and doughnuts. I heard him talk about it on the TV.”
“You watch TV?”
“You tryin’ to hurt my feelings?”
“No. I mean, it’s just, well, you’re blind.”
“What? I am? I’ll be damned! I didn’t know that. Glad you was here to tell me.”
“I didn’t mean no harm.”
“Look here, I got ears. I listen to them thumping on that floor and I listen to the announcer. I listen so good I can imagine, kinda, what’s goin’ on. I ’specially like them little scudders, the midgets. I think maybe on a day I’ve had enough to eat, I had on some pants weren’t too tight, I’d like to get in a ring with one of ’em.”
“You always been blind? I mean, was you born that way?”
“Naw. Got bleach in my eyes. My mama told me a nigger done it to me when I was a baby, but it was my daddy. I know that now. Mama had a bad eye herself, then the cancer g
ot her good one. She says she sees out of her bad eye way you’d see if you seen something through a Coke bottle with dirt on the bottom.”
Mr. Harold didn’t really want to hear about the blind man’s family history. He groped for a fresh conversation handle. Before he could get hold of one, the blind man said, “Let’s go to your place and watch some of that wrestlin’ and cool off, then you can come out with me and show me them places I missed.”
Mr. Harold didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. “I don’t know,” he said. “Won’t the preacher be back in a bit and want his yard cut?”
“You want to know the truth?” the blind man said, “I don’t care. You’re right. Five dollars ain’t any wages. Them little things I wanted with that five dollars I couldn’t get no how.”
Mr. Harold’s mind raced. “Yeah, but five dollars is five dollars, and you could put it toward something. You know, save it up till you got some more. They’re planning on making you a permanent groundskeeper, aren’t they? A little time, a raise could be in order.”
“This here’s kinda a trial run.They can always get the crippled nigger back.”
Mr. Harold checked his watch. There probably wasn’t more than twenty minutes left of the wrestling program, so he took a flyer. “Well, all right. We’ll finish up the wrestling show, then come back and do the work. You ain’t gonna hit me with that weed-eater if I try to guide you into the house, are you?”
“Naw, I ain’t mad no more. I get like that sometimes. It’s just my way.”
Mr. Harold led him into the house and onto the couch and talked the boy out of the cartoons, which wasn’t hard; it was some kind of stuff the boy hated. The blind man had him crank the audio on the TV up a notch and sat sideways on the couch with his weed-eater and cane, taking up all the room and leaving Mr. Harold nowhere to sit. Dirt and chopped grass dripped off of the blind man’s shoes and onto the couch.
Mr. Harold finally sat on the floor beside his boy and tried to get the boy to give him a cookie, but his son didn’t play that way. Mr. Harold had to get his own Kool-Aid and cookies, and he got the blind man some too.
The blind man took the Kool-Aid and cookies and didn’t say thanks or kiss my ass. Just stretched out there on the couch listening, shaking from side to side, cheering the wrestlers on. He was obviously on Low Dozer McGuirk’s side, and Mr. Harold figured it was primarily because he’d heard Dozer trained on beer and doughnuts. That struck Mr. Harold as a thing the blind man would latch onto and love. That and crop circles and flying saucers.
When the blind man finished up his cookies and Kool-Aid, he put Mr. Harold to work getting more, and when Mr. Harold came back with them, his son and the blind man were chatting about the wrestling match. The blind man was giving the boy some insights into the wrestling game and was trying to get the boy to try a hold on him so he could show how easily he could work out of it.
Mr. Harold nixed that plan, and the blind man ate his next plate of cookies and Kool-Aid, and somehow the wrestling show moved into an after show talk session on wrestling. When Mr. Harold looked at his watch nearly an hour had passed.
“We ought to get back over there and finish up,” Mr. Harold said.
“Naw,” said the blind man, “not just yet. This talk show stuff is good. This is where I get most of my tips.”
“Well, all right, but when this is over, we’re out of here.”
But they weren’t. The talk show wrapped up, the Beverly Hillbillies came on, then Green Acres, then Gilligan’s Island. The blind man and Mr. Harold’s son laughed their way through the first two, and damn near killed themselves with humor when Gilligan’s was on.
Mr. Harold learned the Professor and Ginger were the blind man’s favorites on Gilligan’s, and he liked the pig, Arnold, on Green Acres. No one was a particular favorite on the Beverly Hillbillies, however.
“Ain’t this stuff good?” the blind man said. “They don’t make ’em like this anymore.”
“I prefer educational programming myself,” Mr. Harold said, though the last educational program he’d watched was a PBS special on lobsters. He’d watched it because he was sick as a dog and lying on the couch and his wife had put the remote across the room and he didn’t feel good enough to get up and get hold of it.
In his feverish delirium he remembered the lobster special as pretty good cause it had come across a little like a science fiction movie. But that lobster special, as viewed through feverish eyes, had been the closest Mr. Harold had ever gotten to educational TV.
The sickness, the remote lying across the room, had caused him to miss what he’d really wanted to see that day, and even now, on occasion, he thought of what he had missed with a certain pang of regret: a special on how young women were chosen to wear swim suits in special issues of sports magazines. He kept hoping it was a show that would play in rerun.
“My back’s hurtin’ from sitting on the floor,” Mr. Harold said, but the blind man didn’t move his feet so Mr. Harold could have a place on the couch. He offered a pointer, though.
“Sit on the floor, you got to hold your back straight, just like you was in a wooden chair, otherwise you’ll really tighten them muscles up close to your butt.”
When Gilligan’s was wrapped up, Mr. Harold impulsively cut the television and got hold of the blind man and started pulling him up. “We got to go to work now. I’m gonna help you, it has to be now. I got plans for the rest of the day.”
“Ah, Daddy, he was gonna show me a couple wrestling holds,” the boy said.
“Not today,” Mr. Harold said, tugging on the blind man, and suddenly the blind man moved and was behind him and had him wrestled to the floor. Mr. Harold tried to move, but couldn’t. His arm was twisted behind his back and he was lying face down and the blind man was on top of him pressing a knee into his spine.
“Wow!” said the boy. “Neat!”
“Not bad for a blind fella,” said the blind man. “I told you I get my tips from that show.”
“All right, all right, let me go,” said Mr. Harold.
“Squeal like a pig for me,” said the blind man.
“Now wait just a goddamned minute,” Mr. Harold said.
The blind man pressed his knee harder into Mr. Harold’s spine. “Squeal like a pig for me. Come on.”
Mr. Harold made a squeaking noise.
“That ain’t no squeal,” said the blind man. “Squeal!”
The boy got down by Mr. Harold’s face. “Come on, Dad,” he said. “Squeal.”
“Big pig squeal,” said the blind man. “Big pig! Big pig! Big pig!”
Mr. Harold squealed. The blind man didn’t let go. “Say calf rope,” said the blind man.
“All right, all right. Calf rope! Calf rope! Now let me up.” The blind man eased his knee off Mr. Harold’s spine and let go of the arm lock. He stood up and said to the boy, “It’s mostly in the hips.”
“Wow!” said the boy, “You made Dad squeal like a pig.”
Mr. Harold, red faced, got up. He said, “Come on, right now.”
“I need my weed-eater,” said the blind man.
The boy got both the weed-eater and the cane for the blind man. The blind man said to the boy as they went outside, “Remember, it’s in the hips.”
Mr. Harold and the blind man went over to the church property and started in on some spots with the weed-eater. In spite of the fact Mr. Harold found himself doing most of the weed-eating, the blind man just clinging to this elbow and being pulled around like he was a side car, it wasn’t five minutes before the blind man wanted some shade and a drink of water.
Mr. Harold was trying to talk him out of it when Sonny Guy and his family drove up in a club cab Dodge pickup.
The pickup was black and shiny and looked as if it had just come off the showroom floor. Mr. Harold knew Sonny Guy’s money for such things had come from Mrs. Guy’s insurance before she was Mrs. Guy. Her first husband had gotten kicked to death by a maniac escaped from the nut-house; kicked u
ntil they couldn’t tell if he was a man or a jelly doughnut that had gotten run over by a truck.
When that insurance money came due, Sonny Guy, a man who had antennas for such things, showed up and began to woo her. They were married pretty quick, and the money from the insurance settlement had bought the house, the aircraft hanger church, the Day-Glo guitar signs, and the pickup. Mr. Harold wondered if there was any money left. He figured they might be pretty well run through it by now.
“Is that the Guys?” the blind man asked as the pickup engine was cut.
“Yeah,” said Mr. Harold.
“Maybe we ought to look busy.”
“I don’t reckon it matters now.”
Sonny got out of the pickup and waddled over to the edge of the property and looked at the mauled grass and weeds. He walked over to the aircraft hanger church and look it all in from that angle with his hands on his ample hips. He stuck his fingers under his overall straps and walked alongside the fence with the big black dog running behind it, barking, grabbing at the chicken wire with his teeth.
The minister’s wife stood by the pickup. She had a bun of colorless hair stacked on her head. The stack had the general shape of some kind of tropical ant-hill that might house millions of angry ants. Way she was built, that hair and all, it looked as if the hill had been precariously built on top of a small round rock supported by an irregular-shaped one, the bottom rock wearing a print dress and a pair of black rat-heeled shoes.
The two dumpling kids, one boy, and one girl, leaned against the truck’s bumper as if they had just felt the effect of some relaxing drug. They both wore jeans, tennis shoes and Disney T-shirts with the Magic Kingdom in the background. Mr. Harold couldn’t help but note the whole family had upturned noses, like pigs. It wasn’t something that could be ignored.
Sonny Guy shook his head and walked across the lot and over to the blind man. “You sure messed this up. It’s gonna cost me more’n I’d have paid you to get it fixed. That crippled nigger never done nothing like this. He run over a sprinkler head once, but that was it. And he paid for it.” Sonny turned his attention to Mr. Harold. “You have anything to do with this?”
High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale Page 16
