Then Like the Blind Man: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens

  “I don’t wanna be no damned farm hand,” I said.

  “Boy, I’ll wear you out!” Momma said. “See what I mean, Mamaw?”

  “He’ll be all right,” Granny said.

  The sun was on its way down. Far to the east of it two stars trailed after a skinny slice of moon. I could see Old Man Harlan’s Country Store across the road, closed now, but with a porch light burning by the door.

  A ruckus of voices had started up by the Ford, Granpaw and Victor trying to talk at the same time. They’d propped the Ford’s hood up with a stick and were standing out by the front.

  Victor had again taken up his place, leaning back against the front fender, crushing my ball cap. “That’s right, that’s what I said! No good at all.” He held the cigar shoulder level — lit now — waving it with his upraised arm one side to the other. “The Unions are ruining this country, Mr. Wood. Bunch of meddlesome, goddamned troublemakers. Agitators, if you know what I mean.” He took a pull on the cigar then blew the smoke over Granpaw’s head.

  Granpaw was stout looking but a whole head shorter than Victor. He stood there in his coveralls, doubled up fists hanging at the end of each arm, thick as sledgehammers — one with the open jackknife, the other with that thing he’d been working on. “Son, you got a problem?”

  “The rank and file,” Victor said. “They’re the problem! They’ll believe anything the goddamn Union tells them.”

  Granpaw leaned over and spat. “You don’t know nothin’.”

  “Anything,” Victor said.

  “What?”

  Victor took the cigar out of his mouth and smiled. “I don’t know anything is what you mean to say. It’s proper grammar.”

  “I know what I aim to say,” Granpaw said, “I don’t need no northern jackass a tellin’ me.” Granpaw’s thumb squeezed against the jackknife blade.

  Cut him Granpaw! Knock that cigar out his mouth!

  “Strode!” Granny shouted. “Come away from there!”

  Momma hurried over. “Victor, I told you.”

  “I was just sharing some of my thoughts with Mr. Wood here,” Victor said. “He took it the wrong way, that’s all. He doesn’t understand.”

  “I understand plenty, City Slicker.” Granpaw closed the knife blade against his coveralls and backed away.

  “Ain’t no need in this Strode!” Granny said. “Victor’s come all the way down here from Dee-troit. He’s company. And you a man of God!”

  “I’ll cut him a new asshole, he keeps on that a way,” Granpaw said.

  Momma was beside herself. “Apologize Victor. Apologize to Papaw for talking that way.”

  “For telling the truth?”

  “For insulting him!”

  Victor shook his head. “You apologize. You’re good at that.”

  Over where the sun had gone down the sky had turned white-blue. Fireflies winked around the roof of the well, around the branches of the Jesus Tree. Victor walked around to the front of the car and slammed the hood down harder than was necessary. “Come on Orbie! Time to get your stuff!”

  I couldn’t believe it was about to happen, even though I had been told so many times it was going to. I started to cry.

  “Get down here!” Victor yelled.

  Momma met me at the car. She took out a handkerchief and wiped at my tears. She looked good. She always looked good.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I said.

  “Oh now,” Momma said. “Let’s not make Victor any madder than he already is, okay?” She helped bring my things from the car. I carried my tank and my box of army men and crayons. Momma brought my dump truck, the toy cars, my comic books and drawing pad. We put them all on the porch where Missy sat playing with her doll. Momma hugged me one last time, got Missy up in her arms and headed to the car.

  Victor was already behind the wheel, gunning the engine. “Come on Ruby! Let’s go!”

  “You just hold on a minute!” Momma put Missy in the car and turned to hug Granny. “Bye Mamaw.”

  “Goodbye Sweetness. I hope you find what you’re looking for down there.”

  “Right now I’d settle for a little peace of mind,” Momma said; then she hugged Granpaw. “I’m real sorry about Victor Papaw.”

  Granpaw nodded. “You be careful down there in Floridy.”

  “Bye Momma! Bye Missy!” I yelled.

  Momma closed her door and Victor backed out. I hurried down to where Granny and Granpaw were standing. The Ford threw dust and gravels as it fishtailed up the road.

  Granpaw tapped me on the shoulder. “This one’s for you son,” he said and handed down the piece he’d been working on. It was a little cross of blond wood about a foot high with a burnt snake draped lengthwise over its arms. Granpaw moved his finger over the snake’s curvy body. “Scorched that in there with a hot screw driver, I did.”

  It was comical in a way, but strange too; I mean to make a snake there — right where Jesus was supposed to be. Like most everything else in my life, it made no sense at all. Momma’s Ford had disappeared over the hill. Pale road-dust moved like a ghost over the cornfields and under the half-dark sky. It drifted back toward the skull of Granpaw’s barn, back toward the yard. I stood there watching it all, listening as Momma’s Ford rumbled away.

  2

  Kentucky Light

  Granny held up the lamp to see by. She laid clean blue jeans and a long-sleeved red-checkered shirt over the back of a straw chair. I was lying in bed. “Where we going they’s pickers and thorns,” she said. “Scratch ye legs up awful, you don’t put something on.” The attic smelled like old kerosene and Granny’s Juicy Fruit gum. Big beams ran up from out the dark on both sides, little pieces of wood nailed in between.

  Granny turned with the lamp held to the side. Her skin was sunburned, worn looking as old leather. A shadow cut off half her face — an eye and part of her nose. She stood like that, with half a face; chewing gum, her teeth moving inside a mouth looked like a pouch pulled together with a string.

  The arms of the red-checkered shirt hung down from the chair, reaching toward the floor without hands. Momma and Victor had left a little over an hour ago.

  I started to cry.

  Granny raised the lamp and the shadow flew away, eyes green glowing as a cat’s. “Your Momma will be back in two weeks Orbie. That ain’t no time a-tall.” Midget flames like the one in the lamp wiggled in each of her eyes. “Blackberries child! That’s what we gonna do. You and me!”

  “I’m scared Granny.”

  “Scared? What you scared of?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like it dark. There might be something in here. Something under the bed. There might be a man.”

  “A man?”

  “A black nigger man Granny. He might kidnap me!”

  “They Lord Orbie, if that don’t sound like your Momma, every bit.” Granny loomed over me. It was like she’d opened a door to a dark room and was holding the lamp up to see. Her words came out full of spit. “I don’t hold with that word youngun! I don’t care where you heard it from neither. That’s the sorriest, hatefullest word on God’s green earth and I don’t want to hear it mentioned. Not by you ner nobody else! Not in my house.” She pointed a finger at the shadows overhead. “They’s colored folks and they’s white. But when you get down to the rock bottom truth of thangs they’s just folk folks!”

  Granny didn’t know anything about niggers. Mean niggers in Detroit with knives.

  “Ain’t many folks these parts believes the way I do,” Granny said. “Except maybe Granpaw, and folks over to Kingdom. I know your Momma don’t. Your Momma used to have more respect for coloreds. Before she went off north she did.”

  “Still there might be somebody,” I said. “I don’t like it dark Granny.”

  Granny set the kerosene lamp on the floor by the bed. “They ain’t nothin’ under there now, look.” She made a motion for me to climb down and look under. She was right. There wasn’t anything under there except my tennis shoes and the dirty
brown linoleum floor. A big wiry-legged spider crawled into the circle where the light was and stopped. “That’s just old Daddy Long Legs,” Granny said. “He won’t hurt you none.”

  I heard what she said, but I didn’t believe her. I grabbed up one of my tennis shoes and slammed it on the spider.

  “They Lord!” Granny breathed.

  I lifted the shoe away and there the spider was, a wet circle now of crushed legs. One leg had detached and was crawling sideways across the linoleum. I slammed it with the shoe. “I hate spiders Granny.”

  “That ain’t no reason to kill one! Get back in the bed!”

  I put the shoe down and climbed back in.

  “I got to kill thangs too, sometimes,” Granny said. “Pigs. Chickens. Cows. Even spiders sometimes. I don’t do it just to be doing it though.”

  That you needed a reason to kill spiders had never occurred to me. I pulled the sheet up over my chin and stared back.

  “It had been different it was poison,” Granny said. “I’d have killed it myself it was poison.”

  She knew as much about spiders as she did about niggers, which was next to nothing at all. To me spiders were creepy and mean with big fangs that could suck blood. One time at the drive-in-picture-show I saw where a spider had grown so big it ate people alive and crashed through walls. You couldn’t kill it either, not even with a tank.

  Again Granny raised the lamp. “You know, you look just like a baby raccoon I come up on wunst in the woodshed, it’s eyes all a shine. Like glass. Watching me like it thought I was crazy.” She let out a laugh. “You think I’m crazy don’t you?”

  I didn’t know what to think. I liked how she talked though, like she was having the best old time. I liked it so much I almost forgot to cry. Her face sidled in along side the lamp frame. “Sure enough. You and that rascally little raccoon look just exactly alike!” She wagged her head, laughing. I laughed too. Then her eyes went over the floor by the bed. “I don’t reckon they’s a man small enough could fit under there, do you?”

  “No Granny,” I said.

  “Me and Granpaw will be right at the foot of them steps, you get scared.”

  “Okay, Granny.”

  Granny smiled. “All right then.” She went with the lamp to the ladder hole. The shadow of her shoulder soared up to the ceiling, stretched out over the beams like a wing. She started backwards down the ladder hole, facing me but looking down, frowning, holding the lamp to one side whilst she felt for the steps. When her chin got even with the floor she looked back at me. “Go to sleep now hon. Everything’s gonna be all right.” She went on down. The shadow of the wing slid off the beams and followed after her. The light flickered in the hole and went out.

  I curled up in a ball like a rabbit, hunkering down in the featherbed, warm and listening to the crickets. I thought about Momma and Missy, about Victor, barreling down and up and over the hills of Kentucky, moving on into Tennessee and Chattanooga, going on the rest of the way, on down to Florida and that Gulf of Mexico without me. I thought about my real Daddy. I thought about the fire. My tears started again; so much so, I thought they’d never end. And that’s how I went to sleep.

  ———————

  My eyes wouldn’t open. Blades of white stabbed in through the lashes. I saw bright red and blue circles rising, silvery spider legs growing and fading — floating in a glare. There was syrupy stuff too, up in the corners, some of it dried off hard and grainy like scabs. I rubbed until the lashes sucked loose, until I could see the beams and the tin roof overhead — light shining through the little nail holes up there — Kentucky light.

  The featherbed puffed up around me like hills. Still I was able to see the top of Granny’s dresser, the big round mirror leaning over the front, looking back at the room like a big glass eye. I could see my end of the attic in there, the window behind the bed. There was a window at the other end too, full of sunshine, tall like a man with a chest full of fire.

  My dump truck, the one Daddy won bowling at Ford’s, sat on the dresser, shiny red with chrome bumpers and black rubber mud flaps. Granpaw’s cross was up there too, leaning against the mirror, blond wood with a black snake draped along its shoulders where Jesus was supposed to be.

  Momma said Jesus could have called ten thousand angels to come and save him from the cross, but God said not to, which to me didn’t make any sense. To me, Jesus should have called them angels right away instead of letting Himself be killed like he did. He could have saved people for real then. That’s what I would have done.

  “Why, Jesus had to die,” Momma said. “So people could believe on him and be saved. That’s how God planned it.”

  “Do I have to believe in Jesus?” I asked.

  “You got to come to the age of accountability first,” Momma said. “You got to get under conviction.”

  Conviction sounded bad, like a bank robber or some bad man on Dragnet, sitting behind bars in a jail. I didn’t want to be under anything like that.

  “You don’t have to worry none,” Momma said. “Jesus loves all the little children. Little children that don’t know no better’s already saved.”

  I liked it that Jesus loved the little children, but I wasn’t sure if nine-years-old was still little. It didn’t matter anyhow, not if Jesus didn’t come when you wanted him to. Preachers at church said Jesus was coming soon. To me ‘soon’ meant right away like tomorrow or next week, not years and years. If ‘soon’ took that long, maybe a person would be better off without Jesus. At least you wouldn’t all the time have to be thinking about Him, wondering around if He was going to come or not.

  Far off somewhere I heard a rooster crow. The sound zigzagged way up in the sky like a train whistle then gagged off all of a sudden like somebody had choked it. I heard things moving around downstairs. Voices. A chair being pulled across the floor.

  Bacon smells drifted over from the ladder hole, making me think of home, of cartoons on TV where long fingers of smoke would come out from pots and pans on a stovetop. Where they would drift over to a tomcat or a man that was sleeping and start to curl in and out in front of his nose. That cat or that man would float up off the ground then, and the smoky fingers would just float him along by the nose till they got to where the food was. This morning they were doing the same thing to me.

  “Orbie! Ah, Orbie!” It was Granny yelling up the ladder hole, her breath going in and out. “I got you some eggs down here! Ah, Orbie! You up yet?”

  “I am Granny!”

  “Come on then. Granpaw’s already eatin’ his.” She walked away, slipper bottoms smooching across the floor.

  I slid out of bed onto the cracked linoleum, cold and prickly with dirt. I tiptoed one foot to the other, rubbing at my eyes; still trying to get that syrupy stuff out.

  “Orbie! Ah, Orbie! Eggs is gettin’ cold!”

  “Okay Granny!” I quick put on my clothes, went over to the dresser, got my dump truck, put the cross in the back end and climbed down the ladder hole — backwards like Granny — the truck tucked under my arm. When I got to the bottom, I wrapped both arms around the truck from underneath, rounded a corner in Granny and Granpaw’s bedroom and went into the kitchen.

  ———————

  Granpaw sat at the end of a big brown table, wheezing as he sopped up his eggs with a biscuit. His head was covered with short silvery hairs. A shiny red knot went up with his ear and then down as he chewed. He slurped coffee from a thick white mug he held by the rim between his big finger and thumb.

  Under a hawk brow he spied me, standing in the doorway. His words crawled out over the table. “You ever seeed a black snake, boy?” A crooked grin fixed itself up one corner of his mouth. Then his eyes and face suddenly blew out like a bullfrog’s throat and there he was, choking on coffee. He slammed his mug down, sloshing coffee over the rim, spat something in his hand and wiped it on the leg of his coveralls. “Sit you down, boy!” he said. “Get you some of these eggs.”

  In back of him by the door hung
a one-day-at-a-time wall calendar. A black number ‘7’ took up most of the page — with the month and the year printed above, and the day, Friday, printed below. I put my truck with the cross on the floor and sat down. On my plate were two fried eggs with bacon and a biscuit broke in two, covered over with thick white gravy.

  “Go on, eat,” Granpaw said. “Put some meat on them bones.”

  I picked up my fork. I wasn’t hungry but I cut out a piece of egg white and put it in my mouth. On the other side of the room under a window with a fan was a woodstove for cooking. A quiet fire played peek-a-boo behind the air holes on the door.

  Granny came and stood in the doorway next to Granpaw. “Them eggs ain’t cold now are they?”

  “No, Granny.”

  She walked around Granpaw and stood next to the stove. She had a thick white mug like his in one hand and a spoon in the other. “Orbie hon, look up here to me. You got the dry eye, don’t ye?”

  I didn’t know if I had it or not.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes you do.” Granny dug out a spoonful of coffee and biscuit from her mug. I’d seen her do that other times I was down here. Coffee and biscuit from a mug was one of her most favorite things. She called it ‘soak’. “You know what the dry eye is?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You get the dry eye from crying and sleeping too hard,” she said. “Makes a person’s eyes swell out. Like yours is now. I bet they was stuck together when you woke up.”

  “Uh huh,” I said.

  “Well,” Granny said, “they’ll be fine after while.”

  I was glad there wasn’t nothing the matter with my eyes. I cut out another piece of egg white and put it in my mouth. I let it stay there.

  Granpaw’s words crawled out over the table. “You ever seeed a black snake, boy?”

  The piece of egg white slid over my tongue.