I went over to the boy who was now lying on his belly with his head down, ashes and cigarette butts scattered all around. The paper he’d been writing on was dirty with cigarette ashes. Across the top it said, Room 5A. Dearborn Elementary. Mrs. Reed. On the line underneath was the little boy’s name. Victor Denalsky.
Moses’ accordion voice wheezed from above. “LOOK at the KNIFE!” it said. The kitchen and the little boy quickly vanished. In their place was the pool again with Granny’s big butcher knife at the bottom. It lay down there on the pebbles, a blue flame. I reached in and pulled it out of the water; held it, glowing, in front of me. If you take this up son, you’ll have to live with it. I had no idea what to do with the knife or why I was holding it — why it was supposed to be held. Seeing Victor’s name on the little boy’s paper had confused me, had turned everything I thought to be mine inside out and into somebody else’s. I liked the little boy; I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel the same for Victor. Victor, I hated. Wasn’t I supposed to hate him? Didn’t he kill Daddy? Isn’t that what the dream said? My arm began to tremble with the knife, with my shoulder, the whole front part of my body.
“Good! Good!” Moses said. The light from the knife blade shined in his eyes. He nodded and opened his mouth at me, a black jack-o-lantern head, the mouth cut in a way you couldn’t tell if it was smiling at you friendly or laughing at you mean.
Some son of a bitch, a Negro, poured hot steel on Jessie. That’s what happened. Burned him up alive!
“Good, good,” Moses whispered.
“What you whispering for, Moses?” I said, but it was like the words belonged to somebody else.
I could see the green flicker of the water, the pebbles on the bottom. Then a picture came to me of Moses, hanging upside down in a tree, naked, his hair so long it almost touched the ground. Blood curled around his wrists, dripped off the ends of his fingers.
“What you mean, Moses? What’s good?”
Before I could get the answer, my head hit the water.
———————
I woke up dazed and sitting with my back against a rock wall. I was at the high end of a long ridge that looked like an empty swimming pool with the floor tilting up from the deep end. A forested hill rose up in front of me, taller than the ridge. Wind howled, but the sky was clear, and the sun was still high. Granny’s knife was tucked in my belt, wrapped in its sock like before. I got up and leaned against the wall, waiting for my head to clear. Under my bare feet stretched a smooth rock floor. I pulled a hard bulge of something out of my pocket — a bone white skull with eye sockets and fangs — the skull Moses used on Granpaw. Something inside made a swishing sound like sand or maybe seeds. I pushed it back inside my pocket and looked out over the ridge. I saw then that I was on top of the hump, atop the dragon’s back. In one direction it tapered and curled down into the woods. In the other it also tapered but to a place above the trees, a place thick with gooseberry bushes. Two black pine trees bent toward one another there — the dragon horns I’d seen from below.
My shirt was still damp from the rain, but the day now was bone dry and hot. No puddles. No sign of rain anywhere. Wind howled over the hump. Half a white dandelion-puffball twirled in front of me and twirled away. I looked out along the neck of the Dragon. Beyond the head, waving in the light, I could see the shiny tops of a few poplar trees. I started along the spine of the neck, picking my way toward the head where the two dead trees bowed, waded through gooseberry bushes out to where the dragon’s head ended — out to the very end of its nose — and looked down. There I saw the grassy roadbed and the railroad tracks. I saw Willis and Chester, waiting under the poplars. I was on top of the fist of rock I’d seen when we’d first rode up. Vines and little bushes grew all down the front.
“Ah Willis!” I shouted.
Willis looked up to where I was and smiled. “Ca-Come down, boy! Dey a path!” He pointed to a place above where the vines started. A narrow ledge went down from there, down the face of the rock and disappeared behind the vines.
“Ain’t wide enough!” I yelled.
“Ya’ll gots a hold on dem grape vine!” Willis shouted. “Come down dat way! It easy!”
“It don’t look easy!” I shouted. “Shit Willis!”
Willis picked up a rock and threw it halfway up. “Right in dare! It get wide!”
“I don’t know Willis,” I said, but I started down the ledge anyway, my back to the rock. I tried not to look down. I grabbed for the vines, knocked off a bunch of grapes and heard them smack against the rocks down below. I grabbed out again, got a hold of the vines and started down. The ledge was broken and not much wider than a six-inch plank but the vines, they steadied me. I held on, working my way down until the ledge finally widened and the going got easier. When I got all the way down, I ran over to Willis. I had a bunch of grapes in my hand.
“Dem grape mmmake you sick,” Willis said.
“I don’t care.” I put one in my mouth but it was so bad sour I had to spit it out.
Willis laughed. “You a sight! Pine needle all ova you!”
I looked back at the fist of rock. From this side you couldn’t tell it was the front part of a dragon. You couldn’t even see the horns.
“There’s a cave Willis.”
“Cave?”
“Uh huh. In that ridge. There’s a cave-room down in there.”
I looked at Willis. “I was gone a long time.”
Willis shook his head. “Fifteen minute. Maybe twenty.”
“Liar,” I said. “Didn’t you get wet?”
“Na-uh.”
“The rain! Didn’t you see the rain?”
“It didn’t rain,” Willis said.
“It did! Look at my shirt!” I pulled my tee shirt away from my body so Willis could feel of it, but it was already dry.
21
The Rain Skull
They brought Granpaw back from the hospital on a Friday, the second day of August. His right eye stared straight ahead. The left stared off to the side. He sat in his wheelchair all day — day after day — out on the front porch or in the front room. Sometimes he hollered out words. “Tribulations!” he would yell, or “Goddamn!” Sometimes he called Momma, ‘Mattie’ and Granny, ‘Ruby’.
He called me ‘Jessie’ once. I was trying to tell him about Moses and the cave. I even showed him the rattlesnake skull. “You see it, don’t you, Granpaw?”
“Jessie,” he said. “What you doing with that gun?”
———————
I was holding up the pan of water. Granny scraped the beard off Granpaw’s neck with a straight razor she held up like a wing. Every now and then she’d splash the pan-water with the blade. Silvery soapy water now, water mixed with old beard.
All of a sudden, Granpaw got up out of the wheelchair and started grumbling about his hat. No drooling. No retard sounds. Just crabby old Granpaw-words, like before.
I was glad.
“You’ll fall, Strode,” Granny said.
“I had it on just this morning!” Granpaw said.
“You ain’t had nothin’ on that head except what little hairs you got. Hat’s where it usually is, on that nail by the door.”
Granpaw put his hawk eye on me. He put it on my chickens, Elvis and Johnny, both half asleep on the front porch steps. He put it on Willis, who sat with his back against a post drawing on a pad. Granny had tied a towel around his neck. Foamy white shaving cream hung off the end of his chin. It was spread like cake icing up one side of his jaw.
Granny gave him a hard look. “Strode? You back?”
“I’m tired of sitting around here.” Granpaw ditch-walked over to Willis and put his hand out. “What you doing there, boy? Let me see.”
“Praise God, he is back,” Granny said.
Willis smiled and handed his paper up to Granpaw.
Granpaw wiped off his chin with the towel and looked at the paper. “Sumbitch.”
“Don’t be saying that,”
Granny said.
“This here’s good as one a them camry pictures, Mattie! Just you look!” Granpaw turned with the picture and showed it to Granny and me. It was a picture of Granny shaving Granpaw — of me standing next to her with the pan of water. Granpaw had a dumb look on his face, mouth half open.
“We always knowed Willis could draw,” Granny said. “You best sit down now.”
“Time I was gettin’ back to the fields,” Granpaw said.
“Not while I’m alive,” Granny said.
Granpaw put his hand up to the back of his neck. “I feel like I been asleep a long time. I had a bad dream Mattie. I dreamed we was about to lose our place and they wasn’t nothing I could do about it. Have I been?”
“Have you been what?”
“Sleepin’, by grabs!”
“You can see where you’ve been. Look at that picture Willis made.”
Granpaw looked again at the picture then let it go down by his side. “I remember Ruby. I remember her face. It was all beat up.”
“You had a stroke,” Granny said.
“A stroke? Hell!”
“Don’t be saying that. You was up Glascow the better part of a week.” Granny took the water pan from me and dumped it in the yard. She wiped the razor on her dress. “That Glasgow Doctor said you’d never talk normal again.”
“Get me my hat, Orbie,” Granpaw said. “I got to go see about my crops.”
“No now,” Granny said. “If you was to have another stroke, that’d be it. ‘Sides, the farm’s took care of, for now anyway.”
“Hell it is,” Granpaw said.
———————
Granny put her foot down when it came to working in the tobacco. You couldn’t keep Granpaw in his wheelchair though. He always had to be off doing something. Always somebody had to watch him too. Momma, Granny, Miss Alma. Sometimes Willis and me. Sometimes just me by myself. Granpaw didn’t seem to mind or even to notice very much — just went along being his crabby old self, doing small things here and there around the house.
Sometimes he’d get started on something, forget what he was doing, then remember again. Sometimes he’d go like before, all zombie-eyed and still. The day after he got up from his wheelchair, I saw him in the middle of the pigs with a slop bucket; just standing there, looking off at the hills back of the barn. The pigs were humping and shoving themselves around the bucket, waiting to be fed. I yelled from the yard, “Granpaw! What you doin’?” He just stood there, frozen. Granny and Miss Alma had to go bring him in.
While they were walking him back to his wheelchair, he came back to himself. “What you two hussies doing with an old man like me?”
“Lawd, Lawd, Brotha Wood!” Miss Alma laughed. “You the devil, sho ‘nuff!”
“I’m serious,” Granpaw said. “Ya’ll was takin’ advantage of me, wasn’t you? Helpless as I am.”
“You the sorriest excuse for a preacher I ever seen,” Granny said. Her and Miss Alma helped him to sit down in the wheelchair.
Granpaw looked up at Granny. “If you all wanted to be loved on, you could have asked.”
“Hush that sorry talk,” Granny said.
Granpaw got loud. “Well, you could have! I would have give you some!” His eyes went over to Miss Alma. “Would have give you some too, girl! White sugar on brown!”
Miss Alma laughed so hard her titties shook.
Granny looked disgusted. “And you call yourself a man of God.”
“I never said no sich a thing,” Granpaw said.
———————
Granpaw sat on a stool beside the cow. He got hold of one of its teats. “Come here boy. Feel this. Grab ‘at other stool there.”
I pulled the other stool over and sat down.
“Take a hold of her, right there,” Granpaw said.
I reached under where Granpaw’s hand was and got a hold on the teat. I was surprised how warm it was — warm and squishy like a sponge.
“Now squeeze her,” Granpaw said.
I squeezed but no milk came out.
“Let me show you.” Granpaw got a hold of the teat and squeezed in a way to make the milk whistle in the bucket.
“See? Squeeze and pull. Pretend that little hand of yours is a calf’s mouth. Suck it right out of there.”
I tried again, got a little bit to come, then nothing.
“It’s a wonder any milk comes at all, it’s been so dry,” Granpaw said. “Ain’t had a drop of rain in weeks.”
Granpaw was right. All we had were thunderheads in the afternoons that would flash and boom a while — then blow away. We hadn’t had a real rain since I chased after Moses in the woods. That was almost two weeks ago.
“Can it rain on one side of a hill and not on the other?” I asked.
“I reckon it could,” Granpaw said. “Don’t rain everywhere all at once. It ain’t likely though.”
“It did when I was following Moses,” I said. “It rained. It rained hard. But when I got back on the other side of the dragon, it was dry.”
“Dragon?”
“A hill Granpaw. It looked like a dragon on one side. I was inside its belly. Inside a pool of water. Green water that went all silvery like a mirror.”
Granpaw looked at me flat on. “You was with Moses then?”
“Willis took me,” I said before I could catch myself.
“Willis did?”
“Yeah Granpaw,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, but he did. Don’t tell Granny.”
Granpaw shook his head.
“I was scared, Granpaw. I thought Moses might could help me. I dreamed Victor poured fire on Daddy. Remember I told you?”
Granpaw shook his head. “A dream’s one thing. What’s real is another.” He got up from the stool with the milk bucket. I got up too. He set the bucket on a shelf, and then undid the rope holding the cow. The cow walked out to the middle of the open barn door and stood.
“Get out now!” Granpaw yelled. But the cow lifted its tail and pooped a big pile of soupy green poop right there on the barn’s dirt floor. Granpaw got mad and bounced a corncob off the cow’s rear end. The cow knocked against a milk can and leaped out the door.
“Razor-backed bitch!” Granpaw shouted. He ditch-walked himself back to his stool, sat down and motioned me to sit down on mine. He gave me that flat-on look. “Now. Tell Granpaw. What all happened out there with Moses?”
I sat down and told him everything I could remember. How the beams appeared and disappeared. How the little boy who was Victor tried to get his Momma to stop what she was doing. How the men around the table laughed. About the sight I had of Moses, hanging upside down in a tree. How the blood dripped from his fingers. I reached in my pocket and pulled out the rattlesnake skull. “He gave me this, Granpaw.”
Granpaw took it between his first finger and thumb, raised it up to the level of his eyes.
“He used it on you, Granpaw. He made you better with it.”
Granpaw turned the little skull around, looking at it every which way. “Moses wouldn’t give this away unless they was good reason to. This is his Rain Skull. You know what a Rain Skull is?”
“No Granpaw.”
Granpaw shook the skull, making that swishy hissing sound. “Them’s herbs and things Moses put in there. Walked all over these hills gathering them. I know. I helped him do it. A Rain Skull is power, son. Contrary power. You’ll think it’s going one way but then it’ll end up going another. Then it’s too late.”
“Too late for what, Granpaw?”
He gave me another flat-on look. “To save what you was wanting to destroy, by grabs.”
I thought about that a minute. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“No,” Granpaw said. “And I don’t reckon it ever will. That’s how it works though.”
“Like magic,” I said.
“Not magic. Contrary power. Moses is a medicine man, son. Takes a good long while to get what a medicine man is saying. It’ll seem unnatural.”
Granpaw nodded his head at me real slow like. “You’ll see though. In time.”
I was glad I would see. Still I wanted to know about the little boy, about Victor. I wanted to know what he was doing there with his momma in that kitchen with all those men.
“Victor’s the enemy, that’s what you think,” Granpaw said. “To feel sorry for the enemy runs agin the blood. An eye for an eye is what the blood says. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.”
“But what if the enemy was going to kill your family, Granpaw?” I said. “Like in a war. Like, if somebody was going to drop a bomb on your house. What would you do then?”
Granpaw laughed. “Well, I reckon I’d have to kill the sumbitch!” He reached up around his neck, took hold of the leather draw-string his tobacco pouch was tied on and pulled it over his head. “You got to keep that in a good place. You got to keep it protected.” Granpaw emptied the pouch of chewing tobacco and pushed the rattlesnake skull inside. “I can’t chew no more no how. Here. Put this around your neck.”
I’ll skin it back for you, if you want me to. You can put its skull on a string for a necklace.
“How’s that feel?” Granpaw said.
“All right I guess.” I ran my finger along the draw-string. “Granpaw? If you wanted to destroy something, why would you want to save it too?” I looked up for the answer, but Granpaw had gone all zombie-eyed again.
———————
It was the 7th of August. Granny was sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch. Granpaw was in his wheelchair, staring at something across the road. I was throwing little stones at the picture of Jesus in the Jesus Tree.
“Orbie, cut that out,” Granny said. “You’ll put a hole in Jesus.”
“Yes. Stop that,” Momma said. She was sitting on the edge of the porch with Missy in her lap. Her face had healed some, more yellow now than purple. Missy still wasn’t talking.
“Aw shit,” I said.
“I’ll wear you out boy,” Momma said.
“Them kids ought not be missing their school,” Granny said.
“I ain’t leaving Harlan’s Crossroads Mamaw. Not till you and Granpaw get more situated.”
Then Like the Blind Man: Orbie's Story Page 19
