Then Like the Blind Man: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens

  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?”

  “He’s been throwing rocks at Mr. Harlan here,” Victor said.

  “Have not! He killed my chickens Granny!”

  Granny spied Elvis and Johnny hanging from Old Man Harlan’s hands. “They Lord!”

  Old Man Harlan’s face soured over. “These is my chickens. I reckon I can do what I want with them.”

  “He twirled their heads off Granny! He killed them!” I was crying so hard now I could hardly get my breath.

  “They Lord, hon, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “For crying out loud.” Victor ducked his head back inside the trailer.

  Granny came down off the porch. “I was afraid something like this might happen. Come on hon.” She gave Old Man Harlan a look. “I reckon if you threw a rock at old Nealy he shore enough deserved it.”

  “No wonder he’s spoilt,” Old Man Harlan said.

  “He could use a little spoiling around the likes of you.”

  “Say what you want to, old girl. Your days is numbered.”

  “All our days are numbered Nealy.”

  “Humph!” Old Man Harlan stepped to one side of Granny and walked off with the dripping chickens. Dotted lines of blood followed him across the yard.

  ———————

  Everybody was eating supper except Victor, who was still passed out in the trailer. I wasn’t hungry. I got me a coffee can and went out by the chicken yard. A breeze was coming in from back of Granpaw’s tobacco patch, blowing up bits of straw and making the tin roof on the chicken house tick. Granny’s knife was still where I left it by the fence. I stuck it in my belt and went looking for Elvis and Johnny’s heads. I found them in one of the tracks of the wagon road covered with flies. Elvis’s floppy comb had shrunk to about a third of its size. Johnny’s beak was frozen in mid squawk. I picked them each up by their bloody neck feathers and put them in the can, crying so hard now I could barely see.

  I slipped past the house with the can and out across the road to the cemetery. I’d never been out there by myself, and never so late. The ‘Harlan’s Crossroads Cemetery’ sign faced outward from its curve over the gate. The cottonwood limbs were rocking in the breeze. I pushed open the gate and crossed the weedy, picker-filled graveyard to the busted out place. The sun was going down and the umbrella of the weeping willow tree stood black in the haze.

  I came across Granny and Granpaw Ray’s graves, crumbling white slabs, darkened now, though I could still make out the worn letters of their names. And there was Daddy’s grave too — the shiny gray stone — the words ‘Loved By All’ cut across the front.

  I dumped Elvis and Johnny’s heads out of the can and onto the grass. Taking up the butcher knife, I made a hole at the foot of Daddy’s grave. I put the heads in there and covered them with the dirt. I sat listening to the breeze. It was true, what the words on Daddy’s grave said. Loved By All. Everybody loved Daddy. Missy and me loved him. Momma loved him. Granny and Granpaw did. The church people did. People he worked with too. Why would anybody want to kill Daddy? Why would Victor?

  A voice cracked behind me. “What you burying chicken heads in my graveyard for?” I whirled around with the knife. Hunched over like a gray bug, standing just inside the busted out place, was Bird Pruitt. “Chickens ain’t peoples.” She had that same purple dress she always had on, the purple hat with the purple net. “Answer me, Ruby’s boy! I said what you burying chicken heads in my graveyard for?”

  I couldn’t believe it — first Victor, then Old Man Harlan, now this. I scrambled to my feet. “This graveyard doesn’t belong to you Bird!”

  Bird ran a tongue over her lips, grinning. “You just like your Momma was. Course now her spirit’s robbed away. Ain’t it? In ‘at box! And here you are all by your lonesome agin that man. Eee! Eee! Eee! Poor thang.” Half her teeth were gone, her face watery with watery gray eyes and a mouth like a brown hole of black gumline and yellowed bits of bone. The perfect cousin for Old Man Harlan, I thought. She shuffled up under her hump and started toward the weeping willow.

  “What box?” I said.

  I could see just one side of her face as she paused, one watery eye looking up in the sky. “You know they’s a storm coming don’t you? A big un too. Look up there.” She pointed to the sky. The sun had gone down but it was still light out. Up where Bird pointed was a round moon, floating in the dark sky, around it a hazy white ring, one diamond star inside. “Storms a coming, shore ‘nuff.” Bird wagged her head and shambled off into the black shape of the weeping willow tree.

  “What storm?” I called.

  28

  Body Snatchers

  Friday morning Granpaw woke up from his spell. Granny told him what all Reverend Pennycall had said and about Victor too. “I got to go talk to that judge.”

  “Judge Beechum?” Granpaw said.

  “Yeah, Judge Beechum! I got to go talk to him.”

  “You mean we, don’t you?” Granpaw said. “I’ll tell you what’s the truth; Nealy and the Reverend can both kiss my ass! Victor too. Ought to’ve run him off long ago.”

  “You don’t have to get all worked up about it,” Granny said.

  “I ain’t worked up!” Granpaw growled. “I’m mad!” He waited for that to sink in; then said, “Reckon what Reverend Pennycall said is true? Reckon they hung ole Moses?”

  “I don’t know,” Granny said. “I didn’t believe it at first, but now they all talking about it.”

  “I’d trust the Devil for I would the Reverend.”

  “Strode,” Granny said.

  “Well I would, by grabs.”

  After breakfast they both got in the station wagon and drove off.

  ———————

  All the rest of the morning and on into the afternoon it was so sweaty hot outside you could hardly get your breath. Victor wouldn’t eat breakfast. He wouldn’t eat lunch. Both times Momma took food out to the trailer, and both times she had to bring it back.

  I went around the side of the house and looked out across Nub Road. A huge cloud was swelling up over Granpaw’s tobacco patch; the top so bright it was hard to loo
k at, the underside all charcoal gray and bulging with dark green bubble shapes.

  Willis sat Chester in the middle of the road — the first I’d seen of him since Reverend Pennycall’s visit. “What ya’ll doing?” he said.

  “Watching that cloud. What you?”

  “Nothing. Too hot.” Willis slid off Chester. He looked at the cloud. “Rain ca-comin’.”

  I remembered what Bird said. I remembered the circle around the moon and the diamond star. “It’ll blow over.”

  “Might,” Willis said.

  “Where you been?”

  He didn’t answer, but I could see he had been crying.

  “He ain’t dead,” I said. “Can’t be.”

  “Can be too.”

  “Granny don’t think so.”

  “Miss Alma do.”

  We watched the cloud a while, and then we went around to the front porch. I had my comic books and drawing papers and all my colors out there. Momma was sitting at the end of the porch in the rocking chair with Missy. Willis drew a picture of them. Then he started coloring it in. The colors looked good. Momma with black slacks and a blue blouse, little white flowers stitched across the front. Missy in a pair of black pedal pushers and a pink tee shirt. I sat back against the wall and read about body snatchers, about this man who was trying to warn people about the invasion of the body snatchers but nobody would listen.

  Momma took up a little brown make-up case and looked at herself in the mirror. She took out the powder-puff and rubbed powder around the bruises on her neck. Willis worked on his picture. A blue dragonfly zoomed down next to his arm, flickered in the sunlight and zoomed away. Momma put the powder-puff back in the case. She dropped the case in a makeup bag by her chair. She took up a fan with a picture of Jesus on the back and began fanning herself and Missy.

  I put away the Body Snatcher book and looked up in the sky. The cloud had moved up closer to the house and had mushroomed big as an A-bomb, twice the size it was before. The sky underneath was almost green with black-green curlycues and cave holes going through it. I had on my red shorts and Davy Crockett tee shirt. Flies kept tickling me, landing in places I couldn’t reach. I was smothering in the heat.

  Something, a suitcase, Victor’s tan colored suitcase, kathumped down on the end of the porch right next to Momma, causing her suddenly to sit straight as a board. Victor kathumped his green file box on the porch too. He stood there a minute, looking around at the yard, all fidgety-like and nervous. “Momma,” he said. “I’ve decided. I’ve got to get out of here honey, and I want you and the kids to go with me.”

  He broke down then and started to cry. Tears streamed down around his nose. He was wearing his silvery gray pants and that pink shirt with the cuffs rolled back to his elbows. Two pens and the end of a fat cigar stuck out the breast pocket. “I want you to come right now Momma. I’ve worked everything out. You don’t even have to think about it. We’ll just get in the car right now.” He took out a hankie from his back pocket and wiped his eyes. “Get the hell away from here.”

  Momma sat up even straighter. “I can’t do that hon, what with Granpaw in the shape he’s in — and all this other business going on.” Missy began to whimper.

  Willis looked up from his picture. He looked at me. He looked at Victor.

  “I know,” Victor said. “But your mother and father, they’re going to be all right. I mean, listen. They could move to town. People will help them.” The color was gone from his face. “I’ve got it all figured out, Momma. Forget Florida. Forget the house, for now anyway. We can go anywhere we want. I’ve heard Texas is a good place. We could go to Dallas or Houston. Or how about Arizona?” When he said Arizona his eyes went wide. “Tucson? Yes! It’s hot there, but the winters are mild. We can go there! Sell the house later. I’ve got money. A little. And you’ll have Jessie’s insurance. I love you Momma! I don’t know what I would do without you and the kids!”

  You could tell he’d been drinking. His forehead gleamed whitely in the sunlight. I could see the worms in his eyes — even from where I was sitting — cutting themselves on the glass behind his tears. Thunder rumbled across the sky. “Say you’ll come with me Momma. We don’t have much time.”

  No Momma! Don’t believe him! Don’t say you’ll go Momma!

  “Time?” Momma said, “Victor honey, what do you mean?”

  Victor frowned. “I mean if we don’t hurry, your parents will be back. And then we’ll have to explain everything. You know how stubborn they can be. Your mother will start asking a lot of questions. Confuse things. I can’t have any confusion right now Momma. You can understand that, can’t you? Sure you can.”

  Momma hugged Missy tighter, her voice weak and trembling. “Oh hon, now. Try to calm yourself. Mamaw. She just wants what’s best for the kids and me. She don’t mean any harm.”

  Victor blew his nose in the hankie. “Uh huh. Then, what about me?” His voice had turned suddenly unpleasant. “What is it she wants for me I would like to know?”

  “Well. She wants the best for you too. I think she does anyway. I don’t know. I don’t think she understands you good Victor. Sometimes. Sometimes I don’t know if I do.” She leaned a little away from Victor. “I mean like now. You wanting me to leave without even saying goodbye.”

  Victor’s face went like a rock. “Write her a note.”

  “I can’t do that hon.”

  “I can’t do that hon,” Victor said, his voice mocking and hateful.

  I got to my feet.

  “It wouldn’t be right,” Momma said. “Please hon; don’t do this a way!”

  Victor made his face go like Momma’s. “Please hon; don’t do this a way!”

  I looked around for something to use against him. I remembered the knife but it was in the box with the Rain Skull under the house. Granpaw’s wheelchair sat empty. Maybe I could turn it around somehow and push it at Victor. There was an old iron Granny used as a doorstop; it was sitting upright on the floor behind the wheelchair. I reached down and grabbed it up by the handle.

  Momma said, “It would break Mamaw’s heart I was to leave without telling her goodbye.”

  Victor grabbed Momma by the wrist, jerking her toward him. “Break it then!”

  Missy started to cry.

  “Victor, your hurting me!”

  “Victor, your hurting me!” Victor answered. “Better think of your kids Momma. You want what’s best for them don’t you? You want them to be safe?”

  “Course I do!” Momma said.

  “Course I do! Course I do!”

  Take care of your Momma son. She don’t see things all the way through.

  I tried to lift the iron over my head, but it was too heavy. I thought maybe, if I ran at Victor with it and let it go, it would hit him in the ribs, maybe knock the breath out of him. To do it though, I would have to run in front of Granpaw’s wheelchair, past Momma to the edge of the porch.

  Willis grabbed me by the ankle. “What you gone do boy?”

  “Let go of me Willis!”

  “Well, well, what have we here?” Victor was looking right at me now. He still had a hold of Momma’s wrist.

  “We ain’t going with you!” I said, trying to hold up the iron.

  “So! Momma’s little hero,” Victor said.

  “Let him alone,” Momma said. “Orbie put that down.”

  Missy was crying full out now, screaming almost. There came the sound of a truck lumbering up the road, gears grinding hard. Missy got quiet. I thought it would pass but when it got to Granny and Granpaw’s, it turned up in the yard — Moses’ old pick-up truck — with Miss Alma behind the wheel. Vern and Fable were standing up in the truckbed, holding onto the cab.

  Victor said, “Son of a Goddamn Bitch!” He let go of Momma’s wrist, grabbed up his suitcase and stormed away. The green file box stayed on the porch. A cool breeze rushed over the yard. Bunches of clouds were moving overhead now. They made an upside down floor over the crossroads all the way almost up to the house.
Black green bubbly clouds they were, big bruised titties hanging down. A white bolt of lightning streaked to the ground followed by a roll of thunder.

  Miss Alma had climbed down out of the truck and was huffing and puffing her way up to the porch — she was huge — a gigantic huge black woman in a sweat stained housedress. Wrapped around her head was a black, green polka dotted hankie with two little rabbit ears sticking out the sides. She came up, sucking air and blowing wind, but when her eyes fell on Momma all her everything just stopped. “Lawd Ruby! What happen?”

  Momma put on a friendly face. “Why nothing, Miss Alma.”

  “You a ghost, girl.” Miss Alma said. “What happen here?”

  Momma forced a smile. “Nothing Miss Alma. I’m fine. What are you in such a hurry about?”

  Miss Alma looked at Momma still with a question in her eyes, still trying to get her breath. “Radio say dey twistas! North a Circle Stump!”

  “Oh, but this will blow over,” Momma said. “It always does.”

  “Dis house is what gone blow over, girl!” Miss Alma shouted. “Everythang gone blow! Ya’ll bes come on now, down to Moses’! Wait dis out!”

  Without warning, a wall of cold wind bent the Jesus Tree. It took Miss Alma’s dress between her legs and caused Willis to have to hold on to his papers. Thunder shook the house. Momma got up with Missy, looked around at the trailer and then at the angry clouds. “Can you take the boys? I got to shut down the stove and warn Victor.”

  Miss Alma frowned. “Ya’ll bes hurry girl!”

  “I ain’t going nowhere,” I said.

  “Leave dem windows open,” Miss Alma said. “House blow, you don’t!”

  Momma headed for the door, serious now. “Put them comic books away and go on! You and Willis. Don’t argue with me now! Go on with Miss Alma!” Momma hurried around me with Missy in her arms and went inside the house. I got my comic books and papers and Willis’s picture of Momma and piled them all in a stack with my colors on the top. I picked it all up and carried it in the house in the front room and put it on the couch. I could hear Momma, messing with the stove in the kitchen. I quick got my ball cap and went back out on the front porch. Miss Alma had already turned the truck around. Chester was tied to the back end. Willis sat up in the cab with Miss Alma. Vern and Fable stood in the truck bed, signaling me to hurry.