THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens Wegela

  “I know, but I can’t just up and leave,” Momma said. “Not till they’re better situated.”

  “The kids will have to begin school soon.”

  “I know. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Well, figure it out now!” Victor said. “I’m tired of all this nonsense! I’ve got important matters to see to.”

  “Go on to Detroit then, if that’s what you want!”

  “Leave you and the kids?”

  “We’ll come as soon as we can,” Momma said. “I told you.”

  “Jesus, you’re stubborn.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Momma answered. “Mr. Easy-To-Get-Along-With, himself!”

  Victor agreed that he would go on to Detroit by himself but he never did. Seemed like there was always something else he had to do. Another letter to write. Another letter to wait for. A talk with Old Man Harlan or Reverend Pennycall. A drive into Circle Stump to use the pay phone at Grinestaff’s. The important thing is that we stay together as a family, he kept on saying.

  Momma would pretty herself up, put a bunch of makeup over what was left of the bruises on her face and smile for Victor. She helped Granny cook and clean, took care of Granpaw, slopped hogs and fed the chickens. I showed her some of the tricks Elvis and Johnny could do, and I told her about the beauty contest coming up at the fair.

  “I’m so proud of you, Orbie. You know that don’t you?” Momma ran her hand over the top of my head, her bright blue eyes all sparkly and full of smiles. “You look so much better. I mean it. You look happy. Your Daddy would be proud.”

  I didn’t feel so happy though – not with Victor and all his business taking up Momma’s time. The Dark Thing was everywhere – in Victor’s letter writing, his Dean Martin haircut and fancy cigarettes. It was in Momma not knowing what to do, in her trying to be a married person, a mother and a daughter all at the same time.

  “You and them chickens are a regular circus act,” Momma said. “We probably won’t be around for that fair though. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said sadly. “Granny will take them.”

  “I’m so proud of you sweetheart.” Her eyes went away from me then, looking a way off toward the trailer and Victor. Sometimes they’d be in there with the door and all the windows closed – even in the middle of the day – even with it being so hot a person would sweat buckets just standing in the shade. “Real proud,” she whispered. But I could feel her slipping away.

  That’s how it went, all through the end of August and on into September. Victor and Momma shutting themselves up in the trailer every chance they got. Momma worrying over what direction to take. Granny’s eyes flashing with something she knew but wouldn’t tell. Victor, Reverend Pennycall, and Old Man Harlan talking on the porch in front of the store. Missy sucking her thumb one minute, screaming the next. Granpaw spitting cuss words all over the yard, then laughing about it, shaking his head like he just heard the best joke. Me under the house with Granny’s knife, standing my army men in a line, or else down to the swimming hole with Willis and the Kingdom Boys, the days so hot you could fry eggs on the rocks, ugly black thunderheads reaching out over the afternoon sun, sometimes pissing out a little rain, most times not.

  24

  Signs

  Granpaw opened the back of the station wagon and got out one of the signs he made, a white cross with crooked black letters wrote across the arms. ‘love tHine eneMy’, it said. With the sign in one hand and a hammer in the other, he ditch-walked up the road where there was a red clay bank and a field behind a barbed wire fence. Willis and me followed after him. The fence posts stuck out every which a way, some rotten and falling apart, tilted toward the road like frozen pieces of black fire. Some of the barbed wire made thorny loops along the ground.

  Granpaw stopped in front of one of the posts. He lifted his hat off his head and set it back down. A nail stuck out between his lips. He tilted his head the way the post was tilted; then he stepped up and nailed the cross to it. He nailed it tilted like the post, like a hitchhiker, sticking a thumb out for a ride.

  He stepped back to look at his handiwork. “That ought to grab somebody’s attention. Don’t you think?”

  “Yessah, Mista Wood,” Willis smiled. “Dat do fa-fine.”

  Granpaw smiled, then looked over where I was standing. “Go get them others I laid up next to the car there.”

  “You ain’t supposed to be out here, Granpaw,” I said. “You ain’t supposed to be driving.”

  “Who said I wasn’t?”

  “Granny. You might have a spell and run off the road.”

  “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Why didn’t you say something before?”

  “Cause of what you said. What you said about clouds.”

  “We ain’t come to that yet.” Granpaw looked up toward the station wagon and back at us. “A body can’t just give up, just because of a little sickness.”

  Willis fitted his walking stick snug under his arm. “Ya’ll ba-bad sick dough.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What if you were to go in a spell?”

  “What if a pig was to shit roses?” Granpaw said. “Who’s side you boys on?”

  “Yours,” I said. “Willis is right though.”

  Willis grinned a mouth full of teeth.

  Granpaw frowned. “Go fetch’em signs like I told you to. Won’t be no more driving after this.”

  I went and got the signs. Some of the letters were capitols, some weren’t. And most were crooked. One said, ‘in my Name shall tHey cast ouT devils’. The other said, ‘These signS shall fOller them what beLieve’. I reached them up to Granpaw. “Who’s side are you on, Granpaw?”

  “The Lord’s, if I’m able.” Granpaw took the signs, then reached in his pocket and got out more nails. He put the nails in his mouth like before and got the signs and nailed them to other fence posts. When he was done, he motioned us to come walk with him to a place out on the road.

  “Now. Look there.” He pointed toward the signs. He’d nailed them so they were far apart from each other, so when somebody passed by on the road, they could read one after the other, first ‘love tHine eneMy’, then ‘in my Name shall tHey cast ouT devils’ then ‘These signS shall fOller them what beLieve’.

  “Circa Stump folk be ma-mad!” Willis said. “Dat church land.”

  “Road don’t belong to them.”

  “Fence do,” Willis said.

  Granpaw spat. “They don’t take care of it, if it does.”

  All three signs leaned toward the road. Hitchhikers, waving down cars, each with a little message wrote across the front.

  “Love thine enemy,” I said. “What about Germans Granpaw? What about Japs?”

  “What about them?” Granpaw said.

  “You can’t love somebody wants to kill you,” I said.

  Granpaw grabbed out a hankie from his back pocket. He wiped it down the side of his face and patted his forehead.

  “They’ll kill you Granpaw. The enemy will.”

  Granpaw stuffed the hankie back in his back pocket. He looked up at the sky, at the clouds, shading his eyes with the bent part of his wrist. Then he walked back to the station wagon with Willis and me. He put the hammer away and got out a frying pan he’d brought from the house - that and something that looked like a witch’s broom without a handle. The frying pan was full of white gray coals he’d got from Granny’s wood stove in the kitchen. He gave the witch’s broom to Willis, then looked at me. “You bring that skull like I told you?”

  I pulled the pouch with the skull from my pocket and loosened the drawstring. There was the smooth bone of the rattle-snake skull, its eye sockets and fangs.

  “You seen that before, haven’t you?” Granpaw said to Willis.

  “Uh huh. Mo’s. MMMake da rain be good.”

  “That’s right.” Granpaw took a pinch of something from his shirt pocket and sprinkled it over the coals in the frying pan. Thick white smoke boiled up. He held the pan down to me. “Now,
run that in there. Through that smoke.”

  I held the skull between my thumb and first finger and put it through the smoke. “Like that?”

  “More!” Granpaw hollered. “Do it a bunch a times!”

  I did like he said.

  “Hold to it now.” Granpaw closed his eyes and began to mumble under his breath. Hocus pocus nonsense it sounded like to me. He did that a while, then made a little half turn and stepped up the bank. He stepped through a place where the barbed wire lay on the ground, stepped over it and into the field. He had either gone completely crazy or into another of his spells.

  “We better go back now!” I called. “Granny’ll be mad!”

  He kept on walking. Willis and me had to go after him. It was just an empty field; dried out mostly; with weeds and some grass growing here and there. Granpaw got to the top of a low hill and stopped. He turned around and around, looking up in the sky at the clouds. “Hot. Hot weather this is, for September.” He set the frying pan on a rock and sprinkled more stuff from his shirt pocket. Smoke boiled up. “Fan that a little,” he said to Willis.

  Willis started to wave the witch’s broom at the smoke.

  “Towards the sky there,” Granpaw said. “Fan towards the sky.” Willis made a motion with the broom like to lift the smoke toward the sky. “Keep on that a way,” Granpaw said. “Sang ‘at song. Sang Amazing Grace How Sweet The Sound!”

  Willis started to sing the song. The sound of it lifted up with the smoke to the sky. It was lonesome and strange like the time me and him snuck in Kingdom Church, Willis singing Amazing Grace in that pretty girl voice of his, me thinking I was on a hill somewhere wide open, looking off at clouds in a blue sky.

  “Now, Orbie,” Granpaw said, “I want you to pick one of them clouds out. I want you to stare at it, you know, like it was the only one up there. Hold that skull like this.” Granpaw made a fist and put it in the middle of his chest. The sky was clear except for a few little cottony-white clouds. I held the rattlesnake skull like Granpaw said, the fangs of it poking me in the chest. I chose one of the little clouds. Willis kept on with the song.

  We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise…

  “Look at it,” Granpaw said. “Like you loved it more than anything. Like it was the only thing in the world. That cloud.”

  I tried to stare at the cloud like Granpaw said. Like I loved it. I stared and stared. I stared until the cloud started to go all shifty like. Fuzzy. Different shades of gray and blue.

  “Think about all the people you love. That love you,” Granpaw said.

  I thought of Momma and Granny. I thought of Missy. The cloud jumped around and changed color. “It isn’t working Granpaw. It’s not melting.”

  “Don’t force it. Here, let me show you.” Granpaw took the rattlesnake skull, put it in the middle of his chest and looked at the cloud. I looked too.

  …ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun!…

  Right away the cloud started to break apart. It broke into smaller pieces; wisps of steam that stayed a few seconds then melted away.

  Granpaw handed the skull back to me. “These signs shall foller them what believe!”

  I picked out another cloud. It went all fuzzy like the first one, changing shape and color so fast I began to get dizzy. I felt Granpaw tap the back of my head. Suddenly I was up there in the sky, right next to the cloud – I mean I was almost touching it – and there inside the cloud was Daddy, smiling, waving his bird claw hand, dressed in steel mill clothes.

  You have to pay attention, son. Even in dreams.

  A great happiness welled up inside me then. I felt something warm and flowing, giving out as if from where the skull’s fangs touched my chest. It flooded me and gave outward toward Daddy until there we were, together, one person skyward, not separate at all. Then just as suddenly I was back on the ground. The cloud had broken into two pieces, one small and one big.

  “I never thought I’d see the like.” Granpaw looked over at Willis and laughed. “He’s a good one, ain’t he?”

  Willis nodded that I was.

  “What?” I said. “It didn’t melt.”

  “Took me most a year to do that much,” Grandpaw said.

  Granpaw drove up Bounty toward Harlan’s Crossroads. Hot air rushed in through the window over my face. It felt like spider webs.

  “You don’t have a Rain Skull?” I asked Willis.

  “Na uh.”

  “How come Moses never give you one?”

  “He don’t need one,” Granpaw said. “He’s been showed.”

  Up ahead a bunch of cows had wandered onto the road. Granpaw slowed the station wagon and blew the horn.

  I felt good. Happy and excited. “I seen Daddy, Granpaw. In that cloud. Heat came inside me from that skull. It went out to Daddy.”

  “You the smartest little boy I ever seed next to Willis here. But you wrong, if you think heat came from that skull.” Granpaw pulled at the brim of his hat. “Bone. That’s all that is.”

  “You said it was power.”

  “Power’s in you.” Granpaw blew the horn again at the cows. They made way, running off both sides of the road. Granpaw went slow. He had to yell over the sound of the engine. “By itself t’ain’t nothin’! Bone with a bunch of seeds rattling around inside!”

  We came to the little bridge that went over Kingdom Creek. On the other side there were two cars parked nose to nose along the side of the road. The car facing us I could see was Victor’s blue Cadillac. The other was smaller and red colored. I couldn’t tell what kind it was right off because it was turned the other way. Something like a towel maybe or maybe a flag hung from the antenna.

  Victor stood in front of the Cadillac, leaning against the front end. He was talking to some little man that sat cross-legged on the hood of the red car. As we came across the bridge, the little man passed a jar over to Victor. Victor set it down behind him and out of sight.

  “Well, I’ll be.” Granpaw slowed the station wagon to a crawl and stopped. He leaned over from where he sat at the steering wheel, over Willis and me, and hollered out the passenger side window. “Hot day to be sittin’ at the side of the road!”

  The branches of a dead cottonwood tree hung over the Cadillac. Victor pointed to them and grinned. “What do you mean, Mr. Wood? There’s plenty of shade!” A joke nobody thought was funny. “Should you be out here driving?”

  Granpaw didn’t answer.

  The red car was a Mercury, and the thing hanging from the antenna was a coon’s tail. The little man wore a dark gray hat and a vest over a white shirt rolled to the elbows. He was bony-looking and had a jagged pockmarked face with a broken, Dick Tracy type nose. He squinted from under his hat and grinned. I’d seen him before.

  “These gentlemen came all the way from Florida.” Victor motioned toward the man on the hood. “They’re on their way to Detroit.”

  “That right?” Granpaw said in his most deadpan voice.

  “That’s right, Mr. Wood. They’re with Armstrong.” Victor smiled. “The one who’s helping me and Ruby.”

  “I know who Armstrong is,” Granpaw said.

  Something wasn’t right. Victor sounded way too friendly for one thing. For another he was talking about more than one man.

  Granpaw saw it too, still leaning over Willis and me, he said, “Where’s the other at?”

  “Other what?” Victor said.

  “Other man or men.” Granpaw nodded toward the little man on the hood. “All I see is the one.”

  “Oh,” Victor said. “In the car there. Resting.”

  Slouched behind the wheel of the Mercury was another man, huge – it was a wonder we hadn’t seen him – his arms crossed in front of him, asleep. He wore sunglasses with white frames, and there was sweat streaming down one side of his face. I’d seen him before.

  The boney little man leaned back and with the ball of his fist, pounded against the windshield. “Zeek! Look sharp! Company!”

  Zeek jerked up and pushed the
back of his hand against his mouth. Something or somebody had caved in one side of his face. He yawned at the back of his hand.

  “This is Jimmy The Diamond,” Victor said, jerking his chin toward the man on the hood. “Jimmy, meet Mr. Wood.”

  “Strode,” Granpaw said. “Name’s Strode.”

  Jimmy The Diamond smirked. “Oh, yeah, the dirt-farmer.” He sat up on the hood of the Mercury like that’s where he belonged, like he was controlling things from there. “The man with the knife.”

  “That’s right,” Granpaw said. “The man with the knife.”

  Jimmy The Diamond grinned at Granpaw.

  Cut him, Granpaw! He can’t talk to you that way!

  Victor nodded toward Willis and me. “That’s my son, Orbie. I forget the darkie’s name.”

  Jimmy The Diamond and Zeek both laughed at the word ‘darkie’. Willis bowed his head.

  “Willis!” I yelled. “His name’s Willis! I ain’t your son neither!” I felt Granpaw’s hand on my shoulder.

  Zeek laughed even louder. He hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. Jimmy The Diamond grinned. Victor stayed quiet.

  When that settled, Jimmy put his eyes on Granpaw. “We’re discussing a little business here, Gramps. We’d like to finish and be on our way. If you don’t mind, that is.” It sounded final; like there wasn’t anything else a person could do but go away.

  “No,” Granpaw said, “I don’t mind.” He sat up straight behind the wheel and started to put the station wagon in gear. Then he got another idea and leaned once again over Willis and me. “Quicker you all are gone the better, far as it matters to me!” He straightened again, put the station wagon in gear and spun away.