THEN LIKE THE BLIND MAN: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens Wegela

  “Let dem boys be,” Miss Alma said.

  Bird poked the floor with her cane and a grin gashed her face. The front room was small, the ceiling so low the rabbit ears on Miss Alma’s hankie almost touched it. Off from the room was a kitchen. A radio was playing scratchy hillbilly music out there. Bird worked her rubbery mouth around in a circle. “Radio say a funnel cloud touched ground. Up Glasgow way. Mudlick too. Two drowned up there! Flash floods!”

  “Lawd!” Miss Alma said.

  Willis and me looked at each other.

  “I hope to God that cellar’s clean!” Bird said. “Last time it was so nasty, I couldn’t find no place to sit!” Miss Alma’s eyebrows hitched together. Bird got up and spider-walked herself toward the kitchen.

  Miss Alma looked out the window. “Sun gone now. Lawd Lawd.” Right then a white sheet of light flashed all around Miss Alma, all around the house, in through the windows in the kitchen. There was another sound of something like boulders hitting the ground. The radio went dead. Miss Alma turned away from the window. White whiskery hairs – little pieces of silvery green fire – stood out on her chin. It started to rain – a million hands, slapping against the house, against the window in the front room, against the windows in the kitchen. Miss Alma hollered over the roar.

  “Bird! It time!”

  Bird shambled back into the front room, carrying a basket now with a red-and-white-checkered dishtowel over the top.

  “Dis rain let up, we go!” Miss Alma hollered.

  “What about Momma?” I said. “What about Missy?”

  Miss Alma smiled. “We’ll keep dat cellah door open till dey come.”

  “Not if they’s a twister we won’t,” Bird said. “They’s a twister that door will be shet!” Miss Alma hitched her eyebrows together. Willis touched me on the arm.

  Bird held up the basket. A warm good smell flowed out from the dishtowel. She spider-walked herself to the front door and pulled it open. The rain had already started to let up, the air cool as the inside of a well. Bird went out, then me and Willis – then Miss Alma. Bubbly purple and green clouds circled overhead. The storm cellar was a stone’s throw away from the house, a bulge of red clay with a rusted slantwise door that was now open and lying off to one side. I could see the dark box of the cellar’s opening and Vern’s fuzzy head sticking out.

  As we walked toward the cellar, I turned and looked up Bounty, halfway expecting Momma and the black Ford to come barreling over the hill. What I saw instead was a little river of red muddy water, boiling down the side of the road. A new pond had formed at the bottom of the hill, covering the road there and spreading out over Moses’ front yard.

  “I be fit to tie!” Miss Alma said, but she was looking in the other direction, toward Circle Stump. From there came Reverend Pennycall’s white police car, rushing toward us with its red bubble light madly circling on top. It slid around into Moses’ driveway; slinging orange muddy water and spinning its wheels before coming to a stop. Old Man Harlan got out the car on the passenger side. Reverend Pennycall on the driver’s. The rain was just a sprinkle now, but cold and steady. Both hurried up to the red hill of the cellar, Old Man Harlan holding the lapels of a black coat around his chin, Reverend Pennycall with his hand pressed flat against the top of his dingy straw hat.

  Old Man Harlan’s eyes were bloodshot. Beads of rain slid off the end of his veiny nose. “Cold son?” he said to me.

  I stood next to Willis just in my shorts and tee shirt. I was cold, but I wasn’t going to talk about it with Old Man Harlan.

  “Not cold as his grandparents is going to be,” Reverend Pennycall said. Both stood in the rain, grinning and nodding their heads like the truth was a secret nobody knew but them.

  A loud cracking sound wandered across the sky – like an earthquake I heard on TV once, like the ground cracking apart. A fist of wind knocked Reverend Pennycall’s hat away. He went chasing after it, his hair thin and light brown, circling a bald spot on top his head. Old Man Harlan laughed. White popcorn shapes began hopping across the ground.

  “Hail!” Miss Alma shouted. I looked up to see a white curtain of hailstones clacking over the hill toward us.

  Reverend Pennycall trapped his hat against a fence post, got it on his head and pushed by Willis and me. “Let’s go Nealy! Hell fire!” Him and Old Man Harlan both hurried themselves down the cellar stairs. The rest of us just stood there, dumbfounded, watching the curtain advance down the hill.

  “Go on!” Miss Alma finally shouted. Willis and me ran for the cellar. Even with just one good leg Willis could go fast. He walked himself lickety-split to the cellar door and did a quick hobble down. Some of the hailstones were big as marbles. Some rock-sized. They popped off the bill of my ball cap and stung the back of my legs. I turned to look up the road one last time and almost knocked into Bird, her eyes filled with miseries and water.

  “I don’t thank she’s going to make it, do you?” she said. “I’m a feared she’s in some bad awful trouble.”

  29

  Comes a Storm

  “Twister took half a Grinestaff’s store,” said Old Man Harlan.

  Bird set the basket with the checkered dishtowel on a little bench in the middle of the cellar. “Radio said them funnel clouds was north. Not in Circle Stump!”

  “I don’t care what the radio said!” Old Man Harlan squawked. “I’m tellin’ you what I seen! What the Reverend here seen!”

  Reverend Pennycall nodded. Him and Old Man Harlan had parked themselves in the only two chairs in the cellar. Willis and me sat on a pile of grass sacks. Vern and Fable squatted against the wall. Bird eased herself down on the little bench next to the basket, facing Willis and me. The cellar door was open, and a green light lay like a ghost across the stairs.

  “What’s ‘at ole pancake nigger doing up there anyhow?” Old Man Harlan said. “Don’t she know they’s a storm on?”

  Willis stayed quiet. Vern and Fable looked at the floor. “You shouldn’t call her that, Mr. Harlan,” I said.

  “Who says I shouldn’t?”

  “Miss Alma is Vern and Fable’s momma. She’s waiting up there for my Momma. My sister too. She’s keeping a watch out for them.”

  “Well, why ain’t they showed up yet?”

  “Momma had to get the house ready. Cause of the storm. She had to warn Victor. She said they’d be down in a little while.”

  “She did, did she?” Old Man Harlan caught Reverend Pennycall’s eye. “You say she aimed to warn Victor?”

  “Uh huh. Then they’ll come.”

  Old Man Harlan and Reverend Pennycall looked at each other and laughed. “Sounds easy, don’t it,” Old Man Harlan said. “Like they never had no disagreements.”

  “He’ll straighten her out,” Reverend Pennycall said. White light flashed across the cellar stairs followed by another boom of thunder. “Thank Gawd court ended when it did.”

  “Amen on that,” Old Man Harlan said. “We just did make it.”

  “We did,” Reverend Pennycall nodded.

  I wondered how Granny and Granpaw made out, whether the judge had agreed with them or Old Man Harlan. Damned if I’d ask Old Man Harlan about it though. I wondered if Granny and Granpaw were driving back now; trying to get home in the storm. A fuzzy light bulb dangled from a wire in the middle of the ceiling just over Bird’s head. There were some plank shelves on the other side. Dingy glass jars, moldy looking, full of pear halves and apples. Dark tomatoes. Gray corn.

  Bird grinned her rotten-toothed grin and uncovered the basket. “Ya’ll want a bite of this?” A good warm smell overpowered the musty smell of the cellar.

  “Give that here.” Old Man Harlan took a hold of the basket and set it on his lap. Him and the Reverend both took out a napkin with something wrapped inside.

  “They’s tators and corn too,” Old Man Harlan said. “We’ll have that later.” He reached the basket back to Bird. “Get you a piece in there Bird.” He looked at Vern and Fable, then at me and Willis. “You ne
groes will have to wait.” Reverend Pennycall laughed. Willis, Vern and Fable looked on hungrily. I hadn’t eaten anything myself since breakfast. My mouth began to water.

  Bird took out a crusty piece of something and bit in – like some old spider jawing on a bug. “Chicken smells good fried, don’t it Reverend? Eats good too.”

  The Reverend held his piece in the napkin in front of his mouth, grease shining all around his lips. “It do, don’t it?”

  Old Man Harlan held up a golden brown drumstick and pointed it toward me. “These is them chicken-friends of that boy there. I believe this leg belonged to Elvis. That right Reverend?” Reverend Pennycall winked at me and went on feeding his face.

  “You know that boy loves chickens,” Old Man Harlan said. “Pitched him a fit t’other day cause I killed me two. Pets he said they was! His pets.” White meat turned over in Reverend Pennycall’s half open mouth.

  Bird looked up from the piece she was gnawing on. “Buried they heads in ‘at graveyard a mine.”

  I watched as they ate my snowbirds, as they looked for fresh places to bite in. The good smell of the dinner spread all throughout the cellar. I tried to swallow the water in my mouth and almost gagged. I thought of Momma, the bruises around her neck, Victor’s hands like Old Man Harlan’s around the chicken’s necks.

  Bird pushed the good smelling basket into my thoughts. “Get you a piece in there, Ruby’s boy!”

  I swatted it away. “Do that again and I’ll knock the rest of your goddamn teeth out!” Bird’s mouth dropped open. What I said, how I said it, like a grown-up person, surprised even me.

  “Keep on that a way and I’ll whip you myself,” Old Man Harlan said.

  I jumped off the sacks. “You can go straight to hell! You and Bird both!” Old Man Harlan got up from his chair, but I dodged him and ran up the steps.

  Miss Alma was standing outside in the rain, the umbrella raised over her head. She grabbed hold of my arm. “Hold on, boy! Where ya’ll off to?”

  “Momma’s in trouble Miss Alma! I just know she is!”

  Old Man Harlan was at the bottom of the steps. “That boy’s meaner’n a snake! Send him back down here!”

  “He’s the mean one, Miss Alma!” I yelled. “They’re eating my chickens down there! Momma’s in trouble! I know she is!”

  “Laud, Laud! Ya’ll don’t know dat. Cain’t go running off in dis no how!” Miss Alma gestured with the umbrella toward the sky. Black clouds in a spooky green soup were chasing after one another up there, circling around and around like water going down a drain.

  “I said to send him back down here!” Old Man Harlan yelled, bald head hanging off his crooked neck.

  Miss Alma rose up big as a mountain. “Hush yo mouth, Nealy! We ain’t down to no crossroad now!”

  Reverend Pennycall appeared next to Old Man Harlan. “I wouldn’t go so faw with that tone a voice, Miss Alma. That tone a voice might upset folks. Ya’ll wouldn’t want that now.”

  “Alway somebody get upset!” Miss Alma answered. “Ain’t nothin’ new on me.” I tried to jerk away. Miss Alma held on. “How you know she in trouble?”

  “I just do. I had a dream Miss Alma. Daddy told me I had to take care of her.”

  Miss Alma frowned. She looked off over the little rise toward Granny and Granpaw’s. Then she let go of me and yelled down the cellar. “Fable! Vern! Willis! You boys, come on now! We gone find Ruby!”

  “You ain’t long for this world then!” Old Man Harlan said.

  Fable and Vern came running up the steps. Then came Willis. Miss Alma said, “We be back fo’ long.” She turned away then and walked off toward Moses’ truck – us boys trailed after.

  Old Man Harlan yelled from the cellar. “You cain’t talk to me that way! Come back here!”

  Miss Alma walked on. “See all dat?” she said, sweeping her hand over the ground. “Dat hail. I neva see no hailstone pile up dat way befo’.” The hailstones were piled thick as snow.

  They crunched under our shoes. “I hope we find yo mammy soon. Out here in all dis.”

  We got out to the truck and Miss Alma opened the door. I crawled in behind the steering wheel and over to the passenger side. Willis crawled in with his walking stick, then Fable and Vern. Vern sat up in Fable’s lap.

  Miss Alma positioned herself behind the steering wheel and started the truck. She backed out and went up the road toward Granny and Granpaw’s, went into the pond of water at the bottom of the hill. The truck went a little ways in, slid sideways and stopped. “Lawd! Wata three feet deep if it a inch!” Miss Alma shouted. She stomped the gas pedal. Water shot out the back end. The whole truck tilted sideways. Our side went lower than Miss Alma’s. “We sho stuck now.”

  “We can walk Miss Alma,” I said. “It ain’t that far.”

  Miss Alma looked out the windshield up in the sky. A spooky green light surrounded everything. “Dem cloud like to cut loose any minute. Bad ‘nuff be ridin’ in dis truck. Dey some board back da house. Ya’ll wait here.” Before we could say anything, she was out the door, holding up her housedress, sloshing her way through the water back to the house. We waited and waited but she never came back. I doubted she’d be able to get the truck out anyway. I turned the handle of the door and pushed but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Storm tear you up boy,” Fable said. “It like one dem comic book monster. I know. I seen it befo’. Tear you up.”

  “That jus a lie,” Vern said. “He don’t know.”

  I pushed again against the door. It made a sucking sound and gave way. Muddy red water rushed in over the floorboard. It stretched away and out over Moses’ yard.

  “We all gone get a whippin’ now,” Fable said.

  I splashed in up to my knees. The water was ice cold.

  “What you gone do, boy?” Fable said.

  “I’m going,” I said. “It’ll be too late.”

  “You nutty as a fruit cake,” Vern said, his fuzzed up hair tinted with green light.

  Willis said, “Twista blow you away, boy.”

  “Don’t call me that, Willis. Come with me. Vern, you and Fable too.”

  They all three just stared at me; three black ducks hunkered there on the front seat. I turned and sloshed my way around the door toward the hill, got to where the road started up and ran to the top. There was a bad smell. A dog lay dead up there, covered with hailstones that were already melting. Dead birds were scattered everywhere, killed by the storm.

  From the hilltop, I could see down to Harlan’s Crossroads, how Bounty Road went down and up again to a bigger hill on the other side. I could see the graveyard and part of Old Man Harlan’s store. Across from it, Granny and Granpaw’s house, Momma’s car, the trailer and the chicken yard.

  A twang began over the hills, like a row of piano keys played all at once, low and sustained, then in seconds rising up until it was blaring louder than a steel mill, making it almost impossible to move or think or do anything but listen. I could see black funnel clouds, coiling and uncoiling above Granny and Granpaw’s barn, monster snakes, three of them, slithering downward out of the upside down floor of clouds, black and whirling, circling, passing each other like partners at a dance. One reached, curling toward the barn, making itself long and shrinking back. The barn stood like always, a black skull laughing at the day. The snake reached again, this time touching the barn, sucking the roof away – whirling the walls around and over the field, busting them to smithereens. The snake shrunk back and disappeared. The other snakes disappeared too. The thundering twang went with them.

  “Ole Gooseberry!” Willis shouted. He was standing a little ways in back of me, walking stick tucked under his arm – potato foot, a glob of mud. “Blow dat barn, kingdom come!”

  I was so glad it was him I almost laughed out loud. “God A Mighty, Willis, come on! Momma and Missy’s down there.” I turned and started running, slogging and splashing my way down the hill, down the middle of the road, to the house. Willis did a fast hobble with his stick, not far
behind. If I could go around under the house to my secret place, I could get the knife and the skull. I could save Momma from Victor and the storm.

  I stopped at the crossroads. The rain was starting up again. Mud had splashed up along my legs and onto my shorts. “Go there behind the well, Willis. Don’t let anybody see you!”

  “Wha-What you gone do?” Willis said.

  “I don’t know yet. Go behind the well. Wait for me.”

  I ran up Nub Road a ways and climbed the bank. Fat cold drops of rain smacked against my legs. I ran around to the back of the house to the porch, crawled under there next to the steps and over to the board that went over the hole where I kept the shoebox. I took out the knife, Grandpaw’s pouch and the Rain Skull. I looped the leather cord of the pouch around my neck, gripped the knife and crawled out. Granny’s washtub lay upside down on some boards by the steps. Raindrops thumping across the bottom. I looked up the path toward where the barn had been. The trailer had blown sideways – had mashed through the fence into the pig yard. Black planks and splinters of wood were scattered everywhere all over the chicken yard. I ran around to the front of the house. Momma’s Ford sat near the fence with its trunk raised. Momma was there too, inside the car on the passenger side, eyes closed, her head thrown back against the seat. “Momma!” I yelled, running up to the car. Her hands were tied together with clothesline. Missy sat holding onto Momma’s arm, eyes wide open, trembling like a bird.

  “Momma! Wake up Momma!”

  “No Victor, don’t,” Momma said, her eyes still closed.

  “Momma? It’s me Momma.”

  Momma’s eyes fluttered open. She looked at me. “Oh no. No. Orbie, sweetheart,” she whispered, her voice raspy as sandpaper. “Orbie, you got to get away from here. Victor. He’s… What you said about him. Honey…” She closed her eyes then and went back to sleep.

  The rain was coming almost straight down now. My tee shirt had soaked tight to my skin. I looked around the yard. There was the Jesus Tree, the picture of Jesus, hanging with his belly against the cross. There was the well with its round roof full of flowers tilted back in the rain. Willis peeked out from behind it. I hurried over. “Victor’s got Momma tied up in the car, Willis.” I looked up the road. “Where’s Miss Alma?” Up on the porch I could see Victor’s green file box had turned over, its papers scattered and stuck to the wet floor.