Then Like the Blind Man: Orbie's Story

by Freddie Owens

  “You can help me if you’ve a mind to,” Granpaw said.

  “I don’t have one, Granpaw. I don’t like Jesus anyway. I’m a witch. Witch’s don’t need Jesus.”

  Granpaw spit tobacco juice out the window and wiped his chin. “Where’d you hear that at?”

  “Circle Stump Boys. I made a light come around a tree, Granpaw. I scared all’em Circle Stump Boys away. They said I was a witch.”

  “A light?”

  “Yeah Granpaw, like lightning. It came around a tree. Lightning knocked a branch off. That’s how I got my hat back. It was magic, Granpaw. Victor took my hat away and magic brought it back.”

  “Well,” Granpaw said. “It don’t matter what a person can or can’t do. Who’d you think protected you when you handled that snake?”

  “Moses. He’s a witch too.”

  Granpaw spit more tobacco juice. “The Lord protected you. Not Moses.”

  “You believe in magic Granpaw?”

  “Not like you do, I don’t.”

  “I mean like when a magician cuts a woman in half and she’s still alive? Or when she floats?”

  “Floats?”

  “Yeah, Granpaw! When she floats in the air and the magician shows you with his hoop!”

  “That’s just thinking something is when it ain’t,” Granpaw said. “They’s a power inside things though. Like in that snake you handled. I believe in that. Remember how you felt?”

  “I felt good,” I said. “I felt tall.” Right then a bug left a yellow splatter up the dirty windshield.

  “I know you did. I could feel you feeling it. That’s a natural thing. Like when the sun comes up of a morning. Or when a cloud changes shape.”

  “Or like lightning!” I said.

  “The power of God, that was,” Granpaw said. “Power of God’s like a dream. You’ll think it’s real enough but then when you try to grab hold on it, won’t be nothing to grab. It’s there and not there at the same time.”

  “I had a dream, Granpaw. Moses came inside it.” I told Granpaw about Daddy on the ingot with the fire coming down. About the tiger in the cage and the cigar I thought was Victor’s.

  Granpaw slowed the car a little. “You say it was Moses that come?”

  “Uh huh. He came after. Black Jack didn’t kill Daddy, Granpaw. Not in my dream. It was Victor.”

  “Lord God,” Granpaw said. “What all will you come up with next?”

  “Were you going to stab Victor that time?”

  “Stab him?”

  “With your knife that time. When you and him was arguin’? You hate Victor, don’t you? I do.”

  Granpaw shook his head. “I don’t hate Victor.”

  “You hate Mr. Harlan,” I said.

  “No I don’t. I hate the way he does. There’s a difference.”

  I couldn’t see it. To me if a person did things you hated, you would have to hate them too. It didn’t make any sense otherwise. We went past Moses’ place and over the next hill. I could see the black skull of Granpaw’s barn.

  “Do you see what I see?” Granpaw said.

  “No.”

  “Up to the house there. Looks to me like a car.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “By the well there. Look!”

  My heart leaped up. “Momma’s back!”

  Granpaw laughed. “I knowed you was sharper-eyed than that!”

  We came down to where the house was and turned in. The black Ford was parked next to the well. Right away, I got a scared feeling. I could see Missy’s doll baby twisted up in the back window, naked, one of its arms missing. One glassy blue eye stared out zombie-like across the road. I pushed open the door and jumped out.

  “Wait a minute here,” Granpaw called, but I was already half way to the front porch.

  I could hear blubbering sounds way back in the kitchen. I pushed through the screen door into the front room, ran part way across the crackly linoleum and stopped. There was a smell of perfume and cigarette smoke. From the kitchen I heard Granny say, “They Lord honey, that’s awful.”

  Then I heard Momma. She sounded stuffy like somebody with a cold. “I know it is Mamaw, but that’s how it was. I wouldn’t have hesitated anymore than if it was a bug!”

  “Aw now, Ruby,” Granny said.

  “I mean it Mamaw. The next time that son of a bitch will be dead!”

  Granny let Momma cry; then she said, “I thought ya’ll was goin’ in on a house together.”

  “We was. Then he fell in with those men.” Momma blew her nose.

  “What men?”

  “One’s to do with that Pink Flamingo. You know, that hotel? If you was to ask me, that bunch is up to hell and no good!” A sound like a kicked dog came out of Momma then. “They had women, Mamaw! Sorriest looking old Jezebels you ever seen!”

  “Whores?”

  “Waitresses, Victor said they was, worked in the bar there at the hotel.”

  “Whores then,” Granny said. “Lord.”

  “Them men. They treated me like I didn’t have sense enough to spit.”

  “You run off, didn’t you?” Granny said. “They’s plenty sense in that.”

  “They was lots of places down there,” Momma said. “Too expensive, most of them. Ones we could afford was too far away. Then he up and buys one on his own, a ranch house on the beach. Like it wasn’t none of my business. Armstrong give him the money.”

  “That lawyer?” Granny said.

  It got quiet a while; then Momma cleared her throat. “Fords made Victor take a leave of absence.”

  “They Lord!” Granny said.

  “They made a bunch of people take a leave. Victor said it was just a formality, a temporary thing he said, just to make everybody happy. A period at the end of a long, long sentence is how he put it. We fought over it. He started in bad mouthing Jessie then. Said Armstrong had found out Jessie was some kind of stool pigeon. I never heard of such a thing. Talked like it was all Jessie’s fault what happened!” Momma was full out crying now. “I tell you what’s the truth, Mamaw. He so much as even touches me or my little girl again, I’ll kill the son of a bitch!”

  “Try not to think about it, Sweetness,” Granny said. “You’ll make it worse. Victor will get his due, as sure as I’m sitting here he will.”

  I stepped into the kitchen and saw Momma bent forward in Granpaw’s chair at the end of the table. Granny’s calendar flashed a big number 27. It was Saturday. Momma was making blubbering-drippy sounds in a hankie she held over her nose, her hair piled on top, still combed nice but with some loose strands hanging down. Her left arm rose up slim and pretty as a movie star’s. She wore black slacks with a wrinkled yellow shirt pulled out at the waist. Granny sat with her arm around Momma’s shoulder. With her eyes still closed Momma took both her hands together with the hankie and blew her nose.

  “Momma?” I said. “Momma, it’s me.”

  Momma opened her eyes. The whole left side of her face was swollen half again its normal size — a puffy purple bruise with a two-inch-long scabbed over gash bleeding around her eye. The other side was still pretty, but her eyeliner stuff had run down, streaking her cheek with milky gray tears. She looked like a beat up clown, ugly and bulging on one side, sad but still pretty on the other.

  “Oh, Momma!” I yelled and jumped in between her arms. I hugged her so hard my hat fell off.

  “I missed you!” Momma said, letting that you-word stretch out. We stayed like that awhile, hugging each other by the kitchen table. “Victor throwed that thing away,” Momma said. She was looking down at the cap that now lay right side up on the kitchen floor. “Out the window, he did. I could have killed him.”

  I bent over and picked it up. “A boy found it. I got it back from him Momma. It was magic.”

  “If that don’t beat all,” Momma said. “Magic. I could use a little magic right about now. We all could I guess. You ain’t been in no trouble, have you?”

  “No,” I lied. “Momma, what happened? Where�
�s Missy?”

  “In there in the bedroom,” Granny said. “Poor thing.”

  Right then Granpaw came walking up on the back porch with an arm full of boards and the paint he had bought in town. He put it all down out there on a table by the door and came in. The second he saw Momma he grabbed his hat off and whacked it against his pant leg. “What did that jackassfool do now?”

  “Strode,” Granny said.

  Granpaw gave Granny a look but didn’t say anything. He stood over Momma, waiting, his hat resting against his pant leg.

  Finally Momma said, “I don’t know Papaw. He went crazy I reckon.” She looked at me real quick, then back at Granpaw.

  “We tried to set up house down there but it didn’t take.” She started to cry again. Another string of hair fell over her face.

  Granny passed Momma another hankie.

  “Sum bitch.” Granpaw looked around the room as if he thought Victor might be hiding somewhere, behind the stove maybe, or maybe behind the refrigerator. “Where’s he at?”

  “Florida, I reckon,” Momma said.

  “Floridy?”

  “He can rot down there for all I care.”

  “She run off, Strode,” Granny said. “Had to.”

  Granpaw looked around the room again, mad, lost, that one hawk eyebrow like a hook. Then he reared back like a horse and I saw the gray of his eyeball disappear upward inside his head. He started to cough. He coughed and coughed till he had to go out on the back porch. Out there he kept on coughing. Granny and Momma both had to go out there with him. I went too. He coughed up blood and knocked over the table with the wood and the paint cans. He fell down on the porch trying to get his breath.

  “Strode! Strode!” Granny yelled. “Lord, he’s having a fit!”

  “Papaw!” Momma said.

  Granpaw’s mouth was going like a fish when you take it out of water, opening and closing and opening again. Pink foam bubbled over his bottom lip.

  Momma got down on the floor, lifted Granpaw’s head and put it in her lap.

  “I’ll run get Nealy!” Granny stomped down the porch steps and out across the yard, her big boney hips swinging side to side like a bell. “Don’t let him swaller his tongue!”

  ———————

  Granny had already got back and was standing over Momma and Granpaw when Old Man Harlan came up in the yard. Bird came up behind him, both arms moving like a bug in a glass of water. Granny wrung her hands, rocking one foot to the other.

  Old Man Harlan pointed to a place on the door where the screen had come loose. “Thought ya’ll was gonna mend that.”

  “We ain’t had time Nealy,” Granny said.

  “Humph. It was my farm I’d make time.”

  “It is your farm, Nealy,” Granny said.

  Granpaw groaned, “Ohhh, ohhh.” He lay face up in Momma’s lap. The knot on the side of his head glowed fiery red. Momma bent over him; trying to wipe his face with a washrag, her own face lopsided and splashed with tears. I was sitting on a bucket next to the door. I looked at the screen, at the paint cans that were scattered over the porch.

  Bird’s lips went tight. She frowned and shook her head and looked at Old Man Harlan. Then she looked at Granny. “Bad time for such as this. What with the crops and all.”

  “That’s right, Mattie,” Old Man Harlan said. “I can’t offer you no more credit.”

  “Well, I ain’t asking for none!” Granny said. “You gonna help us or just stand there complaining?”

  Granpaw was breathing fast now, moving his head this way and that.

  Old Man Harlan put his beak nose forward. “Strode?”

  “He can’t hear you!” Granny hollered. “We got to get him up from here!”

  Right then, Moses and Willis came round the corner. Moses with a stepladder. It was the first time I’d seen him since I took a hold of that snake.

  Old Man Harlan’s face soured over.

  “Moses! Thank God,” Granny said. “Strode’s about gone!”

  Moses dropped the ladder and went up on the porch. He put one hand on Granpaw’s forehead and with the other took out from his pocket something looked like a little skull, bone white with eye sockets and fangs. A swishing, hissing sound came from inside. Moses kept his hand on Granpaw’s head. He shook the little skull, making the swishing sound all up and down Granpaw’s body. Nobody said a word. Momma’s eyes followed the movements of Moses’ hand, the movements of the swishing white skull. After what seemed a long while Granpaw’s breathing started to calm down.

  “Thank you Jesus,” Granny said.

  “Lord A Mighty!” Old Man Harlan whispered.

  Bird had lost interest. “Dark meat,” she said, touching Willis’s arm. “I will like me some of that.”

  Willis backed away.

  ———————

  It took them all four to get Granpaw up, get him to the station wagon. Granny and Momma carried him by his arms.

  Moses and Old Man Harlan carried him by his feet. I carried his hat.

  They got Granpaw in the back seat and Granny got in with him. She got Granpaw’s head in her lap. Old Man Harlan spied the groceries in the back seat and told Granny.

  “They’ll keep,” Granny yelled. “Drive this thing! Drive it fast!”

  A hateful look came up in Old Man Harlan’s eyes. “Been driving pert near all my life, Mattie. Don’t need no dirt farmer’s wife telling me how!” He started for the driver’s side door but Moses beat him to it. Willis crawled in on the passenger side.

  Moses started the station wagon, slammed it backwards and out into the road. Granny hollered out the window. “They’s biscuits and ham-gravy in the refrigerator Ruby!” Before Momma could answer, Moses changed gears and the station wagon roared off, dust and gravel blowing out the back end.

  “Old Gooseberry!” Bird cackled.

  “You got that right,” said Old Man Harlan. “In the flesh.”

  20

  Go Through the World

  Willis and me were out on the porch steps at his house, eating ‘maters and baloney on white bread Miss Alma had made.

  “Yo s-step pappy do dat to yo mammy?” Willis said.

  I nodded that he did. “He got in with some men. In Florida. Bad men, Willis. Crooks. He broke Missy’s arm. Momma caught him rubbing on her.”

  Willis brushed a fly off the end of his sandwich. “What you talking ‘bout?”

  “You know. There,” I said, pointing between Willis’s legs. “Her privates.”

  Willis opened his eyes wide. “Yo mammy tell you dat?”

  “No, but I heard her talking to Granny. He was supposed to be giving her a bath. But Momma walked in.”

  Missy hadn’t said a word since her and Momma came back, just laid on the couch, thumb inside her mouth, staring at nothing in particular. She wore a cast with a sling down the front like a sail. Four little purple fingers and a thumb curled out the end.

  “Victor said he wasn’t doing anything. Momma didn’t believe him. She tried to pull Missy away, and that’s how her arm got broke. Victor beat Momma with his fists.”

  “Call da police?”

  “Don’t know. It was bad though. Like what happened to Granpaw.”

  Granpaw’d been in the hospital three days. Me and Granny and Momma and Missy all went to see him there, all the way up to Glascow. The room they had him in smelled like pee.

  “Granny got Miss Alma to help out around the house,” I said.

  “I know,” Willis said.

  “She had to get somebody to take care of the tobacco too.”

  “‘L’ brothas,” Willis said. “From church. MMMiss Alma. She tell me.” He took another bite off his sandwich. Granny had hired the ‘L’ brothers — Lester, Luke and Lionel — tall colored boys with muscles and scarves and long handled hoes and jugs of water. She was going to pay them from her and Granpaw’s crop money. She figured out she could pay off Old Man Harlan and still have enough they could make it through the winter even with Gran
paw being sick. She was sure of it. People from Kingdom Town would help.

  Old Man Harlan didn’t like the idea. “Ya’ll can’t run a farm this way. Why don’t ya’ll move into town and let me handle things? I’ll loan you the money.”

  “Yeah and what about the tobacco crop?” Granny said.

  “I’ll take care of that. Give you your share when I get mine.”

  “You crazier’n you look, you think I’d do that,” Granny said.

  Old Man Harlan’s face soured over. “Bad enough you going t’at nigger church. You got to hire out the congregation too?”

  “That don’t concern you,” Granny said.

  A red grin opened one corner of Old Man Harlan’s mouth.

  “Reckon they’s niggers in heaven, Mattie?”

  “I don’t have to listen to this.” Granny turned to go back in the house.

  “Or you reckon niggers got they own heaven?”

  A mangy brown dog laid out next to the porch where we were eating. I threw it a piece of sandwich. “Let’s go see Moses.”

  “Mo not say,” Willis said. “He got to sssay first.”

  “He isn’t ever going to say. I been down here all this time he hasn’t.”

  Willis took another bite off his sandwich. “Ca-cain’t go dare ‘less he say. Dey mmmagic in dem wood. Snake.”

  “I ain’t scared of no magic,” I said.

  “Make you crazy, boy. Dem wood will.”

  “Don’t call me ‘boy’,” I said. “We can run away, can’t we? If we get in trouble we can.”

  “Na uh,” Willis said.

  “Moses might could help me, Willis. I had a dream about Moses.” I told Willis the dream I had when we were playing the ‘pass out’ game, about the fire pouring on Daddy, about Moses. I threw another piece of sandwich to the dog. “I think he did it Willis. I think Victor killed Daddy.”

  Willis looked at the ground.

  After while I said, “You reckon if Moses was to fight Victor he’d win? I bet he could knock Victor’s block off!”

  Willis took another bite off his sandwich. He closed his eyes and chewed. Then he looked at me. “We go, you ca-cain’t tell Miss Mattie. Yo Mammy neither.”