Freddie Owens - Then Like the Blind Man - Orbie's Story

Victor leaned in on Momma. He leaned in on Missy and me too, saying what a good boy I was, how Missy would grow up to be a beautiful young woman some day — just like her mother — how he wished he had a little girl like her. Said he damn sure wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life working for Ford Motor Company. Breathing those factory fumes. Chasing after lazy good for nothings, just to get them to do an honest day’s work. Not when he could make triple or even quadruple the money working for himself. Said if a man really wanted to get ahead, he had to have plans that were significant .

I liked that word significant , even if at the time I didn’t know quite what it meant, I liked how it felt in my mouth, on the tip of my tongue, like something that if you didn’t pay attention to it, it would cause you a whole heap of trouble. I liked going around the house saying it.

Significant. Significant. Significant .

I liked that Victor liked us, but I didn’t like the way he was all the time trying to be on my mind. It was too close together somehow — like when Momma started talking about Jesus and wouldn’t shut up. A Dark Thing would come then, so sticky hot it would gum up all my army men and tanks, making them so they couldn’t move or explode or be in battles and wars like they were supposed to be.

After some time Momma started feeling better. She looked better too, started to put makeup on, not much, just a little lipstick and color for her cheeks. One day Victor asked her to go to the picture show, and she said yes. After that they started going out all the time. First to the picture shows. Then dinners. Then dancing. I think Momma liked dancing the best. Her and Victor would stay out late, come home making noise, laughing, whispering, Mrs. Profit, our baby sitter, shushing them not to wake Missy and me, smoking, clinking glasses, Mrs. Profit saying goodbye, then kissy stuff, and Momma telling Victor ‘no’. Then Victor laughing, saying goodbye, going out the door, the whole place smelling like beer.

One Saturday after dinner Victor came in drunk. He got down on his knees in front of Momma, crying, wrapping his arms around her like some big cry-baby-bear. He loved Momma, he said. He loved me and he loved Missy and he wanted us all to be a family together. Momma told him she wouldn’t talk to him about it until he sobered up. She made him lay down on our couch. He was there when I went to bed and he was there in the morning when I got up.

I thought Victor was all right, but I didn’t want to be a family with him. I didn’t care he was trying to be so nice. He didn’t joke around or laugh or anything, not like my real Daddy had. I didn’t like his smell in our bathroom either. Cigars and toilet shit. Daddy never smelled that way.

One time, Missy and me were playing in the living room, and for no reason he told us to keep it down. We weren’t even making any noise. I got mad and told him to shut his mouth and he drew back his fist like he was going to hit me. I saw then he had something like worms, slimy red worms turning over in his eyes, twisting around on sharp glass, cutting themselves in there and getting mean.

Momma said he looked like Superman in disguise. “Why, with them glasses, he looks just like that Clark Kent. Don’t he look just like that Clark Kent?”

I thought he did too, a little bit maybe, especially with his hair combed back the way it was. I didn’t want to say it, but really he looked better than Clark Kent. That was because of his glow. But when the glow wasn’t there, he’d be just all by himself, watching things dead on. It was like he’d somehow gotten bored with everything and was waiting — for what, I didn’t know.

Momma said he might make Missy and me a good Daddy — with a little practice he might. “He’s got a good job. And good prospects too! And he wants so much to take care of us all!” I think that’s why she left Missy and me with Mrs. Profit one day and went off with Victor to the Justice of the Peace. That was in September of 1957. That was why she married him. That and their dancing, and that smoochy stuff I heard him and Momma do on the couch late at night, Momma saying ‘no’ and ‘no’ and ‘no’ and then nothing. Nothing at all.

1958

“Orbie, turn that down,” Momma said. “Me and Victor’s talking here.”

“Aw, Momma. It’s Davy Crockett.”

“I don’t care what it is. It don’t need to be that loud.”

Davy Crockett was pointing his gun over a wall, shooting at the Mexicans. “Aw, Momma.”

“You heard your mother!” Victor said. “Turn it down, or turn it off!”

I got up and turned it down. We’d finished eating supper a while ago. The whole house smelled like fried chicken and dishwater. I could see Momma and Victor out the corner of my eye. Four empty beer bottles stood like smoke stacks on the coffee table’s glass top.

“Imagine that,” Victor said, “a Negro.” He took a swig off his beer and pushed his eyeglasses up. He held the bottle upright on the arm of his chair. Blue Ribbon beer. He’d been drinking it all through supper. “At work. He wanted to talk to me about Jesus. Asked me if I knew Jesus.” He looked at Momma like she’d be stupid not to know what he was talking about.

“Victor honey, that don’t matter. Jesus loves everybody. It don’t matter the color a person’s skin is.” A big King James Bible lay open-faced across her lap.

“Oh, you Christ-Sellers are all alike,” Victor said. “Would you let Missy marry one?”

“No,” Momma said.

“Why not? Your own mother would. She’d even come to the wedding.”

All the air went out of Momma’s chest. “I wouldn’t let her do that Victor. Marry one, I mean.”

“But I thought Jesus loves everybody, Momma.”

“Well He does,” Momma said. “He’s God’s only son.”

“God’s only son,” Victor said. “You really believe that.”

“Yes I do, Victor. With all my heart.”

Victor took out a pad of paper and a blue ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket. He wrote something on the pad and gave it to Momma.

Momma read the letters out loud. “A-T-H-E,” she began and gave Victor a sideways glance.

“Go on,” Victor said. “Read it.”

“A-T-H-E-I-S-T.” Momma gave Victor another look. “You always coming up with something big, Victor. What is this?”

“Atheist Momma.”

“Atheist?”

Victor smiled. “That’s right. Means I’d no sooner believe in God than you’d let Missy marry a Negro.”

This was how they argued — Momma on God’s side, Victor on the Devil’s.

Victor put the pad of paper back in his shirt pocket. He held onto the pen, his good looks spoiled now by the worms in his eyes.

“And here I thought you coming to our little church meant something,” Momma said.

Cannon fire exploded from the television set. The Mexican army men, dressed in gray coats and white pants, stormed over the hills, some of them carrying wooden ladder-things that looked like backbones with the ribs chewed off. Black smoke boiled up over the walls of the Alamo.

Momma said, “There is a God, Victor. Even you ought to know that.”

Victor took another swig of beer. He threw his head back, turning the bottle practically upside down. Bubbles and foam jumped up inside the neck. He set it on the coffee table empty. That made five. Five empty brown bottles with blue ribbons on the coffee table. He worked the push button on his pen, making it click. “Prove it to me Momma.”