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

“This!” She pointed to the place where the ledge had broken away — a yard-long gash shaped like a grinning mouth.

“No Granny,” I said. “I didn’t do that.”

“Who did then?”

“It broke off by itself. I lost my truck down there, Granny. And Granpaw’s cross.”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

I started to cry. “I didn’t know it was going to break!”

“You ought not have been up there in the first place! What if it was you that fell in?” I pictured the truck tumbling into the well and me tumbling in after. “Yeah,” Granny said. “That truck don’t matter.”

“Daddy gave me that truck!” I shouted. “He won it… at Fords!”

Granny let me cry a while, and then she told me how sad Momma would be if I was to fall in, how even Victor would be, and Missy too. How her and Granpaw would be beside themselves with grief. How they would have to bring my dead body up on a hook. “What were you doing up there anyhow?”

“Looking.”

“Looking? Looking at what?”

“Things Granny. Rocks. A truck.”

“That dump truck of yours?”

“No, a truck Granny. A real truck. It came from up there.” I pointed up to where the road went over the hill. “I thought it was Momma. It looked like her, Granny. It looked like her car.”

“I thought you said it was a truck.”

“It turned into one when it came down the road. A colored man was driving it. He had a big black nigger hat on too!”

Granny’s eyes flashed green. “Around here you say ‘colored’ or ‘negro’ or nothing at all! I told you.” We looked at each other a few seconds. “Probably old Moses you saw,” Granny finally said. “Moses Mashbone, whose house fell in with that tree. Remember?”

“Uh huh,” I said. “His hair’s longer than Momma’s.”

“That it is,” Granny laughed. “His own momma was pure Choctaw. Married a colored man down Mississippi way, she did.”

“Momma told me he’s a medicine man,” I said.

“That’s what they say,” Granny said. “He was struck by lightning once. Blacked out three years; then come back alive.”

“Does he mash bones, Granny?”

“Why no!” Granny laughed. “That’s just his name. He can heal people though. I seen that part.”

“He saved Granpaw,” I said.

“Ruby tell you that too?”

“Yeah.”

“I never will forget how he helped Strode. Him bleeding the way he was.”

Momma had told me the story of how Moses saved Granpaw many times; how one day he gashed the calf of his leg on a plow blade.

“He liked to’ve bled to death,” Momma said.

Granny tried to tie off the top part of his calf with a belt, but it did no good. Granpaw was hunched over on the couch, pressing his leg, trying to stop the blood. Granny was beside herself, walking up and down, grabbing first one hand then the other. Finally, Granpaw told her she’d better go get help. Said he’d be all right, that Momma was there and she could take care of him.

“Nodded over to where I was standing,” Momma said. “Like I knew what to do. And me about to shit myself.”

Granny got the mule from the barn and was just about to ride off when she saw Moses Mashbone come out from around the back of the house. Momma saw him too. Said it was real strange, the way he stood there with his hat and that long hair, his face black as the Bible tucked under his arm, the smoke curling up around him from a hand-rolled cigarette he held pinched between his fingers.

“Why he looked like he’d been waiting out there back of the house. Waiting especially for something bad to happen,”

Momma said. “Short and stout, built like a wrestler with thick legs and arms and big flat hands.”

Said Granny jumped down off her mule like the world was on fire, run over to Moses and started yelling about Granpaw.

Moses just shook his head and waved Granny off, like he didn’t need to hear anything about it, like he already knew. He threw his cigarette down, took a knife from his belt and cut two long pieces from Granny’s clothesline without even asking if he could. Then he went inside.

Granpaw was still hunched over on the couch, hugging that gashed calf with a bloody towel.

“I never seen anything like it,” Momma said. “Old Moses acted like he knew exactly what to do.”

He told Granny to go get a pan of salt water hot. He undid the belt Granny had tied. Then he took the two pieces of clothesline and tied off the gash. He tied it off at the top where the belt had been, then at the bottom just above the anklebone.

He told Granpaw to take the towel away, and when he did, Momma said you could still see the blood gushing out. The blood dripped down onto some old sheets Granny had laid up under Granpaw’s leg. “You’d a thought them clotheslines would have been enough to stop the blood from a lot worse, tied around the way they was,” Momma said. “But they didn’t.”

The blood spread out like a smile, Momma said, a terrible bloody smile on Granpaw’s leg. Didn’t seem to bother Moses though. He just stood there looking down at Granpaw. Told him just to let the blood run. Then he opened his Bible and began to read.

“Strangest thing I ever seen,” Momma said. “Granpaw sitting there, bleeding like a stuck hog and Moses reading from his Bible.”

Moses read, “And when I passed by thee, and saw thee wallowing in thy blood, I said unto thee: In thy blood, live; yea, I said unto thee: In thy blood, live.”

Momma said while he was reading that, the bleeding just stopped. Just like that. Said it was a miracle.

Said Moses told Granny to wash the cut with salt water, clean it out with kerosene and wrap it good. Granpaw and Granny were happy and thanked Moses for what he’d done, and Moses told how he had a church they could all come to anytime, and Granny and Granpaw were so happy they said they would, and they did.

“And that’s how Mamaw and Papaw come to learn things from Moses. How we got started over to Kingdom. Kingdom Church Of God,” Momma said. “I must have been every bit of twelve or thirteen.”

Kingdom was where the coloreds had church. White folk went to Circle Stump. That was Baptist. People there said Kingdom Church was awful. Said Moses Mashbone was nothing but a geechee witch doctor. Said he was bad — like the Devil was bad.

“Claimed he put a spell on Mamaw and Granpaw,” Momma said. “Said they wouldn’t have joined no nigger church, unless they was ‘put on’ with some kind of spell.”

Momma wanted to keep going to Circle Stump Baptist. It wasn’t that she hated or even disliked the coloreds, she said. It was just everything was so wild and strange at Kingdom. “Why that Moses even brought snakes in, handing them around to everybody like they was toys!”

She didn’t tell anybody how unhappy she was though. She was too afraid. Afraid Moses might put her in a spell. Mostly she just sat off by herself and didn’t talk to anybody.

“One day Moses seen me, you know, sitting off by myself. He came right over and asked me what the matter was; his voice like a little old lady’s, so kind and sweet natured it made me want to cry,” Momma said. “I just started in boohooing right there.”

She told Moses how unhappy she was, what the Circle Stump folks were all saying, and how she was afraid of him putting a spell on her.

Moses just looked at her for the longest time. Then he smiled and said there wasn’t anything in the world the matter with a girl that wanted to go to her own church. Said that’s where a girl ought to be.

“Mamaw and Granpaw didn’t like it. They told Moses I was too young to be going off to another church all by myself. Said I’d just have to get used to things the way they were. Well, I’ll tell you what’s the truth, Moses threw him a fit,” Momma said. “He shook his head and spat and grabbed off his hat. That same black hat he always wears, you know, that one with the rattlesnake band. He grabbed that and threw it on the floor right there in the church house in front of Mamaw and Granpaw and all the rest of the churchgoers, stomped and mashed it flat with the heel of his boot. Then he stomped off mad as a hornet. Left Mamaw and Granpaw standing there with their mouths hung open, long faced as two old Billy goats. Nobody had ever seen Moses get mad that way before.”