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

They let Momma alone after that, and she went back over to Circle Stump. Circle Stump was where she met Daddy.

“He was just a little old country boy come to church with his uncle,” Momma said. “Uncle Joe and Aunt Dolly Ray was the ones raised him. His own momma and daddy had took sick with fever one winter and died. That was your Granny and Granpaw Ray, Orbie, on your Daddy’s side. Buried up there to Harlan’s Crossroads. Joe found them in bed together froze to death. Said each had a poultice of lard and turpentine froze to their chests. Never would go to no doctors. Your Daddy was down in between them, down under the blankets there, still alive!

“I tell you what’s the truth. If Mamaw and Papaw had got their way, if Moses hadn’t a freed me, I might never have married your Daddy. You and Missy might never have been born.”

The sky was a white frying pan turned upside down over Kentucky. You had to put your hand over your head and look between your fingers to see the sun. That’s how white it was. Everything that wasn’t in the shade fried. The porch steps fried. The dirt fried. The rocks. My bomber plane left out in the yard. Everything fried.

It was Saturday. Granny’s calendar said ‘June’ with a big number ‘15’ underneath. Momma had been gone over a week. It rained only one time; little bitty sprinkle drops didn’t even get the ground wet. I was laying out on the front porch drawing sailing ships when suddenly this stumpy longhaired coloredman stomped up on the planks and leaned a stepladder by the door. It was the man I’d seen barreling by in that pickup truck. He wore a black cowboy hat with a snakeskin band. His hands hung half-open from the wrists, almost black, black fingers thick around, nails and knuckles spotted with white paint. He stood by the ladder, frowning down where I lay next to my drawing papers and colors.

Granny came to the door. “I allowed that was you, Moses. That there’s Orbie. Ruby’s boy.”

“I see you,” the colored-man said, frowning.

“Down here from Detroit,” Granny said like she was proud of it. “Moses been painting our house a little to the time. Say ‘hidy’, Orbie.”

I felt the word in my mouth but it wouldn’t go.

The colored-man had a funny way of talking, making his voice go loud suddenly when he didn’t have to. “Cat got yo tongue. DON’T! he boy?” Long black hair made curtains down the sides of his head. “I SEE you.”

I got to my feet, the ‘hidy’ word still stuck in my mouth.

“Say hidy,” Granny said again. “Be nice.”

Moses spied his eye at my drawing papers. “I know boy draw too.” His face was shiny with cracks and little dug out places, a piece of shiny black coal with eyes. “You be like PEACH tree leaves and CREAM!”

“That would be Willis,” Granny said to me. “A little colored boy Moses takes care of. There’s one you could play with. Gone off to Tennessee now though. Peach tree leaves and cream is good for poison ivy.”

I didn’t want to be no peach tree leaves and cream, not with no colored boy. Right then Granpaw came around the corner, ditch-walked to where we were and stopped. He spat, took his hat off and held it over his head like to shade his eyes with. He looked at the sky that way.

Moses stepped out in the yard and gazed up with Granpaw. Granpaw was all white and silvery, Moses black. Salt and pepper shakers. Both thick around and short, with thick-fingered hands. Both acting like there was something serious important up in the sky. Granny had said Moses was a lot older than Granpaw. To me they looked the same.

“See that?” Granpaw said. “That whorl in thar.”

“Hmmm,” Moses said. “Old Gooseberry.”

“Reckon it is?” Granpaw said. “It is, ain’t it?”

“It won’t never rain then,” Granny said.

Granpaw spied his eye on me. “There’s a black snake in them clouds by grabs. Look up thar!”

I looked but it was too bright to see anything.

Granpaw suddenly hollered, “Watch out boy! It’s crawling right toward you!”

I jumped backward and knocked up against the wall.

“Strode! Stop that,” Granny said.

Granpaw slapped his leg and hee-hawed. Moses made a little disgusted sound with his tongue and went back looking up in the sky.

Far as it mattered to me, they could both go to hell.

“I’d be ashamed Strode,” Granny said.

I got my drawing papers together and went inside. I let the screen door slam. Over the bed in the corner was the picture of Jesus and the Lord’s Supper. Always sad. Always waiting. I drew back with the drawing papers and let fly. They went ever which way across the floor. I wished I was back home in Detroit, playing with my friends, baseball and football and cops and robbers, away from this ignorant old goddamn place. Bunch of old hillbillies, gawking around. I sat down at one end of Granny’s couch and started to cry.

Granpaw came up to the door. He mashed his nose against the screen, one hand cupped around the side of his face. “You all right in there son?”

“Go away!”

“Aw now.” Granpaw opened the door a little and looked in. “Ain’t no need a crying, son. Granpaw was just funning.”

Tears streamed over my cheeks. “I hate you!”

Granpaw came inside. “Aw now, son.”

“I ain’t your son!” I said, something catching up in my throat. “My Daddy’s dead!”

Granpaw ditch-walked over to the couch. “I’m jest a sorry old sumbitch, Orbie. Only thing sparks me anymore is some old ignorant fun.”

“You don’t have to scare me to have it!”

“You right there, you right. I’m sorry about it too. You can see I’m sorry about it, can’t you?” Granpaw set himself down on the couch next to me, his face covered with short silvery hairs. “Why, I’d hurt my own self before I’d hurt you. You my grandson.”

Granpaw sat a minute, staring out the window. “You know, it’s hard to learn a old sumbitch like me anything.” He wagged his chin back and forth; whisker hairs throwing back the light. “I’ll bet you, you could though.”

“What?” I said.

“Learn me. Learn me to be nice. Couldn’t I do with that?”

“Yes!” I said, still trying to be mad.

“Yes sir. Granpaw could do with that. He sure could. You could tell him when he’s crossing the line. You know. Tell him so he’ll know when to quit. Sometimes folks will cross a line without even knowing it.”

I’d stopped crying. What Granpaw said, how he was saying it, made me feel better someway.

“Couldn’t you? I mean when I cross that line, you know.” Granpaw nodded his head at me and winked. A smile almost as warm and nice as Daddy’s used to be suddenly spread across his face.

“I wished Momma would come back,” I said. “I don’t like it down here.”

“Well,” Granpaw said. “I haven’t been much help I’m sorry to say. You can forgive old Granpaw though. Can’t you?”

I sat there a long time, not saying a word. Granpaw sat too. He looked at me a while, then out the window. More time went by. The thought came to me he might could stay waiting like that a long, long time — that he meant what he said and that there was no other place he would rather be. I looked out at my drawing papers scattered over the floor. One was wedged up under Granny’s sewing machine. “What’s gooseberry Granpaw?”

Granpaw cleared his throat. “Why, gooseberries is gooseberries. They’ll grow hereabouts some places. Sorriest fruits I ever eat. Worse than rhubarb, them is.”

“What about what Moses said,” I said. “When you were looking in the sky?”

Granpaw turned his head to look at the room. He looked at Granny’s sewing machine, the bed, the picture of Jesus and the Lord’s Supper. “You mean Old Gooseberry.”