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

“What Granny?”

“Oh Orbie, it’s a boy!” She was almost whispering now. “A little colored boy. Talks funny but you’ll get used to that. It ain’t like you can’t understand him.”

Already I was getting scared.

“Stutters a little bit is all. It’s Willis, back from Tennessee.

Moses told him about you.” Granny smiled. “I told you they was kids down here.”

I got a feeling of being dizzy, like I was high up on a cliff somewhere about to fall. “I ain’t playing with no goddamn coloreds Granny!”

Granny’s mouth went hard. She reached out with both hands and closed my arms together. I tried to twist away. My face was so close to Granny’s I could see the little coffee stained wrinkles under her lip. “Let go of me you old bitch!”

“Now you listen here to me,” Granny whispered. Hard puffs of chewing-gum-breath hit me square in the face. “I have had just about enough of that sorry talk!” She sent fast eyes up to the house and then back again to me. “What if he was to hear you?”

“I don’t care! Let me go!”

“Shhhh! Orbie! I declare!”

Then I whispered too. “I don’t care, Granny.”

“Ain’t no need of getting all red-faced about this! He’s just a boy like you are.”

I jerked away from Granny and ran over next to the fence.

Granny stood up.

The screen door banged to. Out on the porch now came a little colored boy. He had a walking stick looked like a tree limb somebody’d cut to fit under his arm. He leaned on the stick, made a step, brought the stick to the front, leaned on it, made another step.

“That there’s Willis,” Granny said in her loud way. “Rode over here on his mule!”

The colored boy was even skinnier than me. He wore coveralls without a shirt. The coveralls were puffed out around his body. He let himself down the steps, using his stick, one foot at a time. He didn’t have any socks or shoes, and I could see there was something the matter with the foot on his right leg.

I stepped back against the fence.

The colored boy hop-walked himself over to Granny. He smiled a thick row of white teeth. I could see how the rib bones curved under his skin. The foot on his bad leg had toenails but no toes — a black potato with little white potato eyes sticking out the end.

“How you been sweetheart?” Granny gave him a hug, and then she kissed him on the head. “You been a good boy, today?”

“Yessum,” Willis said.

His head was shaved, and he had pretty brown eyes. His face was pretty too — like a girl’s — smooth with round cheeks and dimples. When he smiled, his head hung to the side, eyes slanting in a way I thought they’d slide right off his head.

“Ha–Ha–Hidy,” he said, his smile all pretty and melting-like.

“Orbie, come on now, tell Willis hidy,” Granny said.

I tried to back up more but the fence wouldn’t let me. “Hidy.”

The colored boy smiled that girl smile again; his face sliding off to the side.

“Mind what I told you Orbie,” Granny said.

I looked at the boy.

“Go on, Willis,” Granny said.

The boy came over to where I was — dark chocolate all over except for the bottoms of his hands.

“Go on, Orbie,” Granny said.

I remembered the time at the schoolyard when the colored boys had my pants down.

Cut his dick off, Lawrence. Cut Whitey’s dick.

I hawked up a gob and spat it at the colored boy. “Get away from me, nigger!” Squeezing through the fence I ran across the chicken yard; Granny shouted after me. I ran to the chicken house and stepped over the plank threshold, waiting there a few seconds until my eyes caught up with the dark. There were chickens, sleeping in lines on railings going diagonally up and down. Some were hunkered in little boxes along the wall.

I squatted in a corner away from the door. Some of the chickens looked at me. Elvis and Johnny looked at me. Granny could go straight to hell . I thought about Momma and Missy and Victor. I thought about Florida and Superman and Jesus. I wished somebody like that would come, somebody strong, take me away from this chicken shit farm. I wished Daddy would come.

A stick poked itself inside the door, then a bumpy bare foot. “Orbie? You in da-da-dare?” It was the colored boy, his voice all high-pitched and sissy-sweet.

I tried to make myself small. “Go away!”

“Miss Mattie. She se-se-send me for da eggs.” Willis walked in to where there were chickens sitting in boxes right above my head. He balanced on his good foot and waved the stick in front of him, trying to feel his way through the shadows.

“Watch out with that stick!” I said.

“I gots to get da eggs.”

“Get them then. I ain’t stopping you.”

The colored boy looked down where I now sat hunched in the corner. “Day ya’ll is! You want to see ha-how I does it?”

“No.”

“Ha-How I gets da eggs?”

“No, I said! You can’t hear so good, can you?”

He didn’t answer. Then, before I could say anything else, he began to sing.

It was the same song they sung at Daddy’s funeral. A sweet sad song that made me think of Daddy going up to heaven with the angels. The colored boy sang so sweetly I could feel the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. He felt his way to the boxes over my head, still singing, not stuttering now at all.

I got up from the corner.

The chickens weren’t nervous or anything. They just sat there in their boxes while the colored boy reached in under and got their eggs.

When he finished the song, he looked at me. “Hold deze.” He gave me the eggs and turned with his walking stick toward the door. I went with him; still under the spell of his singing. The eggs felt warm and good on my arms. I walked all the way back to the house that way; still making sure to keep a little distance between him and me.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked.

“What you mean?”

“With them chickens. Making them be quiet like that. When Granny gets eggs they run all over.”

“Mo teach me,” the boy said.

“Mo?”

“Mo.”

“Didn’t I tell you they was kids down here?” Granny had a big grin on her face, standing in the doorway with the screen pushed open.

The colored boy and me came up the steps, and I gave Granny the eggs.

“That’s Willis, Orbie. That’s his name.”

Willis grinned with all his teeth.

“You better get on home,” Granny said to Willis. “It’ll be dark soon.”

“Yessum,” Willis said.

Granny and me followed him around to the front of the house where his mule was tied. The mule’s name was Chester. He was old with a curvy back and no saddle, a piece of metal in his mouth with a rope on each side. Granny got one of her chairs and put it next to the mule. Willis climbed up, grabbed the hair on the mule’s neck and pulled himself to where he could hike his potato foot over. Granny handed him his walking stick. He sat up there and grinned.

Granny and me watched him ride off.

Later on I said, “He sung a song Granny. He made all them chickens just be quiet.”

Granny looked at me and smiled. She was busy fixing up ham and biscuits for supper. “He might come over again sometime.” I watched her mix white flour and ham grease in a pan. “You don’t have to play with him though. Not if you don’t want to.”

Next day I was out on the front porch, drawing airplanes dive bombing a battleship. I made the sky full of smoke and some of the airplanes on fire. There was a submarine too. I was just about to explode the ship with a torpedo when I heard something sounded like water pouring out by the well. What it was, was Chester, Willis’s mule, peeing a big yellow stream there. Willis sat on top of him, smiling, a red scarf tied over his head.