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

We rode out to where Granpaw was hoeing out tobacco. Tobacco leaves brushed over our legs. Granpaw came up the row, limping like a whiskery old pirate, a white rag tied over his head. I handed down the water jug. Granpaw unscrewed the lid and turned the jug up to drink. Water curled over his chin down the front of his shirt. When he was done, he set the jug on the ground. “Where you boys off to?”

“Nowheres,” Willis said.

Granpaw cocked his head to one side and looked up at Willis. “Nowheres? Reckon it’s any cooler there than it is here? I’d like to go there if it is!”

Willis grinned.

“I bet it is, ain’t it? That nowheres place.” Granpaw grabbed a hankie out from his back pocket and wiped his mouth. “Phew, it’s hot.” He put the hankie back in his pocket and brought out his tobacco pouch. Tobacco leaves waved in the sunlight all the way out to the road. Granpaw bit off a piece of chewing tobacco and handed the pouch up to me. “Get you some in there boy. Make a man out of you.”

“I don’t want any, Granpaw!” I said too loud.

“You seen air’y black snake since you been down here?”

“No, and I don’t want to!”

Granpaw threw his head back, hee-hawing, but that soon turned into coughing. Tobacco juice and blood spewed out of his mouth.

Willis looked around at me.

“You got blood Granpaw,” I said.

Granpaw ran his hand over his chin and looked. “Why that ain’t nothin’,” he said, “You coming to the Fourth Willis?” He pushed his open hand along the thigh of his pant leg, leaving a reddish-brown stain.

“Yessah.”

“Moses coming?”

“Don’t know. He gone.”

“Gone?” Granpaw said.

“Two day. Don’t know where.”

“He’ll do that, won’t he?” Granpaw stared out across the field toward Moses Mashbone’s place. It was like his eyes were going out to meet something up the hill. He did that a while; then he hawked up another gob and spat. “Why ain’t you boys out to the swimming hole? I was you and had time, that’s right where I’d be.”

“I don’t know how to swim, Granpaw,” I said.

“You can wade,” Granpaw said. “It ain’t deep enough to swim in no way. Been too dry. There’s still snake up around there though. Have to get ya’ll some rocks first. Scare them old water snakes away.”

“Uh huh.” Willis smiled. “I knows how.”

I stared at the back of Willis’ head. He might could sing chickens out of their eggs, but I doubted he could scare snakes away. Anybody skinny as he was would be more like to run off from something like a snake.

Granpaw turned and ditch-walked himself back down the row, growling over his shoulder. “Mind how you turn that mule around in here!”

We sat next to the swimming hole, drying off in the sun. There hadn’t been any snakes, but we’d thrown a few rocks in anyway. Big tree branches drooped over the water. There was a tire on a rope over the water Willis and me earlier had taken turns jumping from. I sat in my underwear. Willis was naked. He leaned back on his hands with his legs stretched out in front of him. His thing peaked out between his legs — a little black tadpole I tried not to stare at. I looked at his potato foot instead. “How did you get that?”

“Ba-Bawn with it,” Willis said. “Mammy die right after.”

“After you were born?”

“Pappy run off.”

“I thought Moses was your Daddy.”

“Mo look after me. Sa-Sometime he take me in da wood. Sh-show me things. Snake. Flower.”

“Flowers?”

“Uh huh. All kind. I sangs to’em. Snake too.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of,” I said.

Willis smiled sideways.

After while I said, “It’d be awful if my own Momma was to die.”

We rode Chester back up Kingdom Creek toward the road.

“What did Granpaw mean back there Willis? About the Fourth?”

“Fourth of July,” Willis said. “Thursday. Gone be mmmeeting at da Kingdom Church.”

“Moses bring his snakes?”

“Might.”

There were bushes full of red and green berries growing on the other side of the creek. Skinny white trees — poplar trees, Willis called them — went up the hill behind the bushes.

“Gooseberry,” Willis said, pointing at the bushes.

“Them are sour,” I said. “Granpaw said they were the sorriest fruit he ever ate. You ever hear of Old Gooseberry?”

“He da Devil,” Willis said. “Look dare.”

“What?”

Willis made Chester stop. “On da other sa-side dare!” He was pointing toward the ground at something on the other side of the creek.

At first, I couldn’t see anything but the gooseberry bushes.

Then a breeze rattled the poplars and I saw a spooky shadow disappearing along the ground. It came into view again further up — disappearing and reappearing with the shifting light, with the breeze. “There’s a path Willis. I can see a path.”

“Mo place up dat way. In dem wood. Talk to da rain up dare.” Willis smacked Chester with the rope and we went on.

I wondered how a person could talk to the rain, or to any thing that didn’t have a mouth and couldn’t talk back. “Moses talk to trees too?”

“Say he do.”

“Don’t you know? Haven’t you never seen him?”

“I seen him talk to da sa-sky.”

“How’s he do it?”

“Smoke. And a broom.”

“A broom?”

“Uh huh. He smoke da sky. Den sa-sa-sweep it. Make da rain be good.”

I wondered what might happen if Moses and Victor were to get in a fight. Victor had those Superman muscles, but Moses had magic. At least, it seemed like he did. I bet he was strong too. He looked strong. Maybe he could beat Victor. “Let’s go up there Willis. Let’s go see Moses!”

“See him at da house. He painting.”

“I know, but he ain’t never there when I look. He’s always sneaking up. Like you. Then he goes.” It was true. Granny and Granpaw’s house was getting painted, but, except for that one time, I’d never seen Moses do any work. “Let’s go up there Willis.”

“Na uh,” Willis said. “Not ‘less Mo say.”

We went down a hill and up another. Then we found a path through the woods and turned off.

“This ain’t the way home,” I said.

“Ain’t goin’ home,” Willis said.

In a while we came onto a field of yellow grass that went over a low hill with a church house near the top. It was a white cinder block rectangle with yellow stained glass windows along the sides and a silver cross, sticking out bent-wise from the roof over the main doors. A dirt road curved down from the church and went off in the woods on the other side.

“Dat Kingdom Church. Fourth of July be dare,” Willis said. “Ra-Road go Kingdom Town.” He reached around with the rope and smacked Chester’s rump. We went up the hill right up to the church house doors. There was a porch there with a little roof and a sign above the doors that read, KINGDOM CHURCH / WELCOME TO GOD’S HOUSE.

Willis slid off Chester first, then me. I followed Willis around the side of the church to where there was a junk car sitting up in the weeds, nudged up against the cinder block wall of the church house — a rusty old Buick — faded milky blue with flat white-wall tires and no glass in the windows at all.

Willis tied Chester to the door handle and gave me his walking stick. Then he grabbed himself up the front of the car, dragging his potato foot over the hood and up onto the roof to a place just under one of the windows. I could see someone had left the window open a crack. As Willis raised himself to a standing position, the roof of the car made a bunch of loud banging noises.