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

“Fooled ya’ll!” Fable hollered, jumping up, sniggering and laughing, pointing his finger at everybody. “Ya’ll just a bunch of fools!”

“Boy, what you do dat fo?” Vern said. “We thought you hurt.” Vern’s hair was like black fuzz. It stuck straight up off his head. He had a snotty nose flat as a spoon, and was all the time doing things with his hands. Like putting one hand up to shade his eyes, pretending to be like a scout. One time he stuck his arms straight out to the sides and hung his head down, pretending like he was Jesus. Jesus on the cross with fuzzed up hair. It was stupid. When we played our shows he was always the one that went to the electric chair. That was because of his hair. It already looked electrocuted.

Fable and Vern’s pappy was Ezra. He had to be on a chain gang. Fable bragged it was because he robbed a bank and killed nine people. Miss Alma said Reverend Pennycall was the reason. “Dat Reverend. He gone beat dis po colored boy fa stealin’ molasses. Matt Willy’s boy. Yessah. Gone beat him wid a shovel! Would have killed him too, Ezra not stop his hand comin’ down! All dat Circle Stump bunch jump in on him den. Uh huh. Brothas Of The Watch. Claim he hit Reverend Pennycall! Horseshit! Bullshit too! What I think.”

It was the only time I ever heard Miss Alma cuss.

We played this game where you had to put your thumb in your mouth and blow till you passed out. Then you had dreams. I dreamed I couldn’t move cause I was tied up on a railroad track with a train coming. The sky was pitch black and I was terrified, fighting, trying to get loose. The train got bigger and bigger till I could see sparks and smoke, boiling out from underneath. When the wheels cut into me, I let out a scream and came full awake.

Fable and Vern stood over me, laughing, which made me mad.

“What’re you laughing at?”

“You,” Vern said. “Twitching down there, look like a worm.”

“How long was I gone?”

“Time it take a fly to jump,” Fable said.

“No time,” Vern said.

That’s how it would go. You would think you were gone for a long time but really it was only a second or two — the time it took your breath to come back.

Fable said he dreamed two giant witches had him turned upside down by the legs. Said they were going to make a wish and then tear him apart like you would a wishbone. “But den I blowed dey heads off wit ma gun!”

Nobody believed him.

After about a week of playing together, we were all going down the road when Fable pushed into me and I yelled, “Nigger get away from me!”

Fable just laughed. The other boys laughed too, Willis and Vern and Dewey and Daryl, even Daryl’s little sister Jewel Ann. They all laughed at me.

It made me get ashamed.

Then Fable yelled, “Les beat whitey’s ass!” and they all jumped in on me. I ducked and waited for their hands to hit. Black hands — gorilla hands — pink monkey-nails digging in.

Instead, they started in tickling me.

I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. Then they started in tickling each other and it turned into that. I tickled Jewel Ann and she tickled me. I liked Jewel Ann. I liked her braids. I liked the way her eyes looked at me too, shiny black eyes — white cream all around.

Then Fable pointed to the railroad tracks. “Las’ one get up dare a piece of po white trash!”

We all ran over there then, laughing and screaming except for Willis who couldn’t run.

“Po white trash! Po white trash!” we all screamed at him.

Willis’s eyes slid off the side of his head, grinning.

Whenever I heard a car I’d look up the hill to see if it was the black Ford. Two weeks had passed since the Fourth of July, and still there was no sign of Momma or Victor.

Seemed like every time you turned around it was time for church. There were regular church services on Sunday morning with Sunday school, singings in the afternoon sometimes with dinner on the ground, Bible study, Sunday night service and Wednesday prayer meetings. That wasn’t enough you could go to Saturday night meetings too.

The preachers hollered and jumped and slapped their Bibles and blew spit ever which a way, carried on about hell and the Devil and how God was going to throw people in a lake of fire. Then all of a sudden they’d go all quiet, start in soft talking the sinners, trying to get them to come down and shake hands with Jesus.

Only Jesus I seen was in a picture they had back of the preacher’s stand of Him hanging on the cross like usual, all hang jawed and helpless. Didn’t look to me like he could shake anybody’s hand. I had the thought maybe they kept the real Jesus out back somewhere. Maybe it was only the saved people that got to go back there to shake his hand. You wouldn’t catch me shaking hands with no dead person.

Moses hadn’t been back to church since the time of the snakes. He’d about finished painting Granny and Granpaw’s house, though I never saw him do any of it. “Moses has a way of slipping around you won’t know he’s there most of the time,” Granny said. “Unless you looking right at him, of course.”

Church was different without Moses. During the time of the snakes, it seemed like the air and all the people were shocked through with some kind of special electricity. People still got excited, even without Moses, but it was just the usual kind of excitement — not the kind that left you wondering at the nighttime sky, not the kind that left you happy and thankful to be alive. Willis and me would sit in the back and throw spit balls at Vern and Fable. We would laugh and cut up till Granny or one of the colored ladies had to come back and make us be quiet. When church was over, we would ride off on Chester.

One time we came across those white boys, the ones broke out the church house window. They were all walking down the road on the other side of a barbed wire fence. It was after church on a Sunday and Willis and me were in a field, going the same direction, only faster because of being on Chester.

The boys were dressed up in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Nice shirts. Clean blue jeans. That littlest boy was there, the one who’d gone all spastic, pretending the rope was a snake. He cocked his head back, grinning at us with a Bible under one arm and a piece of straw, sticking out of his mouth. The fat boy was with them too; wearing the gray ball cap, the one that looked like mine, with the red winged horse sown on the front. He stood apart from the others.

A rock hit the ground in front of us. Willis pulled Chester’s rope, and we started off in another direction. Another rock sizzled over Chester’s head. Chester stopped and danced backward. Willis had to pull the rope to keep him from running off.

I looked back to see the boys, standing there, staring like nothing at all had happened. The little boy with the Bible continued to grin.

“Nigger lover!” somebody shouted.

I wanted to yell back, but Willis kicked Chester into a run and we went bouncing up and down over the field away from the fence.

“Chick, chick, chick, chick.” Granny threw handfuls of feed from a big white pan. “Uh huh, and how would you know they’s the one’s broke out the church house window? Here, get you some of this.” She reached the pan down to me.

I grabbed out a handful. “Me and Willis was over there and seen it.” I didn’t tell her we went inside.

“Ya’ll stay away from there when they ain’t no church on.”

“Okay.” I threw feed out over the ground and watched the chickens go after it.