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

I backed up a step, two steps; looking for a way out. I didn’t feel like Jesus in the temple anymore. Raymond swung the tree limb again, almost knocked the knife out of my hand. Another rock buzzed my head, then another and another. One hit me square in the chest, sharp as a bullet. “Bastards!” I yelled. Then I saw Willis, trying to pull himself up by the waterfall. That little boy Neddy, his birthmark swollen into something like a purple fire, stood over Willis, throwing rocks at his bare back, one after another, cutting him, making welts.

“Orbie!” Willis screamed.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run away and I couldn’t stay where I was. Sheets of blue light, a bunch of them, flashed overhead. A black gust of wind slashed through the trees.

“I told you,” Sow Face said.

Before anybody could answer him, a thick bolt of white static crackled and spat; it hummed and arced like something out of a Frankenstein movie, electrical and snaping over the swimming hole. There was a smell of burnt hair and sulphur. One of the boys began waving his hands wildly, pointing at the cottonwood tree. “Jesus in hell boys! Look!”

A spooky blue line of glowing light had begun to draw itself up and around the branches of the tree. We were all of us rooted to the ground, watching the mysterious light trace itself up and down and around the trunk, around all the branches, every little leaf and twig, the tire and the rope. When it had finished, it stayed awhile — a neon sign glowing in the middle of the woods — then it just popped like a log in a fire and went out. The smell of rotten eggs and burning hair was everywhere.

I almost dropped the knife, its blade glowing with blue light. There came a roll of thunder. Then for some seconds I seemed to lose track of who and where I was — I seemed to go down, or down went up — like with the pass out game, and then something or someone took hold of me on the inside, someone that wasn’t me at all but was me too, like Geronimo or Davy Crockett, way mightier than me but me at the same time, its voice, my voice, strong and true. “In thy blood!” it shouted, I shouted, the same words Moses used on Granpaw. It raised, I raised the knife, blue and burning toward the sky.

Raymond backed away.

“In thy blood, live!” boomed the voice.

Neddy dropped the stones he’d been throwing.

There was an explosion and a flash of light and a crack went up the side of the cottonwood tree. The branch with the tire swayed to one side, moaned and then crashed into the swimming hole. Raymond and all the other boys high-tailed it off through the woods.

Willis had pulled himself out of the water and had come around to where I was standing. He held in his hand the gray ball cap. It was heavy with water. He reached it out to me.

“What happened Willis?” I said.

“You standing right dare boy! You see dat tree branch fall!”

“I reckon I did,” I said. “I don’t know. I feel funny Willis. Are you all right?”

Willis nodded. He had a gash over his left eye where the rock had hit him, but it had stopped bleeding. “Dey say you a witch, Orbie. Dem boys.”

I looked at the hat. It was a darker gray from being in the water. The red winged horse looked darker too. I turned it over and looked on the inside. There were the letters, just like before — ‘J C’ stitched in blue.

Granpaw yanked the steering wheel left, then right. “Good God A Mighty!”

I slammed up against the door. The station wagon fishtailed, then pulled straight.

“I never seen the like!” Granpaw yelled. “New gravel all up and down these roads! And for what?” He hawked up a gob and spit it out the window. Pink snot. “For somebody to get killed on I reckon.”

“I thought it was fun Granpaw,” I said.

“You’d think fun we was to slide off in that ditch by grabs!”

“I would think it was fun! What’s ‘by grabs’ Granpaw? You’re always saying that.”

Granpaw looked at the road. “It’s just something people say from time to time, like some folks will say ‘by God’.”

“‘Grabs’ ain’t like ‘God’ Granpaw. You could be by ‘God’, but I don’t see how you could be by ‘grabs’. What’s that mean?”

“Boy, you shore got you some questions!” Granpaw laughed. “I don’t know. Grabs is grabs is all. It’s just what it is.” After while he said, “I bet this old Buick’s got more rattles than that Ford of Victor’s.”

“It’s Momma’s Ford!” I almost shouted. “It doesn’t belong to Victor!”

“All right, all right,” Granpaw said. “How come you so contrary today?”

“I ain’t contrary.”

“Yes you are. Everything I’ve mentioned you’ve had to fuss about. You ain’t mad at me are you?”

“No Granpaw.”

Granpaw drove on down the road and up a hill. At the top was a barn, its big red doors almost on the road. We passed it and went down around a curve and then over a bridge. Below the bridge a skin-and-bones mule was drinking from a half dried out mud hole, the few hairs left in its tail flicking about like a wrecked broom. The smell was awful.

“That down there’s Kingdom Creek,” Granpaw said. “What they is of it, this far up.”

The sun made a star in the chrome next to the window.

It turned itself into a smoky blue ball. I closed my eyes and there it came again, a blue ball of smoky light floating behind my eyelids.

“You all right over there, Mr. Baseball Cap?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Granpaw reached over and pulled the bill of my ball cap down. I laughed and pushed it back up. “That hat’s bigger’n you are.”

“Is not!”

“It is too,” Granpaw laughed. “It’s a wonder it stays on at all.”

“Granny fixed it,” I said. “She put a piece of quilt inside.” I took it off and held it over for him to see. Pieces of red quilt showed out from the inside. So did the letters ‘J C’.

“What’s them letters stand for? Jesus?”

“Jim Conlin. He’s the one give me this hat. He’s a gas station man, Granpaw.” I turned the hat to where he could see the red winged horse and the words that said, Mobilgas. The horse stood out like a champ.

Granpaw smiled. “That’s a real one ain’t it?”

“Uh huh.” I popped it back on; proud that Granpaw liked it, even if it was too big. It was strange how I’d got it back, that fat boy throwing it in the water, the blue light and the lightning, that tree branch crashing down.

Granpaw took out his leather pouch, undid the string and skinned back the leather. A black twist of tobacco poked out. He bit off a piece, moved it around inside his mouth, and then let it go back to the back of his jaw.

I looked over the seat at the back of the station wagon. A stack of boards rattled back there with a can of white paint and some brushes. Next to all that leaned three big bags full of groceries.

“Can I open them Sugar Puffs, Granpaw?”

“You just had a hamburger. At Grinestaff’s.”

“Yeah, but I need me something sweet.”

“No now. Mattie will pitch a fit.”

“I don’t like Grinestaff.”

“How come?”

“He called me a City Slicker.”

“Well you are, ain’t you?” Granpaw laughed. “Would you rather he said you was a hillbilly?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe. What you gonna do with all them boards?”

“Make signs. Crosses, you know. Put them up and down the road. It’s the Lord’s work.”

“If it’s His work how come you have to do it?” I remembered signs in Indiana — on the way down from Detroit — signs on the side of the road. White crosses with Bible words. John 3:16. Jesus Saves! Prepare to Meet GOD.