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

“You can help me if you’ve a mind to,” Granpaw said.

“I don’t have one, Granpaw. I don’t like Jesus anyway. I’m a witch. Witch’s don’t need Jesus.”

Granpaw spit tobacco juice out the window and wiped his chin. “Where’d you hear that at?”

“Circle Stump Boys. I made a light come around a tree, Granpaw. I scared all’em Circle Stump Boys away. They said I was a witch.”

“A light?”

“Yeah Granpaw, like lightning. It came around a tree. Lightning knocked a branch off. That’s how I got my hat back. It was magic, Granpaw. Victor took my hat away and magic brought it back.”

“Well,” Granpaw said. “It don’t matter what a person can or can’t do. Who’d you think protected you when you handled that snake?”

“Moses. He’s a witch too.”

Granpaw spit more tobacco juice. “The Lord protected you. Not Moses.”

“You believe in magic Granpaw?”

“Not like you do, I don’t.”

“I mean like when a magician cuts a woman in half and she’s still alive? Or when she floats?”

“Floats?”

“Yeah, Granpaw! When she floats in the air and the magician shows you with his hoop!”

“That’s just thinking something is when it ain’t,” Granpaw said. “They’s a power inside things though. Like in that snake you handled. I believe in that. Remember how you felt?”

“I felt good,” I said. “I felt tall.” Right then a bug left a yellow splatter up the dirty windshield.

“I know you did. I could feel you feeling it. That’s a natural thing. Like when the sun comes up of a morning. Or when a cloud changes shape.”

“Or like lightning!” I said.

“The power of God, that was,” Granpaw said. “Power of God’s like a dream. You’ll think it’s real enough but then when you try to grab hold on it, won’t be nothing to grab. It’s there and not there at the same time.”

“I had a dream, Granpaw. Moses came inside it.” I told Granpaw about Daddy on the ingot with the fire coming down. About the tiger in the cage and the cigar I thought was Victor’s.

Granpaw slowed the car a little. “You say it was Moses that come?”

“Uh huh. He came after. Black Jack didn’t kill Daddy, Granpaw. Not in my dream. It was Victor.”

“Lord God,” Granpaw said. “What all will you come up with next?”

“Were you going to stab Victor that time?”

“Stab him?”

“With your knife that time. When you and him was arguin’? You hate Victor, don’t you? I do.”

Granpaw shook his head. “I don’t hate Victor.”

“You hate Mr. Harlan,” I said.

“No I don’t. I hate the way he does. There’s a difference.”

I couldn’t see it. To me if a person did things you hated, you would have to hate them too. It didn’t make any sense otherwise. We went past Moses’ place and over the next hill. I could see the black skull of Granpaw’s barn.

“Do you see what I see?” Granpaw said.

“No.”

“Up to the house there. Looks to me like a car.”

“I don’t see it.”

“By the well there. Look!”

My heart leaped up. “Momma’s back!”

Granpaw laughed. “I knowed you was sharper-eyed than that!”

We came down to where the house was and turned in. The black Ford was parked next to the well. Right away, I got a scared feeling. I could see Missy’s doll baby twisted up in the back window, naked, one of its arms missing. One glassy blue eye stared out zombie-like across the road. I pushed open the door and jumped out.

“Wait a minute here,” Granpaw called, but I was already half way to the front porch.

I could hear blubbering sounds way back in the kitchen. I pushed through the screen door into the front room, ran part way across the crackly linoleum and stopped. There was a smell of perfume and cigarette smoke. From the kitchen I heard Granny say, “They Lord honey, that’s awful.”

Then I heard Momma. She sounded stuffy like somebody with a cold. “I know it is Mamaw, but that’s how it was. I wouldn’t have hesitated anymore than if it was a bug!”

“Aw now, Ruby,” Granny said.

“I mean it Mamaw. The next time that son of a bitch will be dead!”

Granny let Momma cry; then she said, “I thought ya’ll was goin’ in on a house together.”

“We was. Then he fell in with those men.” Momma blew her nose.

“What men?”

“One’s to do with that Pink Flamingo. You know, that hotel? If you was to ask me, that bunch is up to hell and no good!” A sound like a kicked dog came out of Momma then. “They had women, Mamaw! Sorriest looking old Jezebels you ever seen!”

“Whores?”

“Waitresses, Victor said they was, worked in the bar there at the hotel.”

“Whores then,” Granny said. “Lord.”

“Them men. They treated me like I didn’t have sense enough to spit.”

“You run off, didn’t you?” Granny said. “They’s plenty sense in that.”

“They was lots of places down there,” Momma said. “Too expensive, most of them. Ones we could afford was too far away. Then he up and buys one on his own, a ranch house on the beach. Like it wasn’t none of my business. Armstrong give him the money.”

“That lawyer?” Granny said.

It got quiet a while; then Momma cleared her throat. “Fords made Victor take a leave of absence.”

“They Lord!” Granny said.

“They made a bunch of people take a leave. Victor said it was just a formality, a temporary thing he said, just to make everybody happy. A period at the end of a long, long sentence is how he put it. We fought over it. He started in bad mouthing Jessie then. Said Armstrong had found out Jessie was some kind of stool pigeon. I never heard of such a thing. Talked like it was all Jessie’s fault what happened!” Momma was full out crying now. “I tell you what’s the truth, Mamaw. He so much as even touches me or my little girl again, I’ll kill the son of a bitch!”

“Try not to think about it, Sweetness,” Granny said. “You’ll make it worse. Victor will get his due, as sure as I’m sitting here he will.”

I stepped into the kitchen and saw Momma bent forward in Granpaw’s chair at the end of the table. Granny’s calendar flashed a big number 27. It was Saturday. Momma was making blubbering-drippy sounds in a hankie she held over her nose, her hair piled on top, still combed nice but with some loose strands hanging down. Her left arm rose up slim and pretty as a movie star’s. She wore black slacks with a wrinkled yellow shirt pulled out at the waist. Granny sat with her arm around Momma’s shoulder. With her eyes still closed Momma took both her hands together with the hankie and blew her nose.

“Momma?” I said. “Momma, it’s me.”

Momma opened her eyes. The whole left side of her face was swollen half again its normal size — a puffy purple bruise with a two-inch-long scabbed over gash bleeding around her eye. The other side was still pretty, but her eyeliner stuff had run down, streaking her cheek with milky gray tears. She looked like a beat up clown, ugly and bulging on one side, sad but still pretty on the other.

“Oh, Momma!” I yelled and jumped in between her arms. I hugged her so hard my hat fell off.

“I missed you! ” Momma said, letting that you-word stretch out. We stayed like that awhile, hugging each other by the kitchen table. “Victor throwed that thing away,” Momma said. She was looking down at the cap that now lay right side up on the kitchen floor. “Out the window, he did. I could have killed him.”

I bent over and picked it up. “A boy found it. I got it back from him Momma. It was magic.”

“If that don’t beat all,” Momma said. “Magic. I could use a little magic right about now. We all could I guess. You ain’t been in no trouble, have you?”