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

“Not always what you think. Now, isn’t it boy?” Moses jerked his chin again, this time toward the pool.

What happened when I looked at the pool confused me way more than anything else. It was like the pool or the light of the pool had somehow sucked me inside itself, surrounding me in silvery blue light. I tried to yell but no sound would come out of my mouth. I was lost in the middle of a silvery blue nowhere. Then, a little way in front of me, the light began to darken and blend, to turn into a something — the figure of a boy, a dirty uncombed little boy, lying on his belly in a kitchen, elbows underneath, writing out something on a piece of paper. He wore thick black eyeglasses too big for his head, one of the corners broken and held together with orange electrical tape. He had no shoes. The heels of his socks had worn through.

“Hey!” I hollered, this time finding my voice. “Who are you?”

He didn’t answer.

I bent down next to his ear. “Little boy! Don’t you ever take a bath?” I tried to touch his head, but my hand went right through. Three men and a woman sat at a table in the kitchen. One of the men pounded the table with his fist. Everybody laughed. Next to the table was a sink piled with dirty dishes — above it, a darkened window. I walked up to the people at the table. Nobody noticed. Bottles of beer and ashtrays sat everywhere. There was a big, square shouldered whiskey bottle too. It was half empty.

The men looked like factory workers. They were big muscled and wore gray pants and long-sleeved shirts. White long john underwear showed out the necks of their shirts, the ends of their sleeves. They smoked and drank beer, took turns taking little sips from the whiskey bottle.

One man clinked his glass with another man’s. “Here’s to the cat’s meow!” he said.

“Pussy, pussy, pussy!” the other man said.

All three looked at the woman and laughed.

The woman laughed too, her face long and smiling. She was smoking a cigar. She was pretty, but kind of horse-faced with dull black hair, red powdered cheeks and wide flaring nostrils. Eyelids painted green. She sat with her feet propped up on the leg of the man next to her, her knees in the air, her dress pushed back you could see the hemline of a pair of red panties.

She took a puff off the cigar and grinned, letting the smoke leak out small slits between her teeth. She talked like a Yankee; her words jagged-edged, deep and rough sounding like a man. “So now, who wants it first? Michael? You? Don’t be shy. You boys.” She punched the shoulder of the man next to her. “Come on now. It’s not nice to keep Momma waiting.”

One of the men grabbed up the whiskey bottle, took a long pull, and then passed it to another man who did the same. The third man, the one next to the woman, put it back down on the table. All three sat with their eyes lolled out, grinning at each other and at the woman. The man next to the woman grinned and ran his hand up her leg, right up to the red panties.

The woman pressed her feet harder into the man’s leg. “Oh baby, I know what you want.”

The man slid his fingers inside the panties but the woman laughed and slapped it away. All the other men laughed too.

“Ma! No!” The little boy was on his knees now, looking at the people around the table.

The three men looked at the boy and at each other.

The woman’s hair wrapped itself around her head like a towel, one loose end hung over the back of her chair. “Get your ass downstairs! I told you.”

“It’s my house too!”

The men sat at the table with their heads down, waiting.

“What did we say? Huh? Tell me. Didn’t we say to stay downstairs?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“It’s cold down there!”

“Go by the furnace like we said.”

“You go by the furnace! There’s no light down there!”

The woman picked up one of the ashtrays and threw it across the room, cigarette butts and all. It landed upside down on the floor next to the boy. “I’ll send you back to goddamn Salina Street! To that son of a bitch calls himself your father!”

“Do it then! See if I care!”

The woman turned back to the three men. “Christ Jesus Michael, give me a drink.”

The boy started to cry.

It made me feel sad, that woman with the factory men, smoking cigars and laughing, talking now, not paying any attention at all to the little boy. I wanted to give the woman a piece of my mind. I wanted to tell her that a Momma shouldn’t act that way. I tried to remember how my own Momma acted but that only made me sadder. I could smell the woman’s perfume, the stink of the cigar, the beer and the whiskey.

I went over to the boy who was now lying on his belly with his head down, ashes and cigarette butts scattered all around. The paper he’d been writing on was dirty with cigarette ashes. Across the top it said, Room 5A. Dearborn Elementary. Mrs. Reed. On the line underneath was the little boy’s name. Victor Denalsky .

Moses’ accordion voice wheezed from above. “LOOK at the KNIFE!” it said. The kitchen and the little boy quickly vanished. In their place was the pool again with Granny’s big butcher knife at the bottom. It lay down there on the pebbles, a blue flame. I reached in and pulled it out of the water; held it, glowing, in front of me. If you take this up son, you’ll have to live with it. I had no idea what to do with the knife or why I was holding it — why it was supposed to be held. Seeing Victor’s name on the little boy’s paper had confused me, had turned everything I thought to be mine inside out and into somebody else’s. I liked the little boy; I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel the same for Victor. Victor, I hated. Wasn’t I supposed to hate him? Didn’t he kill Daddy? Isn’t that what the dream said? My arm began to tremble with the knife, with my shoulder, the whole front part of my body.

“Good! Good!” Moses said. The light from the knife blade shined in his eyes. He nodded and opened his mouth at me, a black jack-o-lantern head, the mouth cut in a way you couldn’t tell if it was smiling at you friendly or laughing at you mean.

Some son of a bitch, a Negro, poured hot steel on Jessie. That’s what happened. Burned him up alive!

“Good, good,” Moses whispered.

“What you whispering for, Moses?” I said, but it was like the words belonged to somebody else.

I could see the green flicker of the water, the pebbles on the bottom. Then a picture came to me of Moses, hanging upside down in a tree, naked, his hair so long it almost touched the ground. Blood curled around his wrists, dripped off the ends of his fingers.

“What you mean, Moses? What’s good?”

Before I could get the answer, my head hit the water.

I woke up dazed and sitting with my back against a rock wall. I was at the high end of a long ridge that looked like an empty swimming pool with the floor tilting up from the deep end. A forested hill rose up in front of me, taller than the ridge. Wind howled, but the sky was clear, and the sun was still high. Granny’s knife was tucked in my belt, wrapped in its sock like before. I got up and leaned against the wall, waiting for my head to clear. Under my bare feet stretched a smooth rock floor. I pulled a hard bulge of something out of my pocket — a bone white skull with eye sockets and fangs — the skull Moses used on Granpaw. Something inside made a swishing sound like sand or maybe seeds. I pushed it back inside my pocket and looked out over the ridge. I saw then that I was on top of the hump, atop the dragon’s back. In one direction it tapered and curled down into the woods. In the other it also tapered but to a place above the trees, a place thick with gooseberry bushes. Two black pine trees bent toward one another there — the dragon horns I’d seen from below.