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

Victor agreed that he would go on to Detroit by himself but he never did. Seemed like there was always something else he had to do. Another letter to write. Another letter to wait for. A talk with Old Man Harlan or Reverend Pennycall. A drive into Circle Stump to use the pay phone at Grinestaff’s. The important thing is that we stay together as a family, he kept on saying.

Momma would pretty herself up, put a bunch of makeup over what was left of the bruises on her face and smile for Victor. She helped Granny cook and clean, took care of Granpaw, slopped hogs and fed the chickens. I showed her some of the tricks Elvis and Johnny could do, and I told her about the beauty contest coming up at the fair.

“I’m so proud of you, Orbie. You know that don’t you?” Momma ran her hand over the top of my head, her bright blue eyes all sparkly and full of smiles. “You look so much better. I mean it. You look happy. Your Daddy would be proud.”

I didn’t feel so happy though — not with Victor and all his business taking up Momma’s time. The Dark Thing was everywhere — in Victor’s letter writing, his Dean Martin haircut and fancy cigarettes. It was in Momma not knowing what to do, in her trying to be a married person, a mother and a daughter all at the same time.

“You and them chickens are a regular circus act,” Momma said. “We probably won’t be around for that fair though. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said sadly. “Granny will take them.”

“I’m so proud of you sweetheart.” Her eyes went away from me then, looking a way off toward the trailer and Victor. Sometimes they’d be in there with the door and all the windows closed — even in the middle of the day — even with it being so hot a person would sweat buckets just standing in the shade. “Real proud,” she whispered. But I could feel her slipping away.

That’s how it went, all through the end of August and on into September. Victor and Momma shutting themselves up in the trailer every chance they got. Momma worrying over what direction to take. Granny’s eyes flashing with something she knew but wouldn’t tell. Victor, Reverend Pennycall, and Old Man Harlan talking on the porch in front of the store. Missy sucking her thumb one minute, screaming the next. Granpaw spitting cuss words all over the yard, then laughing about it, shaking his head like he just heard the best joke. Me under the house with Granny’s knife, standing my army men in a line, or else down to the swimming hole with Willis and the Kingdom Boys, the days so hot you could fry eggs on the rocks, ugly black thunderheads reaching out over the afternoon sun, sometimes pissing out a little rain, most times not.

Granpaw opened the back of the station wagon and got out one of the signs he made, a white cross with crooked black letters wrote across the arms. ‘love tHine eneMy’, it said. With the sign in one hand and a hammer in the other, he ditch-walked up the road where there was a red clay bank and a field behind a barbed wire fence. Willis and me followed after him. The fence posts stuck out every which a way, some rotten and falling apart, tilted toward the road like frozen pieces of black fire. Some of the barbed wire made thorny loops along the ground.

Granpaw stopped in front of one of the posts. He lifted his hat off his head and set it back down. A nail stuck out between his lips. He tilted his head the way the post was tilted; then he stepped up and nailed the cross to it. He nailed it tilted like the post, like a hitchhiker, sticking a thumb out for a ride.

He stepped back to look at his handiwork. “That ought to grab somebody’s attention. Don’t you think?”

“Yessah, Mista Wood,” Willis smiled. “Dat do fa-fine.”

Granpaw smiled, then looked over where I was standing. “Go get them others I laid up next to the car there.”

“You ain’t supposed to be out here, Granpaw,” I said. “You ain’t supposed to be driving.”

“Who said I wasn’t?”

“Granny. You might have a spell and run off the road.”

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Why didn’t you say something before?”

“Cause of what you said. What you said about clouds.”

“We ain’t come to that yet.” Granpaw looked up toward the station wagon and back at us. “A body can’t just give up, just because of a little sickness.”

Willis fitted his walking stick snug under his arm. “Ya’ll ba-bad sick dough.”

“Yeah,” I said. “What if you were to go in a spell?”

“What if a pig was to shit roses?” Granpaw said. “Who’s side you boys on?”

“Yours,” I said. “Willis is right though.”

Willis grinned a mouth full of teeth.

Granpaw frowned. “Go fetch’em signs like I told you to. Won’t be no more driving after this.”

I went and got the signs. Some of the letters were capitols, some weren’t. And most were crooked. One said, ‘in my Name shall tHey cast ouT devils’. The other said, ‘These signS shall fOller them what beLieve’. I reached them up to Granpaw. “Who’s side are you on, Granpaw?”

“The Lord’s, if I’m able.” Granpaw took the signs, then reached in his pocket and got out more nails. He put the nails in his mouth like before and got the signs and nailed them to other fence posts. When he was done, he motioned us to come walk with him to a place out on the road.

“Now. Look there.” He pointed toward the signs. He’d nailed them so they were far apart from each other, so when somebody passed by on the road, they could read one after the other, first ‘love tHine eneMy’, then ‘in my Name shall tHey cast ouT devils’ then ‘These signS shall fOller them what beLieve’.

“Circa Stump folk be ma-mad!” Willis said. “Dat church land.”

“Road don’t belong to them.”

“Fence do,” Willis said.

Granpaw spat. “They don’t take care of it, if it does.”

All three signs leaned toward the road. Hitchhikers, waving down cars, each with a little message wrote across the front.

“Love thine enemy,” I said. “What about Germans Granpaw? What about Japs?”

“What about them?” Granpaw said.

“You can’t love somebody wants to kill you,” I said.

Granpaw grabbed out a hankie from his back pocket. He wiped it down the side of his face and patted his forehead.

“They’ll kill you Granpaw. The enemy will.”

Granpaw stuffed the hankie back in his back pocket. He looked up at the sky, at the clouds, shading his eyes with the bent part of his wrist. Then he walked back to the station wagon with Willis and me. He put the hammer away and got out a frying pan he’d brought from the house - that and something that looked like a witch’s broom without a handle. The frying pan was full of white gray coals he’d got from Granny’s wood stove in the kitchen. He gave the witch’s broom to Willis, then looked at me. “You bring that skull like I told you?”

I pulled the pouch with the skull from my pocket and loosened the drawstring. There was the smooth bone of the rattle-snake skull, its eye sockets and fangs.

“You seen that before, haven’t you?” Granpaw said to Willis.

“Uh huh. Mo’s. MMMake da rain be good.”

“That’s right.” Granpaw took a pinch of something from his shirt pocket and sprinkled it over the coals in the frying pan. Thick white smoke boiled up. He held the pan down to me. “Now, run that in there. Through that smoke.”

I held the skull between my thumb and first finger and put it through the smoke. “Like that?”

“More!” Granpaw hollered. “Do it a bunch a times!”

I did like he said.

“Hold to it now.” Granpaw closed his eyes and began to mumble under his breath. Hocus pocus nonsense it sounded like to me. He did that a while, then made a little half turn and stepped up the bank. He stepped through a place where the barbed wire lay on the ground, stepped over it and into the field. He had either gone completely crazy or into another of his spells.