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

“Looky here, boy.” Old Man Harlan held out Elvis and Johnny’s heads, the neck feathers wet with blood. “All she wrote for them buzzards.” He tossed the heads over the fence.

He may as well have tossed me. Carrot colored puke exploded out my mouth all over my tennis shoes and onto the ground in front of me.

Old Man Harlan stood, wiping his hands down the front of his vest. “Hell now boy, you’ll be all right. I told you to stay away. Didn’t I tell you?” He went over to the trough and pulled out the chicken that had run there, bloody water dripping from the headless neck. “This one’s good sized,” Old Man Harlan muttered. He went over and picked up the other, carried them both upside down like before with their wings flopped open.

I ran after him, wiping my mouth and crying, “You Goddamn Chicken Buzzard, Old Man Harlan! I hope you rot in hell!”

“What’s all the ruckus out here!” It was Victor, yelling from the doorway of the trailer, no shirt on now. No eyeglasses. “I’m trying to sleep in here!”

Old Man Harlan pushed open the gate. “It’s this here boy a yorn! He’s mad about these chickens. Said I couldn’t kill these cause they was his. I never seen no little boy with as much sass. Like to hit me with a rock.”

“Liar!” I cried.

Old Man Harlan looked up at Victor.

“Apologize to Mr. Harlan,” Victor said.

“That rock would have hit me, it hadn’t gone wild,” Old Man Harlan said.

“Liar!”

Right then, Granny stepped out on the back porch. “What’s all this about?”

“He’s been throwing rocks at Mr. Harlan here,” Victor said.

“Have not! He killed my chickens Granny!”

Granny spied Elvis and Johnny hanging from Old Man Harlan’s hands. “They Lord!”

Old Man Harlan’s face soured over. “These is my chickens. I reckon I can do what I want with them.”

“He twirled their heads off Granny! He killed them!” I was crying so hard now I could hardly get my breath.

“They Lord, hon, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“For crying out loud.” Victor ducked his head back inside the trailer.

Granny came down off the porch. “I was afraid something like this might happen. Come on hon.” She gave Old Man Harlan a look. “I reckon if you threw a rock at old Nealy he shore enough deserved it.”

“No wonder he’s spoilt,” Old Man Harlan said.

“He could use a little spoiling around the likes of you.”

“Say what you want to, old girl. Your days is numbered.”

“All our days are numbered Nealy.”

“Humph!” Old Man Harlan stepped to one side of Granny and walked off with the dripping chickens. Dotted lines of blood followed him across the yard.

Everybody was eating supper except Victor, who was still passed out in the trailer. I wasn’t hungry. I got me a coffee can and went out by the chicken yard. A breeze was coming in from back of Granpaw’s tobacco patch, blowing up bits of straw and making the tin roof on the chicken house tick. Granny’s knife was still where I left it by the fence. I stuck it in my belt and went looking for Elvis and Johnny’s heads. I found them in one of the tracks of the wagon road covered with flies. Elvis’s floppy comb had shrunk to about a third of its size. Johnny’s beak was frozen in mid squawk. I picked them each up by their bloody neck feathers and put them in the can, crying so hard now I could barely see.

I slipped past the house with the can and out across the road to the cemetery. I’d never been out there by myself, and never so late. The ‘Harlan’s Crossroads Cemetery’ sign faced outward from its curve over the gate. The cottonwood limbs were rocking in the breeze. I pushed open the gate and crossed the weedy, picker-filled graveyard to the busted out place. The sun was going down and the umbrella of the weeping willow tree stood black in the haze.

I came across Granny and Granpaw Ray’s graves, crumbling white slabs, darkened now, though I could still make out the worn letters of their names. And there was Daddy’s grave too — the shiny gray stone — the words ‘Loved By All’ cut across the front.

I dumped Elvis and Johnny’s heads out of the can and onto the grass. Taking up the butcher knife, I made a hole at the foot of Daddy’s grave. I put the heads in there and covered them with the dirt. I sat listening to the breeze. It was true, what the words on Daddy’s grave said. Loved By All . Everybody loved Daddy. Missy and me loved him. Momma loved him. Granny and Granpaw did. The church people did. People he worked with too. Why would anybody want to kill Daddy? Why would Victor?

A voice cracked behind me. “What you burying chicken heads in my graveyard for?” I whirled around with the knife. Hunched over like a gray bug, standing just inside the busted out place, was Bird Pruitt. “Chickens ain’t peoples.” She had that same purple dress she always had on, the purple hat with the purple net. “Answer me, Ruby’s boy! I said what you burying chicken heads in my graveyard for?”

I couldn’t believe it — first Victor, then Old Man Harlan, now this. I scrambled to my feet. “This graveyard doesn’t belong to you Bird!”

Bird ran a tongue over her lips, grinning. “You just like your Momma was. Course now her spirit’s robbed away. Ain’t it? In ‘at box! And here you are all by your lonesome agin that man. Eee! Eee! Eee! Poor thang.” Half her teeth were gone, her face watery with watery gray eyes and a mouth like a brown hole of black gumline and yellowed bits of bone. The perfect cousin for Old Man Harlan, I thought. She shuffled up under her hump and started toward the weeping willow.

“What box?” I said.

I could see just one side of her face as she paused, one watery eye looking up in the sky. “You know they’s a storm coming don’t you? A big un too. Look up there.” She pointed to the sky. The sun had gone down but it was still light out. Up where Bird pointed was a round moon, floating in the dark sky, around it a hazy white ring, one diamond star inside. “Storms a coming, shore ‘nuff.” Bird wagged her head and shambled off into the black shape of the weeping willow tree.

“What storm?” I called.

Friday morning Granpaw woke up from his spell. Granny told him what all Reverend Pennycall had said and about Victor too. “I got to go talk to that judge.”

“Judge Beechum?” Granpaw said.

“Yeah, Judge Beechum! I got to go talk to him.”

“You mean we , don’t you?” Granpaw said. “I’ll tell you what’s the truth; Nealy and the Reverend can both kiss my ass! Victor too. Ought to’ve run him off long ago.”

“You don’t have to get all worked up about it,” Granny said.

“I ain’t worked up!” Granpaw growled. “I’m mad!” He waited for that to sink in; then said, “Reckon what Reverend Pennycall said is true? Reckon they hung ole Moses?”

“I don’t know,” Granny said. “I didn’t believe it at first, but now they all talking about it.”

“I’d trust the Devil for I would the Reverend.”

“Strode,” Granny said.

“Well I would, by grabs.”

After breakfast they both got in the station wagon and drove off.

All the rest of the morning and on into the afternoon it was so sweaty hot outside you could hardly get your breath. Victor wouldn’t eat breakfast. He wouldn’t eat lunch. Both times Momma took food out to the trailer, and both times she had to bring it back.

I went around the side of the house and looked out across Nub Road. A huge cloud was swelling up over Granpaw’s tobacco patch; the top so bright it was hard to look at, the underside all charcoal gray and bulging with dark green bubble shapes.