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

“Stay down now!” Victor yelled. “I’ll kill you!”

Look at it like you loved it more than anything. Like it was the only thing in the world. That cloud.

I wanted to do as he said, just to lie there, not to interfere anymore. Drift off. Go to sleep. “People punish people,” I sobbed. “God don’t.” I got to my feet.

He grabbed me again but the bright threat in his eyes had vanished. He drew back to strike, but I could see his heart wasn’t in it, that there was fear, that there was shame. Something had gotten through. I had gotten through. I shook my head, not at Victor but at Willis who was about to swing his walking stick. Victor caught it in mid air, shoved the stick with Willis at the other end backward to the ground.

Somebody laughed. “Little Jimmy Crow to the rescue!” It was Old Man Harlan. He was standing with Reverend Pennycall up from the police car. The police car was parked on the side of the road, its red bubble-light going around and around. Miss Alma sat in the back seat.

A hairy thick-knuckled fist with coils of muscle bulging around the wrist came out of nowhere — out of the sky as if. Like a rock it hit Victor up side the head. He let go of me and staggered sideways. Granpaw stepped around me and hit Victor again, this time square between the eyes. His eyeglasses cart wheeled off his face. He fell backwards in the mud, the bridge of his nose cracked and bleeding. Granpaw spat. “Been wanting to do that ever since you come back.”

Reverend Pennycall pulled out his gun. “Hold on there now, Mista Wood.”

“You hold on Reverend!” Granpaw shouted. “Last I recalled this is still my house! This man assaulted my wife and was about to kill this boy. He got my daughter tied up in that car over yonder. Don’t tell me to hold on!”

Reverend Pennycall pointed the gun at Granpaw. Old Man Harlan stepped up next to him. “Only assault I seen is you, hittin’ this man here. That right Reverend?”

“That’s right,” Reverend Pennycall said. “That’s how I seen it.”

Victor tried to get up but slipped and fell back on his knees. The knife was still in his hand. Blood mixed with tears ran from both his eyes. He began to crawl like a blind man, feeling around in the mud for his eyeglasses. When he found them, he sat back on his knees and put them on. They were bent cockeyed, one corner up, one corner down. I thought again of the little boy in the cave.

Granpaw stepped forward to hit Victor again, but I grabbed hold of his arm. “No Granpaw, don’t. It’s enough.”

Victor sat back on his knees, crying, blubbering to himself now, barely holding onto the knife. “Don’t hit me anymore, Daddy. I’ll be good. I’ll mind.”

Granpaw spat.

Reverend Pennycall looked at Old Man Harlan and shook his head. He put the gun back in his holster.

A roar started up in the sky, like before, only this time like a hundred railroad trains, all at the same time, all running down from the whirling clouds.

I saw Bird, standing up next to the well with the Rain Skull held out over her head. The blue light had swallowed her hand, surrounded the skull and the whole length of her arm. She screeched inside the roar. “And when I passed by thee, and saw thee, wallowing in thy blood! I said unto thee! In thy blood live!”

Victor jumped up with the knife and ran at Granpaw.

“Watch out, Granpaw!” I yelled, but the roar slammed my voice away. On the other side of the fence, inside the pig yard, a giant black funnel whirled in a coiling length, stretching and shrinking, fifty feet or more across, chewing up everything, tearing out big chunks of ground.

It was one a them racers I think. And it come at me so quick!

Fence posts, trees, the pig trough, what was left of the trailer, all flew up and around in a whirl. Victor raised the knife. The funnel jumped over the fence and whirled above the yard. Old Man Harlan and Reverend Pennycall ran for the police car.

I looked up through a gigantic green-glowing tunnel-hole — its walls solid, then vanishing, then solid again — like mist but deadly powerful — wind driven, whirling, spiraling up in the sky, threads of lightning zapping, rising, arcing upward across a heaving gap. I saw Victor and Granpaw struggling in a haze. Victor stabbed Granpaw through the heart with the knife.

I grabbed hold of a place in the middle of my chest, my fist wrapped in blue, shining like a blazing heart. “In thy blood!” I cried, trying to remind myself, trying to remind Victor.

Victor turned but the knife was gone. The blue light spread over my chest and down my arms. I was bigger than Victor now, taller, looking down on him, the worms in his eyes twisting to get away. He tried to run but one of his alligator shoes sucked off in the mud. Still, I didn’t want to hurt him. I wanted to help. I wanted to tell him that everything would be all right — only he had to stop. But then it was like the whorl had grabbed him by the nap of the neck and he was pulled backwards toward the well, arms flailing — surprised now, afraid, not strong, not like Superman anymore, not like Clark Kent — and while the whole world seemed to rise with the wind, the well broke and the posts and the well’s roof, all the flowers up there and the circle of rocks, everything around it, with Victor in the middle dove into the ground.

I’m in Granny’s featherbed. It’s nighttime, and it’s raining outside. I can hear it on the tin roof, a light rain. By the bed a kerosene lamp burns. It makes yellow light on the beams overhead. I feel the soft blanket against my skin. It feels warm and good. There’s a leftover smell of ham and pinto beans in the air. I try to snuggle down in the featherbed. I wonder how I got here, how long it has been.

The rain gets louder. A gust of wind presses against the tin, makes the beams tick. The lamp goes out. I’m looking up into the dark. Rain pours like a waterfall, millions of raindrops all at the same time, pounding against the tin roof. There’s thunder and lightning. More wind.

I feel a chill. I pull the blanket over my head to keep warm. There’s something wet and warm, spreading out from the middle of my back. It spreads all around me and then it turns cold. I’ve peed the bed. Granny will be mad. Granpaw will laugh.

But Granpaw’s dead! Stabbed through the heart with a knife!

I start to cry. Tears stream down my face.

Sharp things are picking into my back. I can’t move out of the wet. The blanket presses down on top of me, hard but soft too, like a wall with a carpet. A musty carpet. It’s pitch black dark. I smell cigars and moonshine. I hear a voice. I can’t tell whose. It’s muffled and far away.

“Orbie! Ah Orbie!” it says.

I beat against the carpet. “I’m here! Here I am!” I try to yell, but my voice falls flat against the carpeted wall thing. I hear huge splashes of water, somebody, a giant outside Granny’s house, crashing through huge puddles of mud. The carpeted wall thing shifts. Light comes in. I think it’s the sun. I think it’s morning and the sun has come up and it’s shining in the attic window, but still it rains.

Then the carpeted wall thing and all the covers, the pitch black dark, the beams and the tin roof, the whole house is lifted off and away. Cold rain splatters my eyes, my face. I choke. I spit. Somebody stands over me. A man. I can’t see who it is. He’s giant sized, old and wild-eyed with wet crazy gray hair, his chin covered with blood. I wipe the rain out of my eyes and see the gray pant legs of Granpaw’s coveralls. Granpaw holds up the darkness with both hands.

And with both hands he pushes it away.

Granpaw pulled me to my feet. I saw a destroyed yard, trailer parts scattered everywhere, broken glass, sheets and towels, the dinner plates Momma had left in the trailer, the roof over the front porch of the house sagging almost to the ground at one end. A dead pig, its belly split open, lay bloody across the hood of Momma’s Ford.