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

We’d climbed the hill back of the barn, and now stood looking out over Harlan’s Crossroads. “I’ll tell you what’s the truth youngun,” Granny said. “We don’t get rain soon, Harlan’s Crossroads gonna blow away. Sure is purdy though. Look away over yonder. See that shining?”

I could see over the four corners of the crossroads, over Granpaw’s field of shiny leaf tobacco.

“Look up Bounty there,” Granny said. “That shining there.”

Light flashed back from where she was pointing. “That’s new tin. Storm blowed a tree over, right onto Moses Mashbone’s roof. He got that tin to fix it with. We done picking, we’ll go see.”

Moses Mashbone was a medicine preacher who was said to have handled snakes, something Momma had told me. I looked away and out over the hazy blue hills. “Bounty goes to Circle Stump, don’t it Granny?”

“Goes through Kingdom first, then Circle Stump.” Granny pointed off to the left. “Kingdom Church’s over that way.”

“Colored people live in the Kingdom,” I said.

“Your Momma tell you that?”

“Uh huh.”

“It didn’t have a name till they started that Nigger Kingdom business,” Granny said. “That bunch over to Circle Stump. Why, coloreds is some of the best folks in the world! You know what they did when the white folks started calling their little section Nigger Kingdom?”

“Got their knives out,” I said.

“Knives?”

“Yeah. To cut the Circle Stump people. For calling them names.”

“Why, they wouldn’t a bit more done that than nothing!” Granny said.

“What did they do then?”

“Kept the name of ‘Kingdom’ without that ‘Nigger’ part is what. So they had just ‘Kingdom’, you know, like the Kingdom of Heaven.” Granny turned and started along another path up the hill. “Kingdom Town. Like in the Bible.”

I hurried to catch up. “Oh. Like with angels and God and Jesus and all the saved people.”

“That’s right. Except their Kingdom is right here on earth. Ain’t that a nice idea?”

I didn’t know if it was nice or not. It sounded good, but you couldn’t have angels and God and Jesus walking around on the ground like people.

“Church house ain’t but a mile from there. Where me and Strode goes. Kingdom Church. There’s a little old creek runs in behind it. Kingdom Creek. Cotton mouth all up in there. Poison.”

“Moses picks’em up, don’t he Granny?”

“What? Snakes?”

“Cotton mouths.”

“Yeah cotton mouths! Copperheads and rattler too. Kill you deader’n four o’clock! God protects Moses though. Even if he was to get bit, I don’t reckon it would hurt him any.”

We came up to Moses Mashbone’s house from the back way, our buckets not even half full of the sorriest looking blackberries Granny said she’d ever seen. I was sweating and miserable, thinking over all what had happened, all the things I couldn’t change, worried about Momma and Victor, still mad at them for leaving me.

“Moses won’t be to home, more than likely,” Granny said. “Miss Alma will be though.”

“That his wife?” I said.

“No,” Granny laughed. “She just keeps house. Got kids of her own. And a house in the Kingdom.”

Moses’ house was smaller than Granny and Granpaw’s, covered over with brown sandy shingles. A tree had fallen across the roof at one end and had knocked the chimney sideways. “That there’s a big oak,” Granny said. “Mashed in the roof there and everything. Ain’t that a sight?” The base of the tree had been pulled right out of the ground, a huge circle of red clay and gnarly black roots.

“Same wind blowed our well cockeyed blowed that tree cockeyed. See that tin there?” Sheets of tin were leaning up against the back of the house. “What we seen from up the hill. Moses gonna fix his roof with that.”

We walked on around to the front of the house. Granny hollered at the door. “Miss Alma, you in there!”

Nobody answered.

“I ain’t got all day girl!”

Still nobody answered; then came the sound of a door closing, and a voice hollering from within. “Lawd, Lawd, I comin’! Don’t has to shout now!”

The screen door opened and out stepped the biggest, blackest colored-woman I’d ever seen. She looked like the woman on all the pancake boxes — the Aunt Jemima woman — so giant-sized she filled up the whole doorway. Her head was wrapped in a dirty orange rag, tied around in front so the ends stood up like little rabbit ears.

Granny put her hand on my shoulder. “This here’s Orbie.”

Miss Alma smiled a mouthful of white-white teeth. Her breasts, titties I called them then, were big as watermelons.

“Ruby’s boy,” Granny said.

“Well,” Miss Alma said. “I sho’ is pleased to meet you!”

I tried not to look at the watermelons.

“He’ll be staying down here a while,” Granny said. “Till his Momma gets back.”

“Hmmm, hmmm. Well. Look to me like he be shy a little bit. Hmmm, hmmm. He a good lookin’ boy though.”

“I thank so,” Granny said.

They both looked at me like it was my turn to talk, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Where’s Moses?” Granny said.

“Oh he be off somewhere,” Miss Alma said. “You know how he do.”

Granny reached one of the buckets of berries up to Miss Alma. “Ain’t much to look at but they’ll do for jam.”

“Lawd, Lawd,” Miss Alma said. “Moses be pleased to get deze, sho’ will. Ya’ll come in now. I gots ice tea.”

“No. We best be getting back, Miss Alma. Thank you kindly.” Granny looked up in the sky. A few clouds drifted up there, dark little clouds with white silvery sides. “Reckon it’ll rain soon?”

Miss Alma laughed. “It do, I hope dey no wind in it.”

“No. We don’t need no more of that. Look over there Orbie.” Granny gestured toward a little hill of dirt by the fence. A big rusty door slanted up one side. “That’s Moses’ storm cellar. Only one around except for Nealy Harlan’s. There’s a bad storm we come down here.”

“How come you don’t use Mr. Harlan’s storm cellar?” I said. “It’s a long way over here, Granny.”

“It ain’t long if you go the road,” Granny said. “Besides, Nealy won’t let nobody use his cellar. Stingy old goat. He don’t even use it himself, him nor Bird neither one. They’s a bad storm, they come down here like the rest of us.”

“Have moonshine in dat cellah of his,” Miss Alma said.

“Barrels of it,” Granny said.

“Hmm, hmm, sho’ do.”

Daddy told me once about Old Man Harlan’s moonshine; how he sold it to the colored. “You know what moonshine is son? Make you sicker’n a dog!” Said Old Man Harlan had to sell his moonshine in secret because of the law. “He might hate the colored, but he don’t hate their money. Never could trust a man like that.”

When we got back to the crossroads, Granny stepped up a little bank and went into the graveyard. She did this so suddenly it near gave me the heebie-jeebies; still I managed to follow her in. Grave markers stuck up everywhere. Some were badly cracked and crumbling, some so dingy gray and grown over with black stuff you could hardly read the names.

“Nealy Harlan ought to be horsewhipped for letting it go like this,” Granny said. Everywhere there were all kinds of weeds and picker bushes growing. Dandelion fuzz balls. Gawky dead cottonwood claws reaching down from above.

“I want you just to look!” Granny pointed along where there was a busted out place in the fence. “All the time after us and won’t even fix his own fence line.” On the other side of the busted out place stood a weeping willow tree, its umbrella of leaves drooped and withering in the sun.