Wise Blood Read online

  Haze was looking at the blind man and the child. “Hey!” Enoch Emery said, reaching across a woman and punching his arm. “He’s talking to you! He’s talking to you!” Enoch had to punch him again before he looked at the peeler man.

  “Whyn’t you take one of these home to yer wife?” the peeler man was saying.

  “Don’t have one,” Haze muttered, looking back at the blind man again.

  “Well, you got a dear old mother, ain’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Well pshaw,” the man said, with his hand cupped to the people, “he needs one theseyer just to keep him company.”

  Enoch Emery thought that was so funny that he doubled over and slapped his knee, but Hazel Motes didn’t look as if he had heard it yet. “I’m going to give away a half a dozen peeled potatoes to the first person purchasing one theseyer machines,” the man said. “Who’s gonna step up first? Only a dollar and a half for a machine’d cost you three dollars in any store!” Enoch Emery began fumbling in his pockets. “You’ll thank the day you ever stopped here,” the man said, “you’ll never forget it. Ever’ one of you people purchasing one theseyer machines’ll never forget it!”

  The blind man was moving forward slowly, saying in a kind of garbled mutter, “Help a blind preacher. If you won’t repent, give up a nickel. I can use it as good as you. Help a blind unemployed preacher. Wouldn’t you rather have me beg than preach? Come on and give a nickel if you won’t repent.”

  There were not many people gathered around but the ones who were began to move off. When the machine-seller saw this, he leaned, glaring over the card table. “Hey you!” he yelled at the blind man. “What you think you doing? Who you think you are, running people off from here?” The blind man didn’t pay any attention to him. He kept on rattling the cup and the child kept on handing out the pamphlets. He passed Enoch Emery and came on toward Haze, hitting the white cane out at an angle from his leg. Haze leaned forward and saw that the lines on his face were not painted on; they were scars.

  “What the hell you think you doing?” the man selling peelers yelled. “I got these people together, how you think you can horn in?”

  The child held one of the pamphlets out to Haze and he grabbed it. The words on the outside of it said, “Jesus Calls You.”

  “I’d like to know who the hell you think you are!” the man with the peelers was yelling. The child went back to where he was and handed him a tract. He looked at it for an instant with his lip curled and then he charged around the card table, upsetting the bucket of potatoes. “These damn Jesus fanatics,” he yelled, glaring around, trying to find the blind man. New people gathered, hoping to see a disturbance. “These goddam Communist foreigners!” the peeler man screamed. “I got this crowd together!” He stopped, realizing there was a crowd.

  “Listen folks,” he said, “one at a time, there’s plenty to go around, just don’t push, a half a dozen peeled potatoes to the first person stepping up to buy.” He got back behind the card table quietly and started holding up the peeler boxes. “Step on up, plenty to go around,” he said, “no need to crowd.”

  Haze didn’t open his tract. He looked at the outside of it and then he tore it across. He put the two pieces together and tore them across again. He kept re-stacking the pieces and tearing them again until he had a little handful of confetti. He turned his hand over and let the shredded leaflet sprinkle to the ground. Then he looked up and saw the blind man’s child not three feet away, watching him. Her mouth was open and her eyes glittered on him like two chips of green bottle glass. She had a white gunny sack hung over her shoulder. Haze scowled and began rubbing his sticky hands on his pants.

  “I seen you,” she said. Then she moved quickly over to where the blind man was standing now, beside the card table, and turned her head and looked at Haze from there. Most of the people had moved off.

  The peeler man leaned over the card table and said, “Hey!” to the blind man. “I reckon that showed you. Trying to horn in.”

  “Lookerhere,” Enoch Emery said, “I ain’t got but a dollar sixteen cent but I…”

  “Yah,” the man said, “I reckon that’ll show you you can’t muscle in on me. Sold eight peelers, sold…”

  “Give me one of them,” the blind man’s child said, pointing to the peelers.

  “Hanh,” he said.

  She was untying a handkerchief. She untied two fifty-cent pieces out of the knotted corner of it. “Give me one of them,” she said, holding out the money.

  The man eyed it with his mouth hiked to one side. “A buck fifty, sister,” he said.

  She pulled her hand in quickly and all at once glared at Hazel Motes as if he had made a noise at her. The blind man was moving on. She stood a second glaring at Haze, and then she turned and followed the blind man. Haze started.

  “Listen,” Enoch Emery said, “I ain’t got but a dollar sixteen cent and I want me one of them…”

  “You can keep it,” the man said, taking the bucket off the card table. “This ain’t no cut-rate joint.”

  Haze could see the blind man moving down the street some distance away. He stood staring after him, jerking his hands in and out of his pockets as if he were trying to move forward and backward at the same time. Then suddenly he thrust two dollars at the man selling peelers and snatched a box off the card table and started running down the street. In a second Enoch Emery was panting at his elbow. “My, I reckon you got a heap of money,” Enoch Emery said.

  Haze saw the child catch up with the blind man and take him by the elbow. They were about a block ahead of him. He slowed down some and saw Enoch Emery there. Enoch had on a yellowish white suit and a pinkish white shirt and his tie was the color of green peas. He was smiling. He looked like a friendly hound dog with light mange. “How long you been here?” he inquired.

  “Two days,” Haze muttered.

  “I been here two months,” Enoch said. “I work for the city. Where you work?”

  “Not working,” Haze said.

  “That’s too bad,” Enoch said. “I work for the city.” He skipped a step to get in line with Haze, then he said, “I’m eighteen year old and I ain’t been here but two months and I already work for the city.”

  “That’s fine,” Haze said. He pulled his hat down farther on the side Enoch Emery was on and walked very fast. The blind man up ahead began to make mock bows to the right and left.

  “I didn’t ketch your name good,” Enoch said.

  Haze said his name.

  “You look like you might be follerin’ them hicks,” Enoch remarked. “You go in for a lot of Jesus business?”

  “No,” Haze said.

  “No, me neither, not much,” Enoch agreed. “I went to thisyer Rodemill Boys’ Bible Academy for four weeks. Thisyer woman that traded me from my daddy she sent me. She was a Welfare woman. Jesus, four weeks and I thought I was going to be sanctified crazy.”

  Haze walked to the end of the block and Enoch stayed at his elbow, panting and talking. When Haze started across the street, Enoch yelled, “Don’t you see theter light! That means you got to wait!” A cop blew a whistle and a car blasted its horn and stopped short. Haze went on across, keeping his eyes on the blind man in the middle of the block. The policeman kept on blowing his whistle. He crossed the street to where Haze was and stopped him. He had a thin face and oval-shaped yellow eyes.

  “You know what that little thing hanging up there is for?” he asked, pointing to the traffic light over the intersection.

  “I didn’t see it,” Haze said.

  The policeman looked at him without saying anything. A few people stopped. He rolled his eyes at them. “Maybe you thought the red ones was for white folks and the green ones for niggers,” he said.

  “Yeah I thought that,” Haze said. “Take your hand off me.”

  The policeman took his hand off and put it on his hip. He backed one step away and said, “You tell all your friends about these lights. Red is to stop, green is to go—men and w
omen, white folks and niggers, all go on the same light. You tell all your friends so when they come to town, they’ll know.” The people laughed.

  “I’ll look after him,” Enoch Emery said, pushing in by the policeman. “He ain’t been here but only two days. I’ll look after him.”

  “How long you been here?” the cop asked.

  “I was born and raised here,” Enoch said. “This is my ol’ home town. I’ll take care of him for you. Hey wait!” he yelled at Haze. “Wait on me!” He pushed out of the crowd and caught up with him. “I reckon I saved you that time,” he said.

  “I’m obliged,” Haze said.

  “It wasn’t nothing,” Enoch said. “Whyn’t we go in Walgreen’s and get us a soda? Ain’t no night clubs open this early.”

  “I don’t like drug stores,” Haze said. “Good-by.”

  “That’s all right,” Enoch said. “I reckon I’ll go along and keep you company for a while.” He looked up ahead at the blind man and the child and said, “I sho wouldn’t want to get messed up with no hicks this time of night, particularly the Jesus kind. I done had enough of them myself. Thisyer Welfare woman that traded me from my daddy didn’t do nothing but pray. Me and daddy we moved around with a sawmill where we worked and it set up outside Boonville one summer and here come thisyer woman.” He caught hold of Haze’s coat. “Only objection I got to Taulkinham is there’s too many people on the streets,” he said confidentially. “Look like all they want to do is knock you down—well here she come and I reckon she took a fancy to me. I was twelve year old and I could sing some hymns good I learnt off a nigger. So here she comes taking a fancy to me and traded me off my daddy and took me to Boonville to live with her. She had a brick house but it was Jesus all day long.” A little man lost in a pair of faded overalls jostled him. “Whyn’t you look wher you going?” Enoch growled.

  The little man stopped and raised his arm in a vicious gesture and a nasty-dog look came on his face. “Who you tellin’ what?” he snarled.

  “You see,” Enoch said, jumping to catch up with Haze, “all they want to do is knock you down. I ain’t never been to such a unfriendly place before. Even with that woman. I stayed with her for two months in that house of hers,” he went on, “and then come fall she sent me to the Rodemill Boys’ Bible Academy and I thought that sho was going to be some relief. This woman was hard to get along with—she wasn’t old, I reckon she was forty year old—but she sho was ugly. She had theseyer brown glasses and her hair was so thin it looked like ham gravy trickling over her skull. I thought it was going to be some certain relief to get to theter Academy. I had run away oncet on her and she got me back and come to find out she had papers on me and she could send me to the penitentiary if I didn’t stay with her so I sho was glad to get to theter Academy. You ever been to a academy?”

  Haze didn’t seem to hear the question.

  “Well, it won’t no relief,” Enoch said. “Good Jesus, it won’t no relief. I run away from there after four weeks and durn if she didn’t get me back and brought me to that house of hers again. I got out though.” He waited a minute. “You want to know how?”

  After a second he said, “I scared hell out of that woman, that’s how. I studied on it and studied on it. I even prayed. I said, ‘Jesus, show me the way to get out of here without killing thisyer woman and getting sent to the penitentiary,’ and durn if He didn’t. I got up one morning at just daylight and I went in her room without my pants on and pulled the sheet off her and giver a heart attact. Then I went back to my daddy and we ain’t seen hide of her since.

  “Your jaw just crawls,” he observed, watching the side of Haze’s face. “You don’t never laugh. I wouldn’t be surprised if you wasn’t a real wealthy man.”

  Haze turned down a side street. The blind man and the girl were on the corner a block ahead. “Well, I reckon we going to ketch up with them after all,” Enoch said. “You know many people here?”

  “No,” Haze said.

  “You ain’t gonna know none neither. This is one more hard place to make friends in. I been here two months and I don’t know nobody. Look like all they want to do is knock you down. I reckon you got a right heap of money,” he said. “I ain’t got none. Had, I’d sho know what to do with it.” The blind man and his child stopped on the corner and turned up the left side of the street. “We ketchin’ up,” he said. “I bet we’ll be at some meeting singing hymns with her and her daddy if we don’t watch out.”

  Up in the next block there was a large building with columns and a dome. The blind man and the girl were going toward it. There was a car parked in every space around the building and on the other side of the street and up and down the streets near it. “That ain’t no picture show,” Enoch said. The blind man and the girl turned up the steps to the building. The steps went all the way across the front, and on either side there were stone lions sitting on pedestals. “Ain’t no church,” Enoch said. Haze stopped at the steps. He looked as if he were trying to settle his face into an expression. He pulled the black hat forward at a sharp angle and started toward the two, who had sat down in the corner by one of the lions. He came up to where the blind man was without saying anything and stood leaning forward in front of him as if he were trying to see through the black glasses. The child stared at him.

  The blind man’s mouth thinned slightly. “I can smell the sin on your breath,” he said.

  Haze drew back.

  “What’d you follow me for?”

  “I never followed you,” Haze said.

  “She said you were following,” the blind man said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the child.

  “I ain’t followed you,” Haze said. He felt the peeler box in his hand and looked at the girl. Her black knitted cap made a straight line across her forehead. She grinned suddenly and then quickly drew her expression back together as if she smelled something bad. “I ain’t followed you nowhere,” Haze said. “I followed her.” He stuck the peeler out at her.

  At first she looked as if she were going to grab it, but she didn’t. “I don’t want that thing,” she said. “What you think I want with that thing? Take it. It ain’t mine. I don’t want it!”

  “You take it,” the blind man said. “You put it in your sack and shut up before I hit you.”

  Haze thrust the peeler at her again.

  “I won’t have it,” she muttered.

  “You take it like I told you,” the blind man said. “He never followed you.”

  She took it and shoved it in the sack where the tracts were. “It ain’t mine,” she said. “I got it but it ain’t mine.”

  “I followed her to say I ain’t beholden for none of her fast eye like she gave me back there,” Haze said, looking at the blind man.

  “What you mean?” she shouted. “I never looked at you with no fast eye. I only watched you tearing up that tract. He tore it up in little pieces,” she said, pushing the blind man’s shoulder. “He tore it up and sprinkled it all over the ground like salt and wiped his hands on his pants.”

  “He followed me,” the blind man said. “Nobody would follow you. I can hear the urge for Jesus in his voice.”

  “Jesus,” Haze muttered. “My Jesus.” He sat down by the girl’s leg and set his hand on the step next to her foot. She had on sneakers and black cotton stockings.

  “Listen at him cursing,” she said in a low tone. “He never followed you, Papa.”

  The blind man gave his edgy laugh. “Listen boy,” he said, “you can’t run away from Jesus. Jesus is a fact.”

  “I know a whole heap about Jesus,” Enoch said. “I attended thisyer Rodemill Boys’ Bible Academy that a woman sent me to. If it’s anything you want to know about Jesus, just ast me.” He had got up on the lion’s back and he was sitting there sideways, cross-legged.

  “I come a long way,” Haze said, “since I would believe anything. I come halfway around the world.”

  “Me too,” Enoch Emery said.

  “You ain’t come so f
ar that you could keep from following me,” the blind man said. He reached out suddenly and his hands covered Haze’s face. For a second Haze didn’t move or make any sound. Then he knocked the hands off.

  “Quit it,” he said in a faint voice. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “My daddy looks just like Jesus,” Enoch remarked from the lion’s back. “His hair hangs to his shoulders. Only difference is he’s got a scar acrost his chin. I ain’t never seen who my mother is.”

  “Some preacher has left his mark on you,” the blind man said with a kind of snicker. “Did you follow for me to take it off or give you another one?”

  “Listen here, there’s nothing for your pain but Jesus,” the child said suddenly. She tapped Haze on the shoulder. He sat there with his black hat tilted forward over his face. “Listen,” she said in a louder voice, “this here man and woman killed this little baby. It was her own child but it was ugly and she never give it any love. This child had Jesus and this woman didn’t have nothing but good looks and a man she was living in sin with. She sent the child away and it come back and she sent it away again and it come back again and ever’ time she sent it away, it come back to where her and this man was living in sin. They strangled it with a silk stocking and hung it up in the chimney. It didn’t give her any peace after that, though. Everything she looked at was that child. Jesus made it beautiful to haunt her. She couldn’t lie with that man without she saw it, staring through the chimney at her, shining through the brick in the middle of the night.”