Wise Blood Read online

  The woman came out of the bath house and went to the diving board. She spread her arms out and began to bounce, making a big flapping sound with the board. Then suddenly she swirled backward and disappeared below the water. Mr. Hazel Motes’s head turned very slowly, following her down the pool.

  Enoch got up and went down the path behind the bath house. He came stealthily out on the other side and started walking toward Haze. He stayed on the top of the slope, moving softly in the grass just off the sidewalk, and making no noise. When he was directly behind him, he sat down on the edge of the sidewalk. If his arms had been ten feet long, he could have put his hands on Haze’s shoulders. He studied him quietly.

  The woman was climbing out of the pool, chinning herself up on the side. First her face appeared, long and cadaverous, with a bandage-like bathing cap coming down almost to her eyes, and sharp teeth protruding from her mouth. Then she rose on her hands until a large foot and leg came up from behind her and another on the other side and she was out, squatting there, panting. She stood up loosely and shook herself, and stamped in the water drip-ping off her. She was facing them and she grinned. Enoch could see part of Hazel Motes’s face watching the woman. It didn’t grin in return but it kept on watching her as she padded over to a spot of sun almost directly under where they were sitting. Enoch had to move a little closer to see.

  The woman sat down in the spot of sun and took off her bathing cap. Her hair was short and matted and all colors, from deep rust to a greenish yellow. She shook her head and then she looked up at Hazel Motes again, grinning through her pointed teeth. She stretched herself out in the spot of sun, raising her knees and settling her backbone down against the concrete. The two little boys, at the other end of the water, were knocking each other’s heads against the side of the pool. She settled herself until she was flat against the concrete and then she reached up and pulled the bathing suit straps off her shoulders.

  “King Jesus!” Enoch whispered and before he could get his eyes off the woman, Hazel Motes had sprung up and was almost to his car. The woman was sitting straight up with the suit half off her in front, and Enoch was looking both ways at once.

  He wrenched his attention loose from the woman and darted after Hazel Motes. “Wait on me!” he shouted and waved his arms in front of the car which was already rattling and starting to go. Hazel Motes cut off the motor. His face behind the windshield was sour and frog-like; it looked as if it had a shout closed up in it; it looked like one of those closet doors in gangster pictures where someone is tied to a chair behind it with a towel in his mouth.

  “Well,” Enoch said, “I declare if it ain’t Hazel Motes. How are you, Hazel?”

  “The guard said I’d find you at the swimming pool,” Hazel Motes said. “He said you hid in the bushes and watched the swimming.”

  Enoch blushed. “I allus have admired swimming,” he said. Then he stuck his head farther through the window. “You were looking for me?” he exclaimed.

  “That blind man,” Haze said, “that blind man named Hawks—did his child tell you where they lived?”

  Enoch didn’t seem to hear. “You came out here special to see me?” he said.

  “Asa Hawks. His child gave you the peeler. Did she tell you where they lived?”

  Enoch eased his head out of the car. He opened the door and climbed in beside Haze. For a minute he only looked at him, wetting his lips. Then he whispered, “I got to show you something.”

  “I’m looking for those people,” Haze said. “I got to see that man. Did she tell you where they lived?”

  “I got to show you this thing,” Enoch said. “I got to show it to you, here, this afternoon. I got to.” He gripped Hazel Motes’s arm and Haze shook him off.

  “Did she tell you where they live?” he said again.

  Enoch kept wetting his lips. They were pale except for his fever blister, which was purple. “Cert’nly,” he said. “Ain’t she invited me to come to see her and bring my mouth organ? I got to show you this thing, then I’ll tell you.”

  “What thing?” Haze muttered.

  “This thing I got to show you,” Enoch said. “Drive straight on ahead and I’ll tell you where to stop.”

  “I don’t want to see anything of yours,” Haze Motes said. “I want that address.”

  Enoch didn’t look at Hazel Motes. He looked out the window. “I won’t be able to remember it unless you come,” he said. In a minute the car started. Enoch’s blood was beating fast. He knew he had to go to the FROSTY BOTTLE and the zoo before there, and he foresaw a terrible struggle with Hazel Motes. He would have to get him there, even if he had to hit him over the head with a rock and carry him on his back up to it.

  Enoch’s brain was divided into two parts. The part in communication with his blood did the figuring but it never said anything in words. The other part was stocked up with all kinds of words and phrases. While the first part was figuring how to get Hazel Motes through the FROSTY BOTTLE and the zoo, the second inquired, “Where’d you git thisyer fine car? You ought to paint you some signs on the outside it, like ‘Step-in, baby’—I seen one with that on it, then I seen another, said…”

  Hazel Motes’s face might have been cut out of the side of a rock.

  “My daddy once owned a yeller Ford automobile he won on a ticket,” Enoch murmured. “It had a roll-top and two aerials and a squirrel tail all come with it. He swapped it off. Stop here! Stop here!” he yelled—they were passing the FROSTY BOTTLE.

  “Where is it?” Hazel Motes said as soon as they were inside. They were in a dark room with a counter across the back of it and brown stools like toad stools in front of the counter. On the wall facing the door there was a large advertisement for ice cream, showing a cow dressed up like a housewife.

  “It ain’t here,” Enoch said. “We have to stop here on the way and get something to eat. What you want?”

  “Nothing,” Haze said. He stood stiffly in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets.

  “Well, sit down,” Enoch said. “I have to have a little drink.”

  Something stirred behind the counter and a woman with bobbed hair like a man’s got up from a chair where she had been reading the newspaper, and came forward. She looked sourly at Enoch. She had on a once-white uniform clotted with brown stains. “What you want?” she said in a loud voice, leaning close to his ear. She had a man’s face and big muscled arms.

  “I want a chocolate malted milkshake, baby girl,” Enoch said softly. “I want a lot of ice cream in it.”

  She turned fiercely from him and glared at Haze.

  “He says he don’t want nothing but to sit down and look at you for a while,” Enoch said. “He ain’t hungry but for just to see you.”

  Haze looked woodenly at the woman and she turned her back on him and began mixing the milkshake. He sat down on the last stool in the row and started cracking his knuckles.

  Enoch watched him carefully. “I reckon you done changed some,” he said after a few minutes.

  Haze got up. “Give me those people’s address. Right now,” he said.

  It came to Enoch in an instant—the police. His face was suddenly suffused with secret knowledge. “I reckon you ain’t as uppity as you was last night,” he said. “I reckon maybe,” he said, “you ain’t got so much cause now as you had then.” Stole theter automobile, he thought.

  Hazel Motes sat back down.

  “Howcome you jumped up so fast down yonder by the pool?” Enoch asked. The woman turned around to him with the malted milk in her hand. “Of course,” he said evilly, “I wouldn’t have had no truck with a ugly dish like that neither.”

  The woman thumped the malted milk on the counter in front of him. “Fifteen cents,” she roared.

  “You’re worth more than that, baby girl,” Enoch said. He snickered and began gassing his malted milk through the straw.

  The woman strode over to where Haze was. “What you come in here with a son of a bitch like that for?” she shoute
d. “A nice quiet boy like you to come in here with a son of a bitch. You ought to mind the company you keep.” Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter. “Jesus,” she said, wiping her hand under her nose. She sat down in a straight chair in front of Haze but facing Enoch, and folded her arms across her chest. “Ever’ day,” she said to Haze, looking at Enoch, “ever’ day that son of a bitch comes in here.”

  Enoch was thinking about the animals. They had to go next to see the animals. He hated them; just thinking about them made his face turn a chocolate purple color as if the malted milk were rising in his head.

  “You’re a nice boy,” she said. “I can see, you got a clean nose, well keep it clean, don’t go messin’ with a son a bitch like that yonder. I always know a clean boy when I see one.” She was shouting at Enoch, but Enoch watched Hazel Motes. It was as if something inside Hazel Motes was winding up, although he didn’t move on the outside. He only looked pressed down in that blue suit, as if inside it, the thing winding was getting tighter and tighter. Enoch’s blood told him to hurry. He raced the milkshake up the straw.

  “Yes sir,” she said, “there ain’t anything sweeter than a clean boy. God for my witness. And I know a clean one when I see him and I know a son a bitch when I see him and there’s a heap of difference and that pus-marked bastard zlurping through that straw is a goddamned son a bitch and you a clean boy had better mind how you keep him company. I know a clean boy when I see one.”

  Enoch screeched in the bottom of his glass. He fished fifteen cents from his pocket and laid it on the counter and got up. But Hazel Motes was already up; he was leaning over the counter toward the woman. She didn’t see him right away because she was looking at Enoch. He leaned on his hands over the counter until his face was just a foot from hers. She turned around and stared at him.

  “Come on,” Enoch started, “we don’t have no time to be sassing around with her. I got to show you this right away, I got…”

  “I AM clean,” Haze said.

  It was not until he said it again that Enoch caught the words.

  “I AM clean,” he said again, without any expression on his face or in his voice, just looking at the woman as if he were looking at a wall. “If Jesus existed, I wouldn’t be clean,” he said.

  She stared at him, startled and then outraged. “What do you think I care!” she yelled. “Why should I give a goddam what you are!”

  “Come on,” Enoch whined, “come on or I won’t tell you where them people live.” He caught Haze’s arm and pulled him back from the counter and toward the door.

  “You bastard!” the woman screamed, “what do you think I care about any of you filthy boys?”

  Hazel Motes pushed the door open quickly and went out. He got back in his car and Enoch climbed in behind him. “Okay,” Enoch said, “drive straight on ahead down this road.”

  “What you want for telling me?” Haze said. “I’m not staying here. I have to go. I can’t stay here any longer.”

  Enoch shuddered. He began wetting his lips. “I got to show it to you,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t show it to nobody but you. I had a sign it was you when I seen you drive up at the pool. I knew all morning somebody was going to come and then when I saw you at the pool, I had thisyer sign.”

  “I don’t care about your signs,” Haze said.

  “I go to see it ever’ day,” Enoch said. “I go ever’ day but I ain’t ever been able to take nobody else with me. I had to wait on the sign. I’ll tell you them people’s address just as soon as you see it. You got to see it,” he said. “When you see it, something’s going to happen.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” Haze said.

  He started the car again and Enoch sat forward on the seat. “Them animals,” he muttered. “We got to walk by them first. It won’t take long for that. It won’t take a minute.” He saw the animals waiting evil-eyed for him, ready to throw him off time. He thought what if the police were screaming out here now with sirens and squad cars and they got Hazel Motes just before he showed it to him.

  “I got to see those people,” Haze said.

  “Stop here! Stop here!” Enoch yelled.

  There was a long shining row of steel cages over to the left and behind the bars, black shapes were sitting or pacing. “Get out,” Enoch said. “This won’t take one second.”

  Haze got out. Then he stopped. “I got to see those people,” he said.

  “Okay, okay, come on,” Enoch whined.

  “I don’t believe you know the address.”

  “I do! I do!” Enoch cried. “It begins with a three, now come on!” He pulled Haze toward the cages. Two black bears sat in the first one, facing each other like two matrons having tea, their faces polite and self-absorbed. “They don’t do nothing but sit there all day and stink,” Enoch said. “A man comes and washes them cages out ever’ morning with a hose and it stinks just as much as if he’d left it.” He went past two more cages of bears, not looking at them, and then he stopped at the next cage where there were two yellow-eyed wolves nosing around the edges of the concrete. “Hyenas,” he said. “I ain’t got no use for hyenas.” He leaned closer and spit into the cage, hitting one of the wolves on the leg. It shuttled to the side, giving him a slanted evil look. For a second he forgot Hazel Motes. Then he looked back quickly to make sure he was still there. He was right behind him. He was not looking at the animals. Thinking about them police, Enoch thought. He said, “Come on, we don’t have time to look at all theseyer monkeys that come next.” Usually he stopped at every cage and made an obscene comment aloud to himself, but today the animals were only a form he had to get through. He hurried past the cages of monkeys, looking back two or three times to make sure Hazel Motes was behind him. At the last of the monkey cages, he stopped as if he couldn’t help himself.

  “Look at that ape,” he said, glaring. The animal had its back to him, gray except for a small pink seat. “If I had a ass like that,” he said prudishly, “I’d sit on it. I wouldn’t be exposing it to all these people come to this park. Come on, we don’t have to look at theseyer birds that come next.” He ran past the cages of birds and then he was at the end of the zoo. “Now we don’t need the car,” he said, going on ahead, “we’ll go right down that hill yonder through them trees.” Haze had stopped at the last cage for birds. “Oh Jesus,” Enoch groaned. He stood and waved his arms wildly and shouted, “Come on!” but Haze didn’t move from where he was looking into the cage.

  Enoch ran back to him and grabbed him by the arm but Haze pushed him off and kept on looking in the cage. It was empty. Enoch stared. “It’s empty!” he shouted. “What you have to look in that ole empty cage for? You come on!” He stood there, sweating and purple. “It’s empty!” he shouted. And then he saw it wasn’t empty. Over in one corner on the floor of the cage, there was an eye. The eye was in the middle of something that looked like a piece of mop sitting on an old rag. He squinted close to the wire and saw that the piece of mop was an owl with one eye open. It was looking directly at Hazel Motes. “That ain’t nothing but a ole hoot owl,” he moaned. “You seen them things before.”

  “I AM clean,” Haze said to the eye. He said it just the way he said it to the woman in the FROSTY BOTTLE. The eye shut softly and the owl turned its face to the wall.

  He’s done murdered somebody, Enoch thought. “Oh sweet Jesus, come on!” he wailed. “I got to show you this right now.” He pulled him away but a few feet from the cage, Haze stopped again, looking at something in the distance. Enoch’s eyesight was very poor. He squinted and made out a figure far down the road behind them. There were two smaller figures jumping on either side of it.

  Hazel Motes turned back to him suddenly and said, “Where’s this thing? Let’s see it right now and get it over with. Come on.”

  “Ain’t that where I been trying to take you?” Enoch said. He felt the perspiration drying on him and stinging and his skin was pin-pointed, even in his scalp. “We got to cro
ss this road and go down this hill. We got to go on foot,” he said.

  “Why?” Haze muttered.

  “I don’t know,” Enoch said. He knew something was going to happen to him. His blood stopped beating. All the time it had been beating like drum noises and now it had stopped. They started down the hill. It was a steep hill, full of trees painted white from the ground up four feet. They looked as if they had on ankle-socks. He gripped Hazel Motes’s arm. “It gets damp as you go down,” he said, looking around vaguely. Hazel Motes shook him off. In a second, Enoch gripped his arm again and stopped him. He pointed down through the trees. “Muvseevum,” he said. The strange word made him shiver. That was the first time he had ever said it aloud. A piece of gray building was showing where he pointed. It grew larger as they went down the hill, then as they came to the end of the wood and stepped out on the gravel driveway, it seemed to shrink suddenly. It was round and soot-colored. There were columns at the front of it and in between each column there was an eyeless stone woman holding a pot on her head. A concrete band was over the columns and the letters, MVSEVM, were cut into it. Enoch was afraid to pronounce the word again.

  “We got to go up the steps and through the front door,” he whispered. There were ten steps up to the porch. The door was wide and black. Enoch pushed it in cautiously and inserted his head in the crack. In a minute he brought it out again and said, “All right, go on in and walk easy. I don’t want to wake up theter ole guard. He ain’t very friendly with me.” They went into a dark hall. It was heavy with the odor of linoleum and creosote and another odor behind these two. The third one was an undersmell and Enoch couldn’t name it as anything he had ever smelled before. There was nothing in the hall but two urns and an old man asleep in a straight chair against the wall. He had on the same kind of uniform as Enoch and he looked like a dried-up spider stuck there. Enoch looked at Hazel Motes to see if he was smelling the undersmell. He looked as if he were. Enoch’s blood began to beat again, urging him forward. He gripped Haze’s arm and tiptoed through the hall to another black door at the end of it. He cracked it a little and inserted his head in the crack. Then in a second he drew it out and crooked his finger in a gesture for Haze to follow him. They went into another hall, like the last one, but running crosswise. “It’s in that first door yonder,” Enoch said in a small voice. They went into a dark room full of glass cases. The glass cases covered the walls and there were three coffin-like ones in the middle of the floor. The ones on the walls were full of birds tilted on varnished sticks and looking down with dried piquant expressions.