Wise Blood (5 page)

“My Jesus,” Haze muttered.

“She didn’t have nothing but good looks,” she said in the loud fast voice. “That ain’t
enough. No sirree.”

“I hear them scraping their feet inside there,” the blind man said. “Get out the tracts,
they’re fixing to come out.”

“It ain’t enough,” she repeated.

“What we gonna do?” Enoch asked. “What’s inside theter building?”

“A program letting out,” the blind man said. “My congregation.”

The child took the tracts out of the gunny sack and gave him two bunches of them,
tied with a string. “You and the other boy go over on that side and give out,” he
said to her. “Me and the one that followed me’ll stay over here.”

“He don’t have no business touching them,” she said. “He don’t want to do anything
but shred them up.”

“Go like I told you,” the blind man said.

She stood there a second, scowling. Then she said, “You come on if you’re coming,”
to Enoch Emery and Enoch jumped off the lion and followed her over to the other side.

Haze ducked down a step but the blind man’s hand shot out and clamped him around the
arm. He said in a fast whisper, “Repent! Go to the head of the stairs and renounce
your sins and distribute these tracts to the people!” and he thrust a stack of pamphlets
into Haze’s hand.

Haze jerked his arm away but he only pulled the blind man nearer. “Listen,” he said,
“I’m as clean as you are.”

“Fornication and blasphemy and what else?” the blind man said.

“They ain’t nothing but words,” Haze said. “If I was in sin I was in it before I ever
committed any. There’s no change come in me.” He was trying to pry the fingers off
from around his arm but the blind man kept wrapping them tighter. “I don’t believe
in sin,” Haze said, “take your hand off me.”

“Jesus loves you,” the blind man said in a flat mocking voice, “Jesus loves you, Jesus
loves you…”

“Nothing matters but that Jesus don’t exist,” Haze said, pulling his arm free.

“Go to the head of the stairs and distribute these tracts and…”

“I’ll take them up there and throw them over into the bushes!” Haze shouted. “You
be watching and see can you see.”

“I can see more than you!” the blind man yelled, laughing. “You got eyes and see not,
ears and hear not, but you’ll have to see some time.”

“You be watching if you can see!” Haze said, and started running up the steps. A crowd
of people were already coming out the auditorium doors and some were halfway down
the steps. He pushed through them with his elbows out like sharp wings and when he
got to the top, a new surge of them pushed him back almost to where he had started
up. He fought through them again until somebody shouted, “Make room for this idiot!”
and people got out of his way. He rushed to the top and pushed his way over to the
side and stood there, glaring and panting.

“I never followed him,” he said aloud. “I wouldn’t follow a blind fool like that.
My Jesus.” He stood against the building, holding the stack of leaflets by the string.
A fat man stopped near him to light a cigar and Haze pushed his shoulder. “Look down
yonder,” he said. “See that blind man down there? He’s giving out tracts and begging.
Jesus. You ought to see him and he’s got this here ugly child dressed up in woman’s
clothes, giving them out too. My Jesus.”

“There’s always fanatics,” the fat man said, moving on.

“My Jesus,” Haze said. He leaned forward near an old woman with blue hair and a collar
of red wooden beads. “You better get on the other side, lady,” he said. “There’s a
fool down there giving out tracts.” The crowd behind the old woman pushed her on,
but she looked at him for an instant with two bright flea eyes. He started toward
her through the people but she was already too far away and he pushed back to where
he had been standing against the wall. “Sweet Jesus Christ Crucified,” he said, “I
want to tell you people something. Maybe you think you’re not clean because you don’t
believe. Well you are clean, let me tell you that. Every one of you people are clean
and let me tell you why if you think it’s because of Jesus Christ Crucified you’re
wrong. I don’t say he wasn’t crucified but I say it wasn’t for you. Listenhere, I’m
a preacher myself and I preach the truth.” The crowd was moving fast. It was like
a large spread raveling and the separate threads disappeared down the dark streets.
“Don’t I know what exists and what don’t?” he cried. “Don’t I have eyes in my head?
Am I a blind man? Listenhere,” he called, “I’m going to preach a new church—the church
of truth without Jesus Christ Crucified. It won’t cost you nothing to join my church.
It’s not started yet but it’s going to be.” The few people who were left glanced at
him once or twice. There were tracts scattered below over the sidewalk and out on
the street. The blind man was sitting on the bottom step. Enoch Emery was on the other
side, standing on the lion’s head, trying to balance himself, and the child was standing
near him, watching Haze. “I don’t need Jesus,” Haze said. “What do I need with Jesus?
I got Leora Watts.”

He went down the stairs quietly to where the blind man was and stopped. He stood there
a second and the blind man laughed. Haze moved away, and started across the street.
He was on the other side before the voice pierced after him. He turned and saw the
blind man standing in the middle of the street, shouting, “Hawks, Hawks, my name is
Asa Hawks when you try to follow me again!” A car had to swerve to the side to keep
from hitting him. “Repent!” he shouted and laughed and ran forward a little way, pretending
he was going to come after Haze and grab him.

Haze drew his head down nearer his hunched shoulders and went on quickly. He didn’t
look back until he heard other footsteps coming behind him.

“Now that we got shut of them,” Enoch Emery panted, “whyn’t we go somewher and have
us some fun?”

“Listen,” Haze said roughly, “I got business of my own. I seen all of you I want.”
He began walking very fast.

Enoch kept skipping steps to keep up. “I been here two months,” he said, “and I don’t
know nobody. People ain’t friendly here. I got me a room and there ain’t never no
body in it but me. My daddy said I had to come. I wouldn’t never have come but he
made me. I think I seen you sommers before. You ain’t from Stockwell, are you?”

“No.”

“Melsy?”

“No.”

“Sawmill set up there oncet,” Enoch said. “Look like you had a kind of familer face.”

They walked on without saying anything until they got on the main street again. It
was almost deserted. “Good-by,” Haze said.

“I’m going thisaway too,” Enoch said in a sullen voice. On the left there was a movie
house where the electric bill was being changed. “We hadn’t got tied up with them
hicks we could have gone to a show,” he muttered: He strode along at Haze’s elbow,
talking in a half mumble, half whine. Once he caught at his sleeve to slow him down
and Haze jerked it away. “My daddy made me come,” he said in a cracked voice. Haze
looked at him and saw he was crying, his face seamed and wet and a purple-pink color.
“I ain’t but eighteen year old,” he cried, “an’ he made me come and I don’t know nobody,
nobody here’ll have nothing to do with nobody else. They ain’t friendly. He done gone
off with a woman and made me come but she ain’t going to stay for long, he’ll beat
hell out of her before she gets herself stuck to a chair. You the first familer face
I seen in two months. I seen you sommers before. I know I seen you sommers before.”

Haze looked straight ahead with his face set and Enoch kept up the half mumble, half
blubber. They passed a church and a hotel and an antique shop and turned up Mrs. Watts’s
street.

“If you want you a woman you don’t have to be follering nothing looked like that kid
you give a peeler to,” Enoch said. “I heard about where there’s a house where we could
have us some fun. I could pay you back next week.”

“Look,” Haze said, “I’m going where I’m going—two doors from here. I got a woman.
I got a woman, see? And that’s where I’m going—to visit her. I don’t need to go with
you.”

“I could pay you back next week,” Enoch said. “I work at the city zoo. I guard a gate
and I get paid ever’ week.”

“Get away from me,” Haze said.

“People ain’t friendly here. You ain’t from here but you ain’t friendly neither.”

Haze didn’t answer him. He went on with his neck drawn close to his shoulder blades
as if he were cold.

“You don’t know nobody neither,” Enoch said. “You ain’t got no woman nor nothing to
do. I knew when I first seen you you didn’t have nobody nor nothing but Jesus. I seen
you and I knew it.”

“This is where I’m going in at,” Haze said, and he turned up the walk without looking
back at Enoch.

Enoch stopped. “Yeah,” he cried, “oh yeah,” and he ran his sleeve under his nose to
stop the snivel. “Yeah,” he cried, “go on where you goin’ but lookerhere.” He slapped
at his pocket and ran up and caught Haze’s sleeve and rattled the peeler box at him.
“She give me this. She give it to me and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.
She told me where they lived and ast me to visit them and bring you—not you bring
me, me bring you—and it was you follerin’ them.” His eyes glinted through his tears
and his face stretched in an evil crooked grin. “You act like you think you got wiser
blood than anybody else,” he said, “but you ain’t! I’m the one has it. Not you.
Me.
”

Haze didn’t say anything. He stood there for an instant, small in the middle of the
steps, and then he raised his arm and hurled the stack of tracts he had been carrying.
It hit Enoch in the chest and knocked his mouth open. He stood looking, with his mouth
hanging open, at where it had hit his front, and then he turned and tore off down
the street; and Haze went into the house.

Since the night before was the first time he had slept with any woman, he had not
been very successful with Mrs. Watts. When he finished, he was like something washed
ashore on her, and she had made obscene comments about him, which he remembered off
and on during the day. He was uneasy in the thought of going to her again. He didn’t
know what she would say when he opened the door and she saw him there.

When he opened the door and she saw him there, she said, “Ha ha.”

The black hat sat on his head squarely. He came in with it on and when it knocked
the electric light bulb that hung down from the middle of the ceiling, he took it
off. Mrs. Watts was in bed, applying a grease to her face. She rested her chin on
her hand and watched him. He began to move around the room, examining this and that.
His throat got dryer and his heart began to grip him like a little ape clutching the
bars of its cage. He sat down on the edge of her bed, with his hat in his hand.

Mrs. Watts’s grin was as curved and sharp as the blade of a sickle. It was plain that
she was so well-adjusted that she didn’t have to think any more. Her eyes took everything
in whole, like quicksand. “That Jesus-seeing hat!” she said. She sat up and pulled
her nightgown from under her and took it off. She reached for his hat and put it on
her head and sat with her hands on her hips, walling her eyes in a comical way. Haze
stared for a minute, then he made three quick noises that were laughs. He jumped for
the electric light cord and took off his clothes in the dark.

Once when he was small, his father took him to a carnival that stopped in Melsy. There
was one tent that cost more money a little off to one side. A dried-up man with a
horn voice was barking it. He didn’t say what was inside. He said it was so SINsational
that it would cost any man that wanted to see it thirty-five cents, and it was so
EXclusive, only fifteen could get in at a time. His father sent him to a tent where
two monkeys danced, and then he made for it, moving close to the walls of things like
he moved. Haze left the monkeys and followed him, but he didn’t have thirty-five cents.
He asked the barker what was inside.

“Beat it,” the man said. “There ain’t no pop and there ain’t no monkeys.”

“I already seen them,” he said.

“That’s fine,” the man said, “beat it.”

“I got fifteen cents,” he said. “Whyn’t you lemme in and I could see half of it?”
It’s something about a privy, he was thinking. It’s some men in a privy. Then he thought,
maybe it’s a man and a woman in a privy. She wouldn’t want me in there. “I got fifteen
cents,” he said.

“It’s more than half over,” the man said, fanning with his straw hat. “You run along.”

“That’ll be fifteen cents worth then,” Haze said.

“Scram,” the man said.

“Is it a nigger?” Haze asked. “Are they doing something to a nigger?”

The man leaned off his platform and his dried-up face drew into a glare. “Where’d
you get that idear?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Haze said.

“How old are you?” the man asked.

“Twelve,” Haze said. He was ten.

“Gimme that fifteen cents,” the man said, “and get in there.”

He slid the money on the platform and scrambled to get in before it was over. He went
through the flap of the tent and inside there was another tent and he went through
that. All he could see were the backs of the men. He climbed up’on a bench and looked
over their heads. They were looking down into a lowered place where something white
was lying, squirming a little, in a box lined with black cloth. For a second he thought
it was a skinned animal and then he saw it was a woman. She was fat and she had a
face like an ordinary woman except there was a mole on the corner of her lip, that
moved when she grinned, and one on her side.

“Had one of themther built into ever’ casket,” his father, up toward the front, said,
“be a heap ready to go sooner.”

Haze recognized the voice without looking. He slid down off the bench and scrambled
out of the tent. He crawled out under the side of the outside one because he didn’t
want to pass the barker. He got in the back of a truck and sat down in the far corner
of it. The carnival was making a tin roar outside.