Wise Blood (8 page)

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 F
ROSTY
B
OTTLE.

“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 shouted. “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 F
ROSTY
B
OTTLE.
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 cross 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.

“Come on,” Enoch whispered. He went past the two cases in the middle of the floor
and toward the third one. He went to the farthest end of it and stopped. He stood
looking down with his neck thrust forward and his hands clutched together; Hazel Motes
moved up beside him.