The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [40]
“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 Oil the corner a block ahead.
“Well, I reckon we gonna ketch up with em after all,” Enoch said. “Ain’t that girl ugly, though? You seen them shoes she has on? Men’s shoes, looks like. 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 man and the girl stopped on the corner and turned up the left side of the street. “We catching 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 child were going toward it. There was a car parked in every space around the building and on the other side 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 nasty angle and started toward the two, who had sat down in the corner by one of the lions.
As they came nearer the blind man leaned forward as if he were listening to the footsteps, then he stood up, holding a tract out in his hand.
“Sit down,” the child said in a loud voice. “It ain’t nobody but them two boys.”
“Nobody but us,” Enoch Emery said. “Me and him been follerin you all about a mile.”
“I knew somebody was following me,” the blind man said. “Sit down.”
“They ain’t here for nothing but to make fun,” the child said. She looked as if she smelled something bad. The blind man was feeling out to touch them. Haze stood just out of reach of his hands, squinting at him as if he were trying to see the empty eye sockets under the green glasses.
“It ain’t me, it’s him,” Enoch said. “He’s been running after yawl ever since back yonder by them potato peelers. We bought one of em.”
“I knew somebody was following me!” the blind man said. “I felt it all the way back yonder.”
“I ain’t followed you,” Haze said. He felt the peeler box in his hand and looked at the girl. The black knitted cap came down almost to her eyes. She looked as if she might be thirteen or fourteen years old. “I ain’t followed you nowhere,” he said sourly. “I followed her.” He stuck the peeler box out at her.
She jumped back and looked as if she were going to swallow her face. “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!”
“I take it with thanks for her,” the blind man said. “Put it in your sack,” he said to her.
Haze thrust the peeler at her again, but he was still looking at the blind man.
“I won’t have it,” she muttered.
“Take it like I told you,” the blind man said shortly.
After a second she took it and shoved it in the sack where the tracts were. “It ain’t mine,” she said. “I don’t want none of it. I got it but it ain’t mine.”
“She thanks you for it,” the blind man said. “I knew somebody was following me.”
“I ain’t followed you nowhere,” Haze said. “I followed her to say I ain’t beholden for none of her fast eye like she gave me back yonder.” He didn’t look at her, he looked at the blind man.
“What do you mean?” she shouted. “I never gave you no fast eye. I only watch 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 over the ground like salt and wiped his hands