The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [41]
“He followed me,” the blind man said. “Wouldn’t anybody 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. His head was at her knee and he set his hand on the step next to her foot. She had on men’s shoes and black cotton stockings. The shoes were laced up tight and tied in precise bows. She moved herself away roughly and sat down behind the blind man.
“Listen at his cursing,” she said in a low tone. “He never followed you.”
“Listen,” the blind man said, “you can’t run away from Jesus. Jesus is a fact. If who you’re looking for is Jesus, the sound of it will be in your voice.”
“I don’t hear nothing in his voice,” Enoch Emery said. “I know a whole heap about Jesus because I attended this here Rodemill Boys’ Bible Academy that a woman sent me to. If it was anything about Jesus in his voice I could certainly hear it.” He had got up onto the lion’s back and he was sitting there sideways crosslegged.
The blind man reached out again and his hands suddenly 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 nothing about me.”
“You got a secret need,” the blind man said. “Them that know Jesus once can’t escape Him in the end.”
“I ain’t never known Him,” Haze said.
“You got a least knowledge,” the blind man said. “That’s enough. You know His name and you’re marked. If Jesus has marked you there ain’t nothing you can do about it. Them that have knowledge can’t swap it for ignorance.” He was leaning forward but in the wrong direction so that he appeared to be talking to the step below Haze’s foot. Haze sat leaning backward with the black hat tilted forward over his face.
“My daddy looks just like Jesus,” Enoch said 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.”
“You’re marked with knowledge,” the blind man said. “You know what sin is and only them that know what it is can commit it. I knew all the time we were walking here somebody was following me,” he said. “You couldn’t have followed her. Wouldn’t anybody follow her. I could feel there was somebody near with an urge for Jesus.”
“There ain’t nothing for your pain but Jesus,” the girl said suddenly. She leaned forward and stuck her arm out with her finger pointed at Haze’s shoulder, but he spat down the steps and didn’t look at her. “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 stock ng 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.” She moved her feet around so that just the tips of them stuck out from her skirt which she had pulled tight around her legs. “She didn’t have nothing but good looks,” she said in a loud fast voice. “That ain’t enough. No sirree.”
“My Jesus,” Haze said.
“It ain’t enough,” she repeated.
“I hear them scraping their feet inside there,” the blind man said.
“Get out the tracts, they’re fixing to come out.”
“What we gonna do?” Enoch asked. “What’s inside theter building?”
“A program letting out,” the blind man said. The child took the tracts out the gunny sack and gave him two bunches of them, tied with a string. “You and Enoch Emery go over on that side and give out,” he said to her. “Me and this boy’ll stay over here.”
“He don’t have no business touching them,” she said. “He don’t want