The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [48]
“Wait on me!” he shouted and waved his arms in front of the car which was already rattling and starting to go. Hazel Weaver cut off the motor. His face behind the windshield was sour and froglike; it looked like it had a shout closed up in it, it looked like one of those closet doors in gangster pictures where there is somebody tied to a chair behind it with a towel in his mouth.
“Well,” Enoch said, “I declare if it ain’t Hazel Weaver. How are you, Hazel?”
“The guard said I’d find you at the swimming pool,” Hazel Weaver 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 winelow. “You were looking for me?” he exclaimed.
“Those people,” Haze said, “those people named Moats—did she tell you where they lived?”
Enoch didn’t seem to hear. “You came out here special to see me?” he said.
“Asa and Sabbath Moats—she gave you the peeler. Did she tell you where they lived?”
Enoch eased his head out 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 live?”
“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 Weaver’s arm and Hazel Weaver 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. “Sho,” he said. “Ain’t she invited me to come see her and bring my harp? I got to show you this thing,” he said, “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,” Hazel Weaver said. “I got to have that address.”
“I won’t be able to remember it unless you come,” Enoch said. He didn’t look at Hazel Weaver. He looked out the window. 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 Weaver. 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 right 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 Weaver 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 with…”
Hazel Weaver’s face might have been cut out the side of a rock.
“My daddy once owned a yeller Ford automobile he won on a ticket,” Enoch murmured. “It had a roll-up top and two arials and a squirril 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 Weaver 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 toadstools in front of the counter. On the wall facing the door there was a large advertisement for ice cream, showing a cow dressed 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 muttered. He stood stiffly in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets and his neck drawn down inside his collar.
“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.