The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [49]
“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 murmured after a few minutes.
Haze’s neck jerked around and he started forward. “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 used to be,” 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 Weaver sat back down. There was no expression on his face but inside his sour wet eyes, something moved. He turned away from Enoch.
“How come you jumped up so fast down yonder at 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 do 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 whiskey 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 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 of a bitch like that yonder. I always know a clean boy when I see one.” She was shouting at Enoch, but Enoch watched Hazel Weaver. It was like something inside Hazel Weaver was winding up, although he didn’t move on the outside, not even his hands. He just looked pressed down in that blue suit, like 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 lot of difference and that pus-marked bastard zlurping through that straw is a goddammed 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 Weaver 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 ain’t clean,” Haze said.
It was not until he said it again that Enoch heard the words.
“I ain’t clean,” he said again, without any expression