The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [51]
Enoch ran back to him and grabbed him by tic arm but Haze pushed him off absently and kept on looking in the cage. It was empty. Enoch stared. “It’s empty!” he shouted. “What do you have to look in that all’ 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 and the piece of mop was 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 Weaver. “That ain’t nothing but an all’ hoot owl,” he moaned. “You seen them before.”
“I ain’t clean,” Haze said to the eye, He said it Just like he said it to the woman in the FROSTY BOTTLE. The eye shut softly and the owl turned its head 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 Weaver turned back to him suddenly and said, “Where’s this thing? Let’s see it right now. Come on.”
“Ain’t that where I been trying to take you,” Enoch murmured. He felt the perspiration drying on him and stinging and his skin began to get pin-pointed, even in his scalp. “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. 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 Weaver’s arm. “It gets damp as you go down,” he said, looking around vaguely. Hazel Weaver shook him off. In a second, he 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 woman holding a pot on her head. A concrete band was over the columns and the letters M V S E V M 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 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 Weaver to see if he was smelling the undersmell. He looked like he was; Enoch’s blood began beating again, and the sound was nearer this time