The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor [52]
“Come on,” Enoch whispered. The drum noises in his blood were getting closer and closer. He went past the two cases in the middle of the floor and toward the third one. He went to the farthest end of it and stopped. He stood looking down with his neck thrust forward and his hands clutched together; Hazel Weaver moved up beside him.
The two of them stood there, Enoch rigid and Hazel Weaver bent slightly forward. There were three bowls and a row of blunt weapons and a man in the case. It was the man Enoch was looking at. He was about three feet long. He was naked and a dried yellow color and his eyes were squinched shut as if a giant block of steel were falling down on top of him.
“See theter notice,” Enoch said in a church whisper, pointing to a typewritten card at the man’s foot, “it says he was once as tall as us. Some A-rabs did it to him in six months.” He turned his head cautiously to see Hazel Weaver.
All he could tell was that Hazel Weaver ‘s eyes were on the shrunken man. He was bent forward so that his face was reflected in the glass top of the case. The reflection was pale and the eyes were like two clean bullet holes. Enoch waited, rigid. He heard footsteps in the hall. Oh Jesus Jesus, he prayed, let him hurry up and do whatever he’s going to do! The footsteps came in the door. He saw the woman with the two little boys. She had one by each hand, and she was grinning. Hazel Weaver had not raised his eyes once from the shrunken man. The woman came toward them. She stopped on the other side of the case and looked down into it, and the reflection of her face appeared grinning on the glass, over Hazel Weaver’s, She snickered and put two fingers in front of her teeth, The little boys’ faces were like pans set on either side to catch the grins us that overflowed from her. Haze’s neck jerked back and he made a noise, It was a noise like Enoch hadn’t ever heard before, It might have come from the man inside the case. In a second Enoch knew it had, “Wait!” he screamed, and tore out the room after Hazel Weaver.
He overtook him halfway up the hill. He caught him by the arm and swung him around and then he stood there, suddenly weak and light as a balloon, and stared. Hazel Weaver grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “What is that address?” he shouted, “Give me that address!”
Even if Enoch had known the address, he couldn’t have thought of it then. He could not even stand up. As soon as Hazel Weaver let him go, he fell backwards and landed against one of the whitesocked trees. He rolled over and lay stretched out on the ground, with an exalted look on his face. He thought he was floating. A long way off he saw the blue figure spring and pick up a rock, and he saw the wild face turn, and the rock hurtle toward him; he smiled and shut his eyes. When he opened them again, Hazel Weaver was gone. He put his fingers to his forehead and then held them in front of his eyes. They were red-streaked, He turned his head and saw a drop of blood on the ground and as he looked at it, he thought it widened like a little spring, He sat straight up, frozen-skinned, and put his finger in it. and very faintly he could hear his blood beating, his secret blood, in the center of the city.
A Stroke of Good Fortune (1949)
RUBY came in the front door of the apartment building and lowered the paper sack with the four cans of number three beans in it