Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor [13]
"He followed me," the blind man said. "Nobody would 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 and set his hand on the step next to her foot. She had on sneakers and black cotton stockings.
"Listen at him cursing," she said in a low tone. "He never followed you, Papa."
The blind man gave his edgy laugh, "Listen boy," he said, "you can't run away from Jesus. Jesus is a fact."
"I know a whole heap about Jesus," Enoch said. "I attended thisyer Rodemill Boys' Bible Academy that a woman sent me to. If it's anything you want to know about Jesus, just ast me." He had got up on the lion's back and he was sitting there sideways, cross-legged.
"I come a long way," Haze said, "since I would believe anything. I come halfway around the world."
"Me too," Enoch Emery said.
"You ain't come so far that you could keep from following me," the blind man said. He reached out suddenly and his hands 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 anything about me."
"My daddy looks just like Jesus," Enoch remarked 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."
"Some preacher has left his mark on you," the blind man said with a kind of snicker. "Did you follow for me to take it off or give you another one?"
"Listen here, there's nothing for your pain but Jesus," the child said suddenly. She tapped Haze on the shoulder. He sat there with his black hat tilted forward over his face. "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 stocking 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."
"My Jesus," Haze muttered.
"She didn't have nothing but good looks," she said in the loud fast voice. "That ain't enough. No sirree."
"I hear them scraping their feet inside there," the blind man said. "Get out the tracts, they're fixing to come out."
"It ain't enough," she repeated.
"What we gonna do?" Enoch asked. "What's inside theter building?"
"A program letting out," the blind man said. "My congregation."
The child took the tracts out of the gunny sack and gave him two bunches of them, tied with a string. "You and the other boy go over on that side and give out," he said to her. "Me and the one that followed me'll stay over here."
"He don't have no business touching them," she said. "He don't want to do anything but shred them up."
"Go like I told you," the blind man said.
She stood there a second, scowling. Then she said, "You come on if you're coming," to Enoch Emery and Enoch jumped off the lion and followed her over to the other side.
Haze ducked down a step but the blind man's hand shot out and clamped him around the arm. He said in a fast whisper, "Repent! Go to the head of the stairs and renounce your sins and distribute these tracts to the people!" and he thrust a stack of pamphlets into Haze's hand.
Haze jerked his arm away but he only pulled the blind man nearer. "Listen," he said, "I'm as clean as you are."
"Fornication and blasphemy and what else?" the blind man said.
"They ain't nothing but words," Haze said. "If I was in sin I was in it before I ever