Stories (2011) (33 page)

When that insurance money came due, Sonny Guy, a man who had
antennas for such things, showed up and began to woo her. They were married
pretty quick, and the money from the insurance settlement had bought the house,
the aircraft hanger church, the Day-Glo guitar signs, and the pickup. Mr.
Harold wondered if there was any money left. He figured they might be pretty
well run through it by now.

"Is that the Guys?" the blind man asked as the
pickup engine was cut.

"Yeah," said Mr. Harold.

"Maybe we ought to look busy."

"I don't reckon it matters now."

Sonny got out of the pickup and waddled over to the edge of
the property and looked at the mauled grass and weeds. He walked over to the
aircraft hanger church and took it all in from that angle with his hands on his
ample hips. He stuck his fingers under his overall straps and walked alongside
the fence with the big black dog running behind it, barking, grabbing at the
chicken wire with his teeth.

The minister's wife stood by the pickup. She had a bun of
colorless hair stacked on her head. The stack had the general shape of some
kind of tropical ant-hill that might house millions of angry ants. Way she was
built, that hair and all, it looked as if the hill had been precariously built
on top of a small round rock supported by an irregular-shaped one, the bottom
rock wearing a print dress and a pair of black flat-heeled shoes.

The two dumpling kids, one boy, and one girl, leaned against
the truck's bumper as if they had just felt the effect of some relaxing drug.
They both wore jeans, tennis shoes and Disney T-shirts with the Magic Kingdom
in the background. Mr. Harold couldn't help but note the whole family had
upturned noses, like pigs. It wasn't something that could be ignored.

Sonny Guy shook his head and walked across the lot and over
to the blind man. "You sure messed this up. It's gonna cost me more'n I'd
have paid you to get it fixed. That crippled nigger never done nothing like
this. He run over a sprinkler head once, but that was it. And he paid for
it." Sonny turned his attention to Mr. Harold. "You have anything to
do with this?"

"I was just tryin' to help," Mr. Harold said.

"I was doin' all right until he come over," said
the blind man. "He started tellin' me how I was messin' up and all and got
me nervous, and sure enough, I began to lose my place and my concentration. You
can see the results."

"You'd have minded your own business," Sonny said
to Mr. Harold, "the man woulda done all right, but you're one of those
thinks a handicap can't do some jobs."

"The man's blind," said Mr. Harold. "He can't
see to cut grass. Not four acres with a weed-eater. Any moron can see
that."

The Reverend Sonny Guy had a pretty fast right hand for a
fat man. He caught Mr. Harold a good one over the left eye and staggered him.

The blind man stepped aside so they'd have plenty of room,
and Sonny set to punching Mr. Harold quite regularly. It seemed like something
the two of them were made for. Sonny to throw punches and Mr. Harold to absorb
them.

When Mr. Harold woke up, he was lying on his back in the
grass and the shadow of the blind man lay like a slat across him.

"Where is he?" asked Mr. Harold, feeling hot and
sick to his stomach.

"When he knocked you down and you didn't get up, he
went in the house with his wife," said the blind man. "I think he was
thirsty. He told me he wasn't giving me no five dollars. Actually, he said he
wasn't giving me jackshit. And him a minister. The kids are still out here
though, they're looking at their watches, I think. They had a bet on how long
it'd be before you got up. I heard them talking."

Mr. Harold sat up and glanced toward the Dodge club cab. The
blind man was right. The kids were still leaning against the truck. When Mr.
Harold looked at them, the boy, who was glancing at his watch, lifted one eye
and raised his hand quickly and pulled it down, said, "Yesss!" The
little girl looked pouty. The little boy said, "This time you blow
me."

They went in the house. Mr. Harold stood up. The blind man
gave him the weed-eater for support. He said, "Sonny says the crippled
nigger will be back next week. I can't believe it. Scooped by a nigger. A
crippled nigger."

Mr. Harold pursed his lips and tried to recall a couple of
calming Bible verses. When he felt somewhat relaxed, he said, "Why'd you
tell him it was my fault?"

"I figured you could handle yourself," the blind
man said.

Mr. Harold rubbed one of the knots Sonny had knocked on his
head. He considered homicide, but knew there wasn't any future in it. He said,
"Tell you what. I'll give you a ride home."

"We could watch some more TV?"

"Nope," said Mr. Harold, probing a split in his
lip. "I've got other plans."

Mr. Harold got his son and the three of them drove over to
where the blind man said he lived. It was a lot on the far side of town,
outside the city limits. It was bordered on either side by trees. It was a
trailer lot, scraped down to the red clay. There were a few anemic grass
patches here and there and it had a couple of lawn ornaments out front. A cow
and a pig with tails that hooked up to hoses and spun around and around and
worked as lawn sprinklers.

Behind the sprinklers a heap of wood and metal smoked
pleasantly in the sunlight.

They got out of the car and Mr. Harold's son said,
"Holy shit."

"Let me ask you something," said Mr. Harold to the
blind man. "Your place got a cow and a pig lawn ornament? Kind that
sprinkles the yard?"

The blind man appeared nervous. He sniffed the air. He said,
"Is the cow one of those spotted kind?"

"A Holstein?" asked Mr. Harold. "My guess is
the pig is a Yorkshire."

"That's them."

"Well, I reckon we're at your place all right, but it's
burned down."

"Oh, shit," said the blind man. "I left the
beans on."

"They're done now," said the boy.

The blind man sat down in the dirt and began to cry. It was
a serious cry. A cat walking along the edge of the woods behind the remains of
the trailer stopped to watch in amazement. The cat seemed surprised that any
one thing could make such noise.

"Was they pinto beans?" the boy asked.

The blind man sputtered and sobbed and his chest heaved. Mr.
Harold went and got the pig sprinkler and turned it on so that the water from
its tail splattered on the pile of smoking rubble. When he felt that was going
good, he got the cow working. He thought about calling the fire department, but
that seemed kind of silly. About all they could do was come out and stir what
was left with a stick.

"Is it all gone?" asked the blind man.

"The cow's all right," said Mr. Harold, "but
the pig was a little too close to the fire, there's a little paint bubbled up
on one of his legs."

Now the blind man really began to cry. "I damn near had
it paid for. It wasn't no double-wide, but it was mine."

They stayed that way momentarily, the blind man crying, the
water hissing onto the trailer's remains, then the blind man said, "Did
the dogs get out?"

Mr. Harold gave the question some deep consideration.
"My guess would be no."

"Then I don't guess there's any hope for the parakeet
neither," said the blind man.

Reluctantly, Mr. Harold loaded the blind man back in the car
with his son, and started home.

It wasn't the way Mr. Harold had hoped the day would turn
out. He had been trying to do nothing more than a good deed, and now he
couldn't get rid of the blind man. He wondered if this kind of shit ever
happened to Jesus. He was always doing good stuff in the Bible. Mr. Harold
wondered if he'd ever had an incident misfire on him, something that hadn't
been reported in the Testaments.

Once, when Mr. Harold was about eleven, he'd experienced a
similar incident, only he hadn't been trying to be a good Samaritan. Still, it
was one of those times where you go in with one thing certain and it turns on you.

During recess he'd gotten in a fight with a little kid he
thought would be easy to take. He punched the kid when he wasn't looking, and
that little dude dropped and got hold of his knee with his arms and wrapped
both his legs around him, positioned himself so that his bottom was on Mr.
Harold's shoe.

Mr. Harold couldn't shake him. He dragged him across the
school yard and even walked him into a puddle of water, but the kid stuck. Mr.
Harold got a pretty good sized stick and hit the kid over the head with it, but
that hadn't changed conditions. A dog tick couldn't have been fastened any
tighter. He had to go back to class with the kid on his leg, pulling that
little rascal after him wherever he went, like he had an anvil tied to his
foot.

The teacher couldn't get the kid to let go either. They
finally had to go to the principal's office and get the principal and the
football coach to pry him off, and even they had to work at it. The coach said
he'd once wrestled a madman with a butcher knife, and he'd rather do that again
than try and get that kid off someone's leg.

The blind man was kind of like that kid. You couldn't lose
the sonofabitch.

Near the house, Mr. Harold glanced at his watch and noted it
was time for his wife to be home. He was overcome with deep concerns. He'd just
thought the blind man pissing on his bathroom wall would be a problem, now he
had greater worries. He actually had the gentleman in tow, bringing him to the
house at supper time. Mr. Harold pulled over at a station and got some gas and
bought the boy and the blind man a Coke. The blind man seemed to have gotten
over the loss of his trailer. Sadness for its contents, the dogs and the
parakeet, failed to plague him.

While the boy and the blind man sat on the curb, Mr. Harold
went around to a pay booth and called home. On the third ring his wife
answered.

"Where in the world are you?" she said.

"I'm out here at a filling station. I got someone with
me."

"You better have Marvin with you."

"I do, but I ain't talking about the boy. I got a blind
man with me."

"You mean he can't see?"

"Not a lick. He's got a weed-eater. He's the
groundskeeper next door. I tried to take him home but his trailer burned up
with his dogs and bird in it, and I ain't got no place to take him but home for
supper."

A moment of silence passed as Mrs. Harold considered.
"Ain't there some kinda home you can put him in?"

"I can't think of any. I suppose I could tie a sign
around his neck said 'Blind Man' and leave him on someone's step with his
weed-eater."

"Well, that wouldn't be fair to whoever lived in that
house, just pushing problems on someone else."

Mr. Harold was nervous. Mrs. Harold seemed awfully polite.
Usually she got mad over the littlest thing. He was trying to figure if it was
a trap when he realized that something about all this was bound to appeal to
her religious nature. She went to church a lot. She read the
Baptist
Standard
and watched a couple of Sunday afternoon TV shows with preaching
in them. Blind people were loved by Baptists. Them and cripples. They got
mentioned in the Bible a lot. Jesus had a special affection for them. Well, he
liked lepers too, but Mr. Harold figured that was where even Mrs. Harold's
dedicated Baptist beliefs might falter.

A loophole presented itself to Mr. Harold. He said, "I
figure it's our Christian charity to take this fella in, honey. He can't see
and he's lost his job and his trailer burned down with his pets in it."

"Well, I reckon you ought to bring him on over then.
We'll feed him and I'll call around and see what my ladies' charities can do.
It'll be my project. Wendy Lee is goin' around gettin' folks to pick up trash
on a section of the highway, but I figure helping out a blind man would be
Christian. Jesus helped blind people, but I don't never remember him picking up
any trash."

When Mr. Harold loaded his son and the blind man back into
the car, he was a happier man. He wasn't in trouble. Mrs. Harold thought taking
in the blind man was her idea. He figured he could put up with the bastard
another couple hours, then he'd find him a place to stay. Some homeless shelter
with a cot and some hot soup if he wanted it. Maybe some preaching and
breakfast before he had to hit the road.

At the house, Mrs. Harold met them at the door. Her little
round body practically bounced. She found the blind man's hand and shook it.
She told him how sorry she was, and he dropped his head and looked sad and
thanked her. When they were inside, he said, "Is that cornbread I
smell?"

"Yes it is," Mrs. Harold said, "and it won't
be no time till it's ready. And we're having pinto beans with it. The beans
were cooked yesterday and just need heating. They taste best when they've set a
night."

"That's what burned his trailer down," the boy
said. "He was cooking some pinto beans and forget 'em."

"Oh my," said Mrs. Harold, "I hope the beans
won't bring back sad memories."

"No ma'am, them was limas I was cookin'."

"There was dogs in there and a parakeet," said the
boy. "They got burned up too. There wasn't nothing left but some burnt
wood and a piece of a couch and an old bird cage."

"I have some insurance papers in a deposit box
downtown," the blind man said. "I could probably get me a couple of
double-wides and have enough left over for a vacation with the money I'll get.
I could get me some dogs and a bird easy enough too. I could even name them the
same names as the ones burned up."

They sat and visited for a while in the living room while
the cornbread cooked and the beans warmed up. The blind man and Mrs. Harold
talked about religion. The blind man knew her favorite gospel tunes and sang a
couple of them. Not too good, Mr. Harold thought, but Mrs. Harold seemed almost
swoony.