Wise Blood (7 page)

He sat looking at the sign and he didn’t hear the horn. An oil truck as long as a
railroad car was behind him. In a second a red square face was at his car window.
It watched the back of his neck and hat for a minute and then a hand came in and sat
on his shoulder. “What you doing parked in the middle of the road?” the truck driver
asked.

Haze turned his fragile placed-looking face toward him. “Take your hand off me,” he
said. “I’m reading the sign.”

The driver’s expression and his hand stayed exactly the way they were, as if he didn’t
hear very well.

“There’s no person a whoremonger, who wasn’t something worse first,” Haze said. “That’s
not the sin, nor blasphemy. The sin came before them.”

The truck driver’s face remained exactly the same.

“Jesus is a trick on niggers,” Haze said.

The driver put both his hands on the window and gripped it. He looked as if he intended
to pick up the car. “Will you get your goddam outhouse off the middle of the road?”
he said.

“I don’t have to run from anything because I don’t believe in anything,” Haze said.
He and the driver looked at each other for about a minute. Haze’s look was the more
distant; another plan was forming in his mind. “Which direction is the zoo in?” he
asked.

“Back around the other way,” the driver said. “Did you exscape from there?”

“I got to see a boy that works in it,” Haze said. He started the car up and left the
driver standing there, in front of the letters painted on the boulder.

CHAPTER
5

That morning Enoch Emery knew when he woke up that today the person he could show
it to was going to come. He knew by his blood. He had wise blood like his daddy.

At two o’clock that afternoon, he greeted the second-shift gate guard. “You ain’t
but only fifteen minutes late,” he said irritably. “But I stayed. I could of went
on but I stayed.” He wore a green uniform with yellow piping on the neck and sleeves
and a yellow stripe down the outside of each leg. The second-shift guard, a boy with
a jutting shale-textured face and a toothpick in his mouth, wore the same. The gate
they were standing by was made of iron bars and the concrete arch that held it was
fashioned to look like two trees; branches curved to form the top of it where twisted
letters said, C
ITY
F
OREST
P
ARK.
The second-shift guard leaned against one of the trunks and began prodding between
his teeth with the pick.

“Ever’ day,” Enoch complained; “look like ever’ day I lose fifteen good minutes standing
here waiting for you.”

Every day when he got off duty, he went into the park, and every day when he went
in, he did the same things. He went first to the swimming pool. He was afraid of the
water but he liked to sit up on the bank above it if there were any women in the pool,
and watch them. There was one woman who came every Monday who wore a bathing suit
that was split on each hip. At first he thought she didn’t know it, and instead of
watching openly on the bank, he had crawled into some bushes, snickering to himself,
and had watched from there. There had been no one else in the pool—the crowds didn’t
come until four o’clock—to tell her about the splits and she had splashed around in
the water and then lain up on the edge of the pool asleep for almost an hour, all
the time without suspecting there was somebody in the bushes looking at her. Then
on another day when he stayed a little later, he saw three women, all with their suits
split, the pool full of people, and nobody paying them any mind. That was how the
city was—always surprising him. He visited a whore when he felt like it but he was
always being shocked by the looseness he saw in the open. He crawled into the bushes
out of a sense of propriety. Very often the women would pull the suit straps down
off their shoulders and lie stretched out.

The park was the heart of the city. He had come to the city and—with a knowing in
his blood—he had established himself at the heart of it. Every day he looked at the
heart of it; every day; and he was so stunned and awed and over whelmed that just
to think about it made him sweat. There was something, in the center of the park,
that he had discovered. It was a mystery, although it was right there in a glass case
for everybody to see and there was a typewritten card over it telling all about it.
But there was something the card couldn’t say and what it couldn’t say was inside
him, a terrible knowledge without any words to it, a terrible knowledge like a big
nerve growing inside him. He could not show the mystery to just anybody; but he had
to show it to somebody. Who he had to show it to was a special person. This person
could not be from the city but he didn’t know why. He knew he would know him when
he saw him and he knew that he would have to see him soon or the nerve inside him
would grow so big that he would be forced to steal a car or rob a bank or jump out
of a dark alley onto a woman. His blood all morning had been saying the person would
come today.

He left the second-shift guard and approached the pool from a discreet footpath that
led behind the ladies’ end of the bath house to a small clearing where the entire
pool could be seen at once. There was nobody in it—the water was bottle-green and
motionless—but he saw, coming up the other side and heading for the bath house, the
woman with the two little boys. She came every other day or so and brought the two
children. She would go in the water with them and swim down the pool and then she
would lie up on the side in the sun. She had a stained white bathing suit that fit
her like a sack, and Enoch had watched her with pleasure on several occasions. He
moved from the clearing up a slope to some abelia bushes. There was a nice tunnel
under them and he crawled into it until he came to a slightly wider place where he
was accustomed to sit. He settled himself and adjusted the abelia so that he could
see through it properly. His face was always very red in the bushes. Anyone who parted
the abelia sprigs at just that place, would think he saw a devil and would fall down
the slope and into the pool. The woman and the two little boys entered the bath house.

Enoch never went immediately to the dark secret center of the park. That was the peak
of the afternoon. The other things he did built up to it. When he left the bushes,
he would go to the F
ROSTY
B
OTTLE
, a hotdog stand in the shape of an Orange Crush with frost painted in blue around
the top of it. Here he would have a chocolate malted milkshake and would make some
suggestive remarks to the waitress, whom he believed to be secretly in love with him.
After that he would go to see the animals. They were in a long set of steel cages
like Alcatraz Penitentiary in the movies. The cages were electrically heated in the
winter and air-conditioned in the summer and there were six men hired to wait on the
animals and feed them T-bone steaks. The animals didn’t do anything but lie around.
Enoch watched them every day, full of awe and hate. Then he went
there.

The two little boys ran out the bath house and dived into the water, and simultaneously
a grating noise issued from the driveway on the other side of the pool. Enoch’s head
pierced out of the bushes. He saw a high rat-colored car passing, which sounded as
if its motor were dragging out the back. The car passed and he could hear it rattle
around the turn in the drive and on away. He listened carefully, trying to hear if
it would stop. The noise receded and then gradually grew louder. The car passed again.
Enoch saw this time that there was only one person in it, a man. The sound of it died
away again and then grew louder. The car came around a third time and stopped almost
directly opposite Enoch across the pool. The man in the car looked out the window
and down the grass slope to the water where the two little boys were splashing and
screaming. Enoch’s head was as far out of the bushes as it would come and he was squinting.
The door by the man was tied on with a rope. The man got out the other door and walked
in front of the car and came halfway down the slope to the pool. He stood there a
minute as if he were looking for somebody and then he sat down stiffly on the grass.
He had on a blue suit and a black hat. He sat with his knees drawn up. “Well, I’ll
be dog,” Enoch said. “Well, I’ll be dog.”

He began crawling out of the bushes immediately, his heart moving so fast it was like
one of those motorcycles at fairs that the fellow drives around the walls of a pit.
He even remembered the man’s name—Mr. Hazel Motes. In a second he appeared on all
fours at the end of the abelia and looked across the pool. The blue figure was still
sitting there in the same position. He had the look of being held there, as if by
an invisible hand, as if, if the hand lifted up, the figure would spring across the
pool in one leap without the expression on his face changing once.

The woman came out of the bath house and went to the diving board. She spread her
arms out and began to bounce, making a big flapping sound with the board. Then suddenly
she swirled backward and disappeared below the water. Mr. Hazel Motes’s head turned
very slowly, following her down the pool.

Enoch got up and went down the path behind the bath house. He came stealthily out
on the other side and started walking toward Haze. He stayed on the top of the slope,
moving softly in the grass just off the sidewalk, and making no noise. When he was
directly behind him, he sat down on the edge of the sidewalk. If his arms had been
ten feet long, he could have put his hands on Haze’s shoulders. He studied him quietly.

The woman was climbing out of the pool, chinning herself up on the side. First her
face appeared, long and cadaverous, with a bandage-like bathing cap coming down almost
to her eyes, and sharp teeth protruding from her mouth. Then she rose on her hands
until a large foot and leg came up from behind her and another on the other side and
she was out, squatting there, panting. She stood up loosely and shook herself, and
stamped in the water drip-ping off her. She was facing them and she grinned. Enoch
could see part of Hazel Motes’s face watching the woman. It didn’t grin in return
but it kept on watching her as she padded over to a spot of sun almost directly under
where they were sitting. Enoch had to move a little closer to see.

The woman sat down in the spot of sun and took off her bathing cap. Her hair was short
and matted and all colors, from deep rust to a greenish yellow. She shook her head
and then she looked up at Hazel Motes again, grinning through her pointed teeth. She
stretched herself out in the spot of sun, raising her knees and settling her backbone
down against the concrete. The two little boys, at the other end of the water, were
knocking each other’s heads against the side of the pool. She settled herself until
she was flat against the concrete and then she reached up and pulled the bathing suit
straps off her shoulders.

“King Jesus!” Enoch whispered and before he could get his eyes off the woman, Hazel
Motes had sprung up and was almost to his car. The woman was sitting straight up with
the suit half off her in front, and Enoch was looking both ways at once.

He wrenched his attention loose from the woman and darted after Hazel Motes. “Wait
on me!” he shouted and waved his arms in front of the car which was already rattling
and starting to go. Hazel Motes cut off the motor. His face behind the windshield
was sour and frog-like; it looked as if it had a shout closed up in it; it looked
like one of those closet doors in gangster pictures where someone is tied to a chair
behind it with a towel in his mouth.

“Well,” Enoch said, “I declare if it ain’t Hazel Motes. How are you, Hazel?”

“The guard said I’d find you at the swimming pool,” Hazel Motes said. “He said you
hid in the bushes and watched the swimming.”

Enoch blushed. “I allus have admired swimming,” he said. Then he stuck his head farther
through the window. “You were looking for me?” he exclaimed.

“That blind man,” Haze said, “that blind man named Hawks—did his child tell you where
they lived?”

Enoch didn’t seem to hear. “You came out here special to see me?” he said.

“Asa Hawks. His child gave you the peeler. Did she tell you where they lived?”

Enoch eased his head out of the car. He opened the door and climbed in beside Haze.
For a minute he only looked at him, wetting his lips. Then he whispered, “I got to
show you something.”

“I’m looking for those people,” Haze said. “I got to see that man. Did she tell you
where they lived?”

“I got to show you this thing,” Enoch said. “I got to show it to you, here, this afternoon.
I got to.” He gripped Hazel Motes’s arm and Haze shook him off.

“Did she tell you where they live?” he said again.

Enoch kept wetting his lips. They were pale except for his fever blister, which was
purple. “Cert’nly,” he said. “Ain’t she invited me to come to see her and bring my
mouth organ? I got to show you this thing, then I’ll tell you.”

“What thing?” Haze muttered.

“This thing I got to show you,” Enoch said. “Drive straight on ahead and I’ll tell
you where to stop.”

“I don’t want to see anything of yours,” Haze Motes said. “I want that address.”

Enoch didn’t look at Hazel Motes. He looked out the window. “I won’t be able to remember
it unless you come,” he said. In a minute the car started. Enoch’s blood was beating
fast. He knew he had to go to the F
ROSTY
B
OTTLE
and the zoo before there, and he foresaw a terrible struggle with Hazel Motes. He
would have to get him there, even if he had to hit him over the head with a rock and
carry him on his back up to it.

Enoch’s brain was divided into two parts. The part in communication with his blood
did the figuring but it never said anything in words. The other part was stocked up
with all kinds of words and phrases. While the first part was figuring how to get
Hazel Motes through the F
ROSTY
B
OTTLE
and the zoo, the second inquired, “Where’d you git thisyer fine car? You ought to
paint you some signs on the outside it, like ‘Step-in, baby’—I seen one with that
on it, then I seen another, said…”