“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 pipped 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 111 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 Frosty Bottle 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 Frosty Bottle 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…”
Hazel Motes’s face might have been cut out of the side of a rock.
“My daddy once owned a yeller Ford automobile he won on a ticket/’ Enoch murmured. “It had a roll-top and two aerials and a squirrel tail all come with it. He swapped it off. Stop here! Stop here!” he yelled—they were passing the Frosty Bottle.
“Where is it?” Hazel Motes said as soon as they were inside. They were in a dark room with a counter across the back of it and brown stools like toad stools in front of the counter. On the wall facing the door there was a large advertisement for ice cream, showing a cow dressed up like a housewife.
“It ain’t here,” Enoch said. “We have to stop here on the way and get something to eat. What you want?”
“Nothing,” Haze said. He stood stiffly in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets.
“Well, sit down,” Enoch said. “I have to have a little drink.”
Something stirred behind the counter and a woman with bobbed hair like a man’s got up from a chair where she had been reading the newspaper, and came forward. She looked sourly at Enoch. She had on a once-white uniform clotted with brown stains. “What you want?” she said in a loud voice, leaning close to his ear. She had a man’s face and big muscled arms.
“I want a chocolate malted milkshake, baby girl/’ Enoch said softly. “I want a lot of ice cream in it”
She turned fiercely from him and glared at Haze.
“He says he don’t want nothing but to sit down and look at you for a while/’ Enoch said. “He ain’t hungry but for just to see you.”
Haze looked woodenly at the woman and she turned her back on him and began mixing the milkshake. He sat down on the last stool in the row and started cracking his knuckles.
Enoch watched him carefully. “I reckon you done changed some,” he said after a few minutes.
Haze got up. “Give me those people’s address. Right now,” he said.
It came to Enoch in an instant—the police. His face was suddenly suffused with secret knowledge. “I reckon you ain’t as uppity as you was last night,” he said. “I reckon maybe,” he said, “you ain’t got so much cause now as you had then.” Stole theter automobile, he thought.
Hazel Motes sat back down.
“Howcome you jumped up so fast down yonder by the pool?” Enoch asked. The woman turned around to him with the malted milk in her hand. “Of course,” he said evilly, “I wouldn’t have had no truck with a ugly dish like that neither.”
The woman thumped the malted milk on the counter in front of him. “Fifteen cents,” she roared.
“You’re worth more than that, baby girl,” Enoch said. He snickered and began gassing his malted milk through the straw.
The woman strode over to where Haze was. “What you come in here with a son of a bitch like that for?” she shouted. “A nice quiet boy like you to come in here with a son of a bitch. You ought to mind the company you keep.” Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter. “Jesus,” she said, wiping her hand under her nose. She sat down in a straight chair in front of Haze but facing Enoch, and folded her arms across her chest. “Ever* day,” she said to Haze, looking at Enoch, “ever* day that son of a bitch comes in here.”
Enoch was thinking about the animals. They had to go next to see the animals. He hated them; just thinking about them made his face turn a chocolate purple color as if the malted milk were rising in his head.
“You’re a nice boy,” she said. “I can see, you got a clean nose, well keep it clean, don’t go messin’ with a son a bitch like that yonder. I always know a clean boy when I see one.” She was shouting at Enoch, but Enoch watched Hazel Motes. It was as if something inside Hazel Motes was winding up, although he didn’t move on the outside. He only looked pressed down in that blue suit, as if inside it, the thing winding was getting tighter and tighter.
Enoch’s blood told him to hurry. He raced the milkshake up the straw.
“Yes sir,” she said, “there ain’t anything sweeter than a clean boy. God for my witness. And I know a clean one when I see him and I know a son a bitch when I see him and there’s a heap of difference and that pus-marked bastard zlurping through that straw is a goddamned son a bitch and you a clean boy had better mind how you keep him company. I know a clean boy when I see one.”
Enoch screeched in the bottom of his glass. He fished fifteen cents from his pocket and laid it on the counter and got up. But Hazel Motes was already up; he was leaning over the counter toward the woman. She didn’t see him right away because she was looking at Enoch. He leaned on his hands over the counter until his face was just a foot from hers. She turned around and stared at him.
“Come on,” Enoch startedť “we don’t have no time to be sassing around with her. I got to show you this right away, I got…”
“I AM clean,” Haze said.
It was not until he said it again that Enoch caught the words.
“I AM clean,” he said again, without any expression on his face or in his voice, just looking at the woman as if he were looking at a wall. “If Jesus existed, I wouldn’t be clean,” he said.
She stared at him, startled and then outraged. “What do you think I caret” she yelled. “Why should I give a goddam what you are!”
“Come on,” Enoch whined, “come on or I won’t tell you where them people live.” He caught Haze’s arm and pulled him back from the counter and toward the door.
“You bastard!” the woman screamed, “what do you think I care about any of you filthy boys?”
Hazel Motes pushed the door open quickly and went out. He got back in his car and Enoch climbed in behind him. “Okay,” Enoch said, “drive straight on ahead down this road.”