“What you want for telling me?” Haze said. “I’m not staying here. I have to go. I can’t stay here any longer.”
Enoch shuddered. He began wetting his lips. “I got to show it to you,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t show it to nobody but you. I had a sign it was you when I seen you drive up at the pool. I knew all morning somebody was going to come and then when I saw you at the pool, I had thisyer sign.”
“I don’t care about your signs,” Haze said.
“I go to see it ever’ day,” Enoch said. “I go ever* day but I ain’t ever been able to take nobody else with me. I had to wait on the sign. I’ll tell you them people’s address just as soon as you see it. You got to see it,” he said. “When you see it, something’s going to happen.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Haze said.
He started the car again and Enoch sat forward on the seat. “Them animals,” he muttered. “We got to walk by them first. It won’t take long for that. It won’t take a minute.” He saw the animals waiting evil-eyed for him, ready to throw him off time. He thought what if the police were screaming out here now with sirens and squad cars and they got Hazel Motes just before he showed it to him.
“I got to see those people,” Haze said.
“Stop here! Stop here!” Enoch yelled.
There was a long shining row of steel cages over to the left and behind the bars, black shapes were sitting or pacing. “Get out,” Enoch said. “This won’t take one second.”
Haze got out. Then he stopped. “I got to see those people,” he said.
“Okay, okay, come on,” Enoch whined.
“I don’t believe you know the address.”
“I do! I do!” Enoch cried. “It begins with a three, now come on!” He pulled Haze toward the cages. Two black bears sat in the first one, facing each other like two matrons having tea, their faces polite and self-absorbed. “They don’t do nothing but sit there all day and stink,” Enoch said. “A man comes and washes them cages out ever’ morning with a hose and it stinks just as much as if he’d left it.” He went past two more cages of bears, not looking at them, and then he stopped at the next cage where there were two yellow-eyed wolves nosing around the edges of the concrete. “Hyenas,” he said. “I ain’t got no use for hyenas.” He leaned closer and spit into the cage, hitting one of the wolves on the leg. It shuttled to the side, giving him a slanted evil look. For a second he forgot Hazel Motes. Then he looked back quickly to make sure he was still there. He was right behind him. He was not looking at the animals. Thinking about them police, Enoch thought. He said, “Come on, we don’t have time to look at all theseyer monkeys that come next.” Usually he stopped at every cage and made an obscene comment aloud to himself, but today the animals were only a form he had to get through. He hurried past the cages of monkeys, looking back two or three times to make sure Hazel Motes was behind him. At the last of the monkey cages, he stopped as if he couldn’t help himself.
“Look at that ape,” he said, glaring. The animal had its back to him, gray except for a small pink seat. “If I had a ass like that,” he said prudishly, “I’d sit on it. I wouldn’t be exposing it to all these people come to this park. Come on, we don’t have to look at theseyer birds that come next.” He ran past the cages of birds and then he was at the end of the zoo. “Now we don’t need the car,” he said, going on ahead, “we’ll go right down that hill yonder through them trees.” Haze had stopped at the last cage for birds. “Oh Jesus,” Enoch groaned. He stood and waved his arms wildly and shouted, “Come on!” but Haze didn’t move from where he was looking into the cage.
Enoch ran back to him and grabbed him by the arm but Haze pushed him off and kept on looking in the cage. It was empty. Enoch stared. “It’s empty!” he shouted. “What you have to look in that ole empty cage for? You come on!” He stood there, sweating and purple. “It’s empty!” he shouted. And then he saw it wasn’t empty. Over in one corner on the floor of the cage, there was an eye. The eye was in the middle of something that looked like a piece of mop sitting on an old rag. He squinted close to the wire and saw that the piece of mop was an owl with one eye open. It was looking directly at Hazel Motes. “That ain’t nothing but a ole hoot owl,” he moaned. “You seen them things before.”
“I AM clean,” Haze said to the eye. He said it just the way he said it to the woman in the Frosty Bottle. The eye shut softly and the owl turned its face to the wall.
He’s done murdered somebody, Enoch thought. “Oh sweet Jesus, come on!” he wailed. “I got to show you this right now.” He pulled him away but a few feet from the cage, Haze stopped again, looking at something in the distance. Enoch’s eyesight was very poor. He squinted and made out a figure far down the road behind them. There were two smaller figures jumping on either side of it.
Hazel Motes turned back to him suddenly and said, “Where’s this thing? Let’s see it right now and get it over with. Come on.”
“Ain’t that where I been trying to take you?” Enoch said. He felt the perspiration drying on him and stinging and his skin was pin-pointed, even in his scalp. “We got to cross this road and go down this hill. We got to go on foot,” he said.
“Why?” Haze muttered.
“I don’t know,” Enoch said. He knew something was going to happen to him. His blood stopped beating. All the time it had been beating like drum noises and now it had stopped. They started down the hill. It was a steep hill, full of trees painted white from the ground up four feet. They looked as if they had on ankle-socks. He gripped Hazel Motes’s arm. “It gets damp as you go down,” he said, looking around vaguely. Hazel Motes shook him off. In a second, Enoch gripped his arm again and stopped him. He pointed down through the trees. “Muvseevum,” he said. The strange word made him shiver. That was the first time he had ever said it aloud. A piece of gray building was showing where he pointed. It grew larger as they went down the hill, then as they came to the end of the wood and stepped out on the gravel driveway, it seemed to shrink suddenly. It was round and soot-colored. There were columns at the front of it and in between each column there was an eyeless stone woman holding a pot on her head. A concrete band was over the columns and the letters, M V S E V M, were cut into it. Enoch was afraid to pronounce the word again.
“We got to go up the steps and through the front door,” he whispered. There were ten steps up to the porch. The door was wide and black. Enoch pushed it in cautiously and inserted his head in the crack. In a minute he brought it out again and said, “All right, go on in and walk easy. I don’t want to wake up theter ole guard. He ain’t very friendly with me,” They went into a dark hall. It was heavy with the odor of linoleum and creosote and another odor behind these two. The third one was an undersmell and Enoch couldn’t name it as anything he had ever smelled before. There was nothing in the hall but two urns and an old man asleep in a straight chair against the wall. He had on the same kind of uniform as Enoch and he looked like a dried-up spider stuck there. Enoch looked at Hazel Motes to see if he was smelling the undersmell. He looked as if he were. Enoch’s blood began to beat again, urging him forward. He gripped Haze’s arm and tiptoed through the hall to another black door at the end of it. He cracked it a little and inserted his head in the crack. Then in a second he drew it out and crooked his finger in a gesture for Haze to follow him. They went into another hall, like the last one, but running crosswise. “It’s in that first door yonder,” Enoch said in a small voice. They went into a dark room full of glass cases. The glass cases covered the walls and there were three coffin-like ones in the middle of the floor. The ones on the walls were full of birds tilted on varnished sticks and looking down with dried piquant expressions.