“What the hell you think you doing?” the man selling peelers yelled. “I got these people together, how you think you can horn in?”
The child held one of the pamphlets out to Haze and he grabbed it. The words on the outside of it said, “Jesus Calls You.”
“I’d like to know who the hell you think you are!” the man with the peelers was yelling. The child went back to where he was and handed him a tract. He looked at it for an instant with his lip curled and then he charged around the card table, upsetting the bucket of potatoes. “These damn Jesus fanatics,” he yelled, glaring around, trying to find the blind man. New people gathered, hoping to see a disturbance. “These goddam Communist foreigners!” the peeler man screamed. “I got this crowd together!” He stopped, realizing there was a crowd.
“Listen folks,” he said, “one at a time, there’s plenty to go around, just don’t push, a half a dozen peeled potatoes to the first person stepping up to buy.” He got back behind the card table quietly and started holding up the peeler boxes. “Step on up, plenty to go around,” he said, “no need to crowd.”
Haze didn’t open his tract. He looked at the outside of it and then he tore it across. He put the two pieces together and tore them across again. He kept re-stacking the pieces and tearing them again until he had a little handful of confetti. He turned his hand over and let the shredded leaflet sprinkle to the ground. Then he looked up and saw the blind man’s child not three feet away, watching him. Her mouth was open and her eyes glittered on him like two chips of green bottle glass. She had a white gunny sack hung over her shoulder. Haze scowled and began rubbing his sticky hands on his pants.
“I seen you,” she said. Then she moved quickly over to where the blind man was standing now, beside the card table, and turned her head and looked at Haze from there. Most of the people had moved off.
The peeler man leaned over the card table and said, “Heyl” to the blind man. “I reckon that showed you. Trying to horn in.”
“Lookerhere,” Enoch Emery said, “I ain’t got but a dollar sixteen cent but I…”
“Yah,” the man said, “I reckon that’ll show you you can’t muscle in on me. Sold eight peelers, sold…”
“Give me one of them,” the blind man’s child said, pointing to the peelers.
“Hanh,” he said.
She was untying a handkerchief. She untied two fifty-cent pieces out of the knotted corner of it. “Give me one of them,” she said, holding out the money.
The man eyed it with his mouth hiked to one side. “A buck fifty, sister,” he said.
She pulled her hand in quickly and all at once glared at Hazel Motes as if he had made a noise at her. The blind man was moving on. She stood a second glaring at Haze, and then she turned and followed the blind man. Haze started.
“Listen,” Enoch Emery said, “I ain’t got but a dollar sixteen cent and I want me one of them…”
“You can keep it,” the man said, taking the bucket off the card table. “This ain’t no cut-rate joint.”
Haze could see the blind man moving down the street some distance away. He stood staring after him, jerking his hands in and out of his pockets as if he were trying to move forward and backward at the same time. Then suddenly he thrust two dollars at the man selling peelers and snatched a box off the card table and started running down the street. In a second Enoch Emery was panting at his elbow. “My, I reckon you got a heap of money,” Enoch Emery said.
Haze saw the child catch up with the blind man and take him by the elbow. They were about a block ahead of him. He slowed down some and saw Enoch Emery there. Enoch had on a yellowish white suit and a pinkish white shirt and his tie was the color of green peas. He was smiling. He looked like a friendly hound dog with light mange. “How long you been here?” he inquired.
“Two days,” Haze muttered.
“I been here two months,” Enoch said. “I work for the city. Where you work?”
“Not working,” Haze said.
“That’s too bad,” Enoch said. “I work for the city.” He skipped a step to get in line with Haze, then he said, “I’m eighteen year old and I ain’t been here but two months and I already work for the city.”
“That’s fine,” Haze said. He pulled his hat down farther on the side Enoch Emery was on and walked very fast. The blind man up ahead began to make mock bows to the right and left.
“I didn’t ketch your name good,” Enoch said.
Haze said his name.
“You look like you might be follerin* them hicks,” Enoch remarked. “You go in for a lot of Jesus business?”
“No,” Haze said.
“No, me neither, not much,” Enoch agreed. “I went to thisyer Rodemill Boys’ Bible Academy for four weeks. Thisyer woman that traded me from my daddy she sent me. She was a Welfare woman. Jesus, four weeks and I thought I was going to be sanctified crazy.”
Haze walked to the end of the block and Enoch stayed at his elbow, panting and talking. When Haze started across the street, Enoch yelled, “Don’t you see theter light! That means you got to wait!*’ A cop blew a whistle and a car blasted its horn and stopped short. Haze went on across, keeping his eyes on the blind man in the middle of the block. The policeman kept on blowing his whistle. He crossed the street to where Haze was and stopped him. He had a thin face and oval-shaped yellow eyes.
“You know what that little thing hanging up there is for?” he asked, pointing to the traffic light over the intersection.
“I didn’t see it,” Haze said.
The policeman looked at him without saying anything. A few people stopped. He rolled his eyes at them. “Maybe you thought the red ones was for white folks and the green ones for niggers,” he said.
“Yeah I thought that,” Haze said. “Take your hand off me.”
The policeman took his hand off and put it on his hip. He backed one step away and said, “You tell all your friends about these lights. Red is to stop, green is to go-men and women, white folks and niggers, all go on the same light. You tell all your friends so when they come to town, they’ll know.” The people laughed.
“I’ll look after him,” Enoch Emery said, pushing in by the policeman. “He ain’t been here but only two days .1*11 look after him.”
“How long you been here?” the cop asked.
“I was born and raised here,” Enoch said. “This is my oF home town. Ill take care of him for you. Hey wait!” he yelled at Haze. “Wait on mel” He pushed out of the crowd and caught up with him. “I reckon I saved you that time,” he said.
“I’m obliged,” Haze said.
“It wasn’t nothing,” Enoch said. “Whyn’t we go in Walgreen’s and get us a soda? Ain’t no night clubs open this early.”
“I don’t like drug stores,” Haze said. “Good-by.”
“That’s all right,” Enoch said. “I reckon I’ll go along and keep you company for a while.” He looked up ahead at the blind man and the child and said, “I sho wouldn’t want to get messed up with no hicks this time of night, particularly the Jesus kind. I done had enough of them myself. Thisyer Welfare woman that traded me from my daddy didn’t do nothing but pray. Me and daddy we moved around with a sawmill where we worked and it set up outside Boonville one summer and here come thisyer woman.” He caught hold of Haze’s coat. “Only objection I got to Taulkinham is there’s too many people on the streets,” he said confidentially. “Look like all they want to do is knock you down—well here she come and I reckon she took a fancy to me. I was twelve year old and I could sing some hymns good I learnt off a nigger. So here she comes taking a fancy to me and traded me off my daddy and took me to Boonville to live with her. She had a brick house but it was Jesus all day long.” A little man lost in a pair of faded overalls jostled him. “Whyn’t you look wher you going?” Enoch growled.