Wise Blood (15 page)

He had not gone half a block before large putty-colored drops began to splatter on
the pavement and there was an ugly growl in the sky behind him. He began to run, clutching
the bundle in one arm and the umbrella in the other. In a second, the storm overtook
him and he ducked between two show-windows into the blue and white tiled entrance
of a drug store. He lowered his dark glasses a little. The pale eyes that looked over
the rims belonged to Enoch Emery. Enoch was on his way to Hazel Motes’s room.

He had never been to Hazel Motes’s place before but the instinct that was guiding
him was very sure of itself. What was in the bundle was what he had shown, Hazel at
the museum. He had stolen it the day before.

He had darkened his face and hands with brown shoe polish so that if he were seen
in the act, he would be taken for a colored person; then he had sneaked into the museum
while the guard was asleep and had broken the glass case with a wrench he’d borrowed
from his landlady; then, shaking and sweating, he had lifted the shriveled man out
and thrust him in a paper sack, and had crept out again past the guard, who was still
asleep. He realized as soon as he got out of the museum that since no one had seen
him to think he was a colored boy, he would be suspected immediately and would have
to disguise himself. That was why he had on the black beard and dark glasses.

When he’d got back to his room, he had taken the new jesus out of the sack and, hardly
daring to look at him, had laid him in the gilted cabinet; then he had sat down on
the edge of his bed to wait. He was waiting for something to happen, he didn’t know
what. He knew something was going to happen and his entire system was waiting on it.
He thought it was going to be one of the supreme moments in his life but apart from
that, he didn’t have the vaguest notion what it might be. He pictured himself, after
it was over, as an entirely new man, with an even better personality than he had now.
He sat there for about fifteen minutes and nothing happened.

He sat there for about five more.

Then he realized that he had to make the first move. He got up and tiptoed to the
cabinet and squatted down at the door of it; in a second he opened it a crack and
looked in. After a while, very slowly, he broadened the crack and inserted his head
into the tabernacle.

Some time passed.

From directly behind him, only the soles of his shoes and the seat of his trousers
were visible. The room was absolutely silent; there was no sound even from the street;
the Universe might have been shut off; not a flea jumped. Then without any warning,
a loud liquid noise burst from the cabinet and there was the thump of bone cracked
once against a piece of wood. Enoch staggered backward, clutching his head and his
face. He sat on the floor for a few minutes with a shocked expression on his whole
figure. At the first instant, he had thought it was the shriveled man who had sneezed,
but after a second, he perceived the condition of his own nose. He wiped it off with
his sleeve and then he sat there on the floor for some time longer. His expression
had showed that a deep unpleasant knowledge was breaking on him slowly. After a while
he had kicked the ark door shut in the new jesus’ face, and then he had got up and
begun to eat a candy bar very rapidly. He had eaten it as if he had something against
it.

The next morning he had not got up until ten o’clock—it was his day off—and he had
not set out until nearly noon to look for Hazel Motes. He remembered the address Sabbath
Hawks had given him and that was where his instinct was leading him. He was very sullen
and disgruntled at having to spend his day off in such a way as this, and in bad weather,
but he wanted to get rid of the new jesus so that if the police had to catch anybody
for the robbery, they could catch Hazel Motes instead of him. He couldn’t understand
at all why he had let himself risk his skin for a dead shriveled-up part-nigger dwarf
that had never done anything but get himself embalmed and then lain stinking in a
museum the rest of his life. It was far beyond his understanding. He was very sullen.
So far as he was now concerned, one jesus was as bad as another.

He had borrowed his landlady’s umbrella and he discovered as he stood in the entrance
of the drug store, trying to open it, that it was at least as old as she was. When
he finally got it hoisted, he pushed his dark glasses back on his eyes and re-entered
the downpour.

The umbrella was one his landlady had stopped using fifteen years before (which was
the only reason she had lent it to him) and as soon as the rain touched the top of
it, it came down with a shriek and stabbed him in the back of the neck. He ran a few
feet with it over his head and then backed into another store entrance and removed
it. Then to get it up again, he had to place the tip of it on the ground and ram it
open with his foot. He ran out again, holding his hand up near the spokes to keep
them open and this allowed the handle, which was carved to represent the head of a
fox terrier, to jab him every few seconds in the stomach. He proceeded for another
quarter of a block this way before the back half of the silk stood up off the spokes
and allowed the storm to sweep down his collar. Then he ducked under the marquee of
a movie house. It was Saturday and there were a lot of children standing more or less
in a line in front of the ticket box.

Enoch was not very fond of children but children always seemed to like to look at
him. The line turned and twenty or thirty eyes began to observe him with a steady
interest. The umbrella had assumed an ugly position, half up and half down, and the
half that was up was about to come down and spill more water under his collar. When
this happened the children laughed and jumped up and down. Enoch glared at them and
turned his back and lowered his dark glasses. He found himself facing a life-size
four-color picture of a gorilla. Over the gorilla’s head, written in red letters was,
“GONGA! Giant Jungle Monarch and a Great Star! H
ERE IN
P
ERSON
!!!” At the level of the gorilla’s knee, there was more that said, “Gonga will appear
in person in front of this theater at 12
A.M.
TODAY!
A free pass to the first ten brave enough to step up and shake his hand!”

Enoch was usually thinking of something else at the moment that Fate began drawing
back her leg to kick him. When he was four years old, his father had brought him home
a tin box from the penitentiary. It was orange and had a picture of some peanut brittle
on the outside of it and green letters that said, A N
UTTY
S
URPRISE
! When Enoch had opened it, a coiled piece of steel had sprung out at him and broken
off the ends of his two front teeth. His life was full of so many happenings like
that that it would seem he should have been more sensitive to his times of danger.
He stood there and read the poster twice through carefully. To his mind, an opportunity
to insult a successful ape came from the hand of Providence. He suddenly regained
all his reverence for the new jesus. He saw that he was going to be rewarded after
all and have the supreme moment he had expected.

He turned around and asked the nearest child what time it was. The child said it was
twelve-ten and that Gonga was already ten minutes late. Another child said that maybe
the rain had delayed him. Another said, no not the rain, his director was taking a
plane from Hollywood. Enoch gritted his teeth. The first child said that if he wanted
to shake the star’s hand, he would have to get in line like the rest of them and wait
his turn. Enoch got in line. A child asked him how old he was. Another observed that
he had funny-looking teeth. He ignored all this as best he could and began to straighten
out the umbrella.

In a few minutes a black truck turned around the corner and came slowly up the street
in the heavy rain. Enoch pushed the umbrella under his arm and began to squint through
his dark glasses. As the truck approached, a phonograph inside it began to play “Tarara
Boom Di Aye,” but the music was almost drowned out by the rain. There was a large
illustration of a blonde on the outside of the truck, advertising some picture other
than the gorilla’s.

The children held their line carefully as the truck stopped in front of the movie
house. The back door of it was constructed like a paddy wagon, with a grate, but the
ape was not at it. Two men in raincoats got out of the cab part, cursing, and ran
around to the back and opened the door. One of them stuck his head in and said, “Okay,
make it snappy, willya?” The other jerked his thumb at the children and said, “Get
back willya, willya get back?”

A voice on the record inside the truck said, “Here’s Gonga, folks, Roaring Gonga and
a Great Star! Give Gonga a big hand, folks!” The voice was barely a mumble in the
rain.

The man who was waiting by the door of the truck stuck his head in again. “Okay willya
get out?” he said.

There was a faint thump somewhere inside the van. After a second a dark furry arm
emerged just enough for the rain to touch it and then drew back inside.

“Goddam,” the man who was under the marquee said; he took off his raincoat and threw
it to the man by the door, who threw it into the wagon. After two or three minutes
more, the gorilla appeared at the door, with the raincoat buttoned up to his chin
and the collar turned up. There was an iron chain hanging from around his neck; the
man grabbed it and pulled him down and the two of them bounded under the marquee together.
A motherly-looking woman was in the glass ticket box, getting the passes ready for
the first ten children brave enough to step up and shake hands.

The gorilla ignored the children entirely and followed the man over to the other side
of the entrance where there was a small platform raised about a foot off the ground.
He stepped up on it and turned facing the children and began to growl. His growls
were not so much loud as poisonous; they appeared to issue from a black heart. Enoch
was terrified and if he had not been surrounded by the children, he would have run
away.

“Who’ll step up first?” the man said. “Come on come on, who’ll step up first? A free
pass to the first kid stepping up.”

There was no movement from the group of children. The man glared at them. “What’s
the matter with you kids?” he barked. “You yellow? He won’t hurt you as long as I
got him by this chain.” He tightened his grip on the chain and jangled it at them
to show he was holding it securely.

After a minute a little girl separated herself from the group. She had long wood-shaving
curls and a fierce triangular face. She moved up to within four feet of the star.

“Okay okay,” the man said, rattling the chain, “make it snappy.”

The ape reached out and gave her hand a quick shake. By this time there was another
little girl ready and then two boys. The line re-formed and began to move up.

The gorilla kept his hand extended and turned his head away with a bored look at the
rain. Enoch had got over his fear and was trying frantically to think of an obscene
remark that would be suitable to insult him with. Usually he didn’t have any trouble
with this kind of composition but nothing came to him now. His brain, both parts,
was completely empty. He couldn’t think even of the insulting phrases he used every
day.

There were only two children in front of him by now. The first one shook hands and
stepped aside. Enoch’s heart was beating violently. The child in front of him finished
and stepped aside and left him facing the ape, who took his hand with an automatic
motion.

It was the first hand that had been extended to Enoch since he had come to the city.
It was warm and soft.

For a second he only stood there, clasping it. Then he began to stammer. “My name
is Enoch Emery,” he mumbled. “I attended the Rodemill Boys’ Bible Academy. I work
at the city zoo. I seen two of your pictures. I’m only eighteen year old but I already
work for the city. My daddy made me com…” and his voice cracked.

The star leaned slightly forward and a change came in his eyes: an ugly pair of human
ones moved closer and squinted at Enoch from behind the celluloid pair. “You go to
hell,” a surly voice inside the ape-suit said, low but distinctly, and the hand was
jerked away.

Enoch’s humiliation was so sharp and painful that he turned around three times before
he realized which direction he wanted to go in. Then he ran off into the rain as fast
as he could.

By the time he reached Sabbath Hawks’s house, he was soaked through and so was his
bundle. He held it in a fierce grip but all he wanted was to get rid of it and never
see it again. Haze’s landlady was out on the porch, looking distrustfully into the
storm. He found out from her where Haze’s room was and went up to it. The door was
ajar and he stuck his head in the crack. Haze was lying on his cot, with a washrag
over his eyes; the exposed part of his face was ashen and set in a grimace, as if
he were in some permanent pain. Sabbath Hawks was sitting at the table by the window,
studying herself in a pocket mirror. Enoch scratched on the wall and she looked up.
She put the mirror down and tiptoed out into the hall and shut the door behind her.

“My man is sick today and sleeping,” she said, “because he didn’t sleep none last
night. What you want?”

“This is for him, it ain’t for you,” Enoch said, handing her the wet bundle. “A friend
of his give it to me to give to him. I don’t know what’s in it.”

“I’ll take care of it,” she said. “You needn’t to worry none.”

Enoch had an urgent need to insult somebody immediately; it was the only thing that
could give his feelings even a temporary relief. “I never known he would have nothing
to do with you,” he remarked, giving her one of his special looks.

“He couldn’t leave off following me,” she said. “Sometimes it’s thataway with them.
You don’t know what’s in this package?”