The Peeler
Hazel Motes walked along downtown, close to the store fronts but not looking at them. His neck was thrust forward as if he were trying to smell something that was always being drawn away. He had on a blue suit that was glare-blue in the day time, but looked purplish with the night lights on it, and his hat was a fierce black wool hat like a preacher’s hat. The stores in Taulkinham stayed open on Thursday nights and a lot of people were shopping. Haze’s shadow was now behind him and now before him and now and then broken up by other people’s shadows, but when it was by itself, stretching behind him, it was a thin nervous shadow walking backwards.
After a while he stopped where a lean-faced man had a card table set up in front of a Lerner’s Dress Shop and was demonstrating a potato peeler. The man had on a small canvas hat and a shirt patterned with bunches of upside-down pheasants and quail and bronze turkeys. He was pitching his voice under the street noises so that it reached every ear distinctly as in a private conversation. A few people gathered around. There were two buckets on the card table, one empty and the other full of potatoes. Between the two buckets there was a pyramid of green cardboard boxes and on top of the stack, one peeler was open for demonstration. The man stood in front of this altar, pointing over it at different people. “How about you?” he said, pointing at a damp-haired pimpled boy, “you ain’t gonna let one of these go by?” He stuck a brown potato in one side of the open machine. The machine was a square tin box with a red handle, and as he turned the handle, the potato went into the box and then in a second, backed out the other side, white. “You ain’t gonna let one of these go by!” he said.
The boy guffawed and looked at the other people gathered around. He had yellow slick hair and a fox-shaped face.
“What’s yer name?” the peeler man asked.
“Name Enoch Emery,” the boy said and snuffled,
“Boy with a pretty name like that ought to have one of these,” the man said, rolling his eyes, trying to warm up the others. Nobody laughed but the boy. Then a man standing across from Hazel Motes laughed. He was a tall man with light green glasses and a black suit and a black wool hat like a preacher’s hat, and he was leaning on a white cane. The laugh sounded as if it came from something tied up in a croker sack. It was evident he was a blind man. He had his hand on the shoulder of a big-boned child with a black knitted cap pulled down low on her forehead and a fringe of orange hair sticking out from it on either side. She had a long face and a short sharp nose. The people began to look at the two of them instead of the man selling peelers. This irritated the man selling peelers. “How about you, you there,” he said, pointing at Hazel Motes. “You’ll never be able to get a bargain like this in any store.”
“Hey!” Enoch Emery said, reaching across a woman and punching Haze’s arm. “He’s talking to you! He’s talking to you!” Haze was looking at the blind man and the child. Enoch Emery had to punch him again.
“Whyn’t you take one of these home to yer wife?” the peeler man was saying.
“I ain’t none,” Haze muttered without drawing his attention from the blind man.
“Well, you got a dear old mother, ain’t you?”
“No.”
“Well shaw,” the man said, with his hand cupped to the people, “he needs one theseyer just to keep him company.”
Enoch Emery thought that was so funny that he leaned over and slapped his knee, but Hazel Motes didn’t look as if he had heard it yet. “I’m going to give away half a dozen peeled potatoes to the first person purchasing one theseyer machines,” the man said. “Who’s gonna step up first? Only a dollar and a half for a machine’d cost you three dollars in any store!” Enoch Emery began fumbling in his pockets. “You’ll thank the day you ever stopped here,” the man said, “you’ll never forget it. Ever one of you people purchasing one theseyer machines’ll never forget it.”
The blind man began to move straight forward suddenly and the peeler man got ready to hand him one of the green boxes, but he went past the card table and turned, moving at a right angle back in among the people. He was handing something out. Then Haze saw that the child was moving around too, giving out white leaflets. There were not many people gathered there, but the ones who were began to move off. When the machine-seller saw this, he leaned, glaring, over the card table. “Hey you!” he yelled at the blind man, “what you think you doing? Who you think you are, running people off from here?”
The blind man didn’t pay him any mind. He kept on handing out the pamphlets. He handed one at Enoch Emery and then he came toward Haze, hitting the white cane at an angle from his leg.
“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 blind man had a peculiar boiled looking red face. He thrust one of the pamphlets a little to the side of Haze and Haze grabbed it. It was a tract. 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 passed the card table again 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. More people had gathered, hoping to see a disturbance, and the blind man had disappeared among them. “These goddam Communist Jesus 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 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.”
Hazel Motes 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 restacking 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 on a black dress and there was 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. Most of the people had moved off.
The peeler man leaned over the card table and said, “Hey!” to the blind man. “I reckon that showed you. Trying to horn in.” But the blind man stood there with his chin tilted back slightly as if he saw something over their heads.
“Lookerhere,” Enoch Emery said, “I ain’t got but a dollar sixteen cent but I. . . .”
“Yah,” the man said, as if he were going to make the blind man see him, “I reckon that’ll show you you can’t muscle in on me. Sold eight peelers, sold. . . .”
“Give me one of them,” the child said, pointing to the peelers.
“Hanh?” he said.
She reached in her pocket and drew out a long coin purse and opened it. “Give me one of them,” she said, holding out two fifty cent pieces.
The man eyed the money with his mouth hiked on one side. “A buck fifty, sister,” he said.
She pulled her hand in quickly and all at once glared around at Hazel Motes as if he had made a noise at her. The blind man was moving off. She stood a second glaring red-faced at Haze and then she turned and followed the blind man. Haze started suddenly.
“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.”
>
Hazel Motes stood staring after the blind man, jerking his hands in and out of his pockets. He looked as if he were trying to move forward and backward at the same time. Then suddenly he thrust two bills at the man selling peelers and snatched a box off the card table and started down the street. In just a second Enoch Emery was panting at his elbow.
“My, I reckon you got a heap of money,” Enoch Emery said. Haze turned the corner and saw them about a block ahead of him. Then he slowed down some and saw Enoch Emery there. Enoch had on a yellowish white suit with a pinkish white shirt and his tie was a greenpeaish color. He was grinning. 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 faster.
“I didn’t ketch your name good,” Enoch said.
Haze said his name.
“You look like you might be follering them hicks,” Enoch remarked. “You go in for a lot of Jesus?”
“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 gonna be sanctified crazy.”
Haze walked to the end of the block and Enoch stayed all the time 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 blowing the whistle. He crossed the street over 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 colored,” 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. I’ll look after him.”
“How long you been here?” the cop asked.
“I was born and raised here,” Enoch said. “This is my ole home town. I’ll take care of him for you. Hey wait!” he yelled at Haze. “Wait on me!” He pushed out 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. “Why don’t we go in Walgreen’s and get us a soda? Ain’t no nightclubs open this early.”
“I don’t like no drugstores,” Haze said. “Goodbye.”
“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 couple 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 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 street,” he said confidentially, “look like they ain’t satisfied until they 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.” While he was talking he was looking up at Haze, studying his face. All of a sudden he bumped into a little man lost in a pair of faded overalls. “Whyn’t you look where you going?” he growled.
The little man stopped short and raised his arm in a vicious gesture and a mean dog look came on his face. “Who you tellin what?” he snarled.
“You see,” Enoch said, jumping to catch up with Haze, “all they want to do is knock you down. I ain’t never been to such a unfriendly place before. Even with that woman. I stayed with her for two months in that house of hers,” he went on, “and then come fall she sent me to the Rodemill Boys’ Bible Academy and I thought that sho was gonna be some relief. This woman was hard to get along with—she wasn’t old, I reckon she was forty year old—but she sho was ugly. She had theseyer brown glasses and her hair was so thin it looked like ham gravy trickling over her skull. I thought it was gonna be some certain relief to get to that academy. I had run away oncet on her and she got me back and come to find out she had papers on me and she could send me to the penitentiary if I didn’t stay with her so I sho was glad to get to theter academy. You ever been to a academy?”
Haze didn’t seem to hear the question. He still had his eye on the blind man in the next block.
“Well, it won’t no relief,” Enoch said. “Good Jesus, it won’t no relief. I run away from there after four weeks and durn if she didn’t get me back and brought me to that house of hers again. I got out though.” He waited a minute. “You want to know how?”
After a second he said, “I scared hell out of that woman, that’s how. I studied on it and studied on it. I even prayed. I said, ‘Jesus, show me the way to get out of here without killing thisyer woman and getting sent to the penitentiary.’ And durn if He didn’t. I got up one morning at just daylight and I went in her room without my pants on and pulled the sheet off her and giver a heart attackt. Then I went back to my daddy and we ain’t seen hide of her since.
“Your jaw just crawls,” he observed, watching the side of Haze’s face. “You don’t never laugh. I wouldn’t be surprised if you wasn’t a real wealthy man.”
Haze turned down a side street. The blind man and the girl were on the corner a block ahead.
“Well, I reckon we gonna ketch up with em after all,” Enoch said. “Ain’t that girl ugly, though? You seen them shoes she has on? Men’s shoes, looks like. You know many people here?”
“No,” Haze said.
“You ain’t gonna know none neither. This is one more hard place to make friends in. I been here two months and I don’t know nobody, look like all they want to do is knock you down. I reckon you got a right heap of money,” he said. “I ain’t got none. Had, I’d sho know what to do with it.” The man and the girl stopped on the corner and turned up the left side of the street. “We catching up,” he said. “I bet we’ll be at some meeting singing hymns with her and her daddy if we don’t watch out.”
Up in the next block there was a large building with columns and a dome. The blind man and the child were going toward it. There was a car parked in every space around the building and on the other side the street and up and down the streets near it. “That ain’t no picture show,” Enoch said. The blind man and the girl turned up the steps to the building. The steps went all the way across the front, and on either side there were stone lions sitting on pedestals. “Ain’t n
o church,” Enoch said. Haze stopped at the steps. He looked as if he were trying to settle his face into an expression. He pulled the black hat forward at a nasty angle and started toward the two, who had sat down in the corner by one of the lions.
As they came nearer the blind man leaned forward as if he were listening to the footsteps, then he stood up, holding a tract out in his hand.
“Sit down,” the child said in a loud voice. “It ain’t nobody but them two boys.”
“Nobody but us,” Enoch Emery said. “Me and him been follerin you all about a mile.”
“I knew somebody was following me,” the blind man said. “Sit down.”
“They ain’t here for nothing but to make fun,” the child said. She looked as if she smelled something bad. The blind man was feeling out to touch them. Haze stood just out of reach of his hands, squinting at him as if he were trying to see the empty eye sockets under the green glasses.
“It ain’t me, it’s him,” Enoch said. “He’s been running after yawl ever since back yonder by them potato peelers. We bought one of em.”
“I knew somebody was following me!” the blind man said. “I felt it all the way back yonder.”
“I ain’t followed you,” Haze said. He felt the peeler box in his hand and looked at the girl. The black knitted cap came down almost to her eyes. She looked as if she might be thirteen or fourteen years old. “I ain’t followed you nowhere,” he said sourly. “I followed her.” He stuck the peeler box out at her.
She jumped back and looked as if she were going to swallow her face. “I don’t want that thing,” she said. “What you think I want with that thing? Take it. It ain’t mine. I don’t want it!”