Page:The Peeler.pdf/10

 “I don’t hear nothing in his voice,” Enoch Emery said. “I know a whole heap about Jesus because I attended thisyer Rodemill Boys’ Bible Academy that a woman sent me to. If it was anything about Jesus in his voice I could certainly hear it.” He had got up onto the lion’s back and he was sitting there sideways cross-legged.

The blind man reached out again and his hands suddenly covered Haze’s face. For a second Haze didn’t move or make any sound. Then he knocked the hands off. “Quit it,” he said in a faint voice. “You don’t know nothing about me.”

“You got a secret need,” the blind man said. “Them that know Jesus once can’t escape Him in the end.”

“I ain’t never known Him,” Haze said.

“You got a least knowledge,” the blind man said. “That’s enough. You know His name and you’re marked. If Jesus has marked you there ain’t nothing you can do about it. Them that have knowledge can’t swap it for ignorance.” He was leaning forward but in the wrong direction so that he appeared to be talking to the step below Haze’s foot. Haze sat leaning backward with the black hat tilted forward over his face.

“My daddy looks just like Jesus,” Enoch said from the lion’s back. “His hair hangs to his shoulders. Only difference is he’s got a scar acrost his chin. I ain’t never seen who my mother is.”

“You’re marked with knowlege,” the blind man said. “You know what sin is and only them that know what it is can commit it, I knew all the time we were walking here somebody was following me,” he said. “You couldn’t have followed her. Wouldn’t anybody follow her. I could feel there was somebody near with an urge for Jesus.”

“There ain’t nothing for your pain but Jesus,” the girl said suddenly. She leaned forward and stuck her arm out with her finger pointed at Haze’s shoulder, but he spat down the steps and didn’t look at her. “Listen,” she said in a louder voice, “this here man and woman killed this little baby. It was her own child but it was ugly and she never give it any love. This child had Jesus and this woman didn’t have nothing but good looks and a man she was living in Sin with. She sent the child away and it come back and she sent it away again and it come back again and ever time she sent it away, it come back to where her and this man was living in Sin. They strangled it with a silk stocking and hung it up in the chimney. It didn’t give her