Page:The Peeler.pdf/4

 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.