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 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.