Wise Blood Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 was moving forward slowly, saying in a kind of garbled mutter, “Help
     a blind preacher. If you won’t repent, give up a nickel. I can use it as good as you.
     Help a blind unemployed preacher. Wouldn’t you rather have me beg than preach? Come
     on and give a nickel if you won’t repent.”
    There were not many people gathered around 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 any attention to him. He kept on rattling
     the cup and the child kept on handing out the pamphlets. He passed Enoch Emery and
     came on toward Haze, hitting the white cane out at an angle from his leg. Haze leaned
     forward and saw that the lines on his face were not painted on; they were scars.
    “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 child held one of the pamphlets out to Haze and he grabbed it. 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 went back to where he was 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. New people gathered, hoping to see a disturbance. “These goddam
     Communist 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 a 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.”
    Haze 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 re-stacking 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 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, and turned her head and looked at Haze from there. 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.”
    “Lookerhere,” Enoch Emery said, “I ain’t got but a dollar sixteen cent but I…”
    “Yah,” the man said, “I reckon that’ll show you you can’t muscle in on me. Sold eight
     peelers, sold…”
    “Give me one of them,” the blind man’s child said, pointing to the peelers.
    “Hanh,” he said.
    She was untying a handkerchief. She untied two fifty-cent pieces out of the knotted
     corner of it. “Give me one of them,” she said, holding out the money.
    The man eyed it with his mouth hiked to one side. “A buck fifty, sister,” he said.
    She pulled her hand in quickly and all at once glared at Hazel Motes as if he had
     made a noise at her.