Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor Read Free Book Online

ain’t friendly here. I got me a room and there ain’t never no
     body in it but me. My daddy said I had to come. I wouldn’t never have come but he
     made me. I think I seen you sommers before. You ain’t from Stockwell, are you?”
    “No.”
    “Melsy?”
    “No.”
    “Sawmill set up there oncet,” Enoch said. “Look like you had a kind of familer face.”
    They walked on without saying anything until they got on the main street again. It
     was almost deserted. “Good-by,” Haze said.
    “I’m going thisaway too,” Enoch said in a sullen voice. On the left there was a movie
     house where the electric bill was being changed. “We hadn’t got tied up with them
     hicks we could have gone to a show,” he muttered: He strode along at Haze’s elbow,
     talking in a half mumble, half whine. Once he caught at his sleeve to slow him down
     and Haze jerked it away. “My daddy made me come,” he said in a cracked voice. Haze
     looked at him and saw he was crying, his face seamed and wet and a purple-pink color.
     “I ain’t but eighteen year old,” he cried, “an’ he made me come and I don’t know nobody,
     nobody here’ll have nothing to do with nobody else. They ain’t friendly. He done gone
     off with a woman and made me come but she ain’t going to stay for long, he’ll beat
     hell out of her before she gets herself stuck to a chair. You the first familer face
     I seen in two months. I seen you sommers before. I know I seen you sommers before.”
    Haze looked straight ahead with his face set and Enoch kept up the half mumble, half
     blubber. They passed a church and a hotel and an antique shop and turned up Mrs. Watts’s
     street.
    “If you want you a woman you don’t have to be follering nothing looked like that kid
     you give a peeler to,” Enoch said. “I heard about where there’s a house where we could
     have us some fun. I could pay you back next week.”
    “Look,” Haze said, “I’m going where I’m going—two doors from here. I got a woman.
     I got a woman, see? And that’s where I’m going—to visit her. I don’t need to go with
     you.”
    “I could pay you back next week,” Enoch said. “I work at the city zoo. I guard a gate
     and I get paid ever’ week.”
    “Get away from me,” Haze said.
    “People ain’t friendly here. You ain’t from here but you ain’t friendly neither.”
    Haze didn’t answer him. He went on with his neck drawn close to his shoulder blades
     as if he were cold.
    “You don’t know nobody neither,” Enoch said. “You ain’t got no woman nor nothing to
     do. I knew when I first seen you you didn’t have nobody nor nothing but Jesus. I seen
     you and I knew it.”
    “This is where I’m going in at,” Haze said, and he turned up the walk without looking
     back at Enoch.
    Enoch stopped. “Yeah,” he cried, “oh yeah,” and he ran his sleeve under his nose to
     stop the snivel. “Yeah,” he cried, “go on where you goin’ but lookerhere.” He slapped
     at his pocket and ran up and caught Haze’s sleeve and rattled the peeler box at him.
     “She give me this. She give it to me and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.
     She told me where they lived and ast me to visit them and bring you—not you bring
     me, me bring you—and it was you follerin’ them.” His eyes glinted through his tears
     and his face stretched in an evil crooked grin. “You act like you think you got wiser
     blood than anybody else,” he said, “but you ain’t! I’m the one has it. Not you. Me. ”
    Haze didn’t say anything. He stood there for an instant, small in the middle of the
     steps, and then he raised his arm and hurled the stack of tracts he had been carrying.
     It hit Enoch in the chest and knocked his mouth open. He stood looking, with his mouth
     hanging open, at where it had hit his front, and then he turned and tore off down
     the street; and Haze went into the house.
    Since the night before was the first time he had slept with any