Free Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor Page B

knew all morning somebody was going to come and then when I saw
     you at the pool, I had thisyer sign.”
    “I don’t care about your signs,” Haze said.
    “I go to see it ever’ day,” Enoch said. “I go ever’ day but I ain’t ever been able
     to take nobody else with me. I had to wait on the sign. I’ll tell you them people’s
     address just as soon as you see it. You got to see it,” he said. “When you see it,
     something’s going to happen.”
    “Nothing’s going to happen,” Haze said.
    He started the car again and Enoch sat forward on the seat. “Them animals,” he muttered.
     “We got to walk by them first. It won’t take long for that. It won’t take a minute.”
     He saw the animals waiting evil-eyed for him, ready to throw him off time. He thought
     what if the police were screaming out here now with sirens and squad cars and they
     got Hazel Motes just before he showed it to him.
    “I got to see those people,” Haze said.
    “Stop here! Stop here!” Enoch yelled.
    There was a long shining row of steel cages over to the left and behind the bars,
     black shapes were sitting or pacing. “Get out,” Enoch said. “This won’t take one second.”
    Haze got out. Then he stopped. “I got to see those people,” he said.
    “Okay, okay, come on,” Enoch whined.
    “I don’t believe you know the address.”
    “I do! I do!” Enoch cried. “It begins with a three, now come on!” He pulled Haze toward
     the cages. Two black bears sat in the first one, facing each other like two matrons
     having tea, their faces polite and self-absorbed. “They don’t do nothing but sit there
     all day and stink,” Enoch said. “A man comes and washes them cages out ever’ morning
     with a hose and it stinks just as much as if he’d left it.” He went past two more
     cages of bears, not looking at them, and then he stopped at the next cage where there
     were two yellow-eyed wolves nosing around the edges of the concrete. “Hyenas,” he
     said. “I ain’t got no use for hyenas.” He leaned closer and spit into the cage, hitting
     one of the wolves on the leg. It shuttled to the side, giving him a slanted evil look.
     For a second he forgot Hazel Motes. Then he looked back quickly to make sure he was
     still there. He was right behind him. He was not looking at the animals. Thinking
     about them police, Enoch thought. He said, “Come on, we don’t have time to look at
     all theseyer monkeys that come next.” Usually he stopped at every cage and made an
     obscene comment aloud to himself, but today the animals were only a form he had to
     get through. He hurried past the cages of monkeys, looking back two or three times
     to make sure Hazel Motes was behind him. At the last of the monkey cages, he stopped
     as if he couldn’t help himself.
    “Look at that ape,” he said, glaring. The animal had its back to him, gray except
     for a small pink seat. “If I had a ass like that,” he said prudishly, “I’d sit on
     it. I wouldn’t be exposing it to all these people come to this park. Come on, we don’t
     have to look at theseyer birds that come next.” He ran past the cages of birds and
     then he was at the end of the zoo. “Now we don’t need the car,” he said, going on
     ahead, “we’ll go right down that hill yonder through them trees.” Haze had stopped
     at the last cage for birds. “Oh Jesus,” Enoch groaned. He stood and waved his arms
     wildly and shouted, “Come on!” but Haze didn’t move from where he was looking into
     the cage.
    Enoch ran back to him and grabbed him by the arm but Haze pushed him off and kept
     on looking in the cage. It was empty. Enoch stared. “It’s empty!” he shouted. “What
     you have to look in that ole empty cage for? You come on!” He stood there, sweating
     and purple. “It’s empty!” he shouted. And then he saw it wasn’t empty. Over in one
     corner on the floor of the cage, there was an eye. The eye was in the middle of