“The guard said I’d find you at the swimming pool/* Hazel Motes said. “He said you hid in the bushes and watched the swimming.”
Enoch blushed. “I allus have admired swimming,” he said. Then he stuck his head farther through the window. “You were looking for me?” he exclaimed.
“That blind man,” Haze said, “that blind man named Hawks—did his child tell you where they lived?”
Enoch didn’t seem to hear. “You came out here special to see me?” he said.
“Asa Hawks. His child gave you the peeler. Did she tell you where they lived?”
Enoch eased his head out of the car. He opened the door and climbed in beside Haze. For a minute he only looked at him, wetting his lips. Then he whispered, “I got to show you something.”
“I’m looking for those people,” Haze said. “I got to see that man. Did she tell you where they lived?”
“I got to show you this thing,” Enoch said. “I got to show it to you, here, this afternoon. I got to.** He pipped Hazel Motes’s arm and Haze shook him off.
“Did she tell you where they live?” he said again.
Enoch kept wetting his lips. They were pale except for his fever blister, which was purple. “Cert’nly,” he said. “Ain’t she invited me to come to see her and bring my mouth organ? I got to show you this thing, then 111 tell you.”
“What thing?” Haze muttered.
“This thing I got to show you,” Enoch said. “Drive straight on ahead and I’ll tell you where to stop.”
“I don’t want to see anything of yours,” Haze Motes said. “I want that address.”
Enoch didn’t look at Hazel Motes. He looked out the window. “I won’t be able to remember it unless you come,” he said. In a minute the car started. Enoch’s blood was beating fast. He knew he had to go to the Frosty Bottle and the zoo before there, and he foresaw a terrible struggle with Hazel Motes. He would have to get him there, even if he had to hit him over the head with a rock and carry him on his back up to it.
Enoch’s brain was divided into two parts. The part in communication with his blood did the figuring but it never said anything in words. The other part was stocked up with all kinds of words and phrases. While the first part was figuring how to get Hazel Motes through the Frosty Bottle and the zoo, the second inquired, “Where’d you git thisyer fine car? You ought to paint you some signs on the outside it, like ‘Step-in, baby’—I seen one with that on it, then I seen another, said…”
Hazel Motes’s face might have been cut out of the side of a rock.
“My daddy once owned a yeller Ford automobile he won on a ticket/’ Enoch murmured. “It had a roll-top and two aerials and a squirrel tail all come with it. He swapped it off. Stop here! Stop here!” he yelled—they were passing the Frosty Bottle.
“Where is it?” Hazel Motes said as soon as they were inside. They were in a dark room with a counter across the back of it and brown stools like toad stools in front of the counter. On the wall facing the door there was a large advertisement for ice cream, showing a cow dressed up like a housewife.
“It ain’t here,” Enoch said. “We have to stop here on the way and get something to eat. What you want?”
“Nothing,” Haze said. He stood stiffly in the middle of the room with his hands in his pockets.
“Well, sit down,” Enoch said. “I have to have a little drink.”
Something stirred behind the counter and a woman with bobbed hair like a man’s got up from a chair where she had been reading the newspaper, and came forward. She looked sourly at Enoch. She had on a once-white uniform clotted with brown stains. “What you want?” she said in a loud voice, leaning close to his ear. She had a man’s face and big muscled arms.
“I want a chocolate malted milkshake, baby girl/’ Enoch said softly. “I want a lot of ice cream in it”
She turned fiercely from him and glared at Haze.
“He says he don’t want nothing but to sit down and look at you for a while/’ Enoch said. “He ain’t hungry but for just to see you.”
Haze looked woodenly at the woman and she turned her back on him and began mixing the milkshake. He sat down on the last stool in the row and started cracking his knuckles.
Enoch watched him carefully. “I reckon you done changed some,” he said after a few minutes.
Haze got up. “Give me those people’s address. Right now,” he said.
It came to Enoch in an instant—the police. His face was suddenly suffused with secret knowledge. “I reckon you ain’t as uppity as you was last night,” he said. “I reckon maybe,” he said, “you ain’t got so much cause now as you had then.” Stole theter automobile, he thought.
Hazel Motes sat back down.
“Howcome you jumped up so fast down yonder by the pool?” Enoch asked. The woman turned around to him with the malted milk in her hand. “Of course,” he said evilly, “I wouldn’t have had no truck with a ugly dish like that neither.”
The woman thumped the malted milk on the counter in front of him. “Fifteen cents,” she roared.
“You’re worth more than that, baby girl,” Enoch said. He snickered and began gassing his malted milk through the straw.
The woman strode over to where Haze was. “What you come in here with a son of a bitch like that for?” she shouted. “A nice quiet boy like you to come in here with a son of a bitch. You ought to mind the company you keep.” Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter. “Jesus,” she said, wiping her hand under her nose. She sat down in a straight chair in front of Haze but facing Enoch, and folded her arms across her chest. “Ever* day,” she said to Haze, looking at Enoch, “ever* day that son of a bitch comes in here.”
