Enoch was thinking about the animals. They had to go next to see the animals. He hated them; just thinking about them made his face turn a chocolate purple color as if the malted milk were rising in his head.
“You’re a nice boy,” she said. “I can see, you got a clean nose, well keep it clean, don’t go messin’ with a son a bitch like that yonder. I always know a clean boy when I see one.” She was shouting at Enoch, but Enoch watched Hazel Motes. It was as if something inside Hazel Motes was winding up, although he didn’t move on the outside. He only looked pressed down in that blue suit, as if inside it, the thing winding was getting tighter and tighter.
Enoch’s blood told him to hurry. He raced the milkshake up the straw.
“Yes sir,” she said, “there ain’t anything sweeter than a clean boy. God for my witness. And I know a clean one when I see him and I know a son a bitch when I see him and there’s a heap of difference and that pus-marked bastard zlurping through that straw is a goddamned son a bitch and you a clean boy had better mind how you keep him company. I know a clean boy when I see one.”
Enoch screeched in the bottom of his glass. He fished fifteen cents from his pocket and laid it on the counter and got up. But Hazel Motes was already up; he was leaning over the counter toward the woman. She didn’t see him right away because she was looking at Enoch. He leaned on his hands over the counter until his face was just a foot from hers. She turned around and stared at him.
“Come on,” Enoch startedt “we don’t have no time to be sassing around with her. I got to show you this right away, I got…”
“I AM clean,” Haze said.
It was not until he said it again that Enoch caught the words.
“I AM clean,” he said again, without any expression on his face or in his voice, just looking at the woman as if he were looking at a wall. “If Jesus existed, I wouldn’t be clean,” he said.
She stared at him, startled and then outraged. “What do you think I caret” she yelled. “Why should I give a goddam what you are!”
“Come on,” Enoch whined, “come on or I won’t tell you where them people live.” He caught Haze’s arm and pulled him back from the counter and toward the door.
“You bastard!” the woman screamed, “what do you think I care about any of you filthy boys?”
Hazel Motes pushed the door open quickly and went out. He got back in his car and Enoch climbed in behind him. “Okay,” Enoch said, “drive straight on ahead down this road.”
“What you want for telling me?” Haze said. “I’m not staying here. I have to go. I can’t stay here any longer.”
Enoch shuddered. He began wetting his lips. “I got to show it to you,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t show it to nobody but you. I had a sign it was you when I seen you drive up at the pool. I 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 something that looked like a piece
