PARTISAN REVIEW
trees." He stopped and saw that Hazel Weaver instead of being be–
hind him had stopped at the last cage for birds. "Oh Jesus," he
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 absently and kept on looking in the cage.
It
was
empty. Enoch stared. "It's empty!" he shouted. "What do 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 of mop and the piece of mop was sitting on an old rag. He
squinted close to the wire and saw that the piece of mop was an owl
with one eye open. It was looking directly at Hazel Weaver. "That
ain't nothing but an ole hoot owl," he moaned. "You seen them
before."
"I ain't clean," Haze said to the eye. He said it just like he said
it to the woman in the
FROSTY BOTTLE.
The eye shut softly and
the owl turned its head to the wall.
He's done murdered somebody, Enoch thought. "Oh sweet
Jesus come on!" he wailed. "I got to show you this right now." He
pulled him away but a few feet from the cage Haze stopped again,
looking at something in the distance. Enoch's eyesight was very poor.
He squinted and made out a figure far down the road behind them.
There were two smaller figures jumping on either side of it.
Hazel Weaver turned back to
him
suddenly and said, "Where's
this thing? Let's see it right now. Come on."
"Ain't that where I been trying to take you," Enoch murmured.
He felt the perspiration drying on him and stinging and his skin
began to get pin-pointed, even in his scalp. "We got to go on foot,"
he said.
"Why? Haze muttered.
"I don't know," Enoch said. He knew something was going to
happen to him. He
knew
now something was going to happen to
him. His blood stopped beating. All the time it had been beating
like drum noises and now it had stopped. They started down the hill.
It was a steep hill, full of trees painted white from the ground up
four feet. They looked as if they had on ankle-socks. He gripped
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