Where Hazel Motes Is

Hazel Motes is dead. I thought he might have gone away to a lot of places, maybe even out of Taukinham, but I never thought he would be dead.

Today Enoch said he’d take me to see Hazel, but I thought he was lying when he took us by the monkeys again and stopped there and made us watch them for a while. I stayed five minutes and then I said I was going back to the apartment but then all of a sudden Enoch left the monkeys behind and took me to a hot dog stand and said we had to eat something first. It reminded me a lot of Miss O’Conner’s book, because he’d some the same things when he first shown my baby to Hazel. It didn’t make him any less crazy, but it did make me think, maybe he really was going to take me to see Hazel. He was so hung up after Hazel in the book, and so maybe Hazel had gotten to be so important to him now that he had to go through this crazy routine just so we could see him. I told him all this while he sat in the hot dog stand and drank his chocolate malt.

Enoch said he read the book once and never did like it and never saw the movie either. He said the book made him feel all crawly inside, like it was saying things his blood didn’t want him to hear yet, and so he had to put the book away and wait for his blood to tell him it was the right time to read it. And besides, he never liked how Miss O’Conner wrote him. He said she made him into a crazy person in the book and that she made it look like he didn’t think straight. Well she did write him like that, but she never made up a thing about it, you only had to be with him a second to see it was all true. Enoch said, though, that even though he didn’t like the book he liked the title because he was the one who gave the book that title and it made him feel proud. He said that because he gave the title he was the most important character in the book. I tried to tell him that he wasn’t and when Jhon Huston made the movie he weren’t nothing but a clown in a gorilla suit, but before I could he finished with his malt and he made me get up and follow him. We passed a big old grey building that was falling apart on the edges with a sign in front that said MVSEVM. I didn’t know what a mvsevm was except I knew it was where my baby had come from. I thought we were going to go inside but we didn’t, Enoch just stood there staring at the place for five minutes and when I said if we didn’t get Hazel soon I was going to leave, he turned again and kept walking down the path. We walked a good long way through the park and then he turned us into the cemetery at the end of it. It was an old place, with a big iron fence around it that had turned rusty with age and brittle like it would all fall apart as soon as you touched it. He took me all the way to a grave in the back and the headstone just said, “Hazel Motes.” It didn’t have anything else, just a name and some dates. He had died over two years ago.

I stared at the grave for a long time, with my mouth open gaping like a fish in the air. Then I looked over at Enoch and he had that Jesus-seeing bright-eyed look on his face again and it made me squirm to see. I told him I didn’t know he had died, and Enoch said, “Well you should have. You said you read the book, and he died at the end of it.”

I said no, I never did read that far past when he went and blinded himself. And Enoch didn’t say anything back and neither did I and we were there staring at Hazel’s grave for a long time before we went back home, and all the time we never said nothing.

As soon as I got back I read the last bit of Miss O’Conner’s Wise Blood. I found out what he done with the barbed wire and the rocks in his shoes and how he went out into the cold rain and let himself to die there, and when I was done with it all all I could do was sit there and wonder to myself why. Why did he do all those things to himself and then let himself out to die alone in the streets? I thought but it didn’t make no more sense that him throwing babies against the wall and preaching churches without Jesus and blinding himself with lime. The things Hazel did never made no sense, not even to me, not even after I read Miss O’Conner’s book and saw Jhon Huston’s movie. They made sense to that detention school lady, and she told me how meaningful and symbolic they all were, but I never could see it. But now I’ve seen his grave it just struck something in me for some reason and now I think I seen what the school lady was getting out. I still can’t see what it all means but I know it’s there and I’m going to see if maybe I can find it.

Now that Hazel’s dead I don’t know where I’ll go. Enoch says I can stay at his house longer so long as I sleep on the floor and don’t get in the way of anything and don’t look in his slop-jar cabinet. I reckon I could stay with Enoch for a long time, he said he’d like it if I could, that he’d like to have a friend around, and I guess I wouldn’t mind if I had to sleep with him, but I don’t want to if I can avoid  it. The man is still a nuisance and the biggest idiot on this Earth, and I want to be rid of him as soon as I can. I reckon maybe I can go over and live with Mrs. Watts instead for a while, just until I found myself a job. She was a nice enough lady, even if she was ugly, and maybe if I asked she’d let me stay if I helped her out with her work. I’d pay the rent there with the money I got from the men she was too busy to serve herself. Besides, she’s already got one thing I like, and that’s that she knew Hazel Motes. She don’t t seem to remember him, but maybe I can show her the book and then maybe she will when she reads it. And I’d like to talk about him to someone who doesn’t make long speeches about how his wise blood led him to Hazel and that’s how come he is what he is now every time I try to talk about him.

So that’s my plan for now. Since my old plan is gone I really don’t know much of what to do with myself. For now, I just sort of what to think about things for a while before I figure out a real new plan.

Enoch Emory

Ignore that date up there, I don’t know why it says it’s the same day as before because it ain’t. I been in Taukinham three days now and I still haven’t found Hazel Motes. I ask around, but that lady who sent me to the detention home must have dropped dead because her house is empty now so I can’t ask her where he’s gone. And Mrs. Watts didn’t know nothing neither.

I may not have found him, yet, but I did find someone else now. I was passing through the zoo looking and I saw this boy standing there and looking at the monkeys in the cage and he’s got his back to me but I think he looks familiar. So I go up to look him in the face and it turns out it’s that Enoch boy who gave me the potato peeler. And he don’t notice me, nor nobody around him, he’s just staring in at them chimps like he wanted to be in there with them or something. So I grab him by the arm and say, “Enoch” and give him a shake. And he don’t notice, but I done it again and this time he looked over and after a minute he recognized me. I asked him if he had seen Hazel Motes at all recently and where he was. I figured, since he used to follow him around so much, heds at least know where I could find him. Enoch looked at me for a long while like he didn’t know what I was talking about but then his eyes kind of went bright and he said yeah, yeah he knows where Hazel is, except he can’t take me there today. I told him I needed to go there today and he just said no, we would go tomorrow, and in the meantime I could stay at his house. But he said he couldn’t take me to his house right now, he’d take me there at five that evening, and he couldn’t do it any earlier because first he had to do some important things first. Then he went back to watching the monkeys.

So I left him with his monkeys and I went off to keep searching on my own for a while longer. I didn’t see him. I saw his car though, his big ratty Essex parked on the side of the road, and a man with a blue suit and a black hat just like his standing on the roof of it just like him and preaching something. I thought it was him for a second, but when I got closer I saw it wasn’t, just a guy with a big drawling voice who looked like him, and when I listened I realized it wasn’t even him who was doing the preaching, a man in front of him with a guitar was and the man on the car was just repeating what he said. I listened in on what they preached for a little while and it sounded nice, but then the man with the guitar said we had to give him money now and I didn’t have none left over so I left to keep walking. Taukinham don’t look much different now than three years ago, except the lights at the theater all got replaced so they light up right nice at night instead of blinking and going dim all the time. I asked the lady at the ticket booth if they had Wise Blood playing, thinking since I had read the book maybe I should see the movie again just to remind me some more, but she was an old crone and couldn’t hear what I was asking. So I wrote down the movie and the director on a scrap of paper and handed it over to her, and she looked at it for a second and then said she was sorry but she never heard of no Jhon Huston and so she didn’t think any of his movies were playing in the theater.

That was fine by me, though, I liked the movie but I didn’t like it that much. Jhon Huston may have done good by finding people who looked like us to act like us, but his Taukinham don’t look nothing like the real Taukinham, and his Sabbath Lily Hawks isn’t 15 but 17. I don’t know why they had to change that but I don’t like that they did. And he tried to make the story all sound funny when really it was bad for us who was in it. But I liked how he showed me with my baby before Hazel done smashed it against the wall. He had a hood over my heard like Mary and I felt like that was supposed to mean something, and it also made me think a little about Mary and her Jesus. Because her and God weren’t married when she had him, and so that makes Jesus a bastard child like me, but Jesus got into heaven ok and so maybe I can too. Maybe that’s why Jhon made it like that, so we’d have to think about things like that. Maybe if I realize that then I do have that something inside that’ll let me understand Miss O’Conner’s version of our story someday.

So at five o’clock I find Enoch again still looking at the monkeys and this time he takes me home to his apartment and I’ve been here for the past three days. He says he’s got to do some things first before he takes me, but all I ever seen him do was go stare at those monkeys some more. I think he just wants me to sleep with him first before he brings me to Hazel so maybe I’ll feel obliged to stay with him and not Hazel, but I won’t because he’s really just a plain nuisance. His tie’s such a gaudy color that it hurts my eyes to look at it, and every days he wants me to go out and see the monkeys with him and sometimes when I do for a bit he just watches them and then he looks at me with these big lighted-up eyes like he’s just seen Jesus come down from heaven and he keeps looking at me like he expects me to say something. Most for the time I just leave. One time I was looking through the things in his room while he was out and I found a big black pile of fur bunched up in a slop-jar cabinet. When I pulled it apart I found it was a big hairy monkey costume with an ugly gorilla head. I remembered he stole the thing in the book but I didn’t think he’d kept it. The man is beyond insane, and I can’t wait to find Hazel so I can be rid of him.

Tomorrow, he says he’ll finally bring to see Hazel, and I hope for his sake he’s really going to show me Hazel this time and not another chimp.  

Off to Taukinham

My paycheck came in earlier than I expected, and now I’m writing this going on the train to Taukinham. By the time I put this up I’ll be in Taukinham already, because I can’t get the Internet on the train, but I’m writing it here because I was just reading that book Wise Blood and I wanted to talk about it some. I decided I needed to read it again so I could remember everything properly for when I get back to Taukinham. I haven’t read it in a while and it was nice to read it again because it made me remember a lot I hadn’t remembered in a long time. Like I had forgotten that that Enoch boy was the boy who done give me that potato peeler I never used.

There’s something really interesting about reading the beginning of the book again because Hazel came to Taukinham on a train too, and when I look at that and I look at how I’m writing this on the train now it seems like maybe I’m writing another book to continue Miss O’Conner’s. Maybe I am, maybe I can write all this down and get this published, but I’m not sure I can write it as good as Miss O’Conner did, so maybe I’ll get her to do it instead. But anyway Hazel Motes came to Taukinham on a train and then he stayed with this Mrs. Watts lady for a while before he come to live where me and my daddy lived. I supposed if I can’t find him at the house first I’ll go see if I can find him at Mrs. Watts. When I first found out about Mrs. Watts I must admit I wasn’t too happy about him having another woman right before me, but I supposed I was just right, he always was just filthy right down to the guts. I wonder if he’s still like that now, or if he’s gotten all pure-like and Jesus-loving and he won’t want nothing to do with someone as filthy as me. But maybe he’ll take me in and set out to try to redeem me, if he’s gotten so holy, and so I’ll have to bring him out of that after a while and we can get back to the way things were before he done blinded himself and ruined those pee-can eyes I was so crazy for.

So that’s what my plan is for when I get to Taukinham. I’ll find a boy to take up with so I can have someplace to sleep and first I’ll look in the house and then at Mrs. Watts and if I still don’t find him I’m going to have to find somewhere else to look too.

I know I’m not really saying much important with this blog now but I got tired of reading the book again and I needed something to do. Right now I’m at the part where Hazel found out about my daddy’s eyes. Sometimes I wonder, is that why he did it, because he saw my daddy didn’t do it like he was supposed to and so he decided someone had to do it in his place? I read that book again and again and I still never knew why he done it or why he throwed that baby of mine against the wall. That lady from the detention home said there was some meaning to it, that Hazel was real Jesus-loving deep down but he never wanted to be that way. Well, I could have told her that, but she says it’s meant to say something about the country and all the people in it, but whenever I asked her what she meant she said I had to figure that out for myself, but I never could and so I don’t know what it means. Maybe you have to have something inside to know what it means, some Jesus-loving part that I don’t got or some wise blood of your own or something.

But anyways, I just wrote this so I’d have something to do on the train here, but it looks like I’m going to be stopping soon and so I’ll stop writing for now.

My Blog

My name is Sabbath Lily Hawks and today I am 18 years old. Last month I was let out of the detention home I been staying in since I was 15 and now I intend to go down to Taukinham and find Hazel Motes. I know he don't want me, what with how he let that woman send me here, and I know when I first took up with him I never counted on no honest-to-Jesus blind man to deal with, but now that my daddy's gone and sunk himself on his banana boat and I can't go back to the detention home, I got nowhere other than him to go. But he'll grow to like me enough in time.

I decided to start writing this blog on account of that book Miss O'Conner wrote on me and how famous it got. I never read all of it, just up until right before Hazel blinded himself because I don't want to think about what him and his eyes looked like after that anymore, but I thought she did a good job of making what we told her sound interesting enough for a book. The book is named Wise Blood, if you don't know, but I never understood why she called it Wise Blood, because other than these few times that a boy named Enoch talked about it it didn't have nothing to do with what went on in the story. A lady at the detention home read the book over a few times herself and said it was a very symbolic thing and that the whole book was meant to say something, but I never could get to what it was.

Sometimes at the detention home they showed us the movie they made all about the book and I watched some of it sometimes and I was right surprised when I saw that girl they got to act like me in the movie, because her and me look just about the same. A man named Jhon Huston made the movie and he made it pretty accurate too, except he got some events out of order or at the wrong times or such, on account of it worked better in the movie that way than what the real thing would have.

So now that I’ve got my own book and a movie with a girl that looks like me acting like me in it, I figure I’m a kind of a celebrity now, and so when I got let out of the detention home I asked to myself what else a celebrity needed. I decided I needed a way to talk to people who seen me in the movie or read me in the book, so I decided to get myself a blog. So here’s the blog, and now I’m going to write down what I see going to Taukinham and what I see when I get there and answer people’s questions if they have any. I suspect they might have a lot, since Miss O’Conner talked more about Hazel than anything in her book and didn’t really show what I was doing except when I did it to Hazel.

I’ve got a job putting things in bags at the grocery store right now and I’m staying with a boy named Adam. I don’t know him much and because he never really talks to me I suspect he don’t really want me around, but he’s letting me stay because I sleep with him from time to time. My paycheck comes in in two or three days and then I’ll have enough money to buy a train ticket to Taukinham. I don’t know if Hazel Motes is still in Taukinham, but that’s the only place I got to look, and so maybe I’ll find him there.