In the Country of the Blind

by Edward Hoagland

  Melba’s noisily unregistered car arrived, fortunately after the cop had left. “Gobbledygook,” she announced, to dispose of the fuss. “Those peaceniks.” Her casual chaffing made Press feel better about the situation. “They’ve looked at your bank records, I assume. You’re all clean, though those druggies ought to have paid you. Storage space,” she chuckled. “People like you who were born with a silver spoon in their mouth are always safer. I bailed out plenty of boyfriends in cow country, and yet, all told, even scrubbing your deck, I’ve never been sorry I left.”

  He didn’t mention the son dead in the snows of Wyoming’s mountains, or the horrible story of a baby eaten by pigs in the homestead cabin, since that would have been like asking if Melba was sorry she’d ever lived. His own scenic memories included Rome’s Capitoline and Janiculum hills and the Borghese Gardens, honeymooning with Claire, doing the tour. “Old and new,” he said, meaning where their exploratory tastes had taken them.

  “God is so cruel,” she murmured reflectively, as though answering him.

  “Yes,” he admitted, from the vantage point of going blind. “Though maybe people are kinder if He made them that way.”

  “You’ve run with a different crowd. Rich people are nicer to rich people.”

  “Sure. Yes. That’s why I’ve washed up here. Rich people couldn’t have been nicer to me.”

  She laughed with him. “Well, nicer than to a charwoman, anyhow.”

  “Probably so. I bet you had fun in your life, though. Those cowboys with their heads in your lap after they’d won a silver belt or whatever, all busted up.”

  “I’m pretty particular about my lap. It’s like a wrangler may be breaking broncs for a living, but he’ll have a love-horse, a horse he loves. I’ll cook his oatmeal for him, when he’s left his teeth out there in the ring on the ground, but if he don’t have a love-horse too, that’s all. You know a man by his horse and by his dog.”

  “I’ll bet,” Press agreed yet again. Silence followed, except for the flop of the mop, until she opened up after a few minutes to tell a funny story she’d been recalling lately, “because you can’t do it over.” She’d once hit the road alone after a disappointment in love—being dumped or dumping someone herself, and before she had kids. Leaving a ranch near Elko, Nevada, she drove to Reno, then up the Sierras to Truckee and down the California side to Sacramento, where she decided to skip San Francisco and headed instead for Point Reyes, up the coast, for some good beach time.

  “I had my tent but it was too cold to swim. There was driftwood, so I had a fire. Deserted beach, seals barking—I could unwind—except along came this guy after a little while, which I didn’t want at all if he was going to hit on me. But no, not a creep; he didn’t stop, walked past, quite aloof. Then, uh-oh, he turns, comes back, yet hardly looks at me. He looked off as if at someone else. Hands me something. ‘Don’t want to waste it,’ he says absently, as if a thought, not very important, had popped into his head, and walked on. I didn’t even notice what it was for a minute, I was so puzzled. Of course it was his wallet. And he drowned himself after he got out of sight.”

  “Ouch. Awful.”

  “Could I have helped? And afterward I didn’t give it to the police for his family or talk to them,” she added, interrupting his assurances. “I moved my camp before the sun set, even before I knew what must have happened, and then read about it in San Francisco when his body washed up.”

  He said nothing, though wanting to know how much money had been in the wallet, till her silence prompted him to assure her again that she couldn’t have saved the man. “And who would want all those interviews?”

  “No, we don’t do interviews. Buckaroo wives. They only talk to you when you’re on top. If your guy breaks his ass and there’s no news guy around.

  “You’re a square,” she told him, approvingly. “Have you ever broken a bone? Have you ever been in a fight?” When he shook his head, “That’s the spirit!” she hollered. “So many men, when they get tanked they want to slug somebody. Get a hard-on and want to push you down. Ever even been slapped?”

  “No. But you liked the bad boys,” he teased. “Not us good boys.” He felt her chapped or wooden lips brush his cheek as she passed.

  “Well, they’re more touching. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Till they’re knocked flat.”

  “Then you pick them up,” he laughed, finishing her thought—but tried to think of anything he’d ventured, beyond joining Merrill Lynch and marrying Claire.

  “But not the grabby guys like Rupert and Rog, with dollar signs for eyes and bank accounts like you. Like you, only mean,” she added, lest he feel offended.

  “Grabby guys are charmless,” he agreed. “I’ve known a lot. But Rupert is your oldest friend, is he not?”

  “He’s been known to get into my pants on occasion, yes. Is that how you define ‘oldest friend?’” She chuckled.

  “Your call, not mine.”

  “Rupert was a business partner, not someone I would have fallen for, after high school. I shipped horses to him and seldom got my money back.”

  “And yet you’re living in his trailer? Is that sad?”

  “Yes, I am. He took me in to spite his wife and drink tea with, honcho-wise. Men like playing padrone, but he’s not as bad as they come.”

  “You had no crooks?”

  She snorted. “There were girls who liked the dudes that would sucker punch another chump in the solar plexus for no reason and go home with him. They’re the ones you read about who go to prison for driving the getaway. I’m the type who’d pick up the guy who couldn’t catch his breath.”

  “The Good Samaritan. St. Peter will wave you right on through.”

  “Oh, no, no. A blind man gave me a C-note once for a tip, thinking it was a ten, and I never told him.”

  “Not me!”

  Having forgotten Press was blind—though his presence might have prompted the memory—she spryly hopped in his lap and hugged him.

  “You’re as light as a feather, you should eat more. Listen, if you ever find me dead, search the house before you call the cops because I’ve hidden money around and I want you to have it.”

  Melba, at a loss for words, stood up and lectured him about how stupid that was if the police had found it to prove he was in with the traffickers. “But sure, hey, give it to me now and I’ll be sure to give it to your hippie girlfriend then. Hasn’t she already found it herself?”

  “I’m not guessing who’s found what, but I wish you weighed more than ninety-five pounds. I’ll give you a twenty for ice cream.”

  “I’ll take it. That’s two hours’ work. But I can’t promise I won’t pay my dentist for the last tooth he pulled. So the frog skins are so you can get out of Dodge?”

  “I want to be able to. Flag down a car. ‘Take me to Montreal.’”

  “You’re blind, but, sure, with a nice guy you’d get there. Then what?”

  “The kindness of strangers. It really does work. Just like here.” He laughed.

  “Yeah, Al and me are kind. And Avis Clark, if you didn’t get in her husband’s pants before she did. And that newspaper lady who takes your money to feed you. But they’d deport you back.”

  “Then I’d get on the New York bus,” he joked.

  “And then you’d be fucked. Real sorry you weren’t back here.”

  “Right you probably are. I’m stuck.” Yet she was chopping kindling for the birch log in his woodstove, so he felt less stuck. The wave of warmth that followed was luscious, whereupon Melba rehearsed with Press how to find an exit in case of fire, checking, for example, that all of the likely windows could be opened with a push.

  “I need to know,” he blurted, to his surprise.

  Melba took what she described as a twenty from him. “Enjoy yourself,” she repeated after hearing him sigh. “That hippie that gives you head—okay, she’s got two nice kids—and if your wife won’t let you see your children, enjoy her children. That’s what I mean. You’re
quite lucky.”

  “Yes,” Press conceded. “God bless you. Don’t leave. I may be lucky but I’m lonesome too.”

  “Don’t be afraid of the dark.” She tousled his hair tolerantly. “I’ve never known a man who wasn’t scared of more things than I was.”

  Chapter 7

  That night, sleeping soundly, Press was awoken by the wail of sirens, suddenly throwing him back to his city days. They went toward Karl’s place or Benny “Bear” Messer’s: he of the spyglasses, and rassling the boulders out of Press’s spring. However they shrieked back rather soon, maybe from a disaster at the commune. Thus an ambulance, not cops or a fire truck. He resisted calling Dorothy’s house until daylight, even though the noise couldn’t have failed to wake them too, not to mention the scanner that Karl kept on all night. Ten Mile Farm’s medley of loose-cannon characters made any accident possible. Busted backs, a bloody miscarriage, a gun going off. At sunrise he called the Swinnertons to check on their welfare.

  “No, Karl’s not okay,” Dorothy said grievingly. Press offered to bike over and hold the fort, since she was going back to the hospital “in a minute,” and by the time he’d done so the house was his. Sheila, the setter, welcomed him with nosey requests to be petted and he found day-old doughnuts in the bread box and coffee on the stove. Dorothy had let the chickens out, so they must have been fed, and the cats as well, both barn and house. He answered the phone when friends called for information, but knew less than they did, being unable to dial the hospital. Apparently the emphysema and bum heart had got the best of Karl overnight, but the EMTs and ER folks had stabilized him.

  Press moved from kitchen chair to parlor sofa, out to a porch rocker and back to the settee. Missing his friends, he wondered whether Karl was suffering even if out of the woods. Nothing could be worse than struggling to breathe; another friend had died last year gasping from Lou Gehrig’s disease. And when was their tax bill due? He’d thought of adding a few acres to his holdings to help with their arrears. Not stinginess but uncertainty about his plans to move or stay had delayed him. But his own unease and discomfiture shriveled by comparison with what they must be feeling. Firemen buddies and the Legion commander all called, and he groomed Sheila, washed a few dishes in the sink, and listened to the two roosters announce individual egg-laying by their respective harems. Shamefully, it occurred to him that if Karl didn’t survive Dorothy might take him in as a permanent border. “Star boarder” was a country term for a boardinghouse resident who shared his landlady’s bed on cold winter nights and sweaty ones too. It was a comfier house than his own.

  He was watching TV when Dorothy called to say that Karl should be home in a day or two and therefore relieved him of duty, and sinful fantasies, in the meantime. He lingered, savoring the pleasure of a house not his own, putting water and feed out for the cats, and chickens, scratching the chest of the dog. Then, wobbling home, he was surprised when a pickup stopped to offer him a lift. Who was it? Couldn’t see; farm trucks resembled hippie trucks, except for the faces, unless you could distinguish what lay in back. He sniffed for fertilizer, hay, or manure.

  “Want to go to Ten Mile, bro, or back home? I noticed you,” said a male voice, youngish, most likely a hipster’s. Press, being lonely anyhow under the circumstances, impulsively chose the commune. He felt the truck turn around, then wind uphill on familiar curves to the same creaky porch and, after somebody was shooed out of his cushioned chair, settled there.

  Before gunning away, the guy sat on the floor next to him, and turned out to be Carol’s friend from Arkansas.

  “I was thinkin’. I go to Portland regularly for fish. Would you like a ride?”

  “For fish?”

  “Yeah, I do a run for the stores. Lobsters, fish, et cetera.”

  “Maybe I would.” He patted Press on the shoulder like a pal before he left.

  Nobody else welcomed or rebuffed Press. Was he now a garden ornament? Would Carol be summoned, or an acquaintance lead him to their quarters? Conspiratorial notions simmered in his head—how long would he be gone from his house and what might happen in the interval? Common sense, though, returned as he realized the absence of children must be due to school, and a house like his would seem radioactive to a bad apple immediately after a police raid. Maybe the communards felt a bit guilty, or were simply busy with their lives? A woman did touch his knee and ask whether he needed anything, but moved on without hinting if she knew him. He might have asked for the woman whose loft he had climbed to, except she had purposely withheld her name. The shape of the barn was visible to him, but to go and search for that ladder, after finding the entrance, would be dangerous, or folly even should she be there.

  The buzz of a nearby beehive soothed him, plus the merry-go-round of residents stepping in and out of the farmhouse to use the phone, put a tape in the boom box, or perhaps carry fixings for the next meal. Honey, he remembered hearing, was part of The Farm’s self-sustenance program, like maple syrup, banty eggs, or leather goods that they sometimes sold. The bees hummed industriously in the flora around the porch and barn swallows hawked for bugs overhead: kvik-kvik. Somebody handed him a vine-fresh tomato to eat with his hands. It dripped in his lap, so he asked them to lead him inside.

  While there, he had this person help him to call Dorothy to make sure she’d gotten home when she expected to and if her morale was up. A friend had joined her to drive her back and forth since Karl was going to be held over. His mood was cranky; didn’t want bypass surgery. “No knife!” She’d be at the hospital tonight. Certainly he could come over tomorrow and feed the animals. She sounded like she’d been crying, but with her many friendships and his handicap, he knew a more complicated offer of help would be unwelcome. Some communards, overhearing his conversation, invited him to hold hands around the dinner table in silent meditation and partake of rice, salad, and pie. The talk was affectionate, with children there, about Karl’s ambulance ride—a man they knew to be Press’s friend, who had helped so many people as fire chief or into that ambulance for their own last ride.

  “Does Carol know you’re here?” a person asked, and Press said maybe not, if nobody had notified her, which he knew was hard to do. “I’ll give you a ride,” she replied, but they left it at that till the light waned outside, supper was over, the kids urged toward bed, and new people had shown up, with a guitar. He smelled marijuana, but “in deference to you,” the lady said, nobody was dropping acid or using mescaline. Press grooved to the guitar, especially when it was backed up by a Credence Clearwater or Jefferson Airplane tape. Eventually his interlocutor tapped his shoulder and led him to her car, seated him next to her, tied the bike to the trunk, and drove him home. Didn’t ask where, or whether he wanted to go to Carol’s instead; just said, “Come any time.” Then asked, “What’s it like to be blind? Stupid question, hey?”

  “No, but hard to answer, which means it’s a good question. Ups and downs. Kind people. This is an up.”

  She fobbed off his own queries except to confirm that she was a chum of Carol’s as well as the guy who had picked him up. “Join if you want. We know you by now,” she joked, after delivering him, hand on elbow, to the door. “Do you want me to walk you through your house?”

  “No, sweetie. No sweat. Best of luck.”

  He didn’t so much as know who she was to ask after her someday. Yet yes, as he’d said, it was an “up” on a down day, and he wasted no time before phoning the Swinnertons, which yielded no answers before bed.

  Next morning Dorothy took him along on her breakfast visit to the hospital. Karl was gruff and grateful, stoic and self-pitying, like any other patient. The murmurous scents evoked memories almost prenatal in their blurry scope. It pained him to remember conversing with his dying dad, a colon tumor having metastasized, ungracefully though sympathetically agreeing with him that at just sixty-three he had already seen the best of the world. He also recalled the births of his children and tonsillitis, appendicitis in his youth.

  As to Karl, t
hough fond and rooting for him to pull through, Press felt he wasn’t moved enough. Dorothy tried to cheer him up, drawing out otter lore, duck dog lore for a pretend column. He changed the subject to fires, what you breathed and what it did to you, and how far, if you passed out, you’d fall. One barn had burned with all the cows alive inside, pinned in their stanchions. Their bawling tore at your heart, and the farmer had gone so crazy he started shooting them before they died more painfully, thus endangering the firemen. Then at Anzio, that dud German .88 shell rolling into his foxhole. A nurse interrupted, lest he become over-stimulated.

  Press, on her porch, agreed that he wouldn’t be the same with an oxygen tank to drag around and tubes in his nose. He walked home for the simple pleasure of exercise, as Dorothy’s agitation segued into a wish for privacy. The leaves were tinged with colors, and nattered even when he couldn’t see them, the sky shortening its hold on daylight, birds flocking with migratory calls. He thought of Jeremy and Molly: how to connect more with them this school year. Easy improvisations like having them mail their history and English papers wouldn’t work; nor reading them to him, which anyway he might like, but not them. Mentors were everything in education, but you only knew that later, so he should encourage their ties to favorite teachers in any subject. What you looked back on was the stance, the courage or humility of sixth grade, eighth grade, high school teachers. “Know who your friends are,” one had said to Press, a wiser adage than he’d realized at first. Not just to protect yourself, but to protect them sometimes from the cruelty of your own arrogance when speaking to people you knew would overlook or forgive your thoughtlessness. And reading was traveling he must tell them; reading is hitting the road. Molly could play the piano for him, and if he delved deeper into his memory he could unearth more stories of his family and himself to tell.

  The slatted sunlight on the splintery floor was lovely and the scent of bats, or birds, skunks, coons that sheltered in the defunct barn seemed an olfactory carnival. A porcupine, interrupted by him as it gnawed on a salty board, shook its greeny-white quills. Press retreated back to his radio for some French female luncheon company, boiling eggs to smear with Thousand Island dressing, and waited for his next visitor.