“Lean on me,” said the kid, seeing that I was unsteady. “Where do you live?”
“The Standhope. At the end of the block.”
He picked up my cane and pressed it into my hand, and then together we walked slowly back down the sidewalk to my apartment. We didn’t talk until we reached the locked security door.
“Key?”
I fished for it in my pocket.
Entering the hallway, he asked my apartment number. I was grateful for the strong arm and never even considered that he might be as big a threat to me as the kid who’d knocked me down. Naïve is another one of my more admirable qualities.
After getting me settled in my Laz-E-Boy, he took off his coat. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“Through the kitchen. It’s next to the bedroom.”
I wished he’d turned on a light. The apartment was growing dark. Something inside me warned not to let on that I still had some part of my vision left. He seemed to have a certain sympathy for blind people. If he knew I could see, it occurred to me, his sympathy might evaporate. I kept my dark glasses on so he couldn’t see my eyes. I wanted to be able to study him without him knowing it. He returned a minute later with a washcloth, some antiseptic cream, and a bandage.
“Here,” he said, switching on the overhead light. He washed off my palm with the soapy cloth. After applying the cream, he placed a bandage over the biggest scrape. “You don’t want that to get infected.”
“Thanks,” I said, still a little dazed, and also a bit surprised at his gentleness and concern.
“You diabetic? That why you’re blind?”
“No. An eye disease.”
With the top light on, I could see a little better now. I watched him move around the living room. I guessed he was about fifteen. He had a stocky build and lank blond hair, and a dark patch on his forearm that I assumed was a tattoo. On his feet was a pair of bright red gym shoes. In the rear pocket of his jeans was an ominous bulge. That’s when I remembered the weapon I thought I had seen in his hand. Without thinking, I said, “Are you carrying a knife—or a gun?”
“Toy gun. But it looks real.”
In my forty-two years as a teacher, I’d developed a sixth sense about teenagers. I didn’t believe him. “You could get hurt carrying that thing, even if it is a toy.”
“I can handle myself. Besides, this is a rough neighborhood. A guy’s got a right to protect himself.”
I lowered my head, but kept watching.
“My dad was diabetic,” he said as he checked out my CD collection. “I used to take care of him.”
“Used to?”
“He died a couple years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. I miss him—miss talking to him.”
He ran a hand over an old Raggedy Ann doll sitting on a stack of magazines. The doll was something I’d brought with me when I moved out of the house. I’d given it to Cary on her fourth birthday, one of the happier days of my life.
“You got a daughter?”
“I do.”
Glancing at the bookcase, he said, “Lots of books.”
“I used to be a high school English teacher.”
“My dad liked books too. You read Braille?”
I shook my head.
He glanced into the kitchen, then back at me. “Maybe I could read to you sometime.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“I used to read to my dad all the time. I’m good at it. I kind of got what they call a dramatic streak.”
“Well—” I didn’t know a thing about this kid. He’d saved me from being robbed, but my instincts told me to be wary. But then, I guess my loneliness got the better of me. “Sure. I’d like that.”
“When?”
“Well, first, do you live around here?”
“Not far. Maybe a mile.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ryan. What’s yours?”
“Leo. You live with your mom?”
“Yup.”
He didn’t elaborate.
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be fifteen in January.”
“Brothers and sisters?”
“I got an older brother and a younger brother—and an older sister. Where’d you teach?”
“Washburn.”
“What grade?”
“Tenth.”
“I got a bunch of friends who go there. Me, I hate school.”
The gripe was so familiar it made me relax a little. “So, how about tomorrow night? You can come for dinner if it’s okay with your mother. I’ll give you my phone number and she can call me.”
“She won’t care. She works evenings.”
“Okay,” I said, drawing the word out. I wasn’t sure about any of this, and yet the prospect of not spending the evening all alone appealed to me. “How about six?”
“Six is great.”
I wished I could see his face better, but as I said, I was afraid to take off the dark glasses and put on my regular ones. I was beginning to like him, so I wanted to come clean, tell him that I did still have partial sight. But something stopped me. I didn’t know it then, but my life would come to hinge on that decision.
By the next morning, my left ribs hurt so much from being kicked that I called my doctor and made an appointment. I took four Ibuprofen while I ate breakfast, then got on a bus headed to Uptown. I had to sit in the waiting room for over two hours before I was allowed into the rear, where the examining rooms were located. My doctor wanted to send me for X-rays, but couldn’t get me an appointment until the next day, so she gave me a prescription for some heavier painkillers and sent me on my way.
I filled the prescription at the Walgreens by my apartment, bought some bottled water, and took a couple before I left the store. It was going on 4, and the light was starting to fade. All my life I’d dreaded fall in Minnesota. The chill winds and early darkness seemed to seep into my soul and depress the hell out of me. There were some things I needed from the store for dinner. Instead of getting back on the bus and heading over to Rainbow, which I knew would take too long and put me out on the street well after sunset, I walked the three blocks to the convenience store not far from my apartment. Without my flashlight to shine down on the sidewalk, I wanted to make it home before dark.
Over the past couple of months, I’d made friends with the man who ran the store. His name was Chuck, although I figured it wasn’t his real name because he was Vietnamese. I said hi to him as I entered. We usually exchanged small talk, so while I made a mental list of what I needed, I listened to him tell me about his newest grandchild. He almost glowed he was so proud of her. He said he planned to take her to Camp Snoopy at the Mall of America as soon as she was old enough.
“She so pretty. So smart,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
After a couple more comments, I drifted toward the meat counter. It wasn’t large, but all I needed was a pound of hamburger. Walking through the aisles, I grabbed a bottle of spaghetti sauce, a box of noodles, and a half-gallon of milk. Thinking that Ryan would probably be expecting dessert, I passed by the frozen food section and found some chocolate ice cream. I wasn’t much of a cook, but I figured most kids liked spaghetti and ice cream.
When I got back to the front counter, I had to wait while four other people paid for their groceries. Chuck was never in a hurry, so the minutes ticked by. Outside, the light was dwindling. I jingled the change in my pocket, cleared my voice a couple of times, but nothing I did seemed to register with Chuck that I was annoyed and wanted him to move faster. I could feel my palms begin to sweat. Finally, it was my turn. Chuck must have thought I was in a foul mood, because as soon as my stuff was rung up and I’d paid the bill, I rushed out the door.
A bitter drizzle had begun falling. I pulled the collar of my coat up around my neck and started across the street. The painkiller had finally kicked in, so I felt kind of floaty and loose, but no less anxious.
As I walked along, I could barely make out the sidewalk. Even with the drugs, I winced as I carried the sack of groceries. I was miserable and tense, and felt I’d made a big mistake in asking Ryan to dinner. I stumbled a couple of times over cracks in the concrete. The last time I nearly fell. And that’s when I sensed it—the feeling that I was being followed. Maybe it was the Vicodin. Or maybe it was the dark closing in around me. I’d been warned to expect a range of emotions as my blindness became more complete, but paranoia wasn’t on any list I remembered.
When I finally made it home, I locked the door and turned on every light in the apartment. I dumped the groceries in the kitchen, then slumped into a chair in the living room, breathing hard—breathing as if I’d been chased home by the boogieman. In the silence, the clock across the room sounded like a jackhammer.
I sat there for a while, until I was steady enough to get up. By then, the ice cream was melting in the sack. I pushed the carton into the back of the freezer and slammed the door. I hated feeling this fragile, this vulnerable. It wasn’t a good night to be entertaining.
Back when I’d first retired, I contacted a group at my church that supplied “big brothers” to children without fathers. The woman who interviewed me was as rigid as an old-fashioned schoolmarm. It became clear pretty quick that she thought I was too old. They needed younger guys who could go sledding, skiing, skating, play softball. I had arthritis and a bad hip which prevented me from being as active as I used to be. When I left the office, I regretted being so honest with her about my physical limitations. I missed spending time with kids, and I figured I had a lot to offer a boy other than sports. Maybe that was another reason I wanted to get to know Ryan better. It was a chance to prove that know-it-all lady at my church wrong.
I’d just set a pot of water on the stovetop to boil when the doorbell rang. I buzzed Ryan in and stood by the front door, hands in the pockets of my khaki pants. As he walked past me into the living room, I could smell cigarettes on his clothing and alcohol on his breath. I decided then and there that this was one troubled kid—or, perhaps more accurately, this kid was trouble. But I’d always prided myself on being able to reach kids that others gave up on. Maybe I could help Ryan. After all, I owed him.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked, trying to sound casual, indifferent, cool.
“Spaghetti.”
Behind my dark glasses, I closed my eyes. I’d never made an entire meal before without relying on what was left of my sight. I opened up the refrigerator to get the hamburger. “Help yourself to a Coke,” I said, feeling around for the right lump.
“You haven’t been blind very long,” said Ryan.
“Is it that obvious? I’m not very good at this, am I?”
“Here,” he said, moving up next to me. “Let me do it. You go sit at the table. I used to cook for my dad a lot, so I know what I’m doing.”
I felt my way over to a chair. “There’s some bottled sauce on the counter.”
“Just relax, man. I got it covered.”
While he made dinner, we talked. Ryan told me about his dad, that he’d been a construction foreman before he lost his vision. Ryan’s family had lived in a house over on 43rd and Sixteenth, but they’d moved to a small apartment when his older brother and sister moved out. By that time, Ryan’s mother was the sole breadwinner. She was an L.P.N. who worked the 4-to-midnight shift at a nursing home in St. Paul. And she had another part-time job that kept her away from the apartment on weekends. Ryan didn’t see her much, but he shrugged and said it wasn’t a big deal.
“What about the brother who’s still living at home?” I asked.
“He’s always on his computer. It’s all he does. It’s brain pollution, man. Boring.”
“You don’t like computers?”
“I don’t like nerds.” He went on to tell me about his best friend. I’m not sure what his real name was, but Ryan called him The Duck Man. I got the impression that The Duck Man was a little older than Ryan, and that he wasn’t in school. They hung out together on weekends. The Duck Man was into motorcycles, music, and all things cool. He was in a band. Nothing ordinary. The music he made wasn’t commercial. Commercial was crap.
While the noodles boiled, Ryan drifted into the living room and came back holding a book. “What’s this about?”
“What is it?”
“It’s called
The Fox and the Hedgehog.
Sounds like a little kid’s story, but it’s big—thick.”
“It’s a compilation of essays on that Greek saying.”
“What Greek saying?”
“A fragment of a verse from an ancient Greek poet:
The
fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, I suppose you could say it’s a way to categorize human beings. They’re either foxes or hedgehogs. They either know one central important thing that guides their lives, or they know lots of smaller things.” I paused. “Which do you think you are?”
No hesitation. “A fox.”
“Why?”
“’Cause foxes are cool. Did you know that back in, like, the twelfth century, people were terrified of foxes because they thought that if you looked deep into a fox’s eyes, it could, like, hypnotize you and then drag you back into the forest?” He stepped over to the stove, stirred the spaghetti sauce, then turned it down. “But actually, I think I’m a more of a hedgehog. I know one big thing.”
“And what’s that?”
His expression sobered. “That you gotta take care of yourself, because nobody else will.”
It was such a bitter, cynical comment for such a young person to make, and yet with what he’d told me about his life, I wasn’t surprised.
“What are you?” Ryan asked. “Fox or hedgehog?”
“I think I’m a fox.”
“So what do you know that’s so important?”
“Well,” I said, feeling like I was being forced to take an exam I hadn’t studied for, “for one thing, I think it makes you feel good when you help people.”
His eyes rose to the ceiling. “Yeah. Okay. What else?”
“That it’s important to love people. We’re not complete unless we do.”
“Shit, man. You sound like a fortune cookie.” He seemed angry. I was about to respond when the phone rang.
Ryan handed me the receiver. “Hello?” I said, easing both of my elbows onto the kitchen table, turning away from him.
“Dad?”
It was my daughter. “What’s up, honey?”
“Do you own a tux?”