Twin Cities Noir

BLIND SIDED by Ellen Hart Uptown (Minneapolis)

I was born in the time of monsters. My earliest memories were of my mother crying because she was frightened for my father, who was off fighting Japan in the Pacific. The names Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin swirled around my young mind like menacing black crows.

I’ve always had a rather mixed relationship with the concepts of good and evil. I know the atom bomb was a horrible genie to release on the world, and yet if the U.S. hadn’t dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my father would surely have been killed. He flew a small plane that was slated to be part of the advance group sent to Japan to soften up their defenses just prior to our invasion. The invasion never happened. Instead, my father came home when I was six years old.

In our house, the bomb was considered miraculous. As a young child, I never thought of it with anything other than a kind of exhilarated wonder. I’d longed to have my dad come home to us, and the bomb made that possible. But after he’d been back awhile, I realized, much to my astonishment, that he was a stranger. I wasn’t even sure I liked him. A year later he was dead. The bomb saved him so he could be knifed in a bar fight and bleed out on a barroom floor. That’s when I was first introduced to the concept of serendipity—another thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. I’m not depressed—or crazy. At least, I tell myself I’m not, but I guess I’ll let you be the judge.

As I grew up, the atom bomb was like a piece of coal flickering blue in my mind, never letting me forget what it had given and what it had taken away. I came to the conclusion in college that people’s views of right and wrong tended to be both situational and generational. But that never really satisfied me, because although I wasn’t religious, I wanted to believe in absolutes. Right and wrong. Good and evil. Maybe that’s a flaw, but it’s who I am.

My name is Leo Anderson, a suitably Minnesota sort of name for a boringly Minnesota sort of guy. I’m sixty-six, part Irish, but mostly Norwegian, a retired school teacher, the divorced father of two. And I’m going blind. Every morning, I wake up and look around my tiny bedroom to see what’s been erased since the night before. It’s a terrifying thing, this going blind business, and I hate it. I also hate being alone, living in this damn drafty apartment after being married for nearly thirty-eight years. Fact is, when I came home and told my wife about my diagnosis, it seemed to open up a sinister trap door in my marriage, releasing an angry accumulation of rabid emotions I never knew existed. Apparently, I wasn’t a very good husband. That part didn’t really come as a shock. I won’t lie to you. It’s another one of my flaws.

When I first met my wife, I was instantly attracted. She was tall and slender, with long brown hair and intense gray eyes—eyes that seemed to hold a secret only I could decipher. I was twenty-seven and a determined romantic. Karen was handing out leaflets at a peace rally outside Northrup Auditorium. We started talking. I don’t know what got into me. I mean, I was usually pretty shy around women, but I asked her to have coffee with me when she was done. It all seemed so easy, so effortless, kind of like sledding down a snowy hill. By the time I got to the bottom and was able to stand on level ground, look squarely at what I’d done, it was two years later and we were married.

If Karen hadn’t been pregnant with our first child, I probably would have left her. But when my son came along, everything changed. Not with the marriage, but with me. I finally had a purpose in my life. I believe I truly fell in love for the first time. My daughter followed a couple of years later. The marriage was never good, but my kids made it bearable. I feel bad now for the way I handled things. Maybe I should have ended the marriage, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that to my children, and so ultimately I guess I made a mess of everything. For many years, my life revolved around teaching and family. But that’s all behind me now. After such a noisy life, I had no idea this much silence existed in the world—so much space between a question and an answer. My days of working with kids had become ancient history. Or so I thought.

The morning it all started, the clock on the nightstand beeped at the usual 6 a.m. I reached over and flipped off the alarm. It was late October, and the light didn’t hit my windows until closer to 7. The way the sun came in and moved around my apartment had become very important to me. I hated waking up in the dark. I figured I had the rest of my life for that.

After breakfast, I took my usual shower. Next to the mirror in the bathroom I’d taped up a page I’d torn from a dictionary. When I moved to this apartment on Columbus a few months ago, I’d been able to read the words while I brushed my teeth. Official. Officiate. Officious. Offish. But that morning, I had to squint at the page, bend very close, and even then I could just barely make out the words.

For the past few weeks, I’d spent part of each day moving around my apartment with my eyes closed. I was practicing, as I’d been taught. You can’t go blind in Minnesota without being offered a lot of help—it’s the way Minnesotans are.

I’d been assigned a counselor to assist me with what they call “travel skill training,” another counselor for “daily living skills,” and I’d been given a list of therapists who could help me with the emotional aspects of going blind. We pay a lot of taxes, so we should get something other than the damn politicians for our money. Don’t get me started on state politics.

I spent that morning in the kitchen, rearranging the cupboards for the third time. Everything had to be logical, and it took awhile to figure out what that was. I had a lot of memorizing to do before the lights went out for the last time. Nobody could predict when it would happen, but it wasn’t far off. By early afternoon, I was sitting on the couch next to a bright reading light with a family album in my lap, my glasses resting on my nose and a magnifying glass in my hand. There was so much I wanted to burn into my memory—mainly, the faces of my children, the good times we had together.

Speaking of my kids, they don’t like me much right now. Or more accurately, they both seem to be afraid of me—for different reasons.

My daughter is engaged to a man who has the body of an anorexic stork and a stretched, rubbery face that reminds me of the rooster in the cartoon movie, Chicken Run.Not a good combination. I figured one of the perks of blindness would be that I wouldn’t have to spend the next twenty years looking at him across a dinner table. And on the off chance that they presented me with grandchildren at some point in the future, I would never know if the children favored the rubber-faced stork or my beautiful daughter.

Cary, that’s my daughter’s name, is afraid of me and her mother at the moment because she doesn’t want to be reminded that love sometimes fails. I guess I understand. My son comes by occasionally, but I can always tell that he’s watching me when he thinks I’m not looking. He’s afraid of some inner biology that will cause him to end up like his old man—blind and alone. Instead of their father, I’ve morphed into a gloomy omen. I hope they get over it—for their sake as much as mine.

Anyway, by 3 that afternoon, I’d mustered up the courage to go for a walk. I slipped on my coat, grabbed my dark glasses, and headed outside with my cane in hand. It was only the second time I’d gone walking with my eyes closed. I’d already committed to memory the number of steps it took to walk along the hall to the front door and then down the outside stairs to the sidewalk. I tried not to cheat and open up my eyes as I walked along. I didn’t intend to go very far, because if I didn’t get home by dusk, I really couldn’t see my hand in front of my face—unless I had my mega flashlight with me, which I didn’t.

It hadn’t snowed yet, so the sidewalks were clear. I figured I’d walk a couple of blocks, maybe as far as the convenience store across the park, and then call it a day. As I came to what I thought must be about midpoint in the block, I heard footsteps behind me. Before I knew what was happening, I was shoved to the ground. “What the—”

“Shut up!” snarled a young voice.

I twisted around, tried to make out the face, but it was just a blur.

“Your wallet. Now.” He slammed a boot into my ribs just to make sure I knew he was serious. “The wallet!”

I yanked it out of my back pocket. All I could think of was that I didn’t want him to hurt me. He could have whatever he wanted. Before I could give it to him, he grabbed it out of my hand.

“Hey,” came a different voice, one that seemed to appear out of nowhere. This voice was equally young, but stronger. More confident. “The dude’s blind. Give it back.”

“Shit, man! Get the fuck away from me.”

I looked behind me and saw the second kid. The late-afternoon sun glinted off something metal in his hand.

“That thing real?” asked my attacker, backing up a few steps.

“Give him the wallet back or you’ll find out.” The second kid’s voice was taunting. Arrogant. But he was on my side so I cheered him on.

“Fuck.” I felt the wallet hit my chest as the attacker sprinted off.

I was still dazed, but I sat up, touching the scrape on the palm of my hand. It had been chewed raw from hitting the concrete.

“Come on, man, I’ll help you. Get you home.”

My rescuer put a strong hand under my arm as I staggered to my feet. I was a good foot taller than he was, but to my frightened eyes, he looked immensely young and robust.

“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: Thefox 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?”

“Me? No.”

“Well, if you’re going to walk me down the aisle in two months, you’re going to need one.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“I made an appointment for you tomorrow night at Nelson’s Tuxedo Rentals. I’ll pick you up at 6 and we can head over to Southdale. Maybe have dinner somewhere first. That work for you?”

“Fine, sweetheart. I’ll look forward to it.” I turned in my chair. Glancing up, I fumbled with the phone, nearly dropping it. Ryan was standing in the middle of the kitchen, arms stretched out in front of him, holding the gun in both hands—the barrel pointed at my chest.

“Holy shit!”

“What did you say, Dad?”

I tried to cover, to stop my voice from betraying my shock. “I just mean…the wedding’s getting so close.”

“I gotta run, okay?”

“Sure, honey.” The dark glasses hid the fear in my eyes, but I was afraid Ryan had picked up on it. Maybe I should have told my daughter to send the police. Except, by the time they got to the apartment, I could have been dead. I had to play this carefully.

“See you tomorrow night at 6,” Cary said.

“See yah,” I replied weakly, clicking the phone off. I was vibrating internally, but trying to hold it together. Sensing that my hands were shaking, I crossed my arms over my chest. “That was my daughter.”

He didn’t respond.

“So,” I said, sucking in a deep breath, “where were we?”

“You were giving me your happy lecture.”

“I was?”

“Tell me something real, man. Don’t you have any, like, dark truths? Stuff about the evil side of life?” He held the gun steady.

My stomach vanished. “Does that seem more real to you than positive thoughts?”

“Hell yes.”

I said the first thing that came into my head. “My parents thought evil was Auschwitz. Concentration camps. You know what they are?”

“I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were.” I tried to regroup mentally and start again. “Truthfully, Ryan, I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about evil.”

“And?”

“Well, people today talk about it like everyone knows what it is. Like it’s the weather. Everybody knows about the weather, right?” I paused, hoping for a response. When I didn’t get one, I continued, “See, we play with the word. Evil is bad, but bad means good sometimes, right? Evil is rebellious, irreverent, sexy. It’s what’s forbidden. And what’s forbidden is a mystery, and mysteries are cool. It’s the uptight assholes, usually our parents or teachers, who tell us what’s right and wrong, and what the hell do they know?”

He grunted at that one.

“For a long time, Ryan, maybe I thought a little like you. I saw evil as something that was darkly grand in a grotesque Third Reich sort of way. I liked to talk about evil in the rhetoric of Milton, of Paradise Lost.I romanticized it. Bad was dangerous, and that was cool. But you know what?”

“What?”

How did I explain this to him when most of the time I couldn’t explain it to myself? I gave it a second, then said, “See, Vietnam taught my generation a different lesson from the one World War II taught my parents. It showed us not the evil of others—but the evil of us. And that’s when I started thinking that evil wasn’t grand and epic and biblical; it was shallow and messy, grimy and stupid. Why do people hurt each other, Ryan?” I gave him some time to respond. When he just stood there belligerently, I continued, “Because they can. Because they feel like it. Because they want something and they have the power to take it. That’s it. Nothing grand or cool.”

The gun lowered a few notches. He was finally listening. “Go on.”

“I think we should stop talking about evil geniuses and instead talk about evil morons. And here’s the bottom line. Being a victim—being somebody who’s been hurt—is the world class excuse, the Mount Everest of self-justification. He hurt me so I can hurt him—or someone else who just happensto get in my way.People do evil because it’s convenient, because of peer pressure and cowardice, because they’re inattentive or under the sway of some idiot ideology. We’re all victims of something, so we all have an excuse for what we do. Except, life shouldn’t work like that. If it does, then all the hurt just continues on forever. People—men in particular— think that courage means stuff like driving a car too fast, or knocking someone down in a fight. But the kind of courage you really need in life is moral. That’s the really hard kind of courage, Ryan. The courage not to be stupid, or shallow, or mean.”

He stared at me. A long moment passed. And then he lowered the gun and stuffed it in his pocket.

“You’re weird.”

“I am?” I could smell the sauce burning. “Better check the food on the stove.”

When he turned away from me, I collapsed back against my chair, waiting for the basketball in my chest to deflate. I struggled to think of a plausible excuse to get him to leave, but at the same time, I was afraid that if I ended the evening abruptly it would tip him off that I’d seen the gun in his hand. I figured that would put me in even greater danger.

The next few minutes were brutal. Something I’d said must have struck a chord because Ryan grew increasingly silent. He’d answer my questions, but with very brief responses. And then, slowly, his mood seemed to lighten. It was as if a light switch had been flipped on inside him, revealing a completely different kid. We ate our dinner and he talked animatedly about music, his main interest, and baseball, an interest we shared, and then he cleaned up. At one point, I remember he said, “You remind me of my dad.”

“Is that good?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s very good. The best.” He sat down on at the table across from me. “You know, I was just thinking, maybe you could use a kid around here sometimes.”

The comment touched me, more deeply than I realized at the time. “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe I could. And maybe you could use an old guy in your life—every now and then.”

“Next time I come,” he said, “I’ll bring this book my dad liked. To Kill a Mockingbird.Ever heard of it?”

I smiled, told him I had.

“I think you’d like it. I’ll read it to you, okay?”

I still wasn’t sure I wanted a repeat of this evening, but before I could respond, he said, “Let me tell you something, Leo. Something I hate more than anything in the whole world. I hate liars. Like people who tell you they love you, but you know they don’t. You know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“So don’t ever lie to me, okay?”

I felt like a fraud. I was a fraud. He didn’t know it, but I was already lying to him. “Okay,” I said.

“You really promise?”

“I do. I promise.”

When he left, he put a hand on my shoulder, and then, suddenly, he hugged me. “You’re okay, man. I’ll be in touch.”

The next day, I couldn’t seem to get him out of my thoughts. I’d been right to think he was a danger to me, but now that our evening together was over and the worst had passed, I started looking forward to seeing him again.

Dinner with Cary on Thursday night was something less than splendid. I told her about being mugged outside my apartment, and that the kid who’d knocked me down had bruised one of my ribs. Thankfully, it wasn’t broken, just sore. But my daughter was so consumed by all of the wedding minutia that the story barely registered. After trying on a dozen tuxedos, and at least that many vests, she finally decided what looked best on me and we ordered it. When she dropped me back at the apartment, she gave me a peck on the cheek. I wanted more.

Over the next seven months, I got to know Ryan very well. We spent at least a couple of nights together every week—sometimes more. My vision stayed pretty much the same, but I was getting better at hiding it, so I don’t think Ryan ever caught on. Sometimes we’d go out to dinner, but most often we stayed in. Ryan loved books, and I loved him for it. We read To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn,Animal Farm, Lonesome Dove,and The Catcher in the Rye.

I figured it was best we get to that last book together before he read it himself. It had been a problem for so many kids that I wanted to talk about it with him. As with most boys his age, Ryan agreed that the world was filled with phonies. And it was at that point that he really opened up for the first time, told me about his life, how he hated his mother. He went on and on about how she would say she loved him, then shove him out the door. I don’t think he’d ever talked to anyone about any of this before, and the act of sharing his feelings, his pain, brought us even closer.

By March, I felt as if he’d become a second son. I had such high hopes for him. He’d been bringing his homework over for months. I’d help him with it if I could. Or, if he didn’t need my input, he’d sit in the living room working on it while I listened to the TV. It wasn’t like we were doing something together all the time. He seemed content just to be with me. And his grades improved. We started talking about college. When he’d leave for the night, he’d hug me. It made me realize how starved I was for affection—for the physical touch of another human being.

One afternoon in late May, I woke from an afternoon nap to find that my vision had suddenly worsened. The world was covered in an even thicker haze. By evening, I had developed a bad case of nervous energy. I hadn’t seen Ryan all week and that was bothering me too. I listened to the news and all of David Letterman and I still wasn’t tired. I got the idea in my head that I should buy a frozen pizza for the next time Ryan and I had dinner together. Chuck’s Market stayed open until midnight, so I put on my coat, grabbed my big flashlight and cane, and headed out the door. I think part of the reason I went out was to prove that I could still do it—still be independent, still make it across the park, no matter what was happening to my sight.

Chuck was behind the front counter when I entered. “Busy night?” I asked.

“No,” he said, stuffing his newspaper under the counter. “Slow. Bad business today. Bad economy. Make me worry.”

I headed to the frozen food section. Adjusting my thick glasses, I squinted at the pictures on the box covers. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking at, but I thought one was sausage, another pepperoni. There was an odd one that looked like it had mushrooms and something green on top. I figured the green stuff would put off a teenager. As I was dithering over which to take, I heard the door jingle open and then shut. A second later, I heard Chuck cry out: “You leave store! Go away, get out!”

I turned and saw two indistinct forms hovering by the front counter.

“The money!” said a young voice. “Now. Quick!”

My mouth opened. It was Ryan’s voice.

“No money,” insisted Chuck. “You go or I—”

Everything moved so fast after that, and my vision was so cloudy, that I can’t tell you for sure what happened. I think Chuck must have reached under the counter, or at least looked like he was about to. The kid who’d come in with Ryan fired a gun and Chuck dropped down out of sight.

I heard Ryan swear. Then scream, “You freak! Why’d you do that?”

“Get the money!”

The kid with the gun burst back through the store, looking to see if anyone had witnessed the shooting. I backed into the shadows next to the freezer and ripped off my glasses. As I pushed them into my pocket, I realized I had my dark glasses with me. I quickly put them on. If the shooter thought I was blind, maybe he’d leave without killing me. My entire body was quaking as I watched him swing around the end of a row of canned goods, the gun held stiffly out in front of him.

“Not much here,” called Ryan. “Maybe two hundred.”

“Shit,” said his buddy. And then he saw me.

“Come outta there!” he shouted.

I didn’t move.

Ryan rushed to the back. When he saw me, he knocked his partner’s hand down.

“Fuck, man! Why’d you do that?”

Ryan whispered, “He’s blind, for chrissake. Leave him alone. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

The kid hesitated.

Ryan grabbed his arm. “Come on!”

The kid with the gun stared at me for another millisecond, then took off.

I guess I’m not much of a hero. I fell to my knees, shaking so hard I wet my pants. It took a long time to pull myself together. Minutes. Maybe longer. I finally struggled to my feet and raced to the front counter. Chuck was lying on his back with a big bloody hole in the center of his chest. I knelt down and felt for a pulse at his neck. If there was one, I couldn’t find it. I grabbed the phone and punched in 911.

A woman’s voice answered, “Emergency operator.”

I told her where I was, that a man had been shot—the owner of the market. I think I may have been crying.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.” I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

“Are the assailants gone? You said there were two?”

I glanced outside, but all I could think of was Ryan, the trouble he was in. Why had he been so stupid? I was hemorrhaging internally for a kid I wasn’t sure I even knew.

For my son.

“Sir, are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“A squad car is on the way. Did you see the assailants?”

“What?”

“You called them kids.”

“I did?” The air shimmered around me. My instinct screamed at me to protect him, but was that right or wrong?

“Can you describe them? Did you…” She paused.

Ten seconds. Twenty.

“Sir? Are you there? Sir?”