An Aversion to Ladders 16

THE BLIND MAN, Part Two

Several more miles down the highway had the couple turning onto a side road. A solitary horse, grazing in stable yard, came into view at the straightaway.

“Now that’s what I’m scared of,” Michael confessed.

Emma looked over at the field. “You’re afraid of horses?”

He answered with a shiver.

The photographer spoke matter-of-factly as she lifted her camera to snap a picture of him against the rural backdrop. “I think you’re biggest fear is women.”

Michael picked up the prostitute’s phone number off the dashboard and waved it around, as though it served as sufficient proof to refute her assertion; Emma grinned, though was struck by how often his humor concealed more than revealed him. She gestured him to turn down a gravel road.

Wind sliced through high grass on both sides of the narrower byway, stripping off chaff and tossing up in a pitting cloud. They drove about a mile before coming on the familiar cutaway that led up to the sloping hill. The photographer stayed behind in the car to load a roll of film while Michael, trudging ahead, fought a gust hampering his ascent up the mound. When he reached the summit, a surging tide of grass lapped up on all sides. The wind cut half-moons into the flat terrain, and with a mind to scare up a ghost or two. The spent remains of the large bonfire were as he remembered, although the burnt effigy was missing from among the cigarette butts and beer cans.

As he continued to look around, his first impression of desolation gave way to another. It occurred to him, quite strikingly, that the burnt debris at his feet was out-of-time. The bonfire could have been yesterday, or last year, or even a hundred years ago. He knelt to stir the ashes with a vacant thought. It was something an astronaut once said about being exposed to the vacuum of deep space for the first time in an airlock, and how it smelled like an old fireplace. For all the wonders of the Universe, this was the one detail about the Cosmos that touched Michael most deeply. It was a sense memory of a personal event: an event that cut to the heart and meaning of everything. The world was personal, and in no other way could it be quantified, qualified, or truly understood. He rose to his feet and wiped his hands. Emma was shooting photographs lower on the southern side of the mound, and her bright dress made her resemble a piece of manganese sky broken off and fallen to earth. Michael hoped, regardless whatever dimension she truly inhabited (be it Heaven or Earth), she would emerge like a phoenix from the ashes—his ashes—to save him.

The wind picked up again to throw his head around. Something whitish was tumbling end-over-end over the meadow. Its queer movement had the character of striding legs counting off paces. The word “Homecoming” briefly unfurled across its surface, betraying it as a paper banner. Michael marked its progress until it snagged on something sticking out of the ground. He galloped down the mound and leapt into the waist-high grass. Emma hesitated, thinking he was playing a joke, but then ventured out to join him. Within seconds he was standing some height in front of her.

“What did you find?” she asked.

“Trees. Fallen down ones.” The topographer turned east and pointed. “They’re all laying in that direction, as if they were knocked over.”

“Knocked over? Knocked over by what?”

Michael was not disposed to explain. He jumped off the tree to find the ground rutty under his shoes. With probing steps he walked first south and then due east. Emma, intrigued, watched for several minutes, occasionally pulling hair out of her mouth put there by the fierce gust.
After about fifteen feet, he turned back. He had to speak loudly to be heard over the drubbing wind. “Are you up to walking with me?”

“How far?”

“To those trees over there.”

Emma peered out over the grassy terrain. The trees were a good quarter-mile away; her expression soured.

The painter told her his thinking. “I think something big knocked down these trees and pushed in that direction.”

She relented and held out her hand.

Michael came back to take the offered fingers. The marrying of limbs and digits always made for awkward grips and a self-conscious stride. Such synchronicity was the gateway to any conceivable intimacy, though he could find little rhythm in it.

Regardless, it was no leisurely stroll. Both were getting a workout in the weeds, and the wind was adding resistance. Approaching the thicket, their treading got easier just when the ground got harder and the grass, shorter. More felled trees lay ahead, and a sudden embankment. A roaring sound was ushering up the incline from behind brush. Emma beckoned her companion down a crumbling slope in pursuit of more substantive adventure.

A powerful jet of water was issuing from a large cement flow pipe half-hidden in undergrowth. Michael tried to ignore its bluster and concentrated instead on the picturesque blooms of chicory above them on the dryer ridge. Quieter water plunged in a quaff at their toes to expose sun-daubed bluegill winking over flat rocks, although the queasy man could feel his shoes giving in the soft soil. He stared stoically in their intended direction, but his tightening grip told the truth.

“You afraid of water, too?” she inquired.

He leaned into a retreat, and Emma, taking the hint, rejoined the path above.

The couple soon came upon a clearing, and, slack-jawed, Michael recognized where they were. “I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed. “We’re at the back of the Willis Quadrangle. Behind that fence is my house.” He had his answer. “These ruts must be the remains of the old train track the school pulled up.”

The front of Emma’s taffeta dress was covered with grass seed.

Feeling foolish for putting her through so much bother, the guide knelt down to brush off the stiff pleats of gown with uncharacteristic forwardness; fingers were even licked to pick clean seeds stuck to the syrup stain.

The young woman was entertained by his attempt to smooth her feathers, and glowed when he peered up from his servile attitude. “I guess this means you can introduce me to the crazy aunt!” she proclaimed.