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| George Maharis as Buz and Barbara Barrie as Celia, in a promo-shot for Even Stones Have Eyes |
3.
It was some time before Buz realised that he was shaking. He
walked, one hand on Tod’s arm, the other sweeping the cane before him to
reassure himself of what was before him, to give him some level of autonomy
without Tod having to give him verbal warnings every few minutes. But there was
something trapped inside him, some kind of pent up anger or fear, that was
making his hands shake as if he were freezing.
He had wanted to hit that man. He had wanted to really lamp
into him, to get him on the ground, to pummel his fists into him over and over
until he had fallen still. He didn’t think it would have mattered if it had
been that man or any other man, perhaps even Tod lying in the dust under the
hail of fists. He just wanted to hit
and hit and hit until whatever it was inside him had been driven out. Perhaps
that was the problem. Perhaps it was himself that he wanted to hit, to push out
the churning unknown of fear and anxiety and frustration and anger that had set
up home in his body.
‘Where are we?’ he asked eventually, turning his head to
hear sounds bounded by buildings and a ringing noise of hammering somewhere
over the street.
‘Uh – Second and Smithson,’ Tod said after a moment.
‘Walking up Second Street .’
Buz shook his head. ‘That doesn’t mean anything. I mean where are we? What’s the lie of the land?’
‘Oh, it’s low-rise buildings mostly,’ Tod told him. ‘A
couple of stores. There’s a garage just over the road. I was taking the long
way back to the car. I thought you needed it.’
‘Maybe I do,’ he said. He clenched his hand on the cane,
trying to push out the feeling that he was about to explode. He stopped walking
abruptly. ‘This was a mistake, Tod,’ he said. ‘I’m – I’m not ready to come out
like this. I’ve gotten used to all the places around the Camp. This is – it’s
like unknown territory. A big, wide map with unexplored stamped all over it. Here
be dragons. All that jazz. Sure, the dragons are just automobiles and guys
with hot coffee, but – I’m not ready for it.’
‘You want me drive you back to the Camp?’ Tod offered
immediately. ‘I mean, I’d like to spend more time with you if that’s okay. I
don’t need to be back until – well, I don’t actually need to be back until
eight o’clock Monday morning. But there’s no need for us to be wandering around
town like vagrants.’
‘Yeah, I’d like that,’ Buz smiled, aware that his smile was
thin and tight. Since when had getting lunch and coffee in a diner been such a
big thing? But it felt big. It felt enormous. He felt like he was exploring
Mars, walking through these streets with his eyes wide open and darkness all
around him, with people’s voices coming and going and the noise of traffic and all
those odd, source-less noises that filled the streets in any town. He felt like
something was about to break inside him. He didn’t want to find himself weeping
like a child in the street.
******
His dorm room was a sanctuary after the uncertain experience
of visiting the town. He felt in control again, as if his surroundings were
closer to him, somehow more visible. He had touched every inch of this room and
he could see it in his mind’s eye. Perhaps what he saw was vastly different
from the truth, but at least it was something
more than shadow and supposition.
‘Will your roommate mind if I sit on his bed?’ Tod asked,
and Buz shook his head.
‘Chet? No. Just don’t move any of his things around. He
hates that,’ Buz said, although he could easily have said we hate that. It was a blessing to be living with someone who was
just as sensitive to unexpected changes in surroundings as he was. Even though
Chet had more sight than him, he was still thrown out by disorder.
He went to his small stack of records and picked them up,
turning them over in his hands. He had taken Chet’s suggestion and notched tiny
grooves in the edge of the vinyl, hating to cut into the record but knowing he
needed some way of telling the discs apart without putting each one on to play
each time. When he was more fluent with Braille he would be able to put labels
on them.
He found what he wanted and dropped the disc onto the
turntable and let the music push out into the room. Celia had been right about
music, how it took you and enveloped you and sent you into a private world. He
didn’t think he had ever appreciated it more.
‘Say, why do you have lamps in here?’ Tod asked suddenly,
obviously looking around the room. ‘I mean – ’
‘Because Chet can see some light, and he likes to have the
lights on,’ Buz replied immediately. Sometimes he stood with his hands above
the light bulb, feeling the heat and wondering why his eyes or his brain
refused to show him that light. ‘Do you want coffee?’ he asked.
‘Oh, sure – but let me – ’ Tod began.
‘I’ve been learning to cook, remember?’ Buz said, going over
to the small kitchen area at the side of the room. ‘Besides, it’s only an
electric kettle. For some reason they don’t want us having gas flames in the
rooms.’
‘Gee, I wonder why not,’ Tod said sardonically. ‘Well, make
me coffee, great chef – and it’d better impress or I won’t be giving
references.’
Buz laughed and went to fill the kettle and carefully
measure out coffee grounds into the pot.
‘So, tell me about your Celia,’ Tod said, the bed springs
creaking under him as he relaxed.
‘She’s not my
Celia,’ Buz insisted.
He kept one hand on the handle of the kettle, feeling the
slight vibration start up as the water began to heat. There was no need to feel
it, but he liked to feel the hum and think of all the tiny bubbles beginning to
form in the water.
‘It’s just a fling,’ he said. ‘Something casual. Something
to make all this bearable.’
‘Come on, Buz. I’ve heard you talk about her on the phone,’
Tod insisted. ‘You never stop talking about her. Celia showed me this. Celia’s
teaching me how to do that.’
‘Well, she’s my mentor, see,’ Buz said, feeling the heat in
the kettle really starting to take hold beneath his hand. ‘I mean, I spend
hours with her. I’m going to talk about her. It doesn’t mean I’m hung up on
her. How ridiculous would that be? A blind guy and blind girl getting together
like that?’
There was a sense of unease prickling at his spine. He had
the sense that he was lying, but he wasn’t quite sure what he was lying about
or who he was lying to.
The kettle finally boiled and he poured it into the coffee
pot with great care, listening out at the pitch of the pouring water changing
as the pot filled up. He set the coffee to brew and sat down in the old leather
armchair near the turntable. He closed his eyes and thought of the feeling of
Celia’s delicate cheekbones and the line of her jaw, and the soft thickness of
her hair as his fingers ran through it. He thought of her hands, thin and
somehow fleeting, like a bird always ready to fly away, and wondered what her
collarbones might feel like, and her ribs, and the softness of her breasts.
There was a confused knot of feeling somewhere between his
ribs and his stomach and he didn’t know what to make of it. He wanted to throw
himself into her arms, to lie with her and be enveloped by her and held by her
forever. He wanted to run and run until he was so far away he wouldn’t even
hear her shout. He didn’t know what to do with his feelings, how to unfold them
and pick through them and work out what they meant. He was in an alien land and
he could barely speak the language, let alone learn how to love the natives.
‘Anyway, she knows it’s nothing serious,’ he said abruptly,
getting up to pour the coffee. ‘It’s just a few dates, that’s all. Nothing to
get tangled up in. I mean, is it really surprising that we have things in
common? She knows how I’m feeling. She’s been through it. She knows what it’s
like to suddenly have your world turned upside down. To – to have day turned
into night and all your future twisted into something you never imagined. She
digs how I feel, see, and I guess I dig her too. Is that really so surprising?’
‘No, it’s not,’ Tod said quietly, coming to take the cup
from his hand. ‘But you’re hiding from it, Buz. You’re not telling yourself the
truth. Maybe she thinks it’s nothing serious – but from where I’m standing
you’re already tangled up so deep that you haven’t got a hope of escaping.’
‘Look, let’s just drop it, Tod,’ Buz said abruptly.
As he spoke the record ended in silence and crackles and he
moved over to the player to flip the disc over to the other side. He lowered
the arm delicately and stood back to let the music play.
‘All right,’ Tod said slowly. ‘All right. Tell me about
something else. You’re learning Braille, aren’t you? How’s that going?’
‘Yeah, I’m learning. Getting on pretty good,’ Buz nodded.
‘Here,’ he said, fetching a little leather portfolio and slipping a card out of
it. He passed it over to Tod, slipping his fingers over the texture of it as he
let go. ‘This is one of the practise cards. David says I have fine touch. It’s slow going, but I’m
getting there.’
Tod laughed shortly. ‘If you can really read that I’m in awe
you,’ he said honestly. ‘It’s just a lot of dots to me, to look at, let alone
to feel. Here.’
He passed the card back to Buz and he touched his fingers to
it, seeking out familiar formations and combinations as if he were reading a map.
He had been told to practice, but he wasn’t even sure what this was. Sometimes
it felt as if he were reading a moth-eaten old parchment, with some letters
obscured or lost forever to time. It would come clear. Celia had promised him
that. But it took so much time. He
had always been a quick learner, and it was frustrating to have to work so hard
at reading just a few words.
He put the card away and sipped his coffee and thought of
sitting with Celia in the evening while she read to him and then passed the
book around for him to try. Their fingers always fumbled at the changeover, and
he was never sure if it were deliberate or not. He liked the feel of her
fingers. Her hands were always cold, smaller than his and seemingly fragile. He
could close her hand in his completely and feel his warmth seep into her skin.
He didn’t know what to make of her. He was sure she wasn’t
the type of girl he’d pick out of a line up. She felt light and brittle as spun
sugar, but there was an unexpected warmth that came from her, an acerbic humour
that reminded him of Tod, a bravery and a willingness to try that seemed to light
a path in front of him wherever they walked. He wondered sometimes why she was
still in this place, stagnating with him. She seemed so capable, so complete in
her ability to handle the world. If she were a bird he would have opened his
hands and held her up to the sky and waited for her to fly away – but like all
beautiful things, he didn’t want to watch her go.
He realised as the silence in the room was wreathed through
by the music that part of him was waiting for Tod to go. He wanted to talk to
Celia, to explain how he had felt today on his first trip away from the Camp,
to tell her about the anger and the fear that had been sparking in him and
threatening to explode all day. He knew she would be able to smooth through
those feelings and sort them out and tell them it was all right to feel that
way. She would help him to feel better. But that reliance on her disturbed and
scared him. Wasn’t he here to learn to look after himself? To be independent?
And what kind of life could he have tied up with a girl who was just as blind
as him? What kind of future would that be? It was wrong. It was all just so
wrong. It was wrong even to think about being tied up with her. She must have
mentored dozens of guys and he was just another in the line. He would move on
and she would take another’s hands as if they were at a country dance, and he
would be forgotten. That was the best way to see it. Brief, intense fun.
Nothing more.
‘Ah, I’m sorry, Tod,’ he said eventually, setting his empty
cup down and turning toward his friend. ‘I’m not being much company, am I?’
‘I thought you’d forgotten I was here,’ Tod laughed. ‘It
looked like there was a whole world going on in your head that I wasn’t invited
to. But that’s okay.’
The silence fell again for a moment, and then Tod leaned
closer and said, ‘I just want you to do one thing for me, Buz, before I leave
you here again. Tell me the truth about how you’re doing. Is it getting
easier?’
He shrugged. ‘Yeah, it’s getting easier. I mean, I can’t
pretend it’s fun. It’s like I said. I’m not a man for blindness. I – god, I
miss freedom so much, Tod. Rolling down the road in that car. Running. Choosing
left or right on a whim. Running up steps and walking out on my own and – light. It’s such a simple thing, light,
but I miss it so bad…’
‘But you’re doing all right?’ Tod asked. His voice was soft
with sympathy.
‘I’m clawing my way out of the hole,’ Buz nodded. ‘Pushing
back the boundaries. I’m never going to like this. I’m never going to stop
waiting for the morning when I open my eyes and have to close the curtains
because the sun’s too bright. But it’s getting easier.’
He breathed out hard. The record had ended again and there
was a quiet static crackling through the room. He got up and switched the
turntable off and put the record away carefully in its paper sleeve.
‘You finished your coffee?’ he asked, reaching out an open
hand.
‘Yeah, sure,’ Tod said, handing him the empty cup.
Buz took it and returned it to the kitchen area with his
own, washing them out and leaving them to dry.
‘Come on,’ he said, fetching the cane from the corner and
picking up his jacket from the back of the door. ‘Let me show you around this
place. There’s some people I’d like you to meet.’
******
He lay in bed after Tod had gone with the blankets hunched
up to his shoulders and his eyes closed. That way he could pretend that the
dark was just the dark of night, not a pervading dark that lived inside his
brain. He had ended the evening with just enough whiskey to make his bones feel
soft and his chest feel warm, and Tod had left him with a rare hug and promises
again to write and call.
It had been a strange day. It had been an odd throwback to Buz’s
previous life, entangled with this new path that he was set on. Thoughts
churned through his head. The noises and sensations of the day, the imagined
scenes of the diner and the streets through which he had walked. He couldn’t
help but make up pictures to go with where he had been, no matter how wrong
they might be.
He listened to the regular noise of Chet breathing in his
bed nearby. It was the sound of a man – he couldn’t deny that – but he let
himself imagine that it was Celia breathing. He thought of her lying in her bed
in her own room, small and alone. He thought that she would be lost in a normal
size bed. That was something strange and rather beautiful about this blindness.
It gave his imagination scope. He saw her as a figure from the Princess and the
Pea, a delicate body atop a teetering mass of mattresses. It would be nice to
be able to share that space – not for anything as carnal as sex, but just for
the comfort of being two bodies tight in one space, holding each other against
the darkness.
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