Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

For myself, in that long June of 1975 I rose early and patted my long, thick hair rather than comb it. I fought with my brother and sisters over the last bowl of Cocoa Puffs or Super Sugar Crisp or King Vitamin; no matter what kind of processed, sugared cereal we ate, my mother bought only last bowls of the stuff. We planted ourselves in front of the TV with zealous punctuality, and yet we never so much as smiled at the crap that played before us: Underdog and Dick Tracy and the Go Go Gophers and Mr. Peabody is not enjoyment. Check the face of any kid planted in front of the tube. It's not fun. It's a business. They don't like cartoons any more than we like work; it's what they do.

By ten each morning, I was on my bike. I'd ride down to Everson's house and we'd pretend to have karate fights or play touch football or just tool around on our bikes, acting like kids instead of the pot-smoking losers we were about to become. Some mornings I'd scrounge through the dryer for change, and Everson and I would race off to the store for baseball cards. I can still see the 1975 Topps baseball cards. They made them a shade smaller that year, for what reason I couldn't possibly say, with the team name shadowed on the top, the player framed just below that set against two-tone cardboard, his name in all caps, his position in a tiny baseball on the bottom right, unless he was an All-Star (the Dodgers had four that year: Messersmith, Garvey, Cey, and Wynn), in which case his position was written inside a star. I tore these tiny men from the package and marveled at the afros and sideburns and mustaches that peeked out from under their ball caps and wondered at the world that opened up to people with afros and sideburns and mustaches, at the vast number and range of boobs that they must be exposed to. I flipped the cards over and read through the stats as if they contained some secret – map of the human genome, key to the universe. To this day, my mind is full of the detritus printed in six-point type on the backs of those cards. I can't remember my bank account number or my sisters' birthdays, but I remember that Richie Zisk had exactly one hundred RBI's for the Pirates, that Pat Dobson won nineteen games for the Yankees, and that Ralph Garr hit a cool.353. I scraped and stole for the quarter that each package cost and never gave a thought to Everson, who must've had thousands of dollars from his school-year dope sales, but who bought exactly the same number of packs as me, peeling singles off a thick roll.

For the first half of that summer, stoic Everson never mentioned pot; nor did he ever have any, at least when I was around. He was just a kid, like me, but with longer hair and a shorter vocabulary, and even though he was going into eighth grade and I was going into sixth, that disparity disappeared that summer in a haze of tag and hotbox and bike races and baseball cards and mud pies and dandelion soup and ice cream trucks and corn on the cob on soggy plates… a life. A real life, ordered and meaningful and simple.

And then Pete Decker got out of juvenile detention.

I don't think I realized that the neighborhood was peaceful until it stopped being so. For the first month and a half of the summer, as long as we stayed in our turf and didn't venture into Matt Woodbridge's fiefdom four blocks down the street, we were safe, seemingly able to stay out until the sun was completely gone without fear of being beaten up. And then, on the day Pete got out of the clink, it all ended.

He'd been gone six whole weeks – a sentence deferred until summer so that he could finish the school year – for stealing car stereos. A whole pile of eight-track players had been found behind Pete's garage. Six weeks in juvenile hall wasn't likely to mellow Pete, a fact I realized when I finally saw him, on a Friday at the end of July, walking down the street, a cigarette dangling from his fingers – ambling, really, like he wasn't even going anywhere, like he was pacing a long hall.

That very weekend, summer ended. The weather stayed hot and school remained closed, but from then on the world didn't feel the same. Bikes were stolen and their parts were seen on other bikes; rocks were thrown through windows; garbage cans were spilled out on the street, and mailboxes were knocked from their posts. That weekend Everson and I stopped playing, and started just hanging out. Waiting. We knew that at any time Pete could come out of his house and take charge of things. Little kids like my siblings continued to play, of course, because that's all little kids can do (their ability to "hang out" still unformed) but it was with one eye on the street, in close proximity to their houses, riding their bikes in small circles in their driveways or on the strips in front of their houses, no longer venturing down the block. Bike traffic fell by two thirds. No one dared walk anywhere anymore, lest they be caught out on the street.

Still, Pete stayed to himself those first days, walking the mile strip of Empire as if he were the only one on it, cigarette in the left corner of his mouth, left eye squinted shut against the curling smoke. It felt as if he were taking the measure of the neighborhood, seeing if anything had changed, who needed to be put in his place, whose ass needed kicking.

We convinced ourselves that maybe things had changed, and gradually, the next week, we ventured out with our bikes and our baseball cards, but stayed close to our own yards. Then, one afternoon while I engaged in the exquisite task of sorting my baseball cards in the front yard, Pete was suddenly there, leaning against the fence next to my house. Everson was with him, looking as if he'd been kidnapped.

"Hey," Pete said in his preternaturally scratchy voice. "What the fuck are those?"

"Baseball cards."

Pete held out his hand and tipped his head back and I looked up at Everson, who shrugged. I stood and brought him the card I happened to have in my hand, an outfielder named George Hendrick of the Cleveland Indians. Pete held it in his hand, turned it over, and made a face like he'd eaten something sour. "What do you do with it?"

I shrugged. "You collect 'em."

"Why?"

I shrugged again. "For fun."

He looked down at the card. "So what, you look at the pictures and beat off? Are you queer, Clark? I mean, Clark's kind of a queer name, ain't it?"

"No." And I don't know what came over me, but I really believed I could explain myself to him. "See, you try to collect all the guys from every team and men you see who's better by the stats on the back. You can measure them against each other and they all start to make sense. That's the only way baseball makes sense, is if you understand how the numbers work against each other."

Everson closed his eyes. Pete turned the card over.

"See," I said, "George Hendrick hit nineteen homers. Reggie Jackson hit twenty-nine and had more RBI's, too. So he's better. In fact, he's the best." My voice lost any force behind it. "See?"

Pete stared at George Hendrick's card for a while and then he tossed it back at me. "We're gonna go party. You comin'?"

I looked at Everson, who was staring at the ground.

Pete stepped forward. "You ain't a puss, are you, Clark?"

"No," I said. "No, I'm ready to go." I left the baseball cards on the porch and we crossed the rabbit hills on our bikes and walked them through the weedy railroad fields until we reached the riverbank where Pete had stashed a six-pack of warm beer that he'd stolen from someone. The three of us passed those beers around and Everson brought out a joint and we drank and smoked and then Pete collected whatever money we had, to pay for the beer – which he'd stolen – and the joint, which he expected to be paid for even though Everson had provided it. These were, in order, my first beer and my first taste of marijuana, and if I felt anything other than a sore throat and nausea I don't remember it. Since that day I have seen people loosen up and become wild on the effects of alcohol and dope, but I don't remember any of us smiling or laughing that day, and I guess that's because Pete drank most of the beer and inhaled most of the pot.