Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

When he got out of the water and back among the ponderosas the sleet had turned to rain. He trotted to warm up. His hands were bright red, his ears too. The long hair at the back of his neck was soaked through and like an icepack on his nape. He began to jog faster and his side ached but it was too cold to give a shit. He crashed the cedar, all numbness and genuinely worried he would get turned around and freeze himself to death. He wondered did the boy hear him fall. Was the boy following him now. Was his old man.

By the time he made it to his car, his jeans were stiff down at his ankles, but he was basically warm, if winded. He turned on the engine and cranked the heat and held his palms to the cold air blowing out of the vents. He blew on his hands and looked in the glove box. He turned off the engine, got out of the car, and went and unlocked the trunk. He squinted at the sliver of rusty Canadian whiskey, swallowed it, and tossed the empty bottle into the weeds.

The snow fell and fell and with it every fool’s hopes for an early spring. Pete worked a few cases in the eastern part of his region. Hard-gotten-to cabins in the Flathead where the grim occupants paced and fumed like bulls at the sight of him. He had lunch with Cecil’s sister in her school. He gently culled from Katie her and her mother’s recent whereabouts. They’d taken a road trip down to Denver for reasons unknown to the girl. When he visited Debbie, he didn’t even bother to try and get the whole story, just informed her that Cecil was in Pine Hills. She pantomimed indignation about Cecil’s incarceration, but Katie was genuinely worried when Pete told her, asking was he okay and how long would he be in jail. He promised he’d get Cecil out as soon as he could.

When he got back to the courthouse, Benjamin Pearl was in his hallway, standing outside his door.

“My papa’s gone blind,” the boy said in a papery voice. He paced, and his words sluiced out faster than Pete could gather them up, all out of order.

The old man’s screaming, hot pokers grinding in his sockets. They try water and he shrieks and writhes on the cold ground. He runs away. Ben has to go look for him. He’s in the woods struck blind. Come morning his eyes are sealed shut swollen. It’s snowing again. The snow’s all over. Ben wants to know if this is his fault. He says God doesn’t need to answer, Ben knows the answer already. He has to fix this. He finds Pete’s card and leaves, his father calling after him, where are you going. Where do you think you are going. Can Pete help, he has to help.

This camp, yet another, was four miles in from the National Forest Development Road #645, most of it uphill and by Pete’s reckoning not all that far from Separation Creek and his own house. Maybe a day’s hike to the old logging road that wound out of the empty wilderness down to his place.

Jeremiah Pearl wasn’t in the camp — a canvas tarp that disappeared into a hillock of young, dense alder, a few packs, some bedrolls, and a fire pit — but sprawled on his back near the runnel of a small headwater. Stones placed on his eyes for the cool in them. Pete searched for signs of the other Pearls, the sisters and brothers and mother, but there were none.

“Papa?”

The man sat upright and the rocks fell away. His eyes surely throbbed under their swollen lids, even at a distance a raging shade of red.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I—”

“Get over here, damnit.”

The boy came forward and his father had him by the arm and gripped his head and appeared about to do some punishment to him, but just grabbed him all over to feel that he was whole. A thing he could accomplish in a glance that assumed a new depth of expression by hand. The boy threw his arms around him and held him, as his father patted him.

Suddenly, the man shot up, pulling the child behind him, and still gripping his boy by the shoulder.

“Who’s that?”

Pete hadn’t stepped or moved at all, but the man perceived him just the same.

“Mr. Pearl, it’s me, Pete—”

“You get the fuck out of here,” he said. His face glistened with water, with tears. Suppurating pus hung like a maggot at the corner of one eye.

“I brought you some medicine.”

“There’s no remedy for God striking you blind, you fool.”

“I’ll bet you’re just snow-blind,” Pete said. “A real bad case from the looks of it.”

“I’m not snow-blind! You ass!” He took a step, stumbled, and gripped the boy to regain his balance.

“There’s snow all up here in the high country, Mr. Pearl. Not a lot, but everything’s covered. You were out in an exposed area for a few hours the other day, I’m guessing.”

Pearl’s eyes moved about, unseeing.

“It doesn’t have to be very bright out. Really,” Pete said. He sat down and began to pull items from his backpack. “My daughter and I went cross-country skiing a couple winters ago. Completely overcast. You could make out the shape of the sun behind the clouds, but just barely. It was hours afterward when things went blurry. By supper we were basically blind. You don’t need any direct sunlight, is my point. Fact is, it was probably worse on us because we weren’t even squinting all day.”

While Pete spoke Pearl rubbed his sockets with fingers of one dirty hand. The effort of it wrenched his face, and a guttural gah issued from his throat as he twisted his head in pain and tried to shake off the torment like an animal.

“Don’t touch them. Please, Mr. Pearl. I have the eyedrops the doctor gave my daughter and me for the pain and some ointments too. There’s no reason to think anything’s amiss.”

Pearl swagged from side to side.

“Papa,” Benjamin said.

“You shut up,” Pearl muttered.

“He’s been leaving us the food, Papa. He’s been helping us already!” His father turned and the boy slipped free of him.

“Don’t be mad at your son, Mr. Pearl. It was my fault. He was just trying to make sure you and your family”—Pete glanced back toward the camp, wondering where he thought he might see the rest of the children—“were all right.”

“Let him help you,” Benjamin begged. “He’s okay, Papa.”

The man touched his temples with his fingertips and began muttering. Then he smiled, some teeth shone out from the thatch of his beard and he began to speak, and Benjamin knelt with him. To pray, Pete realized. They clasped their hands and hung their heads. Pearl spoke to God directly, asked was it His will for him to go blind or was it not. Would the restoration of his vision allow Pearl to enact His will, or was this thought vanity. Was this another in the series of tests, he asked, in a rueful half-grin like a man who’d won a bet with a good friend. Pearl stiffened and said he could take what God would dish out. That God must know this. That Pearl would reach into his mouth right now and wrench out his teeth was it His holy will. That He need only speak. One word.

They remained on their knees. Then Pearl raised his head and seemed to be at some long thought or perhaps trying to see Pete.

At last Pearl stood. He said it was all right for Pete to give him some medicine. What did it matter, what could any remedy accomplish if God didn’t will it.

Pete had listened closely because he couldn’t see, couldn’t tell if Beth was paying attention as the doctor explained how to apply the drops and ointments. Hospitals made her nervous, and when they got home, he was right to have memorized what the doctor told them to do. But that was two winters ago.

He removed a canteen of distilled water from his bag and the packet of gauze and the scissors. He set these on his coat, which he’d spread open on the ground. He rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands with a fresh bar of soap and rinsed with the distilled water and dried them on a little towel from the bag. There were two ointments and a bottle of drops. One of the three was for pain. The drops. The doctor had said white pus meant the infection was bacterial. He said to use one of the ointments in that case. The antibiotic ointment. Or the other.