Уолтер Мосли - Odyssey

Not that anyone else wanted to.

They cruised the block, went shopping for his mother, and made secret excursions to the liquor store, where Eagle would buy P&M whiskey by the half pint. On weekends they went on longer expeditions.

“What are you thinking about, Mr. James?” Seth Offeran asked.

“That ochre dress that Toni Loam was wearing. She’s a young woman, maybe ten pounds less than she should be. Plain at first look but in hindsight there was a prettiness to her cheeks and eyes.”

“Are you going to see her?”

“That’s a funny question, Doctor. I’d like to see her. I’d give everything I have just to see that yellow dress again. But I’ll have to make do with a hello and a handshake.”

“I think it might be good for you to spend some time with this woman,” the psychiatrist offered. “She’s the only thing you’ve seen since your sight shut off.”

“You make it sound like a faucet.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Like I turned it off on purpose.”

“Have you ever seen anything so horrendous that it made you shut your eyes so hard you thought that they might never open again?”

“No, can’t say that I have.”

He was walking down a long lane leading to the beach. It was a sultry afternoon and summer, so the sun was hot and the asphalt heated through his flip-flop rubber thongs until it felt as if they might melt. The path curved and he was carrying a cold can of root beer that his grandfather had given him twenty-five cents to buy. They drank from the same pop-top can when they were alone and Winifred wasn’t there to stop them.

The shadows were long and the air was beginning to cool. Soon he’d push the wheelchair to the edge of the parking lot and use the pay phone to call his mother to come get them.

A dozen seagulls burst suddenly into the air and wheeled high toward the sky. Something had frightened them.

Eagle James’s chair was turned away from the water. That was odd. He was slumped over and a red ribbon ran down from his nose and across the blue work shirt that he wore every day. If Winifred wanted to wash that shirt she had to do it after he went to sleep and get it back in his bureau before he woke up in the morning.

The ribbon was glistening like it was made from nylon or fancy Chinese silk, like it was wet. And Eagle was winking but steadily, not opening his left eye and smiling as he usually did.

It wasn’t until he called and Eagle didn’t respond that Sovereign realized there was something wrong. Then he saw the pistol on the ground in front of the wheelchair and he remembered Eagle saying, Never let ’em count you out, boy. If they comin’ to get ya and you know there’s no way out, there’s still a way . And then he’d hold his thumb and point finger like the muzzle of a pistol up his nose. When the thumb came down Sovereign would close his eyes.

The buzzer to his apartment was mild but insistent. Sovereign woke up realizing that his dream was the answer to Offeran’s question.

“Hello?” he said into the intercom phone.

“A Toni Loam for you, Mr. James,” the doorman Axel Parman said.

“Send her up.”

At first Sovereign stood behind the closed door waiting for the knock or buzz, but after a few minutes he moved out into the hall. He tilted his head for the sound of footsteps on the hard carpet or maybe a sigh of confusion.

He was eager, even nervous. The feeling in the pit of his stomach was exactly the same as when he asked Shirley Bestman to go see Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi with him.

“Mr. James?” she said from down the hall.

“Yes.”

“I walked around the other way lookin’ for nine-F but it went all the way up to Z and I didn’t see it.” Her voice got louder as she approached the door.

He was about to say, If the letters were going up why didn’t you turn around? But he thought better of the criticism. Then he wondered at this self-censorship. For years, he realized, he’d been rude and brusque with just about everyone, but now that he needed people he bit his tongue. Before Toni he resented the fact that he was expected to gag himself; now, though, he realized that he wanted to hold back.

“Hi,” she said.

When she laid a hand on his wrist he flinched and gasped.

“I’m sorry,” Toni Loam said then. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Uh,” he grunted, discomfited by his behavior, “no. I mean, I was just surprised to feel a hand on mine. Do you want to come in, Miss Loam?”

“Uh-huh.”

Sovereign took a step back and gestured for the unseen young woman to enter. He felt more than heard her go past and followed. When they entered into the large living room he said, “Why don’t you sit on the red chair, Miss Loam?”

He went to the white sofa and settled on the southern end.

“So, can you see now?” she asked.

“Not one whit.”

“ ’Cause you move around like you can, and you called the chair red and all.”

“I’ve lived in this apartment for eighteen years. I could have been blindfolded for most of that time and told you everything about the place.”

“And it felt like you was lookin’ right at me when I was walkin’ down the hall,” she said, still leery.

“No. I can’t see. I haven’t seen a thing in nine weeks, except for you when that man attacked me.”

“But the police said that you couldn’t identify the man.”

“I didn’t tell them because... because I’m seeing a psychiatrist who believes my blindness is mental and not physical, and if I admitted that to the police it might have gotten back to my employers and they would blame me for faking my condition and fire me. But I really am blind. I mean, I have been except for that twenty seconds or so there when that guy hit me.”

“People can go blind in they minds?” Toni asked.

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Damn. But if you didn’t tell the police why’d you tell me?”

The question caught Sovereign up short. He had gauged the girl by her limited language and articulation. If she had come to him looking for a job he would have sent her away without a second thought. But her question, whatever motivated it, got to the heart of why he’d called.

“You might have saved my life,” he said. “If you hadn’t screamed and kept on screaming that man would have probably hit me again. The police said it was a blunt instrument. He could have cracked my skull open.”

“So? That don’t have nuthin’ to do with me talkin’ an’ makin’ you lose your job or sumpin’. You already safe now.”

Sunlight was falling on his left hand. He felt the heat between his fingers.

“Ever since,” Sovereign James said, and then he stopped, remembering the vastness of that parking lot and the can of root beer that he moved from hand to hand to keep the cold from burning his fingers. “Ever since I’ve been blind I experience the world differently.”

“Different how?”

“It’s like I owe something, a bill that I forgot to pay. And it’s not just that... It’s as if I was tied by a long rope and then all of a sudden the rope is cut and I’m free, but I don’t know where I am, much less where to go.”

“But what do I have to do with that?”

“When I could see, people touched my life all the time and I took it for granted. I thought I knew everything. All I had to do was look at somebody or hear five words out of their mouth and I thought I knew everything about them. I wasn’t grateful for a damn thing. My own father fed me and protected me from the world. He built a house for his family and one day I just took off. I didn’t even go to his funeral. Now it’s too late. But... but you came up and saved me, and if I don’t give you something, I mean something more than a reward, then I’m still the same man I was — not worth saving.”