Fiction by Roxana Robinson

Blind Man

It had been raining earlier, but was now

stopping. The windshield wipers began
to creak. They were now leaving streaks,
instead of cleaning the glass. He turned
them off and they quit, sliding weight-
lessly down into their hidden pocket.

He’d been on this highway for an hour,

maybe, though it was hard to tell, they
all blended into each other so smoothly:
the exit sign announcing the shift onto
the ramp’s stately decelerating curve; at
its end a slow diagonal merge, then ac-
celeration into the new current. It was
hard to remember just how long he’d
been on this one, exactly when he’d left
the last.

He was, anyway, somewhere in Con-
necticut, on a high bridge over a valley.
Below him lay the dense grid of a nine-
teenth-century mill town. Above the in-
dustrial jumble stood a handsome Vene-
tian campanile of dark-red brick, a white

Roxana Robinson, a Guggenheim Fellow, is the
author of the biography “Georgia O’Keeffe:
A Life” (1989); the short story collections “A
Glimpse of Scarlet” (1991) and “Asking for Love”
(1996); and the novels “Summer Light” (1987),
“This Is My Daughter” (1998), and “Sweet-
water” (2003). This story will be included in
the forthcoming collection “A Perfect Stranger”
(Random House, 2005).

clock face on each side. Its slate roof nar-
rowed upward to a needle’s point.

The bridge stretched from one hillside
to the other. The traf½c, weaving a com-
plicated pattern, prepared for left-hand
exits ahead. The signs for this place,
whatever it was, were now behind him.
He might never learn its name, or the
source of its lost potency, or who had
thought to erect a Renaissance tower
above the grimy brick labyrinth. All
these dismal industrial towns were
ghostly now, their energy dissipated, in-
dustry gone. All that outrage over intol-
erable working conditions: now there
were no working conditions. Ahead, on
the crest of a wooded hillside, stood a
large white cross.

He’d been told not to think about it,
not to go over and over it, but what else
was there to think about? It was what
occupied his mind. Trying to think
about anything else was a torturing dis-
traction. He was never not thinking
about it.

At night he lay in bed beside his wife–
also wakeful, also silent, her back to him
in the dark–and went over it in his
mind. It played there forever, an endless
loop.

The soft blossom of smoke, like a
sweet cloud of scent, drawn swiftly up
through the narrowing shafts into the

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Fiction by
Roxana
Robinson

skull. Sucked down the long hard ribbed
windpipe, then released into the spa-
cious crimson chambers of the lungs.
Drawn deeper, into the branching, di-
minishing pathways of the bronchia.
Further still, into the depths of the soft
honeycomb, the bronchioles, their
membranous walls porous and thin.
There the barrier between air and fluid
was only one slight, slight cell thick.
There the mysterious shift occurred: the
smoke passed magically through the tis-
sue, into the bloodstream. There it dis-
solved. Then it was part of the smooth
surge, pumping rhythmically through
the interlacing curves of the vascular
complex, flowing through steadily wid-
ening channels, headed swiftly and un-
stoppably for the brain.

He imagined its arrival there as an ex-
plosion: the sudden pulsing release of a
million stars, in the deep black sky of the
mind.

He could not hold the two notions to-
gether in his mind: the physiological and
the individual. The chemical reactions
and Juliet.

In the dark, in the close silence of the

bedroom, the sheets and blankets be-
came heavy and tumbled. They seemed
to pool, carried by some hidden current.
They collected in eddies around his legs,
tangling his arms in dank swirls.

Each time he remembered, he was
shocked by the silence of the fact, its
perpetual inertness. There was never
any change.

In the morning, he sat on the edge of
the bed, the weight of another day upon
him, light sifting dully in from under the
window shade. He rubbed his face hard,
palms rasping against his unshaven
cheeks, trying to rid himself of the cling-
ing wisps of the black nighttime world.
The thing was not to think about it.
The thing was to be disciplined, to take
control.

Though what if he did let go, let him-

self think about it? What if he just
locked himself in the room of his mind
and thought about nothing else? Be-
cause that was what he did anyway, he
hadn’t a choice. He was already locked
in there, and that was all there was in
with him.

Approaching the hillside, the highway
passed a grim Catholic church. High on
the stone facade was a rose window, too
small, and of course dark from the out-
side.

What he ought to do was review his
notes, though, just at this exact moment,
he could not remember the topic of his
lecture. The road ahead was gray, still
grizzly with rain. Passing cars made a
sissing sound. He was in the middle
lane, driving fast, like the cars around
him. Being in the midst of this speeding
stream gave him comfort. He liked the
notion of community, he liked the
steady, in½nite supply of power beneath
his foot. He felt he was getting some-
where.

Being alone was a luxury. The small

rented car, for which the university
would reimburse him, was anonymous,
a haven. The woolly dark-red seats, the
spotless gray carpeting, the bland me-
chanical eyes of the dashboard: it was
like a motel room. He could do whatever
he wanted, speeding across Connecticut
among the other cars. He was invisible
here, though around him he carried a
kind of darkness, a cloud.

A huge truck passed on his left, the
size of a small country. The roar was
deafening. The silhouette towered
alongside him, darkening his sky, steam-
ing on and on. The gigantic wheels spun
hypnotically by his face. His small car
swayed, buffeted. It would be better not
to think about it. Her hair had been in
her mouth, there had been strands of it,
dark and silky, lying across her open

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mouth. What else was there to think
about?

His lecture, it now came to him, was
on the cathedral of Haighia Sophia, the
ecclesiastical nexus of Byzantium, sym-
bol of its enormous power, its astonish-
ing beauty, its history of invasion and
transformation. He shook his head and
thought deliberately of the high empty
space, the vast dome ½lled with silence.
The shafts of still sunlight, falling on the
ruined mosaics. The wide bare brick
floor, worn smooth by centuries of slip-
pered footsteps.

The lecture began with a slide of the
exterior. “The dome of Haighia Sophia is
only one brick thick. It is a perfect curve,
mathematically without flaw. No one
knows how this engineering feat was
achieved. It is one of the great myster-
ies of ecclesiastical architecture, just
as Haighia Sophia is one of the great
symbolic mysteries in the history of
Byzantium.”

He had given this talk many times, at
universities, scholarly institutions, collo-
quia, and seminars. The ½rst time long
before she was born.

He moved sideways, into the fast lane.

The little red car rocketed along, the
tires sizzling against the damp pave-
ment. Its slight frame seemed sturdy
and flexible, like an airplane’s, designed
to withstand powerful external forces.
Speed seemed to be what held the car
onto the road. The roar was loud and
steady.

At a flash in the rearview mirror he
looked up. Behind him was a big suv,
threateningly close, its headlights blink-
ing an imperative staccato. It was only a
few feet from his bumper, he could feel
its heavy breath. At this speed it would
take only an instant, a tiny split-second
shift, for things to go badly wrong. The
pace held them all spellbound: his tiny
red car, the suv behind him, the gigantic
rumbling trucks.

He put on his blinker and waited for
the car on his right to pass. The lights
behind him flashed again, impatient,
looming closer. He felt a tightening on
his scalp. The suv bore down, closing
the brief distance between them. The
mirror was ½lled with the flashing lights.
Too soon for safety, he slid sideways,
nearly hitting the bumper of the car
ahead. As he was still moving, the suv
roared past, barely clearing his car.
Spray rose from its tires, coating his
windshield with dirty hissing mist. Sig-
nal still blinking, he waited for another
car to pass, then moved again, into the
slowest lane. Abruptly, dangerously, too
fast, he slid sideways again, moving off
the highway altogether, onto the narrow
shoulder. He felt the loose gravel sud-
denly rough beneath his wheels, the car
juddering as it slowed. For a sickening
moment it skidded. Then the tires
caught, the car slowed and bumped
unsteadily to a stop.

He was on a narrow shoulder, barely
off the pavement. The car was cramped
between a heavy metal guardrail and the
road. The sound of the speeding cars was
deafening. A giant trailer truck thun-
dered past, wheels sizzling viciously past
his window. Within seconds there was
another. As each roared by, his small car
–frail, he now understood, not sturdy–
rocked and shuddered. The grime-
covered trucks steamed past. He felt the
shock from each one. He set his hands
on the steering wheel. Something was
flooding through him, like blood cloud-
ing into water. He leaned back against
the headrest, looking into the traf½c van-
ishing ahead.

The last week: he went over and over it.

Juliet in the kitchen, one morning, un-
loading the dishwasher. Bending over,
her long dark hair falling weightlessly
forward. He’d been at the table, reading.

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Juliet, a stack of plates against her chest,
pushing against the swinging door into
the pantry. A wrinkled yellow jersey, cut-
off blue-jean shorts. Her limbs were soft,
still childish–not plump, but cushiony.
Her legs were tanned to a dark honey-
brown in front, lightening to a paler
cream in back, on her calves.

His wife had called from outside.
“Yeah?” Juliet was vanishing into the

pantry.

Ann again: something about the hose.
Juliet called loudly back. “What?”
She was in the pantry then, stacking the
plates in the cupboard. The crockery rat-
tled. It was clear from Juliet’s voice–
loud, indifferent–that she couldn’t hear
her mother, didn’t care.

Ann’s irritation. “Juliet, would you
please not walk away from me, when I
ask you something?” Ann was in the
kitchen doorway.

“Sorry, Mom,” Juliet said, reappear-
ing, unruffled. Her round face, her short
upper lip, and bright narrow blue eyes
echoed Ann’s, though the dark straight
eyebrows were no one’s but Juliet’s. She
smiled at her mother, at once placating,
but also, mysteriously, pitying, as though
Juliet were in a continual communica-
tion with some superior self, far beyond
the reach of mortals. “Want some
help?” she asked kindly.

They’d gone outside; he’d gone back

to his book.

What did it mean, that moment? Any-

thing? He examined everything, now,
for clues.

Juliet had been in a kind of disgrace
that summer; she was under a certain
obligation to be placatory. She had
screwed up. She had broken rules; laws,
in fact. She had been sent home. She
had not ½nished the college year, she
had ended up instead in a group of insti-
tutional buildings in another state. Her
academic reinstatement depended on
good behavior. Her domestic reinstate-

ment depended on good behavior. She
was in disgrace.

Though in a way it was he and Ann
who were in disgrace, for aren’t the par-
ents absolutely implicated in the trans-
gressions of the child? To be honest,
aren’t the parents, perhaps, more re-
sponsible than the child? Didn’t they
create the world in which the child
found these transgressions possible,
necessary?

And if you, the parent, have ever al-
lowed yourself small helpings of private
pride and satisfaction at your child’s ac-
complishments, if you have ever stood
beaming at a graduation in the June sun-
light, swelling inwardly over the award
for Religious Studies and feeling that in
some unexplained but important way
that your daughter reflects your pres-
ence, that she represents you and your
codes, both cultural and genetic; if you
have ever felt that your beautiful daugh-
ter was somehow flowering forth from
you, so then, when another area of her
endeavors is revealed–addiction, say,
to crack cocaine–then you feel the
heavy cowl of complicity settle over
your head.

At the beginning of the summer,

when they’d brought her up here, they’d
watched Juliet’s every move with anxi-
ety. In those ½rst weeks she’d acted
stunned, silenced. Not sullen, exactly,
simply mute: silenced. She did every-
thing she was asked, but without re-
sponse. It was as though her thoughts
were in a different language. She had
withdrawn. She was elsewhere. She
didn’t laugh. She spent hours silent in
her room, the door closed. He and Ann,
pausing unhappily outside in the hall,
tiptoeing on the threadbare rug, could
hear nothing from inside. Was she read-
ing? Was she lying on the bed, curled on
her side, eyes ½xed steadily on the plas-
ter wall?

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At meals Juliet ate without speaking,
looking down at her plate. They could
hear the sounds of her chewing, the faint
muscular convulsion as she swallowed.

Once, at dinner, Roger lost his temper.
“Jules, could you pass me those

beans?” he asked mildly.

Juliet stopped chewing, the bite of
food still evident in her cheek. Without
looking up she handed her father the
pink china bowl. She began to chew
again, looking back down at her plate.
“Juliet,” Roger said irritably, “could

we please have some manners here?
Could you please look at someone when
he speaks to you? It is considered cour-
teous to acknowledge the presence of
other people. All the rules of life are not
suspended forever, you know, just be-
cause you’ve been in rehab.”

Juliet raised her head and looked level-

ly at him. “Just because I’ve been in re-
hab?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said forcefully, deeply sorry
he’d begun this. “Manners are the mus-
cular supports of society. They are the
embodiment of its moral core. They are
the basis for a civil society. You’re in a
family community, here. We all owe
each other something. Respect. Cour-
tesy.”

“Sorry, Dad,” Juliet said, her voice
pointedly neutral. “Here are the beans.”
Roger was already holding the bowl.
“Thank you,” he answered foolishly. He
set it down and served himself to sec-
onds. Somehow he had lost his moral
authority. He was afraid of what she
might say to him. What was it? What
might she say? What had he done? He
thought nothing; he could not bear to
learn.

But as the summer went on, the ten-

sion seemed to subside. They were up in
New Hampshire, in the old shingle
house that had belonged to Ann’s par-

ents. They had always spent the sum-
mers here; Roger’s academic schedule
allowed for a three-month vacation. Juli-
et and her older sister Vanessa had come
here every year of their lives, though,
starting in adolescence, they’d gone else-
where as well. Now Juliet was back in
the house with her parents, as though
she were a child again.

Slowly, during the summer, she had

begun to thaw.

One night Ann told them about a zon-
ing meeting she’d attended. Developers
had begun greedily to eye the big open
mountainsides, and a town meeting was
held to discuss planning. Ann thought
the Zoning Board’s position was meek
and conciliatory.

“Jackson Perkins might as well have

invited the developers to come and
stand on his stomach,” Ann said. “I
couldn’t believe what he was saying. I
wanted to raise my hand and say, ‘Jack-
son, when we want advice from a ham-
ster, we’ll call on you.’”

Juliet was drinking milk, glass at her

mouth, when her mother spoke: she
erupted, coughing and gasping, milk fly-
ing up her nose. She’d briefly, hilariously
choked, her napkin plastered against her
face, white drops spattering the table.
Roger stood and patted her back, happy
to be able to help her with something so
urgent, so mild: milk up her nose.

Things improved, Juliet began to relax.

By August it seemed she’d reverted to
the easy, sunny child she’d once been.
She’d seemed to like her parents again.
She liked the ramshackle house. She’d
spent that summer as she’d spent earlier
ones: hiking, swimming in the pond,
helping with the garden and the dishes,
walking dreamily through the ½elds.
Late at night, she talked on the tele-
phone. He and Ann heard the low mur-
mur through the thin old walls of the
farmhouse, felt the vibration of the in-

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visible connection, stretching from their
docile meadow to the crackle of distant
cities. None of your old friends, the ther-
apist at rehab had said. No one from
that life. But Juliet was alone there in the
house, with them. She saw no one else.
There were no drugs there, in the sun-
bleached ½eld, the wooded hills.

Though it seemed drugs were every-
where now, seeping into kids’ lives like
groundwater. They were so available, so
common, you couldn’t ask your older,
most obedient child not to take them, let
alone your younger, wilder, more rebel-
lious and more dif½cult daughter.

Vanessa, three years older, had been
relatively saintly, they’d learned. Now
through college, she was living in Som-
erville and working for a landscape
designer in Cambridge. This summer,
Vanessa had been their lifeline at times,
coming up often for weekends, acting as
intermediary between her parents and
her sister. She told them her own story.
Smoking pot: it would have horri½ed
them at the time. Now it seemed inno-
cent, adolescent.

What was it they’d missed? That ex-

change in the kitchen, between Juliet
and Ann–the plates, the hose–that was
completely normal, wasn’t it? Or not?
What was it that he should have fore-
seen? He felt again the sliding terror of
what approached.

The last week, they’d gone swimming,

the four of them, in the pond at the foot
of their hill. At the near end of the pond
was a splintery wooden dock. At the far
end was a stand of willows, overhang-
ing the water, trailing their long green
strands into its depths. Beneath the wil-
lows the water was dark and murky. No
one swam there, for fear of monsters:
snapping turtles, eels, leeches. Logic sug-
gested that all those things might be any-
where in the pond, but instinct warned

that the dark shadows, the overhanging
branches, were a haven for sinister
forces.

That afternoon, Vanessa and Juliet

stood side by side at the edge of the
dock, wrangling languidly. Feet braced,
they shoved hips at each other.

“Go in, then. Why don’t you go in?
You’re such a wuss,” Vanessa told Juliet,
pushing her shoulder.

“As if,” Juliet said, shoving back. “I’m

so much braver than you.”

“Okay, then, swim the pond. Go under

the willows,” Vanessa challenged.

Instantly, without a second’s pause,
Juliet threw herself full-length onto the
cool green skin of the water in a long
racing dive, hitting the top of the water
flat, then sliding under it to disappear.
There was a lengthy, expectant pause.
The pond was silent. The surface was
now smooth and unbroken, though
somewhere beneath it was a living body,
moving swiftly, its heart pumping, oxy-
gen coursing through its blood. Waiting
in the sunlight for Juliet to reappear, the
others became mindful of held breath,
aching lungs, throbbing heart, the
weight of the silver-green water. The
pond was silent. Dragonflies glinted
and shimmered above it.

Juliet suddenly exploded upward, sur-
facing in a swirling rush of air and bub-
bles, unexpectedly far away. Without
glancing back she began to swim, turn-
ing her head to breathe with each stroke.
Her hair, now black and glistening, clung
flatly along her back and arms. They
stood on the dock, watching her move
along the edge of the water, toward the
cave of willows. Juliet never stopped,
never looked to see where she was. The
long movement of her arms, the thrash-
ing kick, disturbed the whole pond. Rip-
ples rocked across its wide stretch.

At the far end Juliet disappeared be-

hind the curtain of overhanging

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branches. The water there was shad-
owed and opaque. They could hear her
steady strokes, but her progress was hid-
den. For a moment her disappearance
seemed perilous, the silence fraught, as
though they were waiting for a scream.
Roger found himself holding his breath.
When Juliet reappeared, her arms
beating long arcs through the still air,
dark hair plastered over her polished
shoulders, her flashing progress seemed
now triumphant. Risk now seemed
absurd. There had been no danger after
all, no monsters. Though all those things
existed in the pond: leeches, snapping
turtles, snakes.

Juliet swam steadily back. Reaching
the shallows she stood, walking slowly
in against the weight of the water. Her
face and body were streaming, brilliant.

Juliet looked at Vanessa. “So,” she

said. “Wuss.”

What was it they should have noticed,

foreseen?

The traf½c hurtled past; the red car
trembled. He should move, he was too
close to the thundering stream. Though
now he realized it would be hard to get
out of here: the shoulder ahead nar-
rowed to a point, then vanished. It
would be hard to get up enough speed, in
the space remaining, to reenter the cur-
rent. The red car, though willing, did not
have much acceleration.

At the end of that week, Juliet had

announced her plan to go back to Boston
with Vanessa. It was late afternoon, and
they were all out on the lawn. The girls
were lounging on the grass; Ann sat in a
decrepit aluminum chair, its woven web-
bing frayed. She was shelling peas, and
dropping the empty pods onto a newspa-
per spread on the grass. Roger had just
come up, carrying a hammer and a jar of
nails. His summers here were spent in
continual battle with loosening shingles,
hidden leaks, rotting wood, and creeping

damp; as the house struggled purpose-
fully to return to the earth, he struggled
tinily to prevent it.

Ann frowned. “Where will you stay?”

she asked Juliet. “You can’t stay at
home.” Their house in Cambridge was
empty, it was just the sort of thing that
could get Juliet in trouble.

“She’ll stay with me,” Vanessa said.
“I just want to see Alicia before she
leaves for college,” Juliet explained.

None of your old friends. No one from

that life.

Roger and Ann looked at her, worried.
“Juliet,” Ann began. She was sitting

very straight, her feet crossed at the
ankle, dropping the peas into the colan-
der in her lap.

But Juliet smiled at them. “Don’t
worry,” she said. “Alicia’s not in that
crowd. I’m not going to run off and do
drugs.”

She’d said the words out loud.
Should they not have trusted her? Do
you never trust your child again? When
do you start to trust her? She’d been
there with them for months. Her eyes
were candid, her gaze open. They
couldn’t keep her alone with them in
the mountains forever. It was the end
of the summer; they were all about to
return to the world.

On Sunday afternoon, the two girls

left in Vanessa’s small dusty car, trun-
dling slowly down the rutted driveway
through the ½eld. At the bottom of the
hill Vanessa gave a honk; both girls
stuck bare arms from the windows and
waved. Roger and Ann stood on the lawn
in front of the house, waving back. Then
the car turned out onto the road, and
was lost among the trees.

He would have to make an effort to

get out of here, to get back out onto
the road. He would be late for his lec-
ture.

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Fiction by
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Robinson

He looked in the rearview mirror. The
traf½c streamed at him seamlessly. May-
be he should back up, to give himself
more room. He set the car in reverse and
turned to watch over his shoulder. He
pressed cautiously on the accelerator.
The car began to creep backward, zig-
zagging disconcertingly toward the cars
flowing dizzyingly toward him.

When Vanessa called, the next night,
they’d been asleep. At the ½rst ring they
were both awake, sitting up, hearts rac-
ing. Ann picked up the phone, Roger
fumbled with the lamp.

“What is it?” Ann asked into the

phone.

He looked at the clock: one forty.
“Where is she? Where are you?”
“What is it?” Roger asked.
Ann shook her head, frowning.

“Are you with her right now?”

There was silence while Vanessa

talked.

“What is it?” Roger asked again.
“Hold on.” Ann turned to him. “It’s
Juliet. She came home late and Vanessa’s
worried about her. She thinks she did
some drugs.”

Roger took the phone.
“Vanessa,” he said.“What happened?”
“We met some friends for dinner, and

then we went on to hear some music,
and then I wanted to go home. Jules said
she just wanted to see Alicia, by herself,
and she’d be home really soon.” Vanessa
sounded frightened. “I know I told you
I’d stay with her. I know I did. But she
got really mad at me and told me to stop
following her around, and she promised
she’d be right back. She came back a
while ago, and now she’s asleep, only I
can’t tell if she’s asleep or out cold. Un-
conscious,” she added, touchingly care-
ful, as though verbal precision might
help.

“How did she act?”
“Okay, I guess.”

There was a silence. Roger closed his
eyes to listen, trying to hear what was
going on.

“Really okay?”
“I guess so. She said she had a head-

ache.” Vanessa sounded miserable.
He spoke to Ann. “She had a head-
ache.” Ann frowned and shook her head.
What did it mean? What did a headache
mean? Anything? “That’s all?” he asked
Vanessa.

“Yeah. She said she was going to bed.”
It was quarter of two in the morning.
Whom could they call? Was it an emer-
gency? Juliet was already asleep, and
they were two hours away.

Ann took the phone back. “Nessa, did

she seem okay?”

Their bedroom was in shadow, except

for the glow from the lamp. The dark-
ened ceiling slanted down toward the
eaves; on it, above the lamp was a pale
blurry oval. Around them the house was
still.

They decided ½nally to let Juliet sleep.
Whatever she’d done was already done.
They’d get up early and drive to Somer-
ville. They’d call the therapist at rehab.
They’d ½nd a local program, they’d call
their own doctor, marshal their forces,
½nd out what to do. Right then, seventy
miles away, in the middle of the dark
mountain pasture, the middle of the
night, they could do little. They’d do
everything the next day. They’d start in
the morning.

Of course, for Juliet there was no

morning.

She’d taken no more than her old

dosage, but during those innocent coun-
try months her body had lost its resis-
tance. The cocaine vapor thundered into
her system, accelerating her heart, con-
tracting the vessels in her brain. Within
the hard bone cup of her skull, a nar-
rowed artery gave way. The tissue rup-

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Blind Man

tured, and blood spilled deep into the
smooth inner surfaces of the brain.
These were places sacrosanct, inviolate.
The intrusion was intolerable; an irre-
versible distress signal was transmitted.
The violated brain closed down the cen-
tral nervous system.

Closed down the central nervous system.
He had an image of of½ces darkening

for the night, covers placed over ma-
chines, doors shutting, lights going off.
Closing down. Closing down. He could not
hold the two thoughts in his mind at
once, the physiological and the personal.
The rupturing artery and Juliet.

He was backing now directly toward
the oncoming cars. The afternoon was
waning, and some headlights were on.
The approaching lights were hypnotical-
ly attractive. He had to resist veering
slowly into their path. He backed care-
fully, swerving slightly back and forth,
correcting himself with small swings,
until he’d created enough room to make
a run. Then he waited for a gap in the
oncoming stream. All you could do was
go on. Was there anything else you could
do? Back directly out into the stream?
When he saw the gap, he tried to
measure it mentally, looking backward
through the growing dusk. How big was
it? Big enough? But he could feel some-
thing gather within him, some kind of
excitement, and he understood that this
was the moment, he was going. He had
already gunned the little car; at once it
lost traction on the gravel. But he was
committed, the tiny motor roaring, the
accelerator flat against the floor. He felt
the engine laboring, gathering speed
slowly, the breakdown lane narrowing
rapidly ahead. He was racing it. At the
very end of the lane, his turn signal
sounding its repetitive bell, hoping the
driver behind him would understand
his need, see his danger, Roger pulled
out into the traf½c, his heart racing, ris-

ing to meet the moment. It was like a
plane roaring down the runway toward
liftoff.

The moment the wheels hit the pave-
ment he knew his pace was too slow. He
could feel the speed all around him: he
was too slow. He felt the thunder of
trucks alongside, felt himself borne
down upon from behind. All around him
was the assault of sound, the hurtling
crush of speed; he waited for the impact.
It did not come. The car behind him
must have seen him and understood;
he felt its dangerous looming presence
diminish, fall away. The little red car
droned loudly, its engine straining up-
ward. Finally it reached its capacity, and
then miraculously, within moments he
was again a part of the flow. He was in
it. All you could do was go on. But still, he
stayed now in the slow lane. The far
lane, the fast one, seemed now unimag-
inably distant, suicidally fast.

Somewhere soon, he thought–though
he had now lost all sense of this trip–he
was meant to get off the highway, onto a
secondary road. This would lead him to
the quiet streets of the university, and
somewhere there he would ½nd Allen
Douglas Hall. The small band of waiting
historians, the silent students–respect-
ful? bored? derisive?–lounging in their
seats. This community of dazing speed
would be behind him.

At the exit sign he slowed gratefully
and turned off. Curving sedately down
the ramp he felt himself returning once
again to the actual world. This new road
was two-lane, winding through wooded
countryside, but the traf½c still seemed
fast. It was late afternoon now, not dark,
but nearly dusk. You could still see with-
out headlights, though their presence
reminded you that light was fading, vi-
sion provisional.

After the stoplight at the Dairy Queen,

the road curved down a small hill to-

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Fiction by
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Robinson

ward the town. On the left was a string
of bright seedy places: muffler repair,
Mexican fast food, a gas station. On the
right was nothing: a strip of trees, some
kind of construction. A metal fence, one
grooved and massive band, hugged the
roadside.

When he saw the man, Roger thought

he must be seeing it wrong–the man
must actually be on the outside of the
metal fence, not inside it. There was no
sidewalk, and the verge was narrow.
There was barely room for the man’s
body between the fence and the speed-
ing traf½c.

The man wore a trench coat, and be-
side him was a dog on a leash. Or not
on a leash–a harness? Was it possible?
Roger felt his scalp tighten. That this
was a blind man, making his way along
this shallow gully, inches from the lethal
stream of traf½c?

Roger couldn’t stop as he drove past;
the traf½c pressed him too hard, too fast.
He watched the harnessed dog trying
to lead the man away from the road,
toward the fence. He saw the man stum-
ble against the fence, then jerk the dog,
heading it back toward the traf½c. Roger
passed by, inches from the man’s trench-
coated shoulder. The man held his head
high, his chin raised, as though his face,
pointed toward the sky, would help his
body see. Ahead, unknown to him, the
narrow walkway was about to end, slant-
ing diagonally toward the road, funnel-
ing the man’s steps toward the pave-
ment, the hurtling cars.

There was nowhere on the right to

stop. Roger put on his blinker and
turned abruptly left, cutting across the
traf½c, into the muffler repair parking
lot. Jumping from the car he ran back up
the hill. Across the road, he could see the
blind man yank his dog from the fence
again. At the top of the hill a truck
rounded the curve. Roger ran heavily

across the road in front of it, his heart
answering the thundering approach of
the truck. He ran clumsily up the culvert,
pebbles loose beneath his feet, toward
the blind man.

“Hello,” Roger said loudly. “Can I help

you?” Roger was breathing hard. The
truck was nearly on top of them.

The blind man swiveled to face him.

“I’m ½ne, thanks,” he declared.

“You’re in a dangerous place,” Roger
said. “Let me give you a lift.” The truck
pounded past, rocking them both, blast-
ing them with its hot smoky stink.
“Where are you going?”

“Middletown,” the blind man said,
smiling at the air. He was in his forties,
his hair graying. He looked not prosper-
ous, but respectable. He acted as though
there were no traf½c, drowning out his
voice and buffeting his body.

“That’s where I’m going,” Roger said,

“I’ll take you.”

“No, thanks, I’m all right,” the man
said. “My dog is pretty well trained. She
knows what she’s doing. We’re ½ne.”
The dog, a small golden retriever, stood
unhappily, her head low. The cars rushed
past them, loud and rhythmic.

What were the rules of courtesy,
with the blind? You were meant to act
as though they were perfectly compe-
tent: which they were, weren’t they?
Leading their own lives. It was rude,
condescending, to act as though they
could not cope with things, as though
you knew better.

Roger stood facing the traf½c. Be-
cause of the curve at the top of the hill,
drivers could not see them until they
were on top of them. The cars hurtled
past, the wind from each one rocking
the two men. The murderous roar
mocked their fragile armor of skin,
flesh, bones.

He thought of the blurred oval of light
on the slanting bedroom ceiling, the si-

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lence of the dark house. What if you did
know better?

Roger took the man’s elbow, gently–

he didn’t want him now to pull away,
stumbling into the road.

“You’re not safe here,” Roger told him.
He was ready for the man to resist, to
pull back from his grip, but the man did
not. Instead he stood with his arm in
Roger’s grasp, saying nothing, his head
slightly cocked, as though he were lis-
tening for something. The lack of resis-
tance came as a shock, somehow pain-
ful: maybe this was what people wanted.
“I’m going to hold up my hand to stop

the traf½c,” Roger told him, “and we’ll
walk across the road together. Then I’ll
drive you wherever you want.”

The blind man did not move, and Rog-

er watched the approaching cars for
another gap. He was calm, as he’d been
earlier, waiting on the highway. He was
waiting for another hiatus in the lethal
flow, the moment in which he would
save their lives. When it came he would
seize it, step out boldly, his hand held
high to stop the deadly current.

He would save the three of them: the

blind stranger, gazing aimlessly at the
sky; himself, playing the endless loop
inside his brain; the dog too, silky, dark-
eyed, plumy-tailed, waiting sweetly to
see what would be done with her life.

Blind Man

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