Land Of The Blind

cafeteria to clean the gum off the bottoms of our desks, and we prepared for the last days of fifth grade with the awareness that life was beginning.

Every summer I took over a newspaper route for an older guy in our neighborhood, and this time I promised to let my brother Ben help me out. We started the last week of school; I got up at four-thirty and pedaled around with him pointing out the houses that took the paper and then sliding it into the rusted metal tubes and snazzy-looking new plastic boxes. It was almost six when we came riding back down Empire Road toward our house. We pedaled through a couple of backyards and came out at the RiverVu Trailer Park – the only accurate word of that title being Trailer, since there was no Vu of the River and this was certainly no Park. I rode past the trailer of the great, prematurely bearded quarterback Kenny Dale, his cherry GTO in the driveway behind his parents' Mercury. I stood on my bicycle pedals and tried to look into his window, trying to imagine the things he must do to cheerleaders in that little trailer.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eli emerge from the last trailer on the street and begin walking down the strip of houses. I circled around and watched from a block away as he shuffled in that familiar walk, the clattering of his leg braces the only noise competing with the birds in the neighborhood.

When I got home, my mom had made pancakes for my little sisters. I can still see Mom at the counter in the kitchen, short and slender in one of my dad's big gray sweatshirts, which covered her like a bulky dress, and a pair of fuzzy slippers, smelling like a catalog of Avon products, the smoke from her cigarette curling around the long hair piled atop her head. 'Clark? I'm making the girls some pancakes.'

'No time.'

I ran past her, got my book bag and my Nerf football, and ran back into the kitchen, grabbing my brown sack lunch off the counter.

'What do you mean no time? There's always time for breakfast.'

'Not today. I'm riding my bike to school.'

Finally, she turned. It's funny. The small things I took for granted then torture me now in their simple perfection: a plate of pancakes, a hand on my shoulder, a look of deep concern. You have no idea when you're so eager to escape your own house, your own life, your own childhood, of the sad truth that no one will ever care for you like that again.

'You can't ride your bike, Clark. It's three miles.'

'I can ride three miles.'

My dad came out in pajama bottoms and no shirt, rubbing his head and patting his belly, inadvertently mastering the test of coordination that we used to dare one another. He kissed Mom on the top of the head and she handed him a plate of pancakes.

'You're not riding your bike to school on an empty stomach.'

'I'll eat there.'

I started for the door and she put her hands on her hips. 'But school doesn't even start for an hour and a half.'

'Gotta go,' I said, and ran out the door, tossed the canvas newspaper bag on the porch, and climbed on the banana seat of my Schwinn Scrambler. Maybe I could apologize on the road. But Eli was nowhere on Empire and so I pedaled down the busier Trent, keeping my eyes open until finally I saw him, a hundred yards ahead of me, walking along the railroad tracks on the other side of Trent. He moved with that same inward shuffle that he used at school. He favored his bent left leg, but since the toes on his right leg pointed in a few degrees it was a kind of double limp, exaggerated by his leg braces. Something about his walk had always seemed familiar to me, and as I shadowed him down Trent I understood what it was: some old black-and-white movie I'd seen in which a gangster was shackled and cuffed and hobbled down death row while the other prisoners hissed and made catcalls. With his leg braces, his hippity-hoppity, stare-at-the-ground gait, that's what Eli Boyle appeared to be, a prisoner on his way to his maker.

I checked my watch. It was six-thirty in the morning. I had been assuming that Eli's mother drove him to and from school every day to keep him from being beaten up; in fact he had been walking all this time, leaving two hours early to avoid Pete Decker and Matt Woodbridge. But no, that wasn't quite right; he hadn't walked to school to avoid those two bullies. No, he hadn't started walking until the day he and I fought. My belligerence was his last straw.

I rode so slowly on the shoulder of the road that I could barely stay up, zigzagging my front wheel to keep my balance. Every few minutes a tractor trailer or molten-aluminum truck from the Kaiser plant would blow by and I would nearly lose my balance, but I kept at it, watching Eli on the tracks, across twenty feet of weeds and scrub grass. He never looked up. He arrived at school at a quarter after seven, a full hour before the bell would ring. I padlocked my bike and followed a safe distance behind, unaware that the school even opened this early. He walked past the janitors, who smoked cigarettes and carried rolls of toilet paper into the bathrooms. I followed him past the office, where the principal, Joe Boner, leaned against the secretary's desk, pleading with her about something. Past the glass trophy case with its pictures of former students who'd died in Vietnam and the award named for Woodbridge's brother. Finally, he turned into the gymnasium. I was stunned. Of all the places for Eli to kill an hour before school, I would never have guessed the gym, a veritable torture chamber for a kid like Boyle.

I caught up and peeked in the gym, but he was gone. There was an entrance to the boys' locker room at the end of the gym, but no way he'd have made it there before I got to the door. He'd simply disappeared. I wondered for a second if I'd made the whole thing up. Imagine. Eli Boyle walking two miles to school. Two miles back. With his gnarled legs and crooked feet? Imagine the fear he had of the bus stop, of the bullies of Empire. Imagine him going into the gym, of all places.

Then, in the gaps between the bleachers, I caught a glimpse of greasy hair, of overalls and flannel. I crept up behind the wood bleachers, which were pulled out so that only the bottom two rows were accessible. But it was enough that someone could slide underneath, and that's where Eli sat, on the floor beneath the bleachers, amid the gum and candy wrappers and smashed popcorn, slats of light coming in between the bleacher seats. He sat with his notebook open, writing something, or drawing, possibly the tanks and airplanes that he was always sketching.

His back was to me, and if he knew someone was watching he gave no indication, just sat curled up on himself, as if he could pull in more, disappear from the world. I opened my mouth to say something – I'm sorry – but nothing came out. I backed out of the gym and made my way down the hall. I peeked in the office, but the principal was now gone and the secretary was staring out the door, her head tilted, mouth wide open, like she wasn't seeing whatever was in front of her eyes, like she was imagining something entirely different.

My movement into her field of vision snapped her out of it, and she wiped at her eyes. 'What are you doing here?' she asked.

'I go to school here,' I said.

She straightened some things on her desk and swallowed. 'I know. I mean… it's very early.'

I opened my mouth to say something, but the principal's door opened and Mr. Bender popped his head out.

'Look, Peg, I'm sorry if I led you to believe that this was anything other than two people-'

She cleared her throat and nodded toward me, and Mr. Bender followed her gaze to me, standing flat-footed in the doorway.

'Oh, hello, Mason. What are you doing here?'

'I go to school here,' I answered again.

'Right,' he said.

He came out, his eyebrow up, like he was figuring a problem. 'Okay then, well. I was just having a discussion with Mrs. Federick. And… if I led you to believe, Mrs. Federick, that' – and now he looked from me to her and back again – 'that… uh, that the other bus driver I was telling you about would approve of me… you know, riding your bus… well, obviously, I've got a lot of time invested with that bus driver. As you do with your… bus driver. One ride on another bus doesn't…'

He seemed confused by his own words and he turned and went back into his office. Mrs. Federick stared at his door and I slipped away.

That day we cleaned out our desks and went outside for a huge game of tug-of-war with the other fifth-grade class. In a rare moment of kindness, Mrs. Chalmers-Wright-McKinley allowed Eli to skip the game, but his parole