Hearts In Atlantis

and then followed, waiting for the opportunity to bag the case and run (not that many thieves could run with it, not this case). Once, back in the summer of ’79, two or three young guys, maybe black (he couldn’t say for sure; they sounded black, but his vision had been slow returning that day, it was always slower in warm weather, when the days stayed bright longer), had accosted him and begun talking to him in a way he didn’t quite like. It wasn’t like the kids this afternoon, with their jokes about reading the waffle iron and what does a Playboy centerfold look like in Braille. It was softer than that, and in some weird fashion almost kind—questions about how much he took in by St. Pat’s back there, and would he perchance be generous enough to make a contribution to something called the Polo Recreational League, and did he want a little protec-tion getting to his bus stop or train station or whatever. One, perhaps a budding sexologist, had asked if he liked a little young pussy once in awhile. “It pep you up,” the voice on his left said softly, almost longingly. “Yessir, you must believe that shit.”

He had felt the way he imagined a mouse must feel when the cat is just pawing at it, claws not out yet, curious about what the mouse will do, and how fast it can run, and what sorts of noises it will make as its terror grows. Blind Willie had not been terrified, however. Scared, yes indeed, you could fairly say he had been scared, but he has not been out-and-out terrified since his last week in the green, the week that had begun in the A Shau Valley and ended in Dong Ha, the week the Viet Cong had harried them steadily west at what was not quite a full retreat, at the same time pinching them on both sides, driving them like cattle down a chute, always yelling from the trees, sometimes laughing from the jungle, sometimes shooting, sometimes screaming in the night. The little men who ain’t there, Sullivan called them. There is nothing like them here, and his blind-est day in Manhattan is not as dark as those nights after they lost the Captain. Knowing this had been his advantage and those young fel-lows’ mistake. He had simply raised his voice, speaking as a man might speak to a large room filled with old friends. “Say!” he had exclaimed to the shadowy phantoms drifting slowly around him on the sidewalk. “Say, does anyone see a policeman? I believe these young fellows here mean to take me off.” And that did it, easy as pulling a segment from a peeled orange; the young fellows bracket-ing him were suddenly gone like a cool breeze.

He only wishes he could solve the problem of Officer Wheelock that easily.

4:40 P.M.

The Sheraton Gotham, at Fortieth and Broadway, is one of the largest first-class hotels in the world, and in the cave of its lobby thousands of people school back and forth beneath the gigantic chandelier. They chase their pleasures here and dig their treasures there, oblivious to the Christmas music flowing from the speakers, to the chatter from three different restaurants and five bars, to the scenic elevators sliding up and down in their notched shafts like pis-tons powering some exotic glass engine . . . and to the blind man who taps among them, working his way toward a sarcophagal public men’s room almost the size of a subway station. He walks with the sticker on the case turned inward now, and he is as anonymous as a blind man can be. In this city, that’s very anonymous.

Still, he thinks as he enters one of the stalls and takes off his jacket, turning it inside-out as he does so, how is it that in all these years no one has ever followed me? No one has ever noticed that the blind man who goes in and the sighted man who comes out are the same size, and carrying the same case?

Well, in New York, hardly anyone notices anything that isn’t his or her own business—in their own way, they are all as blind as Blind Willie. Out of their offices, flooding down the sidewalks, thronging in the subway stations and cheap restaurants, there is something both repulsive and sad about them; they are like nests of moles turned up by a farmer’s harrow. He has seen this blindness over and over again, and he knows that it is one reason for his success . . . but surely not the only reason. They are not all moles, and he has been rolling the dice for a long time now. He takes precautions, of course he does, many of them, but there are still those moments (like now, sitting here with his pants down, unscrewing the white cane and stowing it back in his case) when he would be easy to catch, easy to rob, easy to expose. Wheelock is right about the Post; they would love him. They would hang him higher than Haman. They would never understand, never even want to understand, or hear his side of it. What side? And why has none of this ever happened?

Because of God, he believes. Because God is good. God is hard but God is good. He cannot bring himself to confess, but God seems to understand. Atonement and penance take time, but he has been given time. God has gone with him every step of the way.

In the stall, still between identities, he closes his eyes and prays— first giving his thanks, then making a request for guidance, then giv-ing more thanks. He finishes as he always does, in a whisper only he and God can hear: “If I die in a combat zone, bag me up and ship me home. If I die in a state of sin, close Your eyes and take me in. Yeah. Amen.”

He leaves the stall, leaves the bathroom, leaves the echoing confu-sion of the Sheraton Gotham, and no one walks up to him and says, “Excuse me, sir, but weren’t you just blind?” No one looks at him twice as he walks out into the street, carrying the bulky case as if it weighed twenty pounds instead of a hundred. God takes care of him.

It has started to snow. He walks slowly through it, Willie Shear-man again now, switching the case frequently from hand to hand, just one more tired guy at the end of the day. He continues to think about his inexplicable success as he goes. There’s a verse from the Book of Matthew which he has committed to memory. They be blind leaders of the blind, it goes. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. Then there’s the old saw that says in the kingdom of the blind, the one- eyed man is king. Is he the one-eyed man? God aside, has that been the practical secret of his success all these years?

Perhaps so, perhaps not. In any case, he has been protected . . . and in no case does he believe he can put God aside. God is in the picture. God marked him in 1960, when he first helped Harry Doolin tease Carol and then helped Harry beat her. That occasion of sin has never left his mind. What happened in the grove of trees near Field B stands for everything else. He even has Bobby Garfield’s glove to help him remember. Willie doesn’t know where Bobby is these days and doesn’t care. He kept track of Carol as long as he could, but Bobby doesn’t matter. Bobby ceased to matter when he helped her. Willie saw him help her. He didn’t dare come out and help her himself—he was afraid of what Harry might do to him, afraid of all the kids Harry might tell, afraid of being marked—but Bobby dared. Bobby helped her then, Bobby punished Harry Doolin later that summer, and by doing these things (probably just for doing the first of them), Bobby got well, Bobby got over. He did what Willie didn’t dare to do, he rolled with it and got over, got well, and now Willie has to do all the rest. And that’s a lot to do. Sorry is a full-time job and more. Why, even with three of him working at it, he can barely keep up.

Still, he can’t say he lives in regret. Sometimes he thinks of the good thief, the one who joined Christ in Paradise that very night. Fri-day afternoon you’re bleeding on Golgotha’s stony hill; Friday night you’re having tea and crumpets with the King. Sometimes someone kicks him, sometimes someone pushes him, sometimes he worries about being taken off. So what? Doesn’t he stand for all those who can only stand in the shadows, watching while the damage is done? Doesn’t he beg for them? Didn’t he take Bobby’s Alvin Dark–model baseball glove for them in 1960? He did. Gobless him, he did. And now they put their money in it as he stands eyeless outside the cathe-dral. He begs for them.

Sharon knows . . . exactly what does Sharon know? Some of it, yes. Just how much