She began to enjoy sitting on the porch with him, but she could never tell if he knew she was there or not. Even when he answered her, she couldn’t tell if he knew it was she. She herself. Mrs. Flood, the landlady. Not just anybody. They would sit, he only sit, and she sit rocking, for half an afternoon and not two words seemed to pass between them, though she might talk at length. If she didn’t talk and keep her mind going, she would find herself sitting forward in her chair, looking at him with her mouth not closed. Anyone who saw her from the sidewalk would think she was being courted by a corpse.
She observed his habits carefully. He didn’t eat much or seem to mind anything she gave him. If she had been blind, she would have sat by the radio all day, eating cake and ice cream, and soaking her feet. He ate anything and never knew the difference. He kept getting thinner and his cough deepened and he developed a limp. During the first cold months, he took the virus, but he walked out every day in spite of that. He walked about half of each day. He got up early in the morning and walked in his room—she could hear him below in hers, up and down, up and down—and then he went out and walked before breakfast and after breakfast, he went out again and walked until midday. He knew the four or five blocks around the house and he didn’t go any farther than those. He could have kept on one for all she saw. He could have stayed in his room, in one spot, moving his feet up and down. He could have been dead and get all he got out of life but the exercise. He might as well be one of them monks, she thought, he might as well be in a monkery. She didn’t understand it. She didn’t like the thought that something was being put over her head. She liked the clear light of day. She liked to see things.
She could not make up her mind what would be inside his head and what out. She thought of her own head as a switchbox where she controlled from; but with him, she could only imagine the outside in, the whole black world in his head and his head bigger than the world, his head big enough to include the sky and planets and whatever was or had been or would be. How would he know if time was going backwards or forwards or if he was going with it? She imagined it was like you were walking in a tunnel and all you could see was a pin point of light. She had to imagine the pin point of light; she couldn’t think of it at all without that. She saw it as some kind of a star, like the star on Christmas cards. She saw him going backwards to Bethlehem and she had to laugh.
She thought it would be a good thing if he had something to do with his hands, something to bring him out of himself and get him in connection with the real world again. She was certain he was out of connection with it; she was not certain at times that he even knew she existed. She suggested he get himself a guitar and learn to strum it; she had a picture of them sitting on the porch in the evening and him strumming it. She had bought two rubber plants to make where they sat more private from the street, and she thought that the sound of him strumming it from behind the rubber plant would take away the dead look he had. She suggested it but he never answered the suggestion.
After he paid his room and board every month, he had a good third of the government check left but that she could see, he never spent any money. He didn’t use tobacco or drink whisky; there was nothing for him to do with all that money but lose it, since there was only himself. She thought of benefits that might accrue to his widow should he leave one. She had seen money drop out of his pocket and him not bother to reach down and feel for it. One day when she was cleaning his room, she found four dollar bills and some change in his trash can. He came in about that time from one of his walks. “Mr. Motes,” she said, “here’s a dollar bill and some change in this waste basket. You know where your waste basket is. How did you make that mistake?”
“It was left over,” he said. “I didn’t need it.”
She dropped onto his straight chair. “Do you throw it away every month?” she asked after a time.
“Only when it’s left over,” he said.
“The poor and needy,” she muttered. “The poor and needy. Don’t you ever think about the poor and needy? If you don’t want that money somebody else might.”
“You can have it,” he said.
“Mr. Motes,” she said coldly, “I’m not charity yet!” She realized now that he was a mad man and that he ought to be under the control of a sensible person The landlady was past her middle years and her plate was too large but she had long race-horse legs and a nose that had been called Grecian by one boarder. She wore her hair clustered like grapes on her brow and over each ear and in the middle behind, but none of these advantages were any use to her in attracting his attention. She saw that the only way was to be interested in what he was interested in. “Mr. Motes,” she said one afternoon when they were sitting on the porch, “why don’t you preach any more? Being blind wouldn’t be a hinderance. People would like to go see a blind preacher. It would be something different.” She was used to going on without an answer. “You could get you one of those seeing dogs,” she said, “and he and you could get up a good crowd. People’ll always go to see a dog.
“For myself,” she continued, “I don’t have that streak. I believe that what’s right today is wrong tomorrow and that the time to enjoy yourself is now so long as you let others do the same. I’m as good, Mr. Motes,” she said, “not believing in Jesus as a many a one that does.”
“You’re better,” he said, leaning forward suddenly. “If you believed in Jesus, you wouldn’t be so good.”
He had never paid her a compliment before! “Why Mr. Motes,” she said, “I expect you’re a fine preached You certainly ought to start it again. It would give you something to do. As it is, you don’t have anything to do but walk. Why don’t you start preaching again?”
“I can’t preach any more,” he muttered.
“Why?”
“I don’t have time,” he said, and got up and walked off the porch as if she had reminded him of some urgent business. He walked as if his feet hurt him but he had to go on.
Some time later she discovered why he limped. She was cleaning his room and happened to knock over his extra pair of shoes. She picked them up and looked into them as if she thought she might find something hidden there. The bottoms of them were lined with gravel and broken glass and pieces of small stone. She spilled this out and sifted it through her fingers, looking for a glitter that might mean something valuable, but she saw that what she had in her hand was trash that anybody could pick up in the alley. She stood for some time, holding the shoes, and finally she put them back under the cot. In a few days she examined them again and they were lined with fresh rocks. Who’s he doing this for? she asked herself. What’s he getting out of doing it? Every now and then she would have an intimation of something hidden near her but out of her reach. “Mr. Motes,” she said that day, when he was in her kitchen eating his dinner, “what do you walk on rocks for?”
“To pay,” he said in a harsh voice.
“Pay for what?”
“It don’t make any difference for what,” he said. “I’m paying.”
“But what have you got to show that you’re paying for?” she persisted.
