Land Of The Blind

lane. Throughout, Amanda sat in a child's seat strapped in back, staring at me.

'Does it hurt?' she asked.

'Does what hurt?'

'The thing on your eye.'

'Sometimes.' I turned to face her full on. 'So you just turned four?'

'Yeah,' she said.

'When's your birthday?'

'December nine.'

I turned to Michael, my mouth dry. 'You had her party late.'

He looked perturbed. 'What?'

'Her birthday party. When I called in January you were having her party.'

'My parents were out of town for her birthday so we had a second party when they got back,' he said, incredulous that I would ask about such a thing at a time like this. I did the math again. Less than eight months.

'My sister just had a baby,' I said carefully. 'She was almost a month early. Was Dana early like that?'

'No. She was three weeks late. What the hell is this, Mason?' Seven months.

We pulled into the airport turnout. As I got out of the car, Michael put his hand on my arm. 'Please.'

I said good-bye to Michael's daughter and ran into the airport.

I bought a ticket and was the last person to board. I settled in, panting and sweating, between two businessmen, who leaned away from the frantic, one-eyed passenger who sat between them. The plane had to land in Seattle before continuing to Spokane. The Seattle leg seemed to take forever. I'd check my watch, and only two minutes would've passed. I'd sit for an hour, snap my arm up, and check my watch again. Two minutes. I stretched and leaned and craned my neck. Out the window the clouds were stretched and striated, not enough to cover the snow-scarred ground beneath us.

In Seattle the passengers deplaned slowly, as if they were marching to their deaths. 'For God's sake,' I muttered. Both the businessmen got off and the Spokane passengers got on, families, students, and short-sleeved businessmen, ladies in tan slacks, a couple of drunk golfers. The new passengers sat and we waited, quiet except for the low rumble of conversation from the back of the plane and an occasional cough. I checked my watch: 2:45. And still the plane didn't move. I buzzed a flight attendant and asked what the problem was. 'It's just a minor delay, sir. We'll be taking off shortly.'

We didn't take off until just before three. It was a fifty-five-minute flight to Spokane. There wasn't enough time. Eli had said to put the money in the car by four or she would die. I was having trouble breathing again. Like he never imagined someone could hurt. Eli didn't have a phone, so I tried to call Michael from the phone on the plane, but it wouldn't work. I slid my credit card over and over, but it fucking wouldn't work. I tried the phone in the row in front of me. None of them worked. Maybe Michael had called the police. Maybe it would be okay. At 3:55 we made a pass over Spokane, but there was low fog and the pilot said we had to circle. Always circling. We banked and straightened and I saw in a flash my own death, like a carousel ride, faster and faster, around and around, the same faces spinning at the bus stop and high school and the prom and Empire – Dana and Eli and me, and even Ben, until he couldn't hold on anymore and he let go of the railing and fell away. I knew then that I couldn't hold on much longer either (the plane banking, my head sliding against the seat, the tears falling from my eyes) and it occurred to me that I was dead already, that I had been dead since that day by the river, that Eli had put his hand on the chest of a corpse, had comforted a dying boy, and I thought, We are all just loose piles of carbon and regret.

When the fog cleared and the plane stopped circling and I stopped spinning, there was nothing holding me together; when we finally landed, at 4:10 P.M., I felt as if I would dissolve in the air.

As I got off the plane, I half expected to see police meeting me. There were none. I ran through the airport, waded through the other passengers, and sprinted across the terminal, over the sky bridge and into the parking garage, up the elevator to the top floor – low-roofed concrete and round pillars. No cars. The Mercedes was gone. My voice echoed in the garage. 'No! Eli!' I ran down three floors to my own car, which I'd left in the garage the night before. My tires squealed coming down the ramp, and I sped away from the airport and across town.

It took me fifteen minutes to get to Eli's house. The Mercedes was parked out front, the For Sale sign still on it. I ran up the stairs to the carriage house apartment. 'Eli!' The door was unlocked. He would never leave the door unlocked.

My old friend Eli Boyle was lying on his side. Blood was barely moving, in a slackened flow outward from the wound, across the carpet, onto the kitchen floor. Lying there on the ground he seemed so small, just like when we were kids and I saw him walking to the bus stop, the braces rattling around his knees, drawn into himself, as if he could keep the world away. And I remembered feeling his hand on my chest that day, comforting me, the pellet from Pete's gun burning in my eye.

I suppose there are worse things than rest. 'I'm so sorry, Eli,' I said. I crouched down next to him. Blood wept from his head.

The gun was next to his body. I picked it up. The shades were pulled in the apartment and it was dark, so I carried the gun out onto the porch. I pulled the pin the way I'd see Eli do it and rolled the chamber out. There were two bullets missing. I slammed it closed, threw the gun across the lawn, and screamed out: 'Dana!' And then I looked up at the main house and-

Caroline? Another police officer is here. A Sergeant Spivey? He says you have gone home. Is that right? He says I have to stop writing. We almost made it, didn't we? Just close enough to know what we've missed… if that's not the shape of life-

I've been trying for two days to imagine the words I would use to close this, to finish – I have dreamed for you the profoundest words, Caroline – poetry to temper the sorrow and the longing, to somehow make this life beautiful.

But there are no words. No poetry. And only one thing left for me to do.

Rest now.

Clark

What kind of people have committed suicide because they were tired of life?

– Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

IX

ANYTHING YOU SAY

1

SHE FINISHES READING

She finishes reading and sets the last legal pad down in her lap. Spivey is a pad behind – reading with a confused and cross look on his face, mustache twitching as his lips move with the big words. It's three-thirty in the morning. As she slides the last pad over to Spivey, she remembers what Clark said: There aren't even names for the crimes… Caroline stands, walks across the office to her desk, sits down, and calls