Bears Discover Fire

first time, all in a rush, I remembered the car, my blindness, my life, the world. I saw specks floating like dust in shafts of light and wondered if that was all it had ever amounted to. Even as I puzzled over this I was turning back toward the lattice of light, which drew me toward it almost like a lover.

In their preliminary briefing, Sorel and DeCandyle had warned of the “chill” of LAD space; but I didn’t feel it. I felt only awe and peacefulness, like the feeling one gets gazing down from a mountaintop onto a sea of clouds.

Perhaps my experience was moderated by the wonderful new gift of vision; or perhaps somewhere in my bones I knew that this death was not final and that I would soon return to Earth.

I turned back toward the lattice of light (or was it turning toward me?) and saw that it was a display of light and light, no shade. I bathed in it, floating under it with a kind of bliss that I can compare only with that of orgasm, though it lasted for a long time, never peaking, never diminishing—a never-ending climax of quiet joy.

Was this, then, Heaven? Whether I asked that question then, or later, on reflection, I have no way of knowing; for memory and experience and anticipation were one to me then.

“After” (there is no sense of time in LAD space) I had bathed in this glory for what seemed an eternity I felt myself drifting back, down, away from the light. The light was receding and the darkness below was growing closer. I could see both in front and behind as I “fell” and I was vaguely conscious (or did memory add this later?) of the darkness reaching up toward me, like welcoming arms.

And I was blind again. Blind! I pulled back, toward death—and the light—and suddenly felt a sharp shock, and the outrage that pain brings. Reeling, I felt another shock; both, I learned later, were from the electroshock system built into the car, bringing me back to life.

I was conscious of hands on my face. I tried to raise my own hands but they were tied. Then I realized they weren’t tied, but dead.

Dead.

To describe what I felt as “fear” understates the wave of terror that filled me. Though something—my consciousness? my soul?—had been revived, my body was dead. I had no sensation and couldn’t move. My mouth was open, but not by my own will, nor could I close it.

It was only when I tried to scream that I realized I wasn’t breathing.

The third electroshock came as a friend: I welcomed its violence as it ripped through me. I felt, for the first time in my life (or was this my life?), my heart stir in my breast as it clutched itself inward, sucking for blood greedily, like a child sobbing; I heard it bubbling as it filled. Then the blood flooded into my brain, ice-cold, and I could hear screaming all around me.

It was my own scream, echoing.

I must have lost consciousness again, or perhaps there was an injection to smooth out the reentry process. When I awoke I was breathing smoothly, relaxed, lying on a two-person wheeled gurney. It was 4:03 P.M. according to my braille watch; only two hours since my trip had begun.

I heard voices and sat up; a paper cup of hot tea laced with bourbon was thrust into my hand. My lips were numb.

“That first retrocution can be rough,” DeCandyle said.

“How do you feel?” Sorel asked, at the same time: “Are you with us?”

I hurt all over but I nodded.

Thus began my journey to the Other Side.

“There’s something creepy about those two,” my ex said when she picked me up at 5 P.M. as arranged.

“They’re okay,” I said.

“She has no chin but her nose makes up for it.”

“They’re researchers, not models,” I said. “It’s an experiment where I paint dream-induced images. Perfect job for a blind man.” This was the agreed-on lie; there was no way I could tell the truth.

“But why a blind man?” she asked.

My ex is a cop. It is to her that I owe the independence I have enjoyed since the accident that blinded me. It was she who brought me home from the hospital and stayed with me, commuting daily from Durham where she works. It was she who managed the contractors and used the financial settlement from the Mariana Institute to rework my mountainside studio so that I was able to move (at first on ropes, like a puppet, and then independently) from bed to bath, from kitchen to studio, with as little hassle as possible.

Then it was she who went ahead with the divorce she had been planning even before the accident.

“Maybe they want somebody who can paint with his eyes closed,” I said. “Maybe I’m the only fool who’ll do it.

Maybe they like my work; though I realize you would find that a little farfetched—”

“You should see her hair,” she said. “It’s white at the roots.” She turned off the highway up the short, steep driveway to my studio. The low-slung police cruiser scraped on the high spots. “This driveway needs fixing.”

“First thing in the spring,” I said.

I couldn’t wait to get to work. That night, I began my first new painting in almost four months—the one that appeared on the cover of the “Undiscovered Country” issue of the National Geographic and now hangs in the Smithsonian as “The Lattice of Light.”

One week later, at 10 A.M., as arranged, Dr. Sorel picked me up at my studio. I could tell by the door handles that she was driving a Honda Accord. Funny how the blind see cars.

“You’re probably wondering what a blind man’s doing with a shotgun,” I said. I had been cleaning mine when she came. “I like the feel of it even though I don’t shoot. It was a gift from the Outer Banks Wildlife Association. I did a series of paintings for them.”

She said nothing. Which is different from not saying anything.

“Ducks and sand,” I said. “Anyway, it’s real silver. It’s English; a Cleveland. Eighteen seventy-one.”

She turned on the radio to let me know she didn’t want to talk; the college FM station was playing Roenchler’s “Funeral for Spring.” She drove like a bat out of hell. The road from my studio to Durham is narrow and winding. For the first time since the incident, I was glad I couldn’t see.

I decided I agreed with my ex; Sorel was creepy.

Dr. DeCandyle was waiting for us in the lobby, eager to get started, but first I had to stop by his office to “sign” the voiceprint contract; that is, affirm our agreement on tape. I was to join them on five “insertions into LAD space” one week apart. National Geographic (which already knew my work) was to get first reproduction rights to my paintings. I was to own the prints and the originals and get a first-use fee, plus a fairly handsome advance.

I signed, then said: “You never answered my question. Why a blind artist?”

“Call it intuition,” DeCandyle said. “I saw the Sun article and said to Emma—that’s Dr. Sorel—‘Here’s our man!’ We need an artist who is not, shall we say, distracted by sight. Who can capture the intensity of the LAD experience without throwing in a lot of visual referents. Also, quite frankly, we need someone with a reputation; for the Geographic, you understand.”

“Also you need somebody desperate enough do it.”

His laugh was as dry as his palms were moist. “Let’s just say ‘adventurous.’”

Sorel joined us in the hall on the way to what DeCandyle called the “launch lab.” I could tell by the rustling sound of her walk that she had changed clothes. I later learned that she wore a NASA-type nylon jumpsuit on our “LAD insertions.”

I was pleased to find myself in the driver’s seat again. Sorel strapped herself in beside me this time.

My left hand was free but my right hand was guided into an oversized stiff rubber mitten.

“The purpose of this glove, which we call the handbasket,” DeCandyle said, “is to join our two LAD voyagers more closely together. We have learned that through constant physical contact, some perceptual contact is maintained in LAD space. The name is our little joke. To hell in a handbasket?”

“I get it,” I said. Then I heard a click and realized he had not been talking to me but into a tape recorder. “How long will this trip last?” I asked.