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“The colors smell different?” he asked, astonished.
“Absolutely.”
He stood behind me and watched me work for a whole day, but he left for New York none the wiser. I suppose it must be impossible for those with sight to comprehend a life based not on what your eyes tell you, but what your other senses show you.
He couldn’t understand that the images in my brain were no less vivid than those in the world he lived in. He assumed that I lived in terrible darkness. He was shocked when I told him my blindness was a gift. I’m better blind. I’m blessed. My art is more beautiful because I can’t see.
“Don’t you want to see?” he asked incredulously.
I chewed my bottom lip. To be perfectly honest no one had ever asked me that before. “I don’t know,” I told him truthfully.
“Why not? If someone asked if me I wanted to experience something new, I’d say, yes.” He seemed genuinely perplexed.
I thought about his statement carefully. “But what if you had to give up something very precious to you to have that experience?”
He couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. “What do you have to give up?” he asked incredulously.
It was impossible to explain. Depth, motion, perspective, vantage point, surfaces, contours, edges, and other characteristics that sighted people seem to completely miss. When I touch a piece of wood, it talks to me. I don’t see it as a piece of wood.
No one else in my family was blind so when I was young people would pity me a lot, but they shouldn’t have. Since I had never experienced sight, it had no physical, psychological, or social meaning. As a child, I wasn’t even aware that I was without sight.
I ran down the stairs, swam, played in the garden, ate, talked, fought with my brother. I was constantly bumping into walls and furniture, and always wore a collection of bruises in different stages of healing. My mother said I’d fall, and if I wasn’t hurt too badly, I would pick myself up and run off into my next adventure totally unaware what the fuss was all about.
When I grew older I learned that the world was designed for people with sight. My mother taught me that it could take me twice as long, but I could always do whatever I wanted.
When it was time for me to go to a school, my mother told me I was too special for a little school like the one we had in Durango Falls. She was adamant she would teach me herself.
After she died many years later, I found her diaries, and had them all translated into braille. That was when I realized that she had homeschooled me because she was afraid the other kids would snatch away my guide cane, steal my lunch, make fun of me … Actually, the list of misfortunes that she thought could befall me were literally endless.
It made my eyes well with tears to know how frightened she had been for me, but how wise she was never to let even a single one of her fears infect me. It allowed me to trust fearlessly. Even when I had no reason to, I simply trusted and never stopped believing in myself.
Nobody believed I could ride, but I trusted my horse and she put wings on my back. She went from giddy up to breakneck speed real fast, but I just hung on like a tick, the wind in my hair, and the knowledge buried in my heart that I could lasso the moon if I really, really tried. When she came to a sudden halt I went flying into the air, but I landed well so that was okay too.
When we were young Elaine would do that thing with the puddles, where she would shout, “puddle” while we were out walking and I would jump to avoid stepping into it.
Sometimes she would shout puddle even though there was no puddle. I would jump and she would laugh at me. It should have made me angry, but it didn’t. I liked to hear her laugh.
When you trust, good things happen.
Six
Kit
I fought the sheets like a wild dog caught in a trap all night long, and woke up before dawn. The brilliant full moon had sunk beyond the trees and the room was filled with blue light. I was restless and excited. My stomach felt like a dark pit filled with twisting snakes.
For the first time since I arrived at Old Man’s Creek another human being was going to be in my space! I was about to have a visitor. Problem was I didn’t know if I could still interact properly with one of my kind anymore. I was used to listening to nothing but the sound of my own heart and the wild critters around me.
“It’s your own damn fault,” I grumbled to myself.
I’d even taken to talking to myself. Pushing back the blanket, I realized the house was cold. Far too bitter for a young lady. I jackknifed out of bed, got dressed quickly, and went downstairs.
Downstairs it was dark and cold. Like the wolves I had got used to the cold, but it would be nice to light a fire. I hadn’t lit a fire since last winter. I opened the front door and went out into the frosty morning air. Andak was curled by the porch chair. He raised his old bones and came to sniff my hand. I rubbed his head.
“You better be on your best behavior cause we’re having a visitor come around, old boy,” I said to him.
Chepi, a young female, and the latest addition to the pack, bounded next to me as I walked to the shack. I stopped to watch her playfully roll on the snow. She was inviting me to rub her belly. Of all the wolves, she was the closest to me. Sometimes she behaved more like a pet dog than a wolf.
I obliged before filling my arms with firewood. Back in the house, I cleaned out the fireplace and made sure the chimney was clear, then I lay down tinder, made a grid of the kindling, and finally arranged the logs using an old Indian trick that maximized air flow.
I sniffed the air. I thought it smelled okay, but it was entirely possible that I had become immune to the smell of wolf and unwashed man. From the cupboard under the sink I took out dusters, cloths, cleaning sprays, a bucket and a mop.
For the next hour, I dusted, vacuumed, wiped, and polished like a demon. The time passed quickly and the mundane activity made the tight knot in my chest go away. I stood back, looked at my living room and felt pleased with myself. The place was cleaner than it had ever been. All traces of fur were gone, and the floor was polished to a high shine with some kind of lemon wax.
I sniffed the air again.
Better.
I did the hallway in a third of the time and moved to the kitchen. Pale yellow sunlight was filtering through the trees when I finished. I started to put away the things.
Toilet?
What if she wanted to use the toilet? Taking out the cleaning stuff again, I gave that a good cleaning. Made the taps shine like a mirror before I realized she wouldn’t be able to see them.
I went back into the living room and crouched in front of the fireplace. I lit the tinder using lighter fluid, and watched the fire crackle and roar into life, from the center outward.
With it burning merrily, I fitted the fire guard and stood. The entire house would be toasty and warm in a couple of hours. I took the stairs two at a time and made for the shower. The water was freezing cold, like needles on my skin. I came out refreshed and stood in front of the mirror. My skin was red and I had a flash of when the explosion happened.
A white flash.
I didn’t hurt at all.
Afterwards, lying in a hospital bed in Kandahar. Third degree burns on forty percent of my body, the skin on the right side of my face hanging in tatters. It hurt like fuck then. Oh fuck did it hurt. I screamed like a stuck pig.
I touched my face. T
he scars weren’t bad enough to scare little kids, thank God for that, but they were bad enough that they made them stare and point. Bad enough that I never, ever forgot they were there. And worse, I would never forget how they got there.
I turned away from the mirror, scowling. What the fuck was the matter with me? It was years since I allowed my mind to dwell on the past. I got dressed in clean clothes and went downstairs. The fire was doing nicely, and the house felt warm, and smelled clean. I went out to the porch. The air was frozen. My breath came up in puffs. I clenched and unclenched my hands nervously. Strange, that I should be so wired up about a woman coming to my house. I haven’t given a shit what people think of me since I was a kid.
Chepi lifted her head off the floor, turned it toward the road, and perked up her ears. When it came to an unbelievable sense of hearing, nothing in this world could beat a wolf. An old Indian friend of mine told me that wolves could hear as far as ten miles away out in the open, and their hearing was spades greater than that of most dogs. I can vouch for that, as I’ve seen them alert to a vehicle well over fifteen minutes before it actually passes the turning into the dirt road.
In other words, my wolves serve as the best security system I could possibly have.
Sure enough, a few minutes later I watched an old blue Toyota drive slowly down the road. The three wolves near the fence hauled themselves up and sauntered around the back of the house, towards the hill beyond. They almost always made themselves scarce when someone ventured this way. Usually it was someone lost and seeking directions.
The car stopped halfway up the dirt road.
My body was still, but my heart was beating a little too fast and my mind was in overdrive: she had changed her mind. She wasn’t coming up to the house. I didn’t realize until that moment just how much I’d been looking forward to her arrival. Acute disappointment filled every cell in my body.
