In a robe once red and now faded to rose Terasina came toward him wearing dark glasses and extending her arms to find her blind way.
Then one raindrop pinged into a bucket, another and another. It saddened Dove to hear them fall because each time one dropped he lost a friend and he could not leave till the last of all fell. ‘Boy! Wheah’s mah pot?’ A big hand began shaking him.
Under the light the real Fort stood looking down.
‘Who poked the holes in my ceiling, Son?’
Dove looked at the dishpan. Its bottom was barely covered.
‘Luke thought if the rain leaked in we wouldn’t be held for the rent.’
‘A mighty weak thought,’ Fort decided.
‘I got a little inkle, Fort.’
‘You got a little what?’
‘I got a little inkle Luke is fixin’ to move on.’
‘I couldn’t be more unconcerned, son. Made my rent this afternoon. Picked up six dollar in the rain ’n could of made eight with a mite of help.’
‘What line of work you followin’ now, Fort?’
Fort stood up and extended his right arm. Dove reached to shake it but Fort wouldn’t shake. ‘Can’t you see my sad condition?’ he asked softly.
Dove studied him carefully. ‘Your eyes look shut sort of,’ he decided.
‘Why, then lead me, goodbuddy,’ Fort asked without opening a lid. ‘Lead me.’
Dove rose dutifully and led the big man once about the room.
‘Now that’s all there is to it,’ Fort took off his glasses and opened his eyes. ‘Now wasn’t that easy?’
‘We had a blind Indian home name of Chicken-Eye Riley,’ Dove recalled, ‘Wore a tuckin’-comb. But he never went around with his eyes shut. Didn’t have to. He’d been gouged.’
‘Indians don’t have to fake it,’ Fort revealed resentfully, ‘all you got to be to get sent to a reservation these days is be some damned kind of Indian. The government’ll be given out pensions for bein’ Hebrew next. A white man don’t stand a chance no more if he’s poor.’ Fort suddenly left off complaining and used his executive-type voice – ‘You understand this is merely a temporary expedient until we get up a stake to get us into the oil business, goodbuddy?’
‘I don’t follow you, Fort.’
‘In Cameron County between Harlingen and Rio Hondo. Half a day’s hike from your own hometown. All we need to get it is to give the Sinclair man twenty dollar for a tankful of gas. He’ll furnish us cots and blankets out of his own attic. One of us takes care of the pump and the other buys up produce from the Mex farmers round about and wholesales it in the valley stores. The Sinclair man don’t have to know about the produce. So long as one of us is at the pumps when he calls is all that matters. You dig as good as you sell coffee to Negras, Red?’
Dove rolled up his eyes like a doll’s. ‘I can dig real good for I’m bedcord strong – what do I have to dig?’
‘Gas tanks, son – one on each side of the station! You dig one and I dig the other!’
‘To be part owner of a gas station,’ Dove offered dreamily, ‘I’d start to work before good day. I’ll dig ’em both sides.’
‘There’s a deal, goodbuddy.’
‘When do we start, Fort?’
‘Soon as you lead me around a couple days. Then I’ll lead you.’
‘What do I do when the policeman comes up ’n sees I’m not really blind?’
‘Never said you was,’ Fort explained, ‘all your sign says is “Help Me.”’
‘Don’t hardly seem fair after we whupped them so bad,’ it struck Dove.
‘Whupped policemen?’
‘No. Indians.’
‘Stop worrying about Indians. What you got to realize is the blind eye don’t reflect the light but yours do. That’s why you got to keep them shut. If you’re really blind you can go around with them open, people take one look and slip you a buck or two. Over and above that you get a state pension.’
‘I do?’
‘Not you. Really blind people.’
‘So do Indians. That’s why I figure to be a blind Indian must be the best deal a person could have. Still, this fellow back home didn’t have it none too good. In fact he spent all his weekends in jail.’
‘They’re strong for that firewater, or so I’ve heard,’ Fort agreed impatiently.
‘Weren’t firewater. It was a sow Riley was so strong for. He’d find his way to her guided solely by the sense of smell and his wife would come home and find him missing. She’d go down to the sty and put the flashlight on and there they’d be. That woman got so jealous of that beast she had Riley locked up every Friday night.’
‘I allow there was hell to pay in the pigsty when Riley got loose Monday morning,’ Fort conceded.
‘He never bothered her weekdays,’ Dove reported, ‘just when his wife weren’t well. He spent day after day in the domino parlor and seldom lost. He could tell every piece by running his fingers over it once.’
Fort sighed.
‘Either that or he couldn’t find her during the week. As I say, he was guided entirely by a sense of smell.’
Fort got him back on the main highway, ‘Don’t you go gawking. Just look straight ahead and keep saying “Who is it? Who is it? Who’s there? Who is it?”’
‘Who’s there? Who is it?’
‘That’s right. You’re learning.’
‘Who’s there? Who is it?’
‘You can open them now. I’m going to let you lead me until you get the hang of the thing,’ Fort promised. ‘Sunday morning in front of a Catholic church is worth from ten to fifteen dollars.’
‘That leak’ll be wide by morning if this rain keeps up,’ Dove judged. And blinked up to where the next drop clung, lost its grip and plunged, to become one with the eternal waters.
‘How would you like to eat at the best restaurant in town tonight, Tex? Set down at a white tablecloth right amongst the people who got this thing whipped and tell a waiter what to bring you?’
‘Thank you kindly all the same, but I lack the means to return the favor.’
‘Tell you what, Tex,’ Fort persisted, ‘you go on the blink with me and I give you my word of honor here and now, the day we get a stake we throw away the glasses. Think it over, son.’
Dove thought it over as long as it took for two more drops to ping into the dishpan.
‘My stated intent is to rise in the world,’ he decided at last, ‘but playing blind man on Canal Street just don’t seem the proper way. In fact I’d rather see my box a-comin’ than to be led by another as though I were helpless, when all the while I can just about see through that wall.’
‘Opportunity has knocked,’ Fort announced like an undertaker. ‘Opportunity is now going through that door. Opportunity aint coming back.’
And left like a man who would search all day, and half the night if need be, for the right flavor of chocolate ice.
To leave Dove alone to tote up the chances a single day had offered.
‘I could of took a position as a leader of the blind but I turned it down. That’s one. I could be a plain condom mechanic with a chance to do fancy work should I qualify. That’s two and I aint yet turned down the second. The way things are coming my way today it must be hard times are over.’
He went to the window to see the city. There were lights in the haze but no sun was out. He was about to turn away from the window when he caught a brief glimpse of a sun he had never seen before. It was hiding behind the corner of an eave like a chicken thief at dusk. Dove stood quietly to see what its next move would be, thinking itself unseen. Sure enough, it edged softly off, showed a bit more of itself – a sneak thief sun, a sun with a hooded look. A sun of the alley stalls ready to do anything for a fiver.