Joy.
Despair.
Sand.
Homecoming.
VII
i have completely ruined my life.
Parsifal once told Joe that in reference to the Happy Bunny episode, and Joe, to his credit, acknowledged there was some truth to this.
Except for fountain pens.
The night was growing cool. Parsifal sat beneath an overhanging rock and ate a ham-on-whole-wheat sandwich and one of the apples he had packed. Still hungry, he fished out two of the croissants left from the motel’s breakfast. They were a bit the worse for wear, but tasty nonetheless.
After supper he built a small campfire, more for companionship than anything else; its warmth was comforting and made him feel less alone. Despite the dry socks, his ankle was beginning to hurt. It had been many years since he’d walked this much.
Parsifal spread out his blue nylon sleeping bag and fell asleep with his feet close to the fire.
Sometimes, between visits, Conrad wrote Parsifal and his mother letters in blue ink on lined paper. The letters consisted mostly of such phrases as “I miss you,” and “I wish I could come to see you,” and “It must be nice in the forest this time of the year,” but they seemed sincere. What was somewhat troubling, however, was the childish quality of his father’s handwriting, something that Parsifal, even at a young age, was able to recognize, along with the man’s numerous misspellings: faduceary for fiduciary, and hege for hedge.
One afternoon, as he and his mother were sitting outdoors on a log (having remembered to check for rattlesnakes), Parsifal asked his mother, “Do you suppose the people in the city realize what a poor speller my father is? Do you suppose they look at his handwriting and laugh?”
Pearl put her finger to her lips, as if she were about to impart some great secret. “I’m sure they don’t. I’m sure they think your father is just fine. That’s what he has a secretary for, among other things.” Then she repeated “among other things,” and her face darkened.
Pearl gave Parsifal his father’s letters (and there were lots of them) so he could use them to trace the outlines of any unusual leaves he came across. He often brought leaves home, and in the evenings, cut out their silhouettes to pin to the walls of their house, though when he told Joe about this, Joe told him, “You were only attempting to gain control of a frightening environment.” Parsifal wasn’t so sure.
Conrad, he remembered, wrote in ballpoint.
Asleep in the forest that night, Parsifal dreamed he was flying over a different forest engulfed in flames. He flapped his arms as hard as he could, but he could feel them growing tired, and his altitude dropped. How long would it be before he plummeted into the flames? He couldn’t tell because the smoke made it impossible to know exactly how far below the fire actually was. His eyes began to smart and the air grew hotter. Even inside his sleeping bag, he began to sweat. In his sleep, Parsifal could feel his feathers, or whatever made it possible to fly, burning. Finally he could barely flap his arms at all, and he began to fall extremely fast.
The bird, or drone, that had been following him had disappeared.
Parsifal would not have bought the house he currently owned, no matter how attractive the price (and it had been very attractive), had he known the house would be constantly surrounded by that circle of the mobile blind. True, the blind were not exactly missing from the neighborhood during the several visits he’d made when he was in the process of deciding whether to purchase the house. He would see a blind person, say, every second or third visit, but when he happened to ask the real estate woman if she believed it was the same person or different people she claimed not to know. Parsifal couldn’t be sure himself, and afterward, when he asked a neighbor if this near-constant stream of blind men bothered him, the man only said that it would be worse if they could see. Still, they were always men, with canes and no dogs.
Why weren’t there seeing-eye dogs? He’d read countless stories of such dogs pulling people from rubble and throwing themselves in front of runaway cars to save their masters. Did these men think they didn’t need that kind of help? What did these men have against dogs that were willing to give up virtually their entire time on earth just to help out an entirely separate species? Parsifal knew there were dogs out there that had gone through months of training and were now waiting patiently to offer their aid; yet these particular blind men refused all canine assistance. How selfish could a person be if, even with poor eyesight, he couldn’t take a minute out of every morning to open a can of dog food and dump it on some kibble? That’s all the dog was asking for, Parsifal thought. That, and a bowl of fresh water. And walks, too, he guessed.
Parsifal wonders what Misty is doing right now. He wonders if she is wanting to use her pen.
A week after Parsifal had moved in and set up his pen cabinets and his shelf of inks, more blind people showed up. The minute Parsifal had put the last ink bottle on the shelf and stuffed his last pen wipe into the old Kleenex box where he kept them, the blind men all appeared at once, as if they had been lying in wait for him to complete his preparations. They brought their canes, too. But where had they been hiding? Had they been on a cruise, or at a seminar about the benefits legally due to them? Had they been able to see perfectly well while he was in escrow, but the minute escrow was completed they were suddenly struck by their affliction? The formerly friendly realtor returned none of his calls.
So there he was, the owner of a house that no one else would ever buy because of the tapping of the canes both day and night (for what was night to the blind?), and in addition, he wasn’t even home to enjoy it.
Parsifal was not in the least opposed to the benefits that the blind, or anyone else, were entitled to.
And if, as they say, “Where there is love, there is sight,” is it also true that where there is no sight, there is no love?
Parsifal was hungry. Fortunately he still had two sandwiches, a goose liver and a peanut butter and jelly, remaining in the bottom of his backpack. He thought he had packed more, but either he had eaten them during his sleep or they had fallen out of his backpack on his travels. Or, he supposed, the sandwiches might be sitting on the counter of his kitchen at that very moment, attracting ants, because he had forgotten to put them in the backpack. Along with his compass. He ate the goose liver and decided to save the peanut butter one for lunch.
Par/si/faclass="underline" Through the heart, pierced.
Parsifal followed the sandwich with a cup of water. Then, after burning the sandwich wrapper in what was left of his campfire, he rolled his sleeping bag and stuffed everything else into his backpack. He had read accounts of those who had returned to their childhood neighborhoods only to find them terribly diminished and shrunk to embarrassing proportions, but in his case, with the forest, the opposite seemed true. It appeared that the backdrop he had taken so much for granted while living there had grown. Either that, or he had shrunk.