He was so tired he sat down in the water. His clothes soaking cold made his middle ache, he couldn’t stay there. After waiting a moment for breath, he decided to retrace his steps. He tried to climb up but the bare rock wouldn’t have him, he stumbled upstream and then managed by reaching out for saplings to grab and pull himself up by. He came to what seemed like a grassy spot. He could feel the sun which he couldn’t see. He had no idea where the trailer or the road were. His strength gone, he decided to rest until the sound of a car could give him a clue.
After a few minutes one went by. It was closer than he expected, off to his left and below in the direction from which he had come. He thought, I’ll sit in the sun and wait here. Close enough that when they come, if they don’t already see me, I can call out. Up here, you guys. He didn’t know whether it was shock from having been blinded or the kick in the belly, but he felt faint, like spots before his eyes if he had eyes.
He thought, Now we’re square. You took my wife and daughter and blinded me, and I killed you. That’s three to one, but he could accept it as the additional price he had to pay for his pretensions. His ego and vanity, the comfort he took in his name and title, which cost something, quite a lot, evidently. Right now they meant nothing, but at a later date doubtless they would again.
Similarly he anticipated the plans he would make later for a future restored by blindness, as if he had not had a future during the last dark year. There would be an interval of preparation and learning. He would be granted a leave by the university to learn how to change his living habits. New ways, how to study, how to prepare classes, how to teach. Where to live. What to do about clothes, food, hygiene, all the details, which he could see ahead like a mess of trees on a mountainside becoming distinct as he approached. He could see himself on the campus, on the streets of his neighborhood, with his black glasses, his cane, perhaps his dog, known to everyone as a story: Tony Hastings blinded by the man who killed his family. The black glasses, hiding the eyes not there, would spread the legend.
He was not afraid of the police. For them too, he thought, the blinding exonerated him. Not to claim self-defense as Bobby had said, how could he claim self-defense when he had the gun? He thought he would tell them what actually happened. It would give him a good feeling to tell it. I found Ray Marcus in the trailer, asleep. We had a conversation. What did you talk about? What if they asked what you were doing with that gun? What if they said you were trying to provoke Ray to attack?
Which reminded him of Bobby Andes. Was he still obligated to say Ray killed Lou Bates? The possibility sickened him, but he thought his blindness excused him from having to think about it, and he did not think about it.
The day dragged on, he felt the sun shining on his head, the temperature rising, the day getting hot. The early birds silent now, the woods still at midday. He thought, I can wait.
Sitting there under the blind dome, Tony Hastings felt the light through his skin. He reconstructed without eyes the place where he sat: a clearing with sunbaked yellow grass dropped down in front of him into small trees beyond which were the trailer and the curve of the road with his car parked on the shoulder. He grew big trees in the other directions with an oak near by and a rising slope of woods beyond. As clear as seeing, absolute knowledge, he did not know where it came from.
Bravado then. Give it a test. He picked up the gun. The oak tree was to his left, he would hit it with the gun. Target practice for a blind man, it made him laugh. He cocked the gun, pointed it. Fire. That horrible loud explosion knocking his hand back again. The silence of the violated woods returned after the echoes, the endless midday went on and on.
Then the roll of the earth brought the sunlamp directly on his blindfolded face. It must be afternoon. He was obsessed by the thought that his body was identical in all its formal features to that of Ray Marcus. But when he tried to stretch, his body resisted as if tied to the ground. And his unique wounds were already old and familiar, permanent endurable pains, and he had been a blind man most of his life. Never eaten a meal. Never had to pee. He discovered his pants were chilly wet as if he had peed without realizing it. Another effect of the shock, he told himself. The reason he did not go back down to the road was the steepness of the slope, which his imagination saw. He would wait until the police came and helped him down. They would come when Bobby Andes reported his failure to return. If no one else thought to look on this road, George Remington would see the car on the way to his house. There was no reason to be alarmed by the long drag of the day. It’s not forever.
Maybe he had been asleep. He heard voices, footsteps on gravel. Words, not loud, he couldn’t distinguish. Then, “What’s it doing here?”
“Are you sure that’s it?”
“Where’d he go?”
He heard a louder harsh male voice, intoning, numbers, a squawk—police radio. They had come at last. He raised his head, held still, listened.
The police radio squawked on and off, bursts. The live voices stopped.
Suddenly one: “Hey Mike, Jesus Christ.”
Feet scurrying, gravel loosened. “Holy cow!”
They had found Ray Marcus.
He could not hear what they were saying.
“Look, bloody tracks.”
“See where they go.”
“Stay here.”
He heard crashing in the brush below. Blind Tony Hastings as quarry, stretched on the ground not knowing if he was visible or not, took the gun by his side and cocked it as a precaution. The police are your friends, he said.
Someone shouted. “It goes on down, I can’t see where.”
The other. “Forget it. We’ll wait for the others.”
“Call it in, will you? Tell Andes.”
And Tony still not knowing what Andes had told them about who killed Lou Bates.
A voice said, “Probably bleeding to death in the woods.”
Tony Hastings was lying on his side, head propped on elbow trying to listen, not knowing if they could see him if they looked up. The police radio kept spattering. He couldn’t make out what it said but guessed the men were reporting their find. Then on the radio distinct: “Andes here.”
“Marcus, not Hastings?”
“Are you sure of that, god damn it?”
He thought, they will bring dogs to follow his bloody footsteps. Like a fugitive. They will train guns on me, and if I don’t obey swiftly, they will kill me. I killed Ray Marcus, who was unarmed.
Remember the headlights approaching in the woods and hiding in the shadow of a tree so as not to be seen, and the voice trying to find him calling, Mister. I don’t want them to see me when I can’t see them, he said.
You’ll have to come out sometime, they said. I’ll wait for Bobby Andes, he said.
He heard them walking around below, not their voices. Then nothing. Almost silence, a long time. He knew they were there because the radio was going, though the volume had been turned down, he could hardly hear it. Either in the car or in the trailer with the body, if he were they he would prefer to wait outside. Maybe they were outside, sitting on the shoulder smoking cigarettes. He heard bird songs again, the two clear notes, chickadee, pewee. He felt the retreat of the afternoon sun, some cooling breeze. A woodpecker telephoning a tree. The distant ceaseless sound of traffic, the Interstate somewhere bearing families and commerce and thugs through this countryside from all the other countrysides.