Gene Wolfe - The Eyeflash Miracles.pdf - fantasy - rhea137

The Eyeflash Miracles

Gene Wolfe

" I cannot call him to mind."

—ANATOLE FRANCE, The Procurator of Judea

Little Tib heard the train coming while it was still a long way away, and

he felt it in his feet. He stepped off the track onto a prestressed concrete

tie, listening. Then he put one ear to the endless steel and listened to that

sing, louder and louder. Only when he began to feel the ground shake

under him did he lift his head at last and make his way down the

embankment through the tall, prickly weeds, probing the slope with his

stick.

The stick splashed water. He could not hear it because of the noise the

train made roaring by; but he knew the feel of it, the kind of drag it made

when he tried to move the end of the stick. He laid it down and felt with

his hands where his knees would be when he knelt, and it felt all right. A

little soft, but not broken glass. He knelt then and sniffed the water, and it

smelled good and was cool to his fingers, so he drank, bending down and

sucking up the water with his mouth, then splashing it on his face and the

back of his neck.

"Say!" an authoritative voice called. "Say, you boy!"

Little Tib straightened up, picking up his stick again. He thought, This

could be Sugarland. He said, "Are you a policeman, sir?"

"I am the superintendent."

That was almost as good. Little Tib tilted his head back so the voice

could see his eyes. He had often imagined coming to Sugarland and how it

would be there; but he had never considered just what it was he should

say when he arrived. He said, "My card . . ." The train was still rumbling

away, not too far off.

Another voice said: "Now don't you hurt that child." It was not

authoritative. There was the sound of responsibility in it.

"You ought to be in school, young man," the first voice said. "Do you

know who I am?"

Little Tib nodded. "The superintendent."

"That's right, I'm the superintendent. I'm Mr. Parker himself. Your

teacher has told you about me, I'm sure."

"Now don't hurt that child," the second voice said again. "He never did

hurt you."

"Playing hooky. I understand that's what the children call it. We never

use such a term ourselves, of course. You will be referred to as an

absentee. What's your name?"

"George Tibbs."

"I see. I am Mr. Parker, the superintendent. This is my valet; his name

is Nitty."

"Hello," Little Tib said.

"Mr. Parker, maybe this absentee boy would like to have something to

eat. He looks to me like he has been absentee a long while."

"Fishing," Mr. Parker said. "I believe that's what most of them do."

"You can't see, can you?" A hand closed on Little Tib's arm. The hand

was large and hard, but it did not bear down. "You can cross right here.

There's a rock in the middle—step on that."

Little Tib found the rock with his stick and put one foot there. The hand

on his arm seemed to lift him across. He stood on the rock for a moment

with his stick in the water, touching bottom to steady himself. "Now a

great big step." His shoe touched the soft bank on the other side. "We got

a camp right over here. Mr. Parker, don't you think this absentee boy

would like a sweet roll?"

Little Tib said, "Yes, I would."

"I would too," Nitty told him.

"Now, young man, why aren't you in school?"

"How is he going to see the board?"

"We have special facilities for the blind, Nitty. At Grovehurst there is a

class tailored to make allowance for their disability. I can't at this moment

recall the name of the teacher, but she is an exceedingly capable young

woman."

Little Tib asked, "Is Grovehurst in Sugarland?"

"Grovehurst is in Martinsburg," Mr. Parker told him. "I am

superintendent of the Martinsburg Public School System. How far are we

from Martinsburg now, Nitty?"

"Two, three hundred kilometers, I guess."

"We will enter you in that class as soon as we reach Martinsburg, young

man."

Nitty said, "We're going to Macon—I keep on tellin' you."

"Your papers are all in order, I suppose? Your grade and attendance

records from your previous school? Your withdrawal permit, birth

certificate, and your retinal pattern card from the Federal Reserve?"

Little Tib sat mute. Someone pushed a sticky pastry into his hands, but

he did not raise it to his mouth.

"Mr. Parker, I don't think he's got papers."

"That is a serious—"

"Why he got to have papers? He ain't no dog!"

Little Tib was weeping.

"I see!" Mr. Parker said. "He's blind; Nitty, I think his retinas have been

destroyed. Why, he's not really here at all."

" 'Course he's here."

"A ghost. We're seeing a ghost, Nitty. Sociologically he's not real—he's

been deprived of existence."

"I never in my whole life seen a ghost."

"You dumb bastard," Mr. Parker exploded.

"You don't have to talk to me like that, Mr. Parker."

"You dumb bastard. All my life there's been nobody around but dumb

bastards like you." Mr. Parker was weeping too. Little Tib felt one of his

tears, large and hot, fall on his hand. His own sobbing slowed, then faded

away. It was outside his experience to hear grown people—men—cry. He

took a bite from the roll he had been given, tasting the sweet, sticky icing

and hoping for a raisin.

"Mr. Parker," Nitty said softly. "Mr. Parker."

After a time, Mr. Parker said, "Yes."

"He—this boy George—might be able to get them, Mr. Parker. You

recall how you and me went to the building that time? We looked all

around it a long while. And there was that window, that old window with

the iron over it and the latch broken. I pushed on it and you could see the

glass move in a little. But couldn't either of us get between those bars."

"This boy is blind, Nitty," Mr. Parker said.

"Sure he is, Mr. Parker. But you know how dark it was in there. What is

a man going to do? Turn on the lights? No, he's goin' to take a little bit of

a flashlight and put tape or something over the end till it don't make no

more light than a lightnin' bug. A blind person could do better with no

light than a seeing one with just a little speck like that. I guess he's used to

bein' blind by now. I guess he knows how to find his way around without

eyes."

A hand touched Little Tib's shoulder. It seemed smaller and softer than

the hand that had helped him across the creek. "He's crazy," Mr. Parker's

voice said. "That Nitty. He's crazy. I'm crazy, I'm the one. But he's crazier

than I am."

"He could do it, Mr. Parker. See how thin he is."

"Would you do it?" Mr. Parker asked.

Little Tib swallowed a wad of roll. "Do what?"

"Get something for us."

"I guess so."

"Nitty, build a fire," Mr. Parker said. "We won't be going any farther

tonight."

"Won't be goin' this way at all," Nitty said.

"You see, George," Mr. Parker said. "My authority has been temporarily

abrogated. Sometimes I forget that."

Nitty chuckled somewhere farther away than Little Tib had thought he

was. He must have left very silently.

"But when it is restored, I can do all the things I said I would do for you:

get you into a special class for the blind, for example. You'd like that,

wouldn't you, George?"

"Yes." A whippoorwill called far off to Little Tib's left, and he could hear

Nitty breaking sticks.

"Have you run away from home, George?"

"Yes," Little Tib said again.

"Why?"

Little Tib shrugged. He was ready to cry again. Something was

thickening and tightening in his throat, and his eyes had begun to water.

"I think I know why," Mr. Parker said. "We might even be able to do

something about that."

"Here we are," Nitty called. He dumped his load of sticks, rattling, more

or less in front of Little Tib.

Later that night Little Tib lay on the ground with half of Nitty's blanket

over him, and half under him. The fire was crackling not too far away.

Nitty said the smoke would help to drive the mosquitoes off. Little Tib

pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes and saw red and yellow

flashes like a real fire. He did it again, and there was a gold nugget against

a field of blue. Those were the last things he had been able to see for a long

time, and he was afraid, each time he summoned them up, that they

would not come. On the other side of the fire Mr. Parker breathed the

heavy breath of sleep.

Nitty bent over Little Tib, smoothing his blanket, then pressing it in

against his sides. "It's okay," Little Tib said.

"You're goin' back to Martinsburg with us," Nitty said.

"I'm going to Sugarland."

"After. What you want to go there for?"

Little Tib tried to explain about Sugarland, but could not find words. At

last he said, "In Sugarland they know who you are."

"Guess it's too late then for me. Even if I found somebody knew who I

was I wouldn't be them no more."

"You're Nitty," Little Tib said.

"That's right. You know I used to go out with those gals a lot. Know

what they said? Said, 'You're the custodian over at the school, aren't you?'

Or, 'You're the one that did for Buster Johnson.' Didn't none of them know

who I was. Only ones that did was the little children."

Little Tib heard Nitty's clothes rustle as he stood up, then the sound his

feet made walking softly away. He wondered if Nitty was going to stay

awake all night; then he heard him lie down.

His father had him by the hand. They had left the hanging-down train,

and were walking along one of the big streets. He could see. He knew he

should not have been noticing that particularly, but he did, and far behind

it somewhere was knowing that if he woke up he would not see. He looked

into store windows, and he could see big dolls like girls' dolls wearing fur

coats. Every hair on every coat stood out drenched with light. He looked at

Gene Wolfe - The Eyeflash Miracles.pdf

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