Iswell with a solicitous desire to help the blind man tick tick ticking his way ahead of me out of the bank, with an almost imperative desire to help at all costs, no matter what his needs. No question about it, I’m going to help him through the doors and out and into the street after properly guiding him down the stairs. Counting my bills, fanning the crisp ones out, at the same time closing in on the guy, all the while also searching memory banks for more information on the blind man, putting together fragments of gossip—the owner of that boat with the fire, his house clearly available to my mind’s eye, wondrously large, situated on about five acres of expensive land stretching in wide vistas of rolled lawn all the way down to the river. Almost ready to burst with the desire not only to take his elbow but to touch it, too, to feel the sharp (is there a sharper, more protruding object in the human body?) bony nub of it in my hands, and to help him down the walk whether he wants it or not. No matter what his feelings are on the matter, I’m bound by some deeper internal duty to help him out and in doing so, of course, as will be pointed out to me later, after the fall, when his blood is pooling around his head, to help myself out as well by satisfying my compulsion to help.
My desire to help guide the blind man when I see him through the bank doors is just tiny, nothing much, a very small seed in the core of my fruitless heart. Microscopic is the way I describe it to the police during the inquest into the fall and the so-called riotous aftermath. Not duty or a sense of right and wrong but maybe a small hint that if I do not help this man who is swaying toward that fateful first step, then in some way I will be indicted as one who did not come to the aid of a fellow human, no matter how sordid or pathetic that human might be, which was the case, because this man stank of urine and God knows what—dirty from top to bottom. This image of his face stuck with me through the whole process: here was a man with a fine estate and with so much to his name, putting aside the damage he suffered in that horrible fire, who has let himself go to seed. His face was not only blemished by the scar tissue, which would be expected in such cases, but was also dirty in an industrial sense, with grit and grime and smears of what seemed to be axle grease smashed into his pores. Coming upon him and trying to take hold of the very fine nub of his elbow, bony and sharp, I thought of that Walker Evans photo: a man in the moth-holed cap presumably just out of the coal mine, clutching his shovel handle, staring half blankly into the lens. Not a bit of charm or irony on that fucked-up face. A face void of insight. A blank face holding all the blank portents of humankind. The blind man’s face was similar but gave the impression that it might be cleaned up with a good scrubbing: just a nail brush and a bar of lava soap. My desire was only to clean up this man, to move him toward some place where he might be able to bathe, to rub his back with a brush, to scrub beneath his nails, to shave, to buff his feet with a pumice stone, to shampoo his scalp, to dab a cloth under the fold of his ears, to sprinkle aftershave across his face, to trim his nose hairs, to pluck his brows, to clip his nails, to exfoliate his skin, to brush his shiny hair; a desire to move him at least in the direction of all this had me slightly ahead of the blind man, nudging him and therefore causing him to misstep and tumble forward. Unfortunate as it is, the story does have its elements of humor, I am told: the acrobatic, clownish nature of his fall. His foppish Chaplinesque bowlegged tramp moves as he fell. The whole thing is certainly grist for the rumor mill. Many are afloat regarding the event: I pushed him./ I was angry and insisted that I help him./ I didn’t help him./ I didn’t come near him./ I was still in the bank counting my money when he fell./ I gave him a good hard kick in the ass./ He staged the whole event in order to sue me./ He was suicidal and found the most intricate manner to kill himself—so intricate he could not have planned it in such detail./ He pushed me./ I pushed him back./ We pushed each other and fell simultaneously./ He wasn’t blind./ He was a fraud./ I was the one who was blind—legally, though I could see colorless masses across my field of vision./ I wasn’t near the bank. I was in the Grand Union.
When I came out of the bank the blind man was being hoisted into the ambulance, one of those boxy affairs, more a truck than the kind we used to have, which were low and sleek station wagons, making me aware, on seeing the man being hoisted in, that the hearse, a direct relative to the ambulance, hasn’t kept up with the evolution of styles, or else has stayed back in the past for some good reason. A blind man is being put into the ambulance, I thought, because one of the EMS technicians had put his cane neatly alongside of him, though not under the blanket but next to the man and held down by the Velcro straps. The blood was clearly evident, and I heard talk near me of what had happened, that the man had taken a tumble, had fallen head over heels, someone said, no kidding, actually did a little somersault/cartwheel on the way down, you should’ve seen it, this blind guy comes out and this other guy comes behind him to help and it looks, well, it looks as if this man gives him a push instead of helping, and then next thing you know the blind guy’s falling. Down amid the crowd I spot blue shirts, badges, notepads out, a man in handcuffs, or not cuffs but those little elastic straps they use when they arrest a bunch of people at once, demonstrators and the like, mass arrests more than anything, but sometimes used instead of handcuffs to avoid the stigma of metal cuffs; this very elegant man in a fine suit coat and a tie, thin, maybe gaunt, very European-looking, I think, a slightly bewildered look on his face, eyeing the crowd as it closed in on him with ears cocked (if ears can cock) to hear his side of the story, and he’s looking through the crowd right at me, and we exchange what seems to be a kind of knowing glance, though I’ve never seen him before, I don’t think, not sure, doing a search of my memory because in this town you mostly know everybody. I don’t know him. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen him before. But to be sure, I get a bit closer, shoving through the crowd, and get up near him and see that he is a very dainty man, very refined up close with a very thin veneer of sweat over his whole face, from top to bottom. He nods in a knowing way that says he somehow recognizes me, too, and is going through his own mental records to try to make the connection. But before he can speak—because his mouth is open—he is whisked away, held on both sides by the cops who have to get him through the crowd, which is closing in, a few people shouting and calling him an asshole and saying he should be shot, pushing a blind man down stairs like that, until out of impulse I am shouting at him, too, going with it, yelling, You’re