Dante's Wood

by Lynne Raimondo

  Feeling like a clown with a bulls-eye on his back, I pushed myself cautiously to my feet and made my way back to the kitchen. My temples were humming and my face burned. I turned on the faucet and splashed water on it, before resting my head against the wall. Forgetting that I’d managed to pick the door lock only ten minutes before, I allowed a wave of helplessness and self-pity to wash over me. In real life, blind people didn’t scale walls or steal precious contraband from well-guarded castles. They stayed at home, minding their own business and playing Braille Scrabble. If they were very adventurous, they ran marathons or competed in beep baseball. They didn’t fool themselves into acting like ninjas.

  It was time, I thought defeatedly, to concede what everyone had been saying to me all along. I was hopeless as an investigator and probably finished as a doctor. When the authorities got through with me, I’d be lucky if I could land a job as a research assistant at one of the big drug companies. In the worst-case scenario, I’d end up on the street, selling newspapers like Mike or pushing a supermarket cart filled with unwashed blankets and empty return bottles. Or locked up in an asylum.

  I’m not sure what finally brought me back to my senses: the picture created by my overheated imagination, or that the situation I was in suddenly reminded me of George.

  For the first few months after my illness, I’d stubbornly turned down Felicity’s repeated advice that I subscribe to a course in home management. But midway into Marta’s annual visit to her grandchildren in Caracas, I acceded to a one-day session with a vision-rehabilitation specialist. I was tired of playing Let’s Make a Deal with the contents of my pantry, and figured if nothing else he could help me label my canned goods. George was a semiretired sexagenarian who had previously worked for the Veteran’s Administration. His first piece of advice was not to waste my time on things I wouldn’t have bothered with before, like fixing drains or whipping up soufflés.

  “Stick with what you already know and like to do,” he told me. “Then figure out an alternate way of doing it.”

  “What if I liked painting beautiful landscapes?”

  “Then go on painting them. You think there’s such a thing as an insurmountable problem? The client I had before you was an architect.”

  “What’s he doing now? Modeling clay?”

  “No. The last I heard he’d been picked to design the new children’s museum.”

  I admit I was impressed. George explained how his client now used computer software to create tactile blueprints for his projects. It took more time, and he had to rely on his mental skills for three-dimensional images, but he was back at his job and being well paid for it.

  “Look, sonny,” George said. He called me “sonny,” even though I was more than half his age. Or maybe it was his way of implying I should be more upbeat. “I’m not going to tell you to go out and climb Mount Everest, though it’s been done. Just keep an open mind and stop crying over spilled milk. Here, I’ll give you a demonstration.”

  We were standing in my kitchen. George removed a bottle of beer from my refrigerator and casually dropped it on the floor. It shattered, sending shards of glass and a stream of frothy liquid across the tiles and onto my stocking feet.

  I felt more surprised than offended. “I hope that wasn’t the ’56 Dom Perignon. I was saving it for better company. Wait, I know. It is the Vitamin D stuff.”

  “If only milk smelled that good. Don’t worry. I’ll spring for another six-pack when we’re through.”

  I hoped that didn’t mean we would be breaking another five bottles.

  It worked, though. A stupid, insignificant thing, but it worked. By the time I had finished sweeping up the glass and mopping the floor, without any assistance from George and in pretty much the same way I would have when I could see what I was doing—though I did put on a pair of shoes—I felt more in charge of my situation than at any other time since the lights had gone out.

  What I was dealing with now wasn’t all that different. It was just a bigger mess.

  I went back to the other room, stuck my tongue out at whoever might be lurking in the shadows, and began cleaning up, using the ripped-off side of one of the boxes as a combination shovel-finder. It took a while, but when I was finished, most of the broken things were safely pushed aside to one corner. I then attacked the bedclothes and linens, fishing them up with my cane and giving them a good shaking before tossing them atop the heap. Shannon’s books and papers went in another corner, for O’Leary to go through later if my hunch panned out. Though I itched to know whether Shannon’s diary was among them, I fought off the urge to look. There was no point in wasting time on something I didn’t have a prayer of recognizing.

  When I’d reduced the mound in the center to a pile of smaller, mostly non-threatening objects, I began examining them by hand, a task made more difficult by the surgical gloves I’d put on, which decreased the sensitivity in my fingertips but prevented contamination of the evidence. At times it was easy to figure out what I was holding; at others all I could do was guess. An alarm clock, a hair dryer, a picture frame, a stuffed animal. I found a plastic bag holding jewelry and other bric-a-brac that I went through carefully, along with a small suitcase holding nightgowns and lingerie. If I felt uneasy about pawing through the dead woman’s things, I told myself that what I was doing was no more invasive than carving up cadavers in medical school, a procedure that always left me desperate for a hot shower. Still, the scent of Shannon’s perfume was everywhere, and it rose up to fill my nostrils like decomposing flesh.

  When I finally found what I was looking for it was near the bottom of the pile, among an assortment of toiletries and other bathroom supplies. There was no mistaking the slim plastic tube with the rubber bulb on one end. I handled it like a baby, placing it and the gloves I had been wearing in one of the plastic bags, on which I also wrote the date and time with a marker. CSI here I come, I thought happily.

  Having secured this trophy, I still kept going, half-expecting to be charged any moment by a madman wearing a wig and wielding a huge kitchen knife. But Mrs. Bates failed to materialize, and I was able to finish my search without interruption—also, without opening an artery. My only other prize was the small thermos that I discovered when I went back to the kitchen to check the cabinets. I was getting tired and would have skipped the room entirely but for an instinct that told me I couldn’t quit until I had looked everywhere. The thermos smelled like dish detergent and had probably been washed thoroughly, but I tucked it inside a plastic bag all the same, labeling it with the date and time as I’d done previously.

  When I was finally finished, the two plastic bags went in my backpack with the gloves and my tools. I washed my hands thoroughly and checked to be sure the lights were still off. Then I let myself out of the apartment, pulling the back door shut firmly behind me.

  It was then a little after 2:00 a.m.

  Nineteen

  The streets outside were deserted, the Cubs fans having long departed for home. It had turned into a cloudy, moonless night. A warm front had come through while I was in Shannon’s apartment, bringing light rain and a loamy fragrance to the air. I decided it was too late to bother Boris, so after listening in the alley to confirm I hadn’t been seen, I set out on foot. Earlier that evening I’d used Mapquest to plot a route from Shannon’s place to the ‘L’ station on Addison, only a few blocks away. Even at such a late hour taxis were likely to be idling there, and if all else failed, I’d just take the train home.

  The damp air muffled the sounds of my taps as I set off down the street. Tree branches overhead dripped like leaky faucets and sent streams running off the brim of my hat. I heard faint laughter from behind a closed door and the yipping of a terrier, but otherwise the neighborhood was quiet. I concentrated on avoiding the puddles on the uneven sidewalk and keeping track of my position.

  Chicago streets are laid out in a precise grid dating from the era after the Great Fire. One of its features is that city blocks are of almost even length�
��every eight blocks covers a mile—and I’d learned to estimate when I would get to the next corner by keeping a vague count of my steps. The system is also ideal for finding street addresses, since the numbering system corresponds exactly to the distance from an axis formed by the intersection of Madison and State, increasing in increments of one hundred with each block. It’s a blind person’s dream, the only exception being avenues like Clark and Lincoln that cut through the grid at an angle, creating scissored junctions with multiple corners and an array of confusing crosswalks.

  It was one of these that tripped me up.

  My original plan was to go south to Grace and then east three blocks to Clark. A right turn there would eventually bring me to Wrigley Field, on the opposite side of the street. The Red Line stop was immediately adjacent to the ballpark’s southeast corner, so once there I couldn’t miss it. But the directions I’d listened to neglected to mention that Clark passes through Racine at a sharp angle about forty feet after the turn off from Grace. When I got to the intersection I thought I was crossing Clark when in fact I was crossing Racine, and I didn’t realize I’d taken a wrong turn until I’d gone on several more blocks without finding a hint of a baseball field. Confused, I’d retraced my steps, missing Clark altogether on the return journey and finally concluding I was lost when I found myself in a cul-de-sac blocked by a cement wall and a tall chain-link fence.

  It was hardly the first time this had happened to me. By then I’d come to view it as inevitable that I would occasionally have to stop a passerby to ascertain exactly what corner I was facing, or go back and forth several times before I recognized a place I’d been to a dozen times before. I won’t say I always dealt with the situation with aplomb, but neither did it send me into fits, and usually I was able to shrug it off as another one of the minor annoyances I was used to.

  But that night was different. By the time I found myself (literally) up against a wall, it was nearing 3:00 a.m. I was exhausted, worried about getting my cache safely home, and thoroughly disoriented. My usual tricks for estimating location were of no use because there was no moon. Of course, if I’d known I was on Racine a few blocks north of Addison I could have just headed south and found the ‘L’ station in no time, but it wasn’t until I revisited the episode later that I understood where I’d gone off course. I couldn’t call a cab on my cell because I didn’t know where to tell the dispatcher to send it, and I was too embarrassed to start knocking on doors. There was nothing to do but strike out in a random direction and hope I ran into a friendly stranger or late-night establishment hospitable to drunks and stray blind men.

  I found a stranger. But he wasn’t friendly.

  As I turned to exit the cul-de-sac, I realized with an alarming sensation that I wasn’t alone. A crunch of gravel at the entrance to the street. The faint click of moving parts settling into gear. A forward rush of air. But no engine throttle. Under ordinary circumstances I should have heard it coming. Through the many long months of training with Cherie, I’d learned to approximate the distance of moving vehicles, the relative speed at which they were approaching. It was what gave me the confidence to go anywhere I wanted, in or out of familiar territory. But this time there was no warning sound. Before I even knew what was happening, something large, cold and metallic exploded into my midsection.

  The force of the blow sent me flying into the air. I immediately lost control of my cane, which clattered to the ground like a dropped spoon. I bounced onto the hood and over the windshield, frantically grabbing for something to hold onto. Sliding and spinning, I managed to latch onto a wiper before I was sent hurtling over the roof. I hung there for a moment, swinging wildly back and forth while the brakes screeched to a halt. The sudden shift in velocity did nothing to slow my forward momentum. The wiper came loose in my hand and I went tumbling over the side.

  Sooner or later, every cyclist goes headfirst over their handlebars, and I’d been in enough serious collisions to know how to minimize the damage, tucking my chin and bringing my elbows to my chest just before I crashed to the ground. I landed hard on my side and rolled several times before skidding to a stop at the foot of what I guessed to be the fence. For a while I didn’t move, assessing my level of injury. My face was lacerated and I felt pain in my rib cage, but my wrists and ankles weren’t broken and I could wiggle my toes. My ears were ringing but my head was clear. The car hadn’t been moving that fast and my backpack, still attached to my shoulders, seemed to have absorbed a fair amount of the blow.

  The smell of burnt rubber filled the air and I could feel the heat of the engine some yards away. The lights were off and it was idling almost silently. The driver seemed to be waiting, deciding something.

  I didn’t know whether to lie still or call for help. If it had only been an accident, the driver might be scared. The cul-de-sac wasn’t well lit. Maybe he hadn’t seen me until just before the car struck and was unsure of his best move. Take off on the assumption I couldn’t identify him or face added penalties for running down a blind man. Unless hitting me was deliberate. But that was absurd. I was letting all this cloak and dagger stuff get to me. I moved painfully into a crouch and then a standing position, feeling for the chain-link fence behind me. “Hey,” I called out experimentally. “Anybody there?”

  The window on the driver’s side came down. Was he checking to see whether I was injured? I waved at him and said, “It’s OK. I’m not hurt, just a little shaken.”

  I got no answer. The car’s headlights came on and its wheels began to turn, spitting spray onto the wet pavement. Was he backing up or moving forward? The car began to roll again, picking up speed. Heading forward and straight at me. “Please!” I yelled one last time before I gathered he wasn’t stopping. I reversed in a hurry and started to climb, tearing at the diamond-shaped wire above my head. As the car accelerated further, the engine finally sprang to life, roaring like a jet engine in the narrow confines of the alley.

  The first time the front end struck, it missed me by only inches. The impact caused the fence to fold inward like a slat on a venetian blind and I lost my footing. Dangling there like a piñata, I heard the car moving in reverse toward the street. Twenty yards. Fifty. It squealed to a stop before churning its wheels and speeding back in my direction. With a sickened feeling, I realized he really did mean to kill me. The sweat was slicking my fingers as I searched for a toehold. All at once, I remembered the maneuver I used to mount fences when I was caught trespassing as a teenager. I started to swing, using the weight of my lower body like a pendulum until my right foot connected with something solid. I forced the toe of my sneaker into a hole half its size and heaved myself up.

  The second time the car hit the fence swayed like a dancer. Perched precariously on the crossbar with only one leg over the top, I didn’t stand a chance. The last thing I remember was hurtling head forward into nothingness.

  When I woke I was lying in someone’s flower bed. There was mud on my face and vegetation in my teeth. My left eye was swollen shut and my rib cage felt as though it had been through the spin cycle of a washing machine. I picked out the plant matter with one hand while I felt with the other for my things. My hat was long gone, but my backpack, with my cell phone and the finds from Shannon’s apartment, was still hanging by one of its straps from my shoulder. I shook my head from side to side, ignoring the chimes going off between my ears. Stupid, stupid, stupid. As if failing to page Boris and becoming lost weren’t enough, I had to go and get myself in a cat-and-mouse game with a demonically possessed vehicle. Was there no end to my hubris?

  When the 911 operator came on the line, I told her I’d just been the victim of a hit and run.

  “All right, sir,” she said. “Try to remain calm. Just tell me where you are and we’ll have a squad car there in a jiffy.”

  “That’s going to be a problem,” I said. “I don’t know where I am, except that it’s in somebody’s yard in Wrigleyville.”

  “You can’t be more specific than that?” sh
e asked skeptically.

  “No. I’m, uh . . . blind,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. Can you give me your location before the attack?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “How can you not know where you were?” she chided me.

  “I was lost.”

  “All right then. Look around you. Is there a house nearby?”

  “I think so. But I can’t really see it.”

  “Were you hit on the head?”

  “Yes, but that’s not why . . .”

  “No lights on in the house?”

  “Please,” I almost sobbed. “It’s like I told you. I’m blind. Blind as in not able to see.”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed. She continued as though this was nothing out of the ordinary. “Well, don’t worry. You probably have a concussion. I’m sure your vision will clear up soon. Give me a moment while I put a trace on your call.”

  The squad car arrived several minutes later, siren whining and lights flashing, looking like a burst of antiaircraft fire in an old war movie. By that time the owner of the yard had come out with a flashlight, and after ascertaining I wasn’t wielding a shotgun, taken me out to the street. Two cops walked up and introduced themselves.

  “You the accident victim?” one of the officers asked me.

  “You might call it that.”

  “Dispatcher said you were having some trouble with your eyes.”