Cockeyed
Page 2
Pat shot up from his chair and scowled. “Fuck you, Greg, fuck you and your love for Bumbleton.” He stormed out of the lunchroom and humped back down to the shipping area. Within minutes our boom box belted out Pat’s favorite hurtin’ ballad, Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.”
I knew two things at that moment. The first thing I knew was I didn’t want to work as a shipper-receiver for the rest of my life. Warehouse work was hard, crappy; the pay was lousy; and the Pats outnumbered the Gregs. The other thing I knew, and didn’t want to admit, was Greg’s insight. He had hit the target when he called me a klutz. I knew deep down he was right. How could I account for it? I hadn’t always been inept, not at home, not at school. I commented when Judy in sales cut her hair; I caught footballs; I had a good eye. So, I did the next best thing to explaining my flubs. I tried to worm my way out of them.
“The liners,” I began, “it’s just that it’s so dark up there. It’s hard to see the numbers, you know? It’s black felt in the shadows, that’s all. And the box I tripped over, I was carrying a bin of filters and I couldn’t see around it and then, well—but I pay attention, Greg, and I work hard—”
Greg’s lunch still sat untouched on the table between us. He took a sandwich out of the brown bag and began to unwrap it. “I never said you don’t work hard, Ryan. You do.” His tone shifted. He became quieter, concerned even. “If hard work was an issue, Pat would go before you. But I just don’t know if I can trust you behind the wheel when you are, well, so clumsy. Sorry to say it, but I don’t know what else to call it. We need someone to drive, though, a lot of orders to load in the summer peak weeks, so I’ve either got to trust you behind the wheel or hire somebody else, and that’ll cut into your hours and Pat’s hours, unfortunately.”
He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed, not looking at me. I didn’t know what else to say, so I waited. Greg finished his lunch while I stared at Miss January and Miss February on the wall behind him. Great West Pool was not living up to its promise. My job was making me into a strange and hamfisted version of myself, one suspended between the beginning and end of the school year. I felt like I was dangling from the tips of a forklift. My first summertime blues.
Greg crumpled his lunch bag and shot it basketball-style into the waste bin, then broke into a Monty Python voice.
“Oh, hello, sir. I came here for an argument. Do you have one, an argument? I would like an argument, please.”
“No,” I muttered. “I don’t. No argument from the feeb.”
“Well, sir, Sir Feeb, let’s just say I like you, so we’ll just skip all the argument for now and see how you do for the next few days. You drive, just do your best, and most of all—and I mean it—pay fucking attention fucking all the fucking time, sir.”
As I said, I liked Greg.
“And stay away from boss-man’s van,” he added.
I did. I gave it my best for the next few days, and I paid all the fucking attention I fucking could fucking pay. As promised, I did it all a safe distance from the SRVIVR van. I did just fine, too. Until I ran over Pat.
I remember barreling around the corner of the building, a box of lining on my forks, eager to load the waiting semitrailer as fast as I could. I was in a hurry because some of the invoice items had been misplaced, and things were getting backed up. When I rounded the corner of the building, I saw nothing other than a Patless straightaway to the trailer.
Along the edge of the building, in its shadow, just ahead of me and to the left, I saw the two or three towers of wooden palettes stacked under the rooftop overhang. I also saw bright sunlit cement and the bleached gray semitrailer, about thirty yards ahead. But I didn’t catch, despite the twenty yards between us, Pat in the shade trying to pull a palette down from the stack, right there in front of me, between the forklift and the trailer. I must have stared at him and the space he occupied for a good five seconds as I sped towards him.
Then an image flashed. He materialized in my eye, just to the left of the forks, a body in contorted motion as he leapt out of the way, safe. Safe and toxic with rage.
Dumb as a lemming, I locked the brakes, and instead of driving ahead, as fast as I could, past the trailer and out of the parking lot, on to 200th street and south for home, or Mexico, or anywhere safe, I stopped to see if he was okay.
“Wow, sorry about that.”
Pat flipped his mullet.
“You dick, you did that on purpose!” He stormed towards me. “On purpose! You’re fucking dead, Knighton, dead!”
Another lesson in warehouse culture steamrolled my way. Off came Pat’s Slack Alice t-shirt. As he picked up speed, his hands balled into fists. He hurled threats and promises of bodily harm, in customary preparation for heavy metal justice. In this kind of trial, court is a loading dock, and arguments are issued in the form of furious pastings. Through drubbings we were meant to reconcile differences or settle old scores. The jury of a few other guys didn’t watch in silent judgment. They cheered for blood, anybody’s blood.
“No! Pat, no, I didn’t. Really—” I pleaded. “It was a mistake, Pat. It was a mistake!”
For added denial, I waved the palms of my hands back and forth in front of me, as if wiping the accident away like a smudge in the air. Pleading only fueled him. He continued to bull my way, a shirtless fury hell bent on punching my clock. Without stopping, he scooped a heavy roll of packing tape from the ground and pitched it. I ducked and heard the sound as the doughnut of tape whizzed over my head.
From inside the semitrailer, Greg must have heard everything. He suddenly shoved me from behind, pushing me aside, and headed straight for Pat with one arm out, hand open like a crossing guard. The gesture, although softly enforced, meant enough to hold Pat in place. Pat raged on the spot. He deeked his face side to side, trying to see around Greg, all the while shooting menacing looks and imploring me to “c’mon, man, c’mon.”
“What the hell is going on?” Greg said.
Pat made a show of his answer. “Get outta my way, Greg. I’m warning you, I’m gonna deck this guy.”
With a surge of new effort Pat tried to push through but didn’t get far. Greg switched fact-finding tactics and put Pat in a headlock.
“Let go, Greg, let go! Bumbleton tried to run me over. Ow, shit, ow.”
Greg said he’d let go when Pat calmed down. It took a minute, then Pat’s body went sort of limp, his head still nutcrackered like a football in Greg’s armpit.
“Knighton, go to the lunchroom,” Greg said. “I’ll be there in a minute. Pat, you’re gonna stay here and cool off. I’m gonna sort this out, and you two are gonna stay apart, and nobody’s going to do nothing. Christ, I’m sick of you two.”
In the lunchroom I continued to stand my accidental ground.
“It was an accident, Greg, just an accident.”
Greg began to make coffee but slammed everything for punctuation—the lunchroom door, the coffee pot on the counter, the old filter into the garbage can. The accident was my fault this time, no dodging it.
“Listen to yourself. Doesn’t make sense, Ryan. How the hell do you miss Pat, or anybody, or anything, right there in the middle of a wide open space, and how do you just happen to drive straight for him or it or whatever? Doesn’t make any sense to me. You’re a klutz, no doubt about it, but nobody, nobody, is that much of a klutz. What you did was just plain stupid.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have an answer.
Three years and two months later, on my eighteenth birthday, I would learn the truth. An ophthalmologist would tell me I suffer from a degenerative condition known as retinitis pigmentosa. Because of a gene mutation, one I was born with, my retina had begun to scar itself and decay. Little holes were developing in my vision and had been developing for some time. Soon they would expand like blurry pools, band together, and narrow me into the slightest tunnel of sight. Later, perhaps, that last sliver of functional retina would eclipse, too. Either way, I would be legally blind within a few years.
“I have an eye problem, Greg.”
He stopped making coffee. He didn’t totally believe me, not yet, but he was curious.
“What kind of eye problem? “
“I have, well, I have this thing, like a spot I can’t see through. I, well, I didn’t want to tell you because it isn’t a big deal, really, it’s just sometimes I miss stuff because of it.”
It sounded like a reasonable lie. The distinction felt strong enough. My eyes were to blame, but not me. Who would question the diagnosis? Who would know any better?
Greg sprung with new anger, but an anger tinged with regret. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? You should have told me before I let you drive or even work the forks with Pat. For chrissake. You could’ve fallen or—”
“No, I’m fine, I just—well, I just found out last week, and the doctor said it was no big deal, really, it’s a small thing. Like you said, I have to pay attention. That’s all.”
He sat down at the lunchroom table and thoughtfully stroked the corners of his moustache. He was no dummy. I’d just about killed someone on his watch, and I was blameless, as only a teenager can be. Generously, he gave me my only chance to repair the damage.
“Be straight with me. I mean it. Are you sure you’ve got this, this eye problem? I mean, it’s okay if it was an accident; accidents happen. Just tell me the truth.”
Although we sat across from one another, I couldn’t look him in the eye. I fixed my gaze past him, to the pinups on the wall. Miss June’s smile mocked me knowingly.
“It’s true, Greg. It was an accident.”
“Jesus. There’s nothing they can do for you?”
A lump of guilt grew in me. I was deceiving someone I admired. I didn’t want undeserved sympathy, just an excuse. Underneath it all, I could even feel a smaller but heavier uncertainty—maybe something really was wrong with my eyes. The reality flickered and then was gone. I was fourteen and immortal, part of the new order. Nothing could be wrong, so I supersized my lie.
“No, there’s nothing they can do. The damage isn’t something they can reverse,” I said. “But really, Greg, it’s no big thing at all. I’m not getting worse or anything. I just have to pay attention, like you said.”
Greg looked both sympathetic and confused.
“But how are you supposed to pay attention to things you don’t see?”
From that moment on, his was the question that blindness would demand I answer.
“I don’t know,” I said. For the first time, I was truthful. “I’ll have to figure it out, I guess.”
Although I never drove the forklift again, I steered clear of Pat. He didn’t give a shit if I was Helen Keller. He didn’t believe the forklift incident was an accident. Greg did his best to manage things and reminded Pat of his luck.
“You’re a fortunate man,” Greg would say. “Bumbleton could’ve crushed your little legs. Jesus, they’re already too cute and stubby to look at.”
Greg hired me back the following year. Pat wasn’t with the company any more. A few months before I returned to work, grade ten under my belt and my clumsiness on the rise, Pat had delivered a liner and parts to a pool site in Maple Ridge. Backing his van up to the hole, Pat somehow clipped the customer’s house and took a chunk for a drive. It was Pat’s second major screw-up with backing into things. Greg fired him, and said even Bumbleton can spot a house.
Once I had imagined a summer of fortune for myself. I had hoped the simple difference of my job could race me towards my adulthood, even push me into a world some dead-end McJob could never serve-up. I thought I’d start by driving a forklift, and soon enough I’d be driving out of town for good and ahead with things. It may have been short-sighted at the time, but a future, I thought, could be found in a warehouse. It was true enough.
Instead of wealth, I found another fortune, the kind that is told. Somehow I’d bumbled into my fate as a blind man before it was upon me. The story of my blindness began as a lie. Today I see the fortune I told for myself, and I see it in hindsight. That is nearing the only vision I have left. Maybe Pat’s problem was something opposite. He really needed to look back more often, and more thoroughly. Tough luck, I guess. The guy never did get the hang of reverse.
Pontiac Rex
Not seeing something, not seeing an indication of
something, does not lead automatically to the conclusion
that there is nothing.
—Hans Blix, The Guardian, June 2003
Unbeknownst to my family, my physician, or the motor vehicle branch, by the age of seventeen, I was going blind behind the wheel of my father’s 1982 Pontiac Acadian. Feel free to shudder. Other soon-to-be-blind people are on the road today enjoying a similar story, only they’ve still got some damage to do. Maybe you’ll meet one of them at an intersection.
Driving beckoned me the moment I turned sixteen, but my parents thought I’d benefit first from a driver’s education course. Or two. Maybe three. I was that hopeless. Not much of what I learned remains in my brain, but I do remember my teacher, a greasy-haired man who insisted I call him Buddy.
For several months, Buddy picked me up once a week in his school’s red Ford Taurus. The car was equipped with an extra brake on the passenger side. Buddy liked to punch it through the floor when frightened. Pocked and battered, the car’s condition suggested the nifty Siamese brake did little more than relieve the pressure in Buddy’s jaw. Nobody could say he was impatient with his students, though, and nobody could say he looked at the world from his car with anything other than safety on his mind. Oh, and ass. A large helping of ass weighed on his mind, too.
When he wasn’t advising how to make a generous turn, Buddy gazed out the passenger window, as if avoiding eye contact with his job. Who wouldn’t? It probably offered relief from spotting all the gory mishaps I could have steered us into. Some afternoons I could tell that the man was a sack of adrenaline and nerves. As he spoke he’d manically smear his hair across the bald spots on his head. His thoughts flip-flopped at dizzying speeds, all given voice, jumping from death to sex and back again, shaped by a stream of consciousness Freud would have enjoyed fishing in. The sidewalks and parking lots we passed provided his material.
“Holy mother of god! Did you see that honey in the elastic jeans? Slow down. The one going into SAAN’s back there? What a butt. Jesus that was close! You gotta shoulder check, watch your blind spot. What an a-ass! It makes me—just pull to the right a bit so you don’t ride the yellow line. That’s right, a little more, don’t be afraid of your side of the road. How does she get into those pants? What about blood flow, eh? Signal first! They’re like paint.”
Sometimes I couldn’t tell if Buddy was testing me in his own perverse way. Did his questions measure my awareness? Did the asses tell him if I noticed anything other than the car in front of me? Good drivers, he’d declare, observe everything around them. Everything. To underline his point, he’d give an extra wipe of his hair. Sometimes I nodded and muttered something affirmative. I tried to demonstrate that I’d spared some of my abundant driverly attention for the assscape. “Yes, a very different butt from that one back on Fraser Highway, Buddy, quite different.” None of this made me a more attentive driver in the end.
Buddy’s final report was unambiguous. He recommended another course before I bothered failing the driver’s test. It took a lot of practice with my father until my parents felt everybody was safe. Somehow I passed my first road test with only a few demerits, which was unfortunate.
Because of all this I came a year late to driving. My licence, however, which I earned shor
tly before my seventeenth birthday, came a year earlier than my diagnosis with RP. The math is still chilling. I drove for thirteen danger-filled months, practically blind and legally reckless, unaware of what I was missing. And I mean barely missing.
Before I spill all the gory details, I should explain how it could happen. It’s difficult to reconcile how I earned a licence. Some find it hard to believe that a person can be blinded, or slowly blinded, yet remain unaware of the vanishing points. Several explanations are clear to me now.
First, blind spots are not darkness or emptiness in the visual field. Those ideas are in and of themselves visual. Try looking at the floor with your feet. That’s what blindness looks like. We can’t see it, or see it even as an absence in our experience. An omitted image doesn’t alert itself to your attention until, say, you shoot past a stop sign, and, wow, suddenly it appears in the corner of your eye. Only then does it occur to you that something was out there, something that did not appear when it should have. Hard to test for that.
Another explanation is particular to my retinas and their degenerative pattern. Nobody tested me for night vision. An inability to see in the dark is one of the early effects of my disease. When it came to reading the eye chart and identifying the road signs, my eyes did their duty. But put those same signs under a street lamp on a foggy September evening—now that’s another phenomenon, and one I would have missed.
I do remember the administrator checking my peripheral vision. He flashed a couple of bright lights to be caught only by the corner of my eye. Fine. Then he checked my central vision with the usual alphabet soup made into an eye chart. I passed that, too. But the real problem was everything else. Imagine your visual field, the dimension of all that you see, shaped like a dart board. I could spot the bull’s-eye and the outer ring, but the middle or inner rings, they remained a Swiss cheese of tiny blurs my brain refused to see. My cognition, like anybody’s, compensated for the small, missing pockets in between. I saw, in other words, by inferring what wasn’t there, what connected the edges to the center of my sight. The holes weren’t large, but they were growing, and a lot could disappear within so little. Roll a newspaper and hold it like a telescope to your eye. Huge, distant objects can fit inside. Far enough away, even a truck could drive through. Sometimes they did.