Losing Sight

The cold air runs its silky fingers down her body, and she knows he is gone. His arm no longer limply flung over her, and she doesn't hear the snoring she's grown accustomed to. It is the silence that wakes her to covers half down and fog beating lightly against the windows. She rises from the bed, and jerks her robe over her body while walking into the kitchen. Vacant chair, place setting. Into the living room, bare too, save furniture and fireplace. She opens the sliding glass door that they painted with an opaque glaze because their grandchildren kept running into it, and it rumbles and squeaks on its ball bearings. She sets her foot onto the weathered wooden porch. Step softly. Avoid the splinters. The cold, prickly slap on the back of her leg, "Jesus, Cassie! Shoo!" and the cat softly purrs, it's eyes intelligent but apathetic.

He'd done this before, synapses fading fast as eyesight, and he would wander off into surrounding forest. Stumble away, cane-less and aimless, step by step through fog.

The cold numbness, his absence, woke her up every time.

Descending down the hill, milk film over eyes and mist hanging low, a world of black. His dog, Carcass, follows him banging against the back of his legs when he stops too quick, occasionally running off into the weeds and tall grass to chase smells. A spider web breaks against his face and he tries to swipe it off, peel it off his skin. The slender strings stick to his face, tickle his cheek, and he feels a swift crawl down the side of his neck and under the neckline of his shirt. Reaching under, he grabs the retreating spider, legs ticking on his palm, because everything ticks now, makes apparent each passing second. Mercifully, he throws it into the forest. Carcass runs off after it, barking loudly.

He hears the soft gargle of water over rocks, pebbles, sediment. Smells moist mud and feels the humidity as he nears the creek. His foot sinks low, comes up slow with resistance, and he stops, feels the cold sluice over his toes. Carcass jumps into the stream and splashes and laps up water. He kneels down and digs his hand into the mud, lets it puddle into his palm. He rubs the silt between his thumb and his four fingers to separate the sensations. Hard grain of sand and cold fluid water. Carcass pants in front of his face. He pets the dog and feels the slight tilt of its head as he rubs between its ears.

"Let's go, boy." He whispers, "C'mon, let's go."

The heat of the dawning sun begins to elevate the mist, which dissipates in coils and updrafts. Harold and Carcass make a hazy silhouette slowly coming to focus as they leave the forest. Prompted by Cassie's hiss and scurry behind her leg, she looks up from the morning paper B rape, murder, a missing child in Alabama. He reaches for the handrail and slowly climbs the three steps to the porch.

"The prodigal - "

"Just leave it be, Fran."

He opens the frosted glass sliding door, click and rumble, and it scares the cat. Fran folds up the paper, leaves it on the table out in the fog and follows Harold inside. He finds his way into the kitchen, pulls out his chair and sits. He looks into Fran's eyes then quickly at the floor again as he rubs his hands together and she walks around the island to reach into the cabinets. She grabs a glass and fills it with water, but not full, in case he spills. Monday through Sunday, each day a capsule to keep his pills, clear plastic with black raised lettering and Braille for the blind. He opens Monday and takes out the three pills, chokes one down. Fran sits down, hands clasped on the table and stares into his face. He clears his throat and drops another one onto his tongue. "It just scares me, Harry, you know?"

He pauses, rolls the pill between his thumb and forefinger, swallows it.

"You know it, don't you?"

After clearing his throat, "What? What do I know?"

"I love you."

"Yes."

"You know it?"

"I know."

"I love you."

"Yes. I love you too."

"I never want a doubt in your mind."

"Never."

"Never a doubt in your mind."

"I don't."

"Ever."

The large-display digital alarm clock is inconsistent with the rest of the barn full of old machines and rotting wood. He is tightening a bolt on one of his tractors, when the alarm begins to beep repeatedly. He looks up from the rusting hulk of a machine: 12:00. He slides the front door of the barn open, pulling his handkerchief out of his back pocket, wiping his hands and nose. Walking across the backyard, he sees a hazy figure, pastel colored blur, sitting on the porch. When he gets to the porch, up the three steps, he sits in the chair next to his wife. She's reading the paper.

"I almost wish, sometimes, that I couldn't see, that I didn't have to read the things that they put in the paper these days."

He clears his throat roughly, opens his mouth, and chooses not to speak. He pulls out his handkerchief and blows his nose.

She folds the newspaper up, crisp, sharp edges. "What do you want for lunch?"

He occupies his time peeling off hangnails.

"Do you want ham?"

He nods.

She walks inside leaving the frosted glass sliding door open, and closes the screen behind her.

He watches her walk away into the house. When she becomes one with the shadows, he turns to watch the progress of the day. Dark dots fly across the blue and the green smudge of the forest and meadow. Carcass runs off barking after them. He wishes he had his shotgun and his old eyesight.

"They're coming back." She's squinting up at the bright sky following the birds in flight. She sets his plate on the table, a ham sandwich with a pile of chips and a pickle on the side. She has a turkey sandwich on the plate in her other hand. She sits, "That time of year."

They sit together in silence, eating their sandwiches, dentures tapping time against their gums. She occasionally looks at the paper and catches something interesting. Reads it off to her husband. Tells him the weather of cities inhabited by their children and grandchildren, grown and growing.

He finishes his sandwich and gets up to take the dishes inside. Fran scoots back in her chair and starts to get up. "I got it."

"I'm fine, Fran. I can still walk, dammit."

She sits back down. "The screen door is closed."

"I know."

Slow and paced he takes his steps. Intuition or memory, or a mixture of both, tells him when and where to sidestep. Sixty years in the same house and the layout is ingrained in his mind. His shoes thump against the hard linoleum of the kitchen and he hears the floorboards groan against his weight and walks around the island.

Sudden small hands embrace his legs and clasp behind his thigh, a face buried in his knees, "Grampa!" The dishes slip from his fingers and get lost in the green linoleum haze. Brusquely he pushes his granddaughter aside, but it's too late. The high-pitched, tinny crack and bits and shards of china scatter across the floor.

Sue starts sobbing and sniffing and the front door slams open. Pushing her sunglasses on top of her head to hold her hair back, Lynn runs in, grabs Sue's shoulders, "What did you do?" He bends down slow, his muscles resistant and knees popping, and gently places his hand on the floor to sweep up the pieces.

"Pater! Don't!" Lynn puts her hand on his shoulder and walks past him. The broom and the dustpan lean against the wall in the corner of the kitchen. Grabbing them, she sweeps up the pieces and they tinkle as they fall into the trashcan, reminding him of shooting Coke bottles behind his house when he was twelve years old, of watching them dissolve into dust and shards when his aim was right.

"Hon, I told you to be careful." Fran enters the kitchen, eyeing Harold, "Sue, hon, what's wrong?"

Harold gets up from his kneeling, slower than going down, uses the counter to pull himself up and walks to the front porch door.

"Dusty's out there waitin' for ya." Lynn squeezes his shoulder when he passes.

He grunts in acknowledgement.

The front porch is dark and cool, bathed in shade, with a gentle wind sliding through his hair. The juniper bushes lining the front walk send their scent with the breeze. Their scraping sounds like a crowd of whispering voices and when he sits there alone, he can imagine conversations, pick out a soft-spoken couple to eavesdrop on. He walks down the steps into the sun. The heat of midday has arrived, gently creeping up, and now it hits him when he steps out onto the pebbled walk. He walks to the driveway where he sees his son leaning into the backseat of his car. Loose gravel grates under his shuffling feet. He walks to his son.

"Quite a ruckus going on in there from the sound of it. Everything all right?"

"Oh, yeah. Just some dishes fell. Scared Suzy."

"That's easily done." He backs out of the car, child in his arms, and sets him on the ground.

"Hi, Grampa."

"Well, hi there . . . " He struggles to see the face, recognize the distinguishing features of his grandson, so he can call him by name. Some irrational thought telling him to squint and he'll be able to see well. So he bites back emotion and his lower lip, kneels down closer.

"I'm Nathan." He giggles.

"Yeah, I know."

Nathan hugs Harold and runs off into the backyard, yelling for Carcass.

In a playfully exasperated voice, "Here comes double trouble." Dusty lifts the other child out of the car and sets him down. The other grandson, just like the last, the same silhouette and facial blur.

"Hi, Nick." He says as he tousles Nick's hair.

Shyer than Nate, Nick runs off jumping and laughing. Carcass chases the twins around the backyard, Nate screaming as he drops to the ground, letting Carcass pounce and lick his face.

Harold starts walking towards the barn and Dusty follows him, side by side. A satisfied silence between them as they walk. He rolls the door open to musty aging wood as they enter the barn. The rusted tractor before them an ominous shadow until he turns on the light.

"So how have your walks been?" Dusty's words echo in the barn, stirring up dust and teasing the cobwebs. He tests the strength of various parts of the tractor, grabbing pieces and pulling. "It's going good, Dad. You're doing good with this. You're sure you don't need any help?"

"Yeah. I'm sure." Harold turns around, opening his metal toolbox. He fumbles around for a wrench. Feeling for the right size of smooth steel in his hands, he finds it. He goes to his machine and works on the bolts. His muscles strain, and there is pain in his back. He grunts against the effort.

"They're both scared." Dusty sits on the tool bench, rests his elbows on his knees.

Straining against an unmoving bolt, they have all been tightened, he puts the wrench back in the toolbox. He has an armchair in the barn, for breaks in between his work. He sits. "Do you know how many times Fran has told me she's scared? I know this. I know she talks to Lynn. Every time she comes to drop off or pick up the kids, they talk."

"They worry about you. Like they're supposed to. What do you do out there?"

"Walk. Just walk."

Dusty is silent on his tool bench, rubbing his palms together and making circles in the dust with his shoes.

"Fran said something today. She was reading the paper and I came up to her for lunch. She's my wife of sixty years and I love her, but I wanted to yell at her and cuss, maybe sock her one. I don't know. I wanted to do so many things other than explain, because why should I have to?" He is silent now, not knowing how to continue, which thought to bring to the forefront. "It's true what they say, you know? About taking for granted, and never knowing what you have 'til it's gone, and all that garbage. I miss it. I really do."

"Anyone would."

"She says she wouldn't miss it."

"She didn't mean it."

"I used to love B when I first bought this land B I used to love to walk it. I would walk it with her and we'd follow the deer paths or the creek bed. We would listen to sounds of the cicadas in the tress. She could look at a plant and tell me what it was. >This is a such and such' she'd say, 'And this is a that and on and on' Everything was so beautiful because of the way the light came in. There were these shafts of light, so many shafts of light because of the leaves up top, like they were tilted columns of light left in the forest. And in the fall, Son, the color in the fall. The yellow and red and brown and the green of the evergreens were the only color, because of the coming clouds and the new layers of snow. Winters were beautiful, too. The skeleton trees, she called them. 'Don't they just look like a bunch of hands running their fingers through the fog?' she'd said. We'd put on our hiking shoes and pack a lunch, even in winter. We'd find a rock and we'd picnic and did other things a father shouldn't tell his son. But, I'd try to position her so that she'd be directly under one of those shafts of light and, boy, was that a beauty to behold. We'd hold hands, the both of us, and watch the day go by."

"It's beautiful land back there."

"But I can't see it anymore. And she's forgetting"

"She's trying to comfort. She doesn't mean it."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know."

"It just scares them, the danger you face down there. You could hurt yourself down there and how could you save yourself? How could you survive, you being in your condition? They're looking out for you."

He grunts. Rubs his hands across his knees and pushes himself up and out of the chair. He leaves the barn, Dusty at his side again, and they walk.

Slight rustle like paper falling as the wind blows through the trees, leaves, and tall grass, blade against blade. Harold puts his hands down his pockets pulling up the lint lining the bottom, rolling it into balls. He feels the shade slide over him. It cools his skin at contact, pricking up the hairs.

"Watch it, Dad."

"I got it."

His father dips down to avoid the gnarled branches of a tree. He knows where to step, the safest way up slick mud paths, when to turn left and right. They head deeper into the forest, follow the deer paths. Harold breathes in. The creek bed in early afternoon. He stares into the sun.

Struggling to keep pace with his father, Dusty looks up, and sees Harold standing in a sunspot, face turned towards the sky.

"Dad? Can you see?"

Harold turns to his son. "I can see feeling."

          MATT NEWLAND