Girl and Five Brave Horses, A (16 page)

In my mind’s eye I saw a group of children lounging languidly on the end of a small pier extending out into the liquid amber of St. Johns River. A few huge white clouds drifted overhead like lazy vagabonds, and at the shoreline great masses of lavender water hyacinths floated on the undulating surface of the water. A blazing August sun descended toward the west. The children lingered because it was pleasant with the water lapping softly against the pilings and they were enjoying one another’s company. Idly chatting of this and that, they somehow stumbled on the subject of death. As the discussion developed, a question was posed: since everybody had to die eventually, what age would be best?

Someone said she didn’t want to die until she was ninety; someone else said fifty. There were various other choices offered simultaneously, but one voice rose above the rest. “I want to die when I’m twenty-seven,” it said—and I recognized the voice as mine.

This recurring memory continued to frighten me, for I had just turned twenty-seven and, whatever I had said in the past, I did not wish to die. Strange that I had chosen that age, wasn’t it, or that I remembered it now? Was the remembering significant? Had I made an irrevocable choice?

I would no sooner ask these questions than I’d assure myself they were nonsense and that I was being foolish. Then my healthy supply of common sense would return to back me up—until the next time that compelling scene forced its way into my consciousness.

Another scene was almost as vivid. In this one a woman was sitting in a chair, wearing a selfish, petulant expression. A family group moved around her, and whenever one of them got in her shadow they seemed to shrink.

This woman was a friend of my mother’s and a rampant hypochondriac. She made her whole family unhappy with her ceaseless complaints; she claimed to suffer from a little of everything. She never lifted a hand to help with the housework, not even such chores as mending, using the excuse of her “illness.”

I made a resolution then which I had never forgotten: no matter what happened to me, I would never blight the lives of those around me by constant complaining. Now I could only hope that should circumstance change my life and force me, even though authentically, into a situation similar to hers I would have the courage to stick by my pledge.

Company helped to distract me from introspection, but unfortunately I didn’t have it often. All our friends at the pier were then doing as many as five performances a day, for I went to the hospital at the height of the season. Almost the only regular visitors I had were Arnette and Al, who somehow managed to turn up between their appearances. They could never stay long. For the short time they were there I eagerly fired questions at them. Afterward I clung to every little detail of what was going on at the pier in order to have something aside from myself to think about.

They both reported that all was not well. Marie’s comeback was not proving a success, and Al didn’t know how much longer she would continue to ride. She had begun on Monday and by Friday had thrown in the sponge as far as riding Red Lips was concerned. “Not that I blame her,” Al said, “because Red is tough to ride and she just hasn’t got what it takes. I’m not trying to be funny when I say she’s a walking, talking bruise. She’s black and blue from head to toe, and many of the bruises have swelled, making her look knobby and out of shape.”

“How does she get along with Klatawah?”

“Oh, she says shell ride him if I want her to, but I think she wishes she didn’t have to ride any horse again as long as she lives.”

“What are you going to do about a rider for Red?”

“I’ve been thinking about Marty. You know he’s often said he’d like to ride, so tonight when Marie announced she had had enough of Red I asked him if he would be willing to try and he agreed. We’re going out early in the morning to give him a couple of trial rides from the low tower. I think he’ll get along all right because his strength will go a long way toward making up for his lack of experience.”

Marty sounded like a good idea to me. He was small but extremely husky and a trained athlete. During the winter he worked as a physical education instructor in one of the New York high schools; in the summer he became one of the water-sports gang, riding aquaplanes and driving motor-boats.

He began practice the next day, but a week passed before he was able to ride Red out of the tank. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about Red,” Al said. “He dives as if he were dumping these new riders on purpose. Which may be the key to the problem. After all, you’ve been his only rider up until now.”

Of course the idea that Red Lips preferred me to anyone else pleased me immensely. Nevertheless, if he was deliberately trying to knock the riders off he had to be stopped.

“Maybe if you’d have Marty pal up to him it would help. You know how Red loves attention. Suggest that Marty go around to his stall between performances and talk to him and take him a carrot or an apple. And tell Marty to come and see me when he gets a chance. I think I can come up with some advice that may help him.”

Marty didn’t waste any time getting himself over to the hospital. He was there the next morning.

“I hear you’ve been having some trouble,” I said.

“Boy, I’ll say I have! I don’t do anything with that animal.” And then he proceeded to tell me in great and vivid detail what had been happening. By the time he finished I had figured out part of his trouble.

“You’re not holding your weight back,” I said. “On a horse that makes a plunge dive your position is less important, but on Red you must be properly balanced. Don’t duck until you’re ready to hit the water. That’s important too. I think if you’ll try just those two things you’ll find you can handle him. You may even find it’s fun.”

“Lady,” Marty said dryly, “I used to think it would be fun when I watched you doing it, but now I’m telling you that all I’m doing it for is the dough.” Marty’s motives might have been mercenary, but they didn’t interfere with his learning, for Al reported a few days later that Red Lips was slowly yielding to Marty’s overtures of friendship and that in the meantime Marty was getting enough experience on him at least to get by.

Al had scarcely straightened out the crisis over Red when another problem arose. Early one afternoon Arnette rushed into my room so out of breath from running she could hardly talk.

“Marie is gone!” she gasped. “When we got to the pier today Al had a note from her. It said that she had either flu or pneumonia and was going home!”

“Pneumonia?” I said. “But she rode last night, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Arnette replied, “but she’s had a cold for two or three days and she’s pretty banged up, so I guess she just decided she didn’t want to take it any longer. Anyway, she’s gone.” She paused for a minute, still panting. “Al’s going to need another rider,” she said. “How about me?”

According to Al, Arnette had been badgering him ever since I had had to quit but, aware of my feelings, he had refused to listen.

“That’s why I’m here,” she went on. “I’ve just finished my first show and have to run right back, but I wanted to get over here ahead of Al so that I could ask you to ask him to let me ride. I think he’d do it for you.”

In the moment after she stopped speaking every bad ride she had ever made flashed across my mind: the sideways take-offs, the near somersaults, the almost-too-late duck of the head. I recalled the succession of charley horses she had had up the inside of both thighs because she had never learned to take advantage of the “shock-absorber” inner tube behind a horse’s forequarters, which gives a rider something to brace her knees against just before bitting the water.

“Why do you want to dive?” I asked. “I’ve seen you so crippled you could hardly walk.”

“Because I love it,” she said, “just the way you do. I love the horses and the excitement and people making a fuss over me. I just love it, that’s all.”

How could I argue? That night when Al came I consulted with him about letting Arnette ride. “I’ve been going over her performances in my mind,” I said, “trying to figure out what’s wrong, and I think maybe I’ve got it. Arnette is ambidextrous but favors her left hand. When I taught her to ride I taught her from the standpoint of a right-handed person and told her to always duck to the right. Maybe if she tried ducking to the left she’d find it more natural and she could ride much better. Why don’t you start her again with a couple of rides from the low tower to see how it goes and, if she does all right, have her try a dive from the high tower?”

The next night when both of them came to see me after the last performance they were in high spirits. Al said, “I think you’ve found the secret. Her rides were perfect!”

“It was the first time I’ve ever felt completely right and comfortable,” Arnette said. “Why didn’t you think of it before?”

For three weeks after my operation the doctor checked my eyes every day. During the examination he never said anything to me. Each time he finished with the words, “That’s fine,” and directed the nurse to put the bandages back on. But I suspected that things weren’t fine. Actually it seemed to me that the little sight I had had when I came to the hospital had. grown steadily dimmer and was now threatening to disappear entirely.

Finally the doctor admitted that my sight was ebbing away. At this crucial and critical point (for time was running out) he explained that he was going to attempt a last desperation measure. The treatment involved injecting a needle into the eye and pumping air through it into the cavity in front of the retina. The theory was that if enough pressure could be exerted it might press the retina back against the choroid and help to reattach it.

With this operation, the doctor warned me, I would have some pain, but he could not possibly have made me understand how painful it would be. Immediately after the injection I felt nothing, but in a minute the pain built up until it seemed to fill the whole side of my head. I had never known anything so intense in my life. It taught me the real meaning of “excruciating.” Still, when the treatment didn’t work the first time, I was willing to have him try it again because I realized this was my last chance. I went through the same process. It proved unsuccessful. I knew I must face the truth.

Until now I had forced all my frightened thoughts into the recesses of my brain. Only by hiding them had I been able to eat, sleep occasionally, and talk to those around me with some semblance of a normal manner, but I was never completely free of those lurking thoughts. Among them was something I refused to name.

All along, the smoky grayness that had obscured my vision when I entered the hospital had been darkening, and now I found myself enveloped in folds of soft black velvet. As complete as the darkness was, I still managed to ignore the nameless terror. I told myself that the doctor hadn’t said my sight was gone, so perhaps I was mistaken; but one morning, as I lay looking into infinite blackness, a spot of light no larger than a pearl suddenly appeared. It possessed a radiant phosphorescent glow, and I stared at it in surprise. I had had no sensation of light for so long. What did it mean?

As I stared it seemed to advance and expand and grow larger and assume the form of a word, but I had no sooner realized it was a word than a dread took possession of me, warning me not to read it.

Of course this spot of light with the word it formed was a phenomenon of the mind, but it seemed so real that I actually closed my eyes both physically and mentally against it. I could not continue to disregard it, however, for as soon as I opened my eyes the spot would appear again, grow larger, and advance. This happened several times, until I was finally compelled to read it. I realized it would not go away. As the spot appeared, small and glowing against the darkness, I watched breathlessly. Steadily it advanced and expanded until the letters were enormous and seemed to be rushing at me with great speed. Then it was upon me and I read the word blind.

I was so dazzled by the radiance and the overwhelming size of the letters that stood before me, burning and blazing like fire, that I closed my eyes for a moment and released a deep sigh. For a moment I lay there feeling nothing, knowing only that I had faced the thing I had been trying so desperately to escape. The something I had wanted so desperately to remain nameless had been given a name.

After that my first reaction was a sense of relief. It was no longer necessary to run. In place of running I could begin to think, but thinking released the cowardly thoughts I had kept hidden. Like insects trapped in a room, they flew around my brain, beating their wings in a vain attempt to escape. They became more and more panic-stricken and, to a monotonous refrain of “I don’t believe it! It isn’t true!” finally exhausted themselves.

After I rested a bit, logic began to restore order out of chaos, and a small voice heretofore unheard in the uproar said, “You know you’ll never see again. Will you let it ruin your life?”

Until then life had not been exactly easy, but I had hurdled one problem after another without breaking my stride. Now, with the impact of a person running in the dark, I had crashed into a wall. The violence had thrown me back and left me stunned and helpless. As I slowly recovered from the shock I began to realize this wall (intangible though it was, utterly lacking in material substance) as possessing the quality of granite. Indeed my imaginary wall presented a barrier much more formidable than a real one, because a real one could be torn down. My wall seemed indestructible.

This was a dark time for me, the darkest I was to know, for I had to face the knowledge of my blindness alone. Al and Arnette had been duly warned, but they did not yet realize that now all hope was gone. When I was struck by what blindness meant, with all its implications, I could not avoid being overwhelmed at a prospect of empty, fruitless years awaiting me. How could I face them? What would I do?

Then one day as I struggled with my thoughts of a future that must be faced in darkness a strange thing happened. As I lay there in the hospital, the silence around me seemed to deepen and become amplified. In the heart of this silence, seemingly at its very core, there was a feeling of presence. How else shall I describe it? There are no words. I can only say that I knew as emphatically as we know very few things in life that I was in the presence of God.