Land of the Blind Read Free Page B

the flash when she closed her eyes. Caroline looks down.
    “I’ve been having these dreams,” he says, “where I did something wrong. Something terrible? But it’s almost like I’ve done it in another world. Like no one around me knows. But when I wake up…” He swallows. “Do you ever have dreams like that?”
    She thinks, Fuck you, but says simply, “No,” and slides the legal pad to him.
    The Loon picks up the pen and writes across the top of the page: Confession. His handwriting is precise and practiced. He considers his one word, then crosses it out and writes Statement of Fact. He exhales, as if that were it. Then he shakes his arms, cricks his neck, and looks around the room. “Could I be alone to do this? It won’t take long.”
    “Okay.” She stands to leave. Statement of Fact. This guy’s a lawyer, she thinks.
    “One more question, Caroline,” he says as she’s on her way out.
    She turns back from the door. His hair has fallen over his eye patch and he looks like a kid all of a sudden. That’s the thing about men, even crazy ones; after a while, they all turn into boys.
    “Why’d you become a police officer?” he asks.
    Caroline doesn’t hesitate as she reaches for the door. “I like the snow.”

Not every kind of madness is a calamity.
     
—Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
     

Statement of Fact
     

1 | ELI BOYLE’S DANDRUFF
     
    E li Boyle’s dandruff was more than enough indignity for one child. In fact, the word “dandruff” barely did it justice. He was like a snow globe turned upside down, drifting flakes on the Empire State Building or the St. Louis Arch or the Golden Gate. Our classmates made sudden noises—clapping their hands or dropping books—just to see Eli’s head snap around and the snow dislodge and cascade from his head, drift onto his desk and settle on the floor of the classroom. When he sneezed, teachers would stop lecturing until the ash settled. It was hard to believe a human head could flake so much without losing actual mass, and the glacial till of Eli Boyle’s scalp was discussed with some seriousness as a potential science project. Walking down the hall, the dead, flaking snow covered his shoulders like two lesser peaks beneath Boyle’s Everest of a head. So, as I say, at least the way I remember it, Eli Boyle’s dandruff would have been enough humiliation for one kid to bear, enough embarrassment to ruin his life the way lives are ruined in elementary school, before they actually begin.
    But dandruff was only the first of Eli’s afflictions. I will list them here, but please don’t think me cruel, or blame me for piling these horrors upon him. I was not his Maker; Someone Else visited these burdens upon Eli Boyle, Someone Far Crueler Than I. Or just more indifferent. And don’t think for a moment that I take anything but the most humble responsibility in relating these difficulties. When I am finished with this confession, this affidavit, this statement of fact, it will come as no surprise that Eli Boyle turned out to be a better man than I, and nothing would make me happier than to report now that the adolescent version of that good man started life with a clean slate, or at least a clean scalp. But I cannot. So I offer this accounting with no great joy, but with a fidelity to truth and a desire to re-create for those who care, for the record, I suppose, an Eli Boyle whole and pristine,just as he was then, all the more amazing when you consider the list of ruined parts that comprised him:
    He had bad breath, like he’d eaten sour cream from a cat box. He wore braces on his teeth and his legs; had acne and a unique bacon-flavored body odor; picked his nose and ate what he mined; exhibited a zest for epic, untimely flatulence (the Social Studies Incident of 1976; the Great 1980 Pep Assembly Blowout…); wore black-framed, Coke-bottle glasses; had thin red hair, skid marks in his underwear, and allergies to pollen, cotton, peanuts, and soap. He had a