Lunatics Read Free

buyers, what came next turned my head.
    â€œPlease don’t yell, sir. It scares the animals,” said Hyo.
    â€œAnd I wouldn’t be yelling if these fucking animals weren’t here and you sold what your sign says you’re selling, or is ‘wine shop’ the way you say ‘pet shop’ in China or Japan or whatever rice-gobbling country you swam here from!”
    While I couldn’t place it at first, that voice was familiar. I knew I’d heard it. Recently. And when I stepped into the doorway that separated the back room from the front of the store to see what the commotion was about, I recognized the belligerent customer as the belligerent parent who dressed me down the day before at the soccer field. Once again, his rage was palpable. Red face, heaving chest, eyes bulging like a sick Yorkshire Canary. So I opted to remain calm and try to defuse things without incident.
    â€œThere’s a liquor store about a mile from here. Would you like me to call to see if they’re still open?”
    He turned in my direction and immediately remembered me.
    â€œYou? This is your place?”
    â€œIt is,” I nodded.
    â€œMakes perfect sense.”
    â€œWhat does?”
    â€œThat the same idiot who can’t see that a player is not offside also can’t see why this is a ridiculous store. You can’t see
anything
, can you?”
    â€œI guess not,” I answered, shaking my head. “Pretty much like Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder.”
    Hyo, who’d been silent up to this point, chose this moment to speak up.
    â€œThat’s a pretty racist remark,” he said, looking at me with a combination of surprise and disappointment.
    â€œI know it is. I was just quoting what he said to me yesterday.”
    â€œI knew you’d never say such a thing,” said Hyo, visibly relieved.
    â€œIt’s not racist, goddammit! I only mentioned them because there are no famous blind white people!” shouted you-know-who.
    â€œOh, really?” I countered. “How about Helen Keller? And Galileo? And Joseph Pulitzer who created the Pulitzer Prize? Or Brian McKeever, the Olympic cross-country skier? Or Louis Braille, the man who invented Braille? Would you like me to continue?”
    â€œAre you out of your fucking mind? Your blind white people couldn’t shine my blind black people’s shoes. My God, look at the joy Ray Charles’s and Stevie Wonder’s music have brought to millions of people. These are great men who just so happened to be blind. Not like your guys who made a fucking business out of it. The only reason Braille invented Braille was so he could read because other people got tired of telling him what he was missing. And what the hell did Helen Keller do except
be
blind? And she’s on a stamp? Why would they put a person who couldn’t even find the post office on a stamp?”
    â€œShe was also deaf and mute,” I told him.
    â€œWhich means that even if she did find the post office, she couldn’t tell the clerk she wanted to buy her own stamps or hear how much they cost. What bullshit!”
    I was going to respond. Was going to explain that overcoming her handicaps was a laudable achievement itself and an inspiration to so many others similarly afflicted. But before I had a chance, the silence was broken by a faint chirp from the sickly Spanish Timbrado I’d been holding since I came in from the back room. So I looked down and started to gently stroke its head.
    â€œWhat the hell is that?” he asked.
    â€œA canary,” I answered.
    â€œWe’re donating two dozen of them to Children’s Hospital,” Hyo added. “As incentives for the boys and girls in the obesity program.”
    â€œThat’s very nice,” he said.
    It caught me off guard. Those were the first humane words he’d uttered in the two days he’d been a new, unwanted entry into my life.
    â€œThat’s very,