Max Baer and the Star of David (18 page)

And on the evening he told the story of how Jacob had tricked his blind father so as to steal his father’s blessing and inheritance from his brother, Esau, Horace began to invent a story about a blind girl and a deaf boy—brother and sister—who solve crimes by putting together clues unseen and/or unheard by others. He told these stories after dinner, and ended each evening’s episode at a moment of peril for the boy and/or the girl, while promising to tell Anna and David what-happened-next when next our families would be together.

It was, of course, a joy for the three of us to see our children delight in one another, and if I had another life, their friendship would doubtless become the matter of a tale more sanguine in its issue than the tale I am setting down here. Perhaps Horace Jr., whose life is spent elaborating on the wonder of stories and storytelling, will one day set down his memories of these evenings when we counted none but happy hours. But, as one of the sages he would quote when taking his leave of us taught, “the day is short, and the work is great…” Therefore I will take my leave of our children for a while, and return to the story of what happened after Joleen and I left the employ of Max Baer, and I came to know Marie-Anne Hémon and Hawkins Johnson.

I began visiting the Lighthouse regularly and, troubling convergence, found that the more often I visited, the more swiftly did my vision decline. The YMCA graciously accommodating to my needs, I signed up for a course in Braille that met on Wednesday afternoons, and would arrive early in order to spend some time with Miss Hémon, and no matter which route I took to or from her office, Hawkins would be lying in wait for me, asking when was I going to introduce him to Max Baer. He would sometimes jab a finger into my shoulder or chest, and because I was determined to not give him the satisfaction of letting him see that he upset me, I would not respond, even when he would back me up against a wall, and pepper me with ramblings that seemed without sense.

“Your trouble, you ask me,” he said the one time he irritated me sufficiently to cause me to react, “is that you in love, and being in love like being sick. What they got in common—with being off your nut too—is that there ain’t no cure. That’s why you gonna wind up one blind lovesick brother, and I gonna be there to tell you who you are and who you ain’t.”

This was, until the very last time I would see him, the one instance in which I was unable to keep from reacting. I took the hand he was poking me with, and, bending its thumb backwards until I saw pain show itself in his wandering eye, I warned him to leave me be and to get on with his work or I would take measures to see that he was relieved of his duties.

At this point, he pursed his mouth and spit—the spittle gobbed my left eye and cheek—and, slipping away while I wiped at my eye, he told me I was no big shot just because I knew Max Baer, that I was going to be more blind than he would ever be, and that he knew things about me nobody else knew, not even Max Baer, and that if I didn’t show him respect—“Oh you better respect me, my brother, or I put your heart in the same grave my father be lying in”—he would show the world what he knew about me and Max, and become a rich man doing so too.

“I gonna be richer than God, you don’t treat me right,” he said. “And when Miss Marie-Anne, she find out what I know, there go the love of your life too, you be left with nothin,’ and I gonna be here to laugh in your face the way I spit in it now.”

He sucked in more saliva, but before he could launch another stream of the nasty fluid at me, I cracked him across his eyeless cheek with the back of my hand—a quick, sharp blow that sent him reeling along the corridor wall.

I thought he would come at me with more words and threats, but my act—my showing him the fire that was ever mine when I was aroused—seemed to defeat him, for he merely put a hand to his cheek, mumbled to himself—more whimpering than words—and, picking up his mop and pail, limped away.

I agreed with Miss Hémon’s suggestion, endorsed by Doctor Levitzky, that while I still retained relatively normal vision, it would be good for me to visit the Enchanted Hills Camp in order to see for myself the ways people with disabilities learned to accommodate to their deficits. Miss Hémon invited Joleen and Horace Jr. to join us, but they declined, saying they thought it best if I went on my own, and began to construct for myself a community of people, in addition to them, upon whom I could, in the years to come, rely upon for guidance and friendship.

Thus, on the second Saturday morning in June, Miss Hémon and I, along with David and Anna, drove to the camp, located on Mount Veeder, ten miles west of Napa. The weather was balmy, the views along the way lovely, and while we drove we sang songs Anna could not hear, and saw sights David could not see, and in marveling at their skills, I began to learn ways of translating the worlds of silence and darkness into those of seeming sound and light, so that by the time we arrived at the camp I felt exhilarated in much the way I had when I was with Max, following on one of his victories, and I could, though at a remove, revel in
his
untamed expressions of joy.

After we had settled into our separate cabins, and washed up—Miss Hémon and I sharing a cabin with separate rooms and a common bathroom, Anna and David rooming in bunkhouses with boys and girls their own ages, several of whom were not only visually or hearing impaired, but doubly disabled—unable either to see
or
to hear—Miss Hémon took me on a tour of the camp’s grounds.

Wherever we wandered we met others: men and women who walked with canes or with guide dogs, or arm in arm with one another; children who, loosely roped together at the waist, were learning to navigate trails on their own; and staff members who were giving lectures (with other staff members translating the lectures into sign language for those who could not hear) to individuals, who, like me, seemed to be first-time visitors to the camp.

When I asked Miss Hémon about attending some of these talks, she informed me that she had taken the liberty of obtaining VIP status for me, and would be my personal guide for the weekend. Did I approve?

“Perhaps,” I said.

“
Perhaps?!
” she laughed, and talked about how—her hope—as I lost the ability to see the world, I might also lose some of the naiveté that seemed my devoted accomplice.

“I do not understand,” I said.

“Come,” she said as she started on a marked trail, green arrows painted on small leather pouches that were nailed to tree trunks every ten or twenty yards. “Please. Come with me, Mister Littlejohn, and let me show you some of the rather exceptional amenities provided for our amusement and education.”

While we walked along the trail, I found myself recalling training camps where Max and I had stayed, and how wonderful it had been for the two of us to be away from the rest of the world, with time to do nothing but eat, sleep, and work out. Enchanted Hills Camp put me in mind, in fact, of Max’s favorite training camp, in Lakewood, New Jersey, where he had prepared for his fights against Schmeling, Carnera, Braddock, and Louis, and I laughed, recalling how he would drive Cantwell crazy by his refusal to follow the workout regimens Cantwell had prescribed for him. Max did love the early morning roadwork, however, and enjoyed, at the end of these five- to ten-mile runs, sprinting the last two or three hundred yards and challenging anyone, including his young sparring partners, to catch him if they could.

As Miss Hémon and I walked on a path of wood chips that made sweet, crunching sounds beneath our shoes, and then several hundred feet along a narrow trail that rose gradually to a lookout point above the lake, during which walk we passed others who were already heading back toward the camp (a bell had rung, signaling the noon hour, which was also the hour for a communal lunch), Miss Hémon talked of the hikes Anna and David would be taking, and of the self-confidence people with deficits of hearing and sight gained from traveling the camp’s many trails.

By and by, she said, they would come to forget they lacked one or more of the five senses, because what was more important than senses that might take their leave of us were those that remained. This, she explained, was the gist of a talk she often gave to new members of the Lighthouse—a talk in which she emphasized that if we trained the senses that were still ours, we could learn to take as much pleasure—perhaps more—from the world around us as we could were we blessed with a seemingly “normal” set of five senses.

She led me away from the lookout point and along a footpath that descended into a forest thick with evergreens—pine, fir, redwood—and large swaths of flowering rhododendron. There had been a sun-shower earlier in the day—the cool spray of rain welcome on a day that was more humid than usual—and the fragrance of pine needles and rhododendron blossoms, intensified by the moisture-laden air, was intoxicating. We walked, without talking, for perhaps ten or twelve minutes, until we came to a small clearing that was home to a gazebo that was in a state of considerable disrepair, some of the crossing limbs that supported a fragile roof looking as if they, along with the roof, could be blown away by the next strong wind. There were two benches in the gazebo, facing one another. I sat on one, and Miss Hémon sat next to me.

“This is where Anna first learned to read lips, which has proven an enormous aid not only to her understanding others,” she said, “but also to her ability to speak like a hearing person.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like me to show you how it is done?”

“Please,” I said.

“Then close your eyes and put a finger to my lips, and when I speak—I will mouth words without sound—tell me what you think I have said.”

I closed my eyes and put a finger to her lips. Her lips moved.

“‘
Hello
?’” I asked.

“Very good. Now put
two
fingers against my lips.”

Her lips were soft, and my head filled with a confusing bouquet of scents and memories. I began to feel strangely light-headed. Without sound, she again talked to my fingers.

“‘
Mister Littlejohn
?” I asked.

“Ah,” she said. “You are an excellent pupil—a fast read, as we say, yes? I am not surprised. I have, from our first moments together, sensed you were a man of great potential whose loss of vision would be of manageable consequence, especially if…”

“If what?”

“… if you would allow yourself to trust me.”

“I believe that has happened,” I said. “But if…”

“Anna and I would practice hour after hour,” she said, “and I often think of those hours as having been our happiest times together. As she grew up and had less need for my assistance, however, I sometimes found myself wishing we could return to those early times together.”

“I can understand that,” I said.

“But you, my friend,” she said, “who can hear my voice, and who often shies away from its more aggressive probings—you will never have need of what my daughter has had need, will you?”

“I hope not.”

“Still, because it pleases me, will you indulge me a while longer and allow me the pleasure of showing you how she learned to hear
and
to speak?”

“Of course.”

“Good,” she said. “So now please close your eyes again, and press all
five
of your fingers against my mouth.”

What I saw before I did what she asked—the bench across from us, the crossing limbs that held up the gazebo’s roof, the trees, flowers, and forest beyond turned suddenly gray and blurred as if the world were veiled behind a low-lying cloud and I was unmoored from earth as from time itself—alarmed me: could my vision experience so precipitous a decline that what I had seen but a few minutes before could suddenly have no recognizable shape or color?

I pressed my eyes closed, and when I did, she mouthed words I hoped—and feared—she would speak, after which, very slowly, she took the tip of my index finger onto her lower lip, and kissed it.

I did not move. Nor did I state the obvious: that although I might eventually lose my vision, there were, as she had said, no indications I was in danger of losing my hearing. Why, then, was it so important that I learn to read lips the way Anna had? Why was it so important that I understand what
their
experience had been like? She bent over and kissed my hand in much the way she had, in her office, kissed Hawkins Johnson’s hand—more with her breath than with her mouth—and after that it was her eyes that told me what her lips and tongue had told my fingers, and they asked for a reply.

As if she could infer my answer, she nodded once, and so I kissed her hand in the way she had kissed mine, after which she gestured to me to again close my eyes and to again touch her mouth with my fingers. I did what she asked, and my answer, to the question she asked of my fingers, was that yes, I would very much like to kiss her.

Her lips were warm, and everything that was me—my mouth, heart, hands, skin, and what was left of my mind—was aroused, although the kiss itself was without overt force or passion.

“You have never kissed any woman other than your wife, have you?” she said when we had separated.

“I have not.”

“Yet you are remarkably good at it,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Still, I wonder: Am I worthy of—am I prepared
for
such a responsibility?”

“Possibly,” I said.

“Ah yes,” she said. “The land of possibility—far preferable to the land of probability, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps.”

“But there’s also this—can you trust me to continue as your guide? Will you believe that if you fall—I speak metaphorically, Mister Littlejohn—I will be here to catch you?”

We kissed again, and then again, and when some time later I withdrew my mouth from hers, she touched my cheek with her hand, and spoke: “You are a gentle soul,” she said.

“Probably,” I said.

She tapped on my lips with her fingertips. “You are a love,” she said.

“Possibly,” I said, and we both laughed, and I kissed her again—would I ever want to
not
be kissing her?—and her mouth opened to me this time, and I was lost in feelings and sensations of which, in truth, I had had no intimations.