Together (8 page)

"Welcome
to Blinky University," the big man boomed, extending his hand and finding
Brenden's, engulfing it in a massive shake that made Brenden, a good-sized guy
himself, feel like a dwarf. "Welcome to the place where eyes open and
lives are changed! I'm Marvin Barnes. They call me 'Bad News.' Sit down. Sit
down. Sorry I'm late. The conference ran long, and it takes me a little while
to move on this bad knee. They say I need surgery, but I really don't want it.
I figure I'll be back skiing in a month. That's how I hurt it—up in Winter
Park. You know, 280-pound former defensive tackles really shouldn't be letting
gravity and inertia take them down steep hills at high speed. You can't fight
gravity or age!"

While all
this was happening, Brenden heard the big man move behind his desk and seat
himself, his chair groaning in protest.

"You
ski, McCarthy?"

"I used
to," Brenden answered woodenly, "all the time."

"Well,
good," Barnes said. "I'm on the racing team at Winter Park, and we
need new blind skiers for the World Championships in a couple of years."

Brenden came
to attention. "Excuse me?" he asked. "You mean you're—"

Barnes
interrupted. "Blind? You bet, kid! Blind as a bat and black to boot! What
a combo."

Barnes hit a
button, and Brenden heard a synthetic voice coming through a couple of speakers
he figured were probably on a computer on the man's desk.

"Ten
thirty intake appointment with Brenden McCarthy, age twenty-five, practicing
physician doing his internship, newly blind, hurt in a mountain climbing
accident up on the Bells." Barnes hit the stop button.

"Is that
about right, Brenden? Are those the basic facts?"

"Yes,"
Brenden said in a flat tone.

"Well,
your mother and your friend, Charlie, tell me you've been hanging out in your
room, feeling sorry for yourself. Is that about it?"

Brenden felt
the color rise in his face, and the anger began to bubble up inside him like a
volcano about to blow.

"Who are
you to say that?" he asked defiantly. "We don't even know each other,
and you're already judging me, like you have all the information about who I am
or what I feel?"

The chair
indicated that the man sat back. "That's good," he said. "Very
good. At least I know that you can get emotional. If

I can get a
rise out of you, that's the right first step. Now we just have to channel it.
What do you know about being blind, Brenden, beyond that it means your eyes
don't work?"

The clocked
ticked off a few more seconds.

"It
means that life sucks." Brenden spit out the words. "It means that
I'll never be able to enjoy the things that have always brought me pleasure in
life. It means that I won't have independence. It means that people will pity
me. It means that I have to give up my career in medicine. It means that I'll
probably be caning chairs or selling pencils or something like that. Isn't that
what all of you do? Or maybe I'll become musical— tune pianos. How about
that?"

The big man
laughed quietly. "You know the guy who won the blind World Championships
as a downhill skier went faster than Jean-Claude Killy did in the 1964 Olympic
Games? Do you know that there's an amputee who holds many speed records for
freeform skiing? Have you read about Eric Weihenmayer— the guy who climbed
Mount Everest—or what about the blind people who become judges, senators,
lawyers? There's even a fellow named David Hartman in Baltimore who is a
practicing psychiatrist. He's got a medical degree like you, doesn't he? You
can do all those things, Brenden, if you simply decide you want to. And if you
want to, we'll give you all the training you need.

"And
then there's something else. You'll learn that a life in the dark can open up
levels of sensory awareness that you would never have believed possible. Talk
about your mountains? I don't just go there in the winter to ski. I enjoy
mountain bike riding in the summer on the back of a tandem with some poor soul
driving on the front, working much too hard to pedal my fat self up and down
the hills. And while I'm up there, I listen to meadowlarks and mountain
streams. Things I might not have taken in before. You know what, kid? I've even
heard deer running free and the trumpeting of elk in the fall during mating
season. I've sat on a rock and enjoyed the best ham and cheese sandwich I've
ever eaten in my life. Did you ever notice that food tastes a lot better at
fourteen thousand feet?"

Brenden
couldn't help but smile, and the big man heard it.

"I just
heard you smile, young fella, and it's a wonderful sound. Give me five."

The giant
reached over the desk and once again engulfed Brenden's hand, this time pumping
it up and down for emphasis.

"What
did you get out of that handshake, kid? What did it tell you?"

Despite
himself, Brenden thought about it. "It says you ought to be a politician.
It says you're trying to impress me with a lot of bravado about the beauty of
blind. It tells me you're a cheerleader for the disabled of this world. And I'm
not buying any of it."

The big man
returned to his chair. "Okay, kid," he went on after a sigh. "I
get the feeling you not only feel sorry for yourself, but you figure you're the
only person on earth who ever got a bad break. Is that right?

"So
here's my story. I moved to Colorado because I was the number one draft choice
for the Denver Broncos, but there was also something going on called Vietnam
that involved another draft. Getting picked by the NFL didn't stop Uncle Sam
from sending my black hulk overseas. It was 1973, and with a little bit of
luck, I would still have been playing when the guys began to get the big money.
Yes siree, I would have been with John Elway and all the boys in the Super
Bowl. And then there was a little matter of a mine blowing up in my face up by
the DMZ, and it changed everything. I was kind of ugly before it went off in my
mug. But now"—he laughed again—"now it's just as well you can't see
because the scarring will never heal."

"Sorry,"
Brenden heard himself say. "I'm very sorry."

"You
know what?" the man went on, "the scarring inside, well, that's
healed pretty well. I'm quite a minority in this country—a 280-pound
African-American blind guy with a wife and three kids, a house in suburbia that
I can't pay for, and some bills that are overdue. All in all, I'm a pretty
lucky son of a gun, don't you think?"

Brenden
couldn't help it. He became absorbed by the man's honesty, drawn in by his
openness. "Listen," he asked, "do you really like your life? I
mean, the way it is? No bull? You're really okay about it?"

Brenden heard
the big man lean forward, the desk creaking under the weight of his elbows.
"Listen, Brenden," he said with sincerity in his tone, "you're
in for a rocky road if you decide to try and take your place back in the world.
Let me give you some statistics. There are a million and a half blind people in
this country. Let's say out of that group there are about eight hundred
thousand folks who could hold meaningful jobs. Yet only about 20 percent of us
work. The rest of us, well, we live on the public dole, either because we
haven't got the confidence or because we're simply lazy. You have to decide
which one of those you want to be. Not many of us get married and have
families, but frankly that's usually because we're much too focused on
ourselves. A lot of us get involved in organizations for the blind. Not bad,
but many of these organizations, well, frankly, they're pretty militant, and
they become sanctuaries for angry human beings.

"In my
own case, before I took this job, I spent ten years working on the outside just
to prove I could. You'll still go through a lot of patronizing. You'll sit in a
restaurant with some good friends some night, and a waitress will walk up to
the table and say to them, 'What would he like to eat?' People will talk loud
because they think that being deaf is also part of being blind. I suppose you
can blame old Helen Keller for that.

"You'll
get up some mornings, and if you're not well organized, you'll walk out of your
house dressed like somebody left a rainbow in your closet. And a lot of times
people will talk about you as if you're not really there. If you get lucky and
get married and have kids, you'll probably get hit in the head with a baseball
trying to coach Little League. And unless you're willing to work real hard here
at the Center, you'll probably be eating frozen dinners or going out most of
the time because you'll never really learn to cook. Are you getting what I'm
saying, kid?"

Involuntarily,
Brenden nodded, but before he could correct himself, Barnes interjected.

"I heard
you nod. Starch in your collar. Got a girl, Brenden?" Barnes asked.

"Yeah—her
name's Lindsey. She wants to be a lawyer."

"Well,
here's the deal with relationships. If you find the right one, I mean someone
who can really love you and appreciate you, your marriage can become even
deeper because of the intimacy in the way you share. You'll read the newspapers
together in the morning. You'll take walks at sunset holding hands. You'll
listen when she's getting dressed to go out at night and know that she's making
herself beautiful just for you. Your kids will be better off because they won't
have any built-in prejudice.

"Blindness
allows you to look past the labels and see life inside-out, rather than
outside-in. Let me tell you something, kid—something I've really come to
believe. Every disability can be turned into an ability if you want to make it
that way. Now don't interrupt me. I know that doesn't seem true to you right
now, but I'm telling you, you can count on it.

"If I
had played in the NFL during the early seventies and gotten hurt, let's say in
my second year, there was no insurance for players then or a pension to take
care of us. I would have been a big black guy with beat-up knees and no real
future."

"Okay,"
Brenden put in, "but you went to Vietnam and got all shot up. Are you
telling me that's better?"

"No.
That's not what I'm saying. What I'm telling you is that when God deals out a
hand of cards, you have the ability to shuffle them any way you want. All of us
can change our own destiny if we're willing to try. You have to decide if
you're a glass-half-empty or a glass-half-full person. Let me ask you this,
Brenden. What were you before your accident? I mean a month ago. Were you a
glass-half-empty or a glass-half-full human being when you were climbing that
mountain? How did you feel about yourself?"

Brenden
thought for a minute, listening to the clock, this time taking even longer to
answer the question. Finally in a soft voice, he said, "I was at the top
of the world. Life was awesome. I had it all."

"Okay,
kid," the man went on gently, "so what have you really lost?"

"I'm
blind," Brenden answered, starting to tear up. "I'm blind!"

"That's
right," Barnes said, "but you're still Brenden, and Brenden has a lot
to offer life."

In a softer
voice, Brenden said, "But not enough to offer Lindsey. I won't ever be
enough for Lindsey."

"What?"
Barnes said. "Speak up. Now I suppose I'm going deaf. What did you
say?"

"Nothing,"
Brenden said. "Nothing. I was just talking to myself."

Barnes nodded
but let it go and went on. "You know what I want it to say on my
tombstone, Brenden, when I'm dead? 'Here lies big Marvin 'Bad News'
Barnes—black man, husband, father, football player, veteran, activist,
counselor, and friend, who, by the way, happened to be blind.' Listen to me,
Brenden. I'm here for you. We're all here for you, and life is worth living if
you just give it a chance."

The big man
got to his feet and this time put his arm around Brenden's shoulder.
"Listen, kid," he said, "I'm going to send someone in here to
figure out what kind of a schedule you'll be on for classes. Over the next
couple of months, you'll learn how to be independent, and I promise if you give
it a shot, you'll feel like living again. It's this simple. Right now you
believe that you'll always be dependent on someone else, and I suppose what I'm
trying to do is get you to consider the idea that you can become independent.
But the truth is, if your girl loves you and you have good friends, you'll
learn that life is about being interdependent. And when you really get that
idea into your head, being blind won't seem that important."

Brenden felt
the warmth and power of the big man's hug and sagged back onto the couch.

"I'll
give you a few minutes to collect yourself," Barnes said as he walked to
the door. "Somebody will be in to see you in just a little while. Good
luck, Brenden. I'll be right here for you— 24-7. Okay, kid?"