Day Twenty-Three (Monday, July 19, 1971)

My eye was good and black when I went to bed, and even blacker when I got up. The skin felt like charcoal. What scared me was how the white part of my right eye—which I hoped was just severely bloodshot yesterday—was now totally red. There wasn’t any white showing, at all. When I forced the lid open, I could see out.

Ralph visited my room before he left for work and threw me a pair of sunglasses. “Wear these, so you don’t scare anybody. When I get home from work, we’ll go to the eye doctor.”

Otto took one glance at me with my shades on and smirked. “Now what—you’ve gone Beverly Hills?”

“What?”

“You piss ant, Roger.”

“It was strange, not seeing you at all yesterday.”

“You’re an embarrassment to your species, Winans.”

“Betty told me you went roller skating through the streets with Ralph’s old pair. How was that?”

“God didn’t give you the sense of a mule, Winans. Even a fool wouldn’ta stood there when those big guys pulled up.”

“Is this how you choose to greet me?”

“You even had a second chance to nail Duffy at the police station, but you shook his hand instead.” He looked disgusted.

“It’s history, man. Let’s not fuss with it any longer.”

“You’re a jackass, Winans. A nitwit. The more reckless you act, the more I realize I made a mistake.”

“What does that mean?!”

“—You ain’t up to the task of this trip.”

“La-di-da to you! Oh, please. Pipe down! Can’t you understand I just need to rest a bit?”

“You give me mindache, sons.”

The way he wouldn’t stop berating me got up my ire. He had a talent for harping and nagging. This included saying I was hindering his need for exercise. “My blood vessels are startin’ to harden because of your idiocy, Roger. I gotta get my heart pumpin’, soon.”

“All right then, shut up!” To stop his grating, I agreed to face him in a game of handball at the high school across the street.

Just by walking onto the court I knew I was doing something wrong. After the first couple of points, whole sections of my face were waving in and out. It was more extreme punishment, all inflicted on myself. I was foolhardy. I was stoneheaded. My eye pounded with each heave of my chest. I was melting in temperatures of 103.

I lost, 19-2.

Just when I realized, “I’ve done myself in, but good,” Otto motioned, “New game.”

“Tough titty, forget that!” Blind and crippled, I slowly edged my way back to Betty’s, using my hands more than my feet.

Betty fretted when she returned from her part-time job. “Your eye looks worse.” She poured herself a double Scotch waiting for Ralph to get home.

Dr. Elliott Schulman was located in a Spanish-style ranch house which doubled as his office. He was a roly-poly, happy-zany optometrist. “Sorry you got punched in the eye. But on the other hand, I’m happy. I need things like this to happen to keep me in business.”

He played rough with my tender eye, deftly pushing and poking it barehanded or with long metal instruments, or probing with a penlight. He threw in a dozen types of eyedrops, of all colors and sensations.

“You’d be surprised. I’ve had quite a few cases like yours in the past year.” He smiled. “No one gets punched in the nose anymore. It’s always the eye.”

He and Ralph talked the whole time about eyesight, vision, and cases worse than mine. Duffy smashed a good many fibers in my sclera which caused my body to flood the area with blood, in protection. The
red would eventually disappear, but would take several weeks, perhaps months.

“To me, that’s good news.” I sat on the crumpled paper roll of his medical bench.

“The bad guy landed nothing more than a solid right hook clean to the head.” He chuckled. He made a few more jokes about black eyes and fat lips, and that was my visit. I was to return the next day for “further testing,” though he assured me everything would be all right.

Otto imparted more sharp words from the front steps of the house. “Let’s shove off, meat brain. I’m ready to go. Start up this trip again, Mortimer.”

“Not today, sorry. Not tomorrow, either. I’ve got another eye appointment. Day after tomorrow, looks like.”

“You’re a pain in my white ass! Know that, Roger? What kind of retard are you? I didn’t know you’d have to be coddled this whole trip. I’m goin’ out for a jog.”

“Go ahead, jerkboy.”

For amusement, Ralph treated Betty, Otto, and me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Hanford’s China Alley, though it wasn’t so amusing to be caught in Otto’s negative mind field.