SNARL
Gary Crawford
language
(Gary Crawford, Nov. 14, 2013)
People say I was born blind, but I was always an independent child, much to my mother’s dismay, and never let my blindness slow me down. I crawled early and fast, memorizing the arrangement of furniture around the house. Making my way in this darkness was greatly facilitated by what I now understand to be a heightening of my other senses – hearing, taste, touch, and smell – especially smell. My sense of smell, in particular, was finely sensitive and brought to me a complex, nearly endless barrage of information, such as the smell of hay, gravel, grass, manure, and cat on my father’s boot and sweat, metal, smoke, leather, and horse on his hand when he came home from work. I could even smell on his breath what he had eaten for lunch. In those days when I was blind, my nose brought to me a clear “vision” of my world. My hearing, sharply acute, distinguished a whole range of intricate sounds, like the dying chirp of a baby bird outside on the ground beneath its nest, and the rustling of little ant feet scurrying toward it in response. And, of course, there was the “other sense” … But I never learned to understand that until much later in life.As a child I could not comprehend, of course, that I was different from everyone else and at an early age wondered why people sometimes laughed at what I said. On the other hand, sometimes they were silent, especially my mother, wondering how I might know so many peculiar things.I regained my sight on the day when an old woman touched me; dark like a gypsy, she came through town in a wagon, selling a variety of articles for the kitchen. I will always remember her face when she touched me – a sweet, kind smile, although her teeth were crooked and one or two were missing; and one eye looked off in the wrong direction with the good eye saying to me clearly, “I wish I could stay a while, but I can’t …” Constantly on the go as a small child, I never thought to mention her to anyone. It took my mother two years to discover I could see, when she found me teaching Lucien his first reading lesson. * * *Ruthie Gallagher was, she had fathomed as she approached the unlucky age of thirteen, developing an irresistible hunger for nature and the call of the wild; yes, she had always been a tomboy, but, sneaking out of the house at night when the moon was full! – and waking up the next morning as hungry as a wolf? Even her nose was cold and moist these days, causing her to sneeze suddenly and loudly, like a bark! Ruthie had not the slightest doubt that she was mystified in ways that, at her age, her mother and father had not been, and this alarmed her most of all because she had never been the kind of girl who was confused about anything. Ruthie, unlike all other girls she knew, had always ached to be a detective like Sherlock Holmes, and be able to shout something like, “Look out, Watson! The chase is afoot!” Surely at the very least, if she continued to hope real hard and play the part at every opportunity, she would eventually accept her badge as sheriff or some other officer of the law. No one understood, of course, especially not her mother with whom she would never see eye-to-eye about anything. Patrice, her mother, had sighed in dismay when Ruthie had announced her intention, “A detective! I do so wish, Ruthie, that you would stop reading those awful Conan-Doyle stories! They will only lead you astray and destroy your moral character!” Then she had calmed herself, smiling and caressing her daughter’s curly black hair, “... Oh, Ruthie, who can say what life will bring to each of us in its good time, sweetheart? Just let it be ...The important thing is to remember to always be yourself and be ladylike!”