“Say!” an authoritative voice called. “Say, you boy!”
Little Tib straightened up, picking up his stick again. He thought, This could be Sugarland. He said, “Are you a policeman, sir?”
“I am the superintendent.”
That was almost as good. Little Tib tilted his head back so the voice could see his eyes. He had often imagined coming to Sugarland and how it would be there, but he had never considered just what it was he should say when he arrived. He said, “My card . . .” The train was still rumbling away, not too far off.
Another voice said, “Now don’t you hurt that child.” It was not authoritative. There was the sound of responsibility in it.
“You ought to be in school, young man,” the first voice said. “Do you know who I am?”
Little Tib nodded. “The superintendent.”
“That’s right, I’m the superintendent. I’m Mr. Parker himself. Your teacher has told you about me, I’m sure.”
“Now don’t hurt that child,” the second voice said again. “He never did hurt you.”
“Playing hooky. I understand that’s what the children call it. We never use such a term ourselves, of course. You will be referred to as an absentee. What’s your name?”
“George Tibbs.”
“I see. I am Mr. Parker, the superintendent. This is my valet; his name is Nitty.”
“Hello,” Little Tib said.
“Mr. Parker, maybe this absentee boy would like to have something to eat. He looks to me like he has been absentee a long while.”
“Fishing,” Mr. Parker said. “I believe that’s what most of them do.”
“You can’t see, can you?” A hand closed on Little Tib’s arm. The hand was large and hard, but it did not bear down. “You can cross right here. There’s a rock in the middle—step on that.”
Little Tib found the rock with his stick and put one foot there. The hand on his arm seemed to lift him across. He stood on the rock for a moment with his stick in the water, touching bottom to steady himself. “Now a great big step.” His shoe touched the soft bank on the other side. “We got a camp right over here. Mr. Parker, don’t you think this absentee boy would like a sweet roll?”
Little Tib said, “Yes, I would.”
“I would too,” Nitty told him.
“Now, young man, why aren’t you in school?”
“How is he going to see the board?”
“We have special facilities for the blind, Nitty. At Grovehurst there is a class tailored to make allowance for their disability. I can’t at this moment recall the name of the teacher, but she is an exceedingly capable young woman.”
Little Tib asked, “Is Grovehurst in Sugar Land?”
“Grovehurst is in Martinsburg,” Mr. Parker told him. “I am superintendent of the Martinsburg Public School System. How far are we from Martinsburg now, Nitty?”
“Two, three hundred kilometers, I guess.”
“We will enter you in that class as soon as we reach Martinsburg, young man.”
Nitty said, “We’re going to Macon—I keep on tellin’ you.”
“Your papers are all in order, I suppose? Your grade and attendance records from your previous school? Your withdrawal permit, birth certificate, and your retinal pattern card from the Federal Reserve?”
Little Tib sat mute. Someone pushed a sticky pastry into his hands, but he did not raise it to his mouth.
“Mr. Parker, I don’t think he’s got papers.”
“That is a serious—”
“Why he got to have papers? He ain’t no dog!”
Little Tib was weeping. “I see!” Mr. Parker said. “He’s blind; Nitty, I think his retinas have been destroyed. Why, he’s not really here at all.”
“Course he’s here.”
“A ghost. We’re seeing a ghost, Nitty. Sociologically he’s not real—he’s been deprived of existence.”
“I never in my whole life seen a ghost.”
“You dumb bastard,” Mr. Parker exploded.
“You don’t have to talk to me like that, Mr. Parker.”
“You dumb bastard. All my life there’s been nobody around but dumb bastards like you.” Mr. Parker was weeping too. Little Tib felt one of his tears, large and hot, fall on his hand. His own sobbing slowed, then faded away. It was outside his experience to hear grown people—men—cry. He took a bite from the roll he had been given, tasting the sweet, sticky icing and hoping for a raisin.
“Mr. Parker,” Nitty said softly. “Mr. Parker.”
After a time, Mr. Parker said, “Yes.”
“He—this boy George—might be able to get them, Mr. Parker. You recall how you and me went to the building that time? We looked all around it a long while. And there was that window, that old window with the iron over it and the latch broken. I pushed on it and you could see the glass move in a little. But couldn’t either of us get between those bars.”
“This boy is blind, Nitty,” Mr. Parker said.
“Sure he is, Mr. Parker. But you know how dark it was in there. What is a man going to do? Turn on the lights? No, he’s goin’ to take a little bit of a flashlight and put tape or something over the end till it don’t make no more light than a lightnin’ bug. A blind person could do better with no light than a seeing one with just a little speck like that. I guess he’s used to bein’ blind by now. I guess he knows how to find his way around without eyes.”
A hand touched Little Tib’s shoulder. It seemed smaller and softer than the hand that had helped him across the creek. “He’s crazy,” Mr. Parker’s voice said. “That Nitty. He’s crazy. I’m crazy, I’m the one. But he’s crazier than I am.”
“He could do it, Mr. Parker. See how thin he is.”
“Would you do it?” Mr. Parker asked.
Little Tib swallowed a wad of roll. “Do what?”
“Get something for us.”
“I guess so.”
“Nitty, build a fire,” Mr. Parker said. “We won’t be going any farther tonight.”
“Won’t be goin’ this way at all,” Nitty said.
“You see, George,” Mr. Parker said. “My authority has been temporarily abrogated. Sometimes I forget that.”
Nitty chuckled somewhere farther away than Little Tib had thought he was. He must have left very silently.
“But when it is restored, I can do all the things I said I would do for you: get you into a special class for the blind, for example. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, George?”
“Yes.” A whip-poor-will called far off to Little Tib’s left, and he could hear Nitty breaking sticks.
“Have you run away from home, George?”
“Yes,” Little Tib said again.
“Why?”
Little Tib shrugged. He was ready to cry again. Something was thickening and tightening in his throat, and his eyes had begun to water.
“I think I know why,” Mr. Parker said. “We might even be able to do something about that.”
“Here we are,” Nitty called. He dumped his load of sticks, rattling, more or less in front of Little Tib.
Later that night Little Tib lay on the ground with half of Nitty’s blanket over him, and half under him. The fire was crackling not too far away. Nitty said the smoke would help to drive the mosquitoes off. Little Tib pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes and saw red and yellow flashes like a real fire. He did it again, and there was a gold nugget against a field of blue. Those were the last things he had been able to see for a long time, and he was afraid, each time he summoned them up, that they would not come. On the other side of the fire Mr. Parker breathed the heavy breath of sleep.