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| Can you see me now? |
The rails and ties were covered in frost, and the wood smoke from every chimney in Hancock permeated the icy Maryland air. Buck lifted his face to the morning sun, which he could feel but not quite see, and inhaled deeply the scents of a new winter. There was a hint of pine, courtesy of the garlands that the town had draped from lamp post to lamp post, the length of West Main Street.
"Smells like Christmas, Woozy," he said quietly, to the German shepherd that no one ever saw. "It's a big day. How are you feeling, buddy?"
Woozy woofed in agreement with whatever his master had just said, then resumed racing in blurry, nausea-inducing circles on the sidewalk. He didn't even slow down to barf, this time.
Buck sniffed the air again, and frowned. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Woozy. That is just foul. Settle down."
Woozy settled down, which here means continued to run in circles, almost slowly enough to be seen.
"Slow down. I swear, you must be part greyhound," Buck said, with a smile and a slight shake of his head. "Are we still on West Main? We need to turn left on Pennsylvania, then it's another left in three blocks, got it? And please, no more vomiting. I'm already nervous enough. I don't need to worry about your perpetually upset stomach."
Blind Buck was, in fact, nervous. He hadn't deliberately interacted with a non-hobo in at least six years, and he was about to give it a final try. It was December 24th, 1937. Buckley "Blind Buck" Conrad, now over ninety percent blind, on account of his aggressive early-onset cataracts, was shambling through Hancock, Maryland for the first time in about a dozen years - assuming you don't count the time in 1933, when the sheriff paraded him up and down West Main Street in shackles, as some sort of warning to other hoboes not to show their soot-caked faces on this town's fair streets, lest they suffer a similar fate.
Woozy, the invisible seeing-eye dog - who was technically not invisible, but merely very hard to see because of his tendency to run in impossibly quick circles around his human - paused for a nanosecond and poked Buck in the calf with his nose. Buck knew that this meant, be still; there's an authority figure looking our way, so he stopped walking and pretended to be entranced by the nearest shop window. While he performed his fake browsing, his mind took a break, and replayed some of the steps that had led him from admiring this store window as a child to faux-admiring it as a homeless, nearly-blind drifter.
Step one: He was a round-faced little boy with candle-lit blue eyes, staring slack-jawed at the toy tanks and assorted cowboy hats and "Indian" headdresses in the shop window at the corner of West Main and Pennsylvania, clutching his mother's hand, trying in vain to keep her from moving further along the Christmassy thoroughfare.
Step two: His shell-shocked (whatever that meant) father, slumped in his chair trying to listen to the radio while his desperately drunk and equally unwell mother berated him with passionate, incoherent nonsense. Nine-year old Buckley made himself as small as he possibly could - though not small enough.
Step three: Seven years later, fearing for his life - and that of his broken, inert father - he packed a sack full of pants and shirts and bread and apples, and fled. His father's final words to him were, "You, you can save; for me it's too late. Go, son. But for God's sake, see a doctor about your eyes, first."
Step four: On the run from a gang of high school boys in Richmond, each stride a scorching reminder of the bruises and malnutrition he had endured. A dog bit him, removing a small chunk of calf muscle. He momentarily lost track of where he was, and why he was remembering all this stuff, but Woozy stepped gently on his foot, which meant, focus, boss.
Steps five through nine: Frostbite took two of his toes. He lost his bindle sack - twice. He sprained everything. The Great Depression was felt literally everywhere. His mother had died (no word on how), and his father now sat in a veterans' home, incessantly asking everyone he saw if they knew when his son would be coming.
Step ten: Buck, now nearly blind and almost as broken as his old man had been when he returned from the War To End All Wars, decided to save his pop, and in the process, with any luck, himself. Woozy bonked him in the other leg, which meant, the authority figure is moving on - let's go...
"I'm going, I'm going," Buck muttered. "Don't rush me." He walked slowly, following Pennsylvania Avenue for one block, two blocks, and three, feeling the pavement with his thin cane as he shuffled forward. Woozy confirmed Buck's intuition, and indicated that it was time to turn left, by racing in spectacularly, invisibly fast counterclockwise circles around him whacking the backs of Buck's legs with his tail on each pass. Buck smelled the canine upchuckery almost before he heard it. "Oh, come on, Woozy..."
He stopped in front of the veterans' home, reached down and patted his trusty German shepherd on the head. Woozy woofed, embarrassed at the public display of affection, and resumed his hypersonic racing about. Buck took a deep breath, felt his way through the front door, and informed the first blurry person that spoke to him that he was Morris Conrad's son, and he was there to wish him a merry Christmas.
"And a very merry Christmas to you, as well," came an ancient, tired, gravel-filled voice from just beyond the fuzzy reception area. "I've been waiting for you. I told you he would come," he nearly shouted to the rest of the room. "I told you!"
"Merry Christmas, Pop," Buck said. "Woozy old boy - this is my Pop. Say hello." The dog opted instead to continue running in tiny circles on the front porch of the veterans' home.
"Yeah, yeah - Merry Christmas - we've covered that," the elder Conrad laughed, "So... where are we headed?"
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