Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories Read Online Free PDF

plunges of the Jeep made Robert weary—or perhaps it was the lunchtime glass of Chilean wine. He leaned against the headrest, closed his eyes … and was awakened by something creeping along the side of his neck. He slapped the creature. It was a small hand.
    “Sorry, Jaime. Excúlpame. Hey!” for the child had slapped him back.
    “Jaime.” Lex’s voice was as authoritative as Janet’s. Some low, rapid Spanish followed. Then came a tap on the shoulder and a presentation across that shoulder, in front of his face, of three Lego bricks imperfectly joined.
    “Asa,” Jaime said.
    Casa. House. “Bueno,” Robert said, mustering enthusiasm. He turned to meet those attractive eyes, that odd mouth. Lex smiled primly.
    Just before two o’clock they reached the town where they were to spend the night. Robert carefully got out.
    “You need a back rub,” noticed Janet.
    The town square was a bare knoll. A church faced the square. Its stucco walls seemed to be unraveling. The one-storied inn sagged toward its own courtyard. Robert was shown to a rear bedroom. From his window he could see oxen.
    Janet and Lex invited him to walk to the orphanage with them. “Thanks, no,” he said. “I’ll sit in the courtyard and read.” And write another postcard to little Maureen.
    But as soon as they had tramped off, he felt forlorn. He would not stay; he would follow his son.
    They had told him that the orphanage lay two miles out of town, on the straight road west. He walked fast, at first. Within five minutes he had caught sight of them, and soon he was passing the low stone huts that they had just passed, each with its open door revealing a single room, the same room—a couple of cane rockers, a table. The same expressionless woman stood in each doorway. Children played in the mud. Had Jaime been born in such a home? More likely he had sprung from a shack like those Robert was passing now—tin and slats, the latrine in back made decent by a curtain.
    Lex and Janet walked together in the middle of the road. Jaime darted from one side to the other. Janet was taller than Lex. Her light brown hair humped over her backpack and draggled, khaki on khaki.
    At the end of the road a crowd of small boys waited behind a gate—just a couple of horizontal logs—a not entirely successful attempt to keep out nearby animals. Jaime scrambled between the logs. Lex and Janet vaulted them.
    Robert climbed over the top log, his bones creaking. He heard, as if in the distance, the sound of crying. Perhaps it was his own old-man’s wail.
    H E HAD LANDED amid the boys. Boys, boys everywhere. Boys: grimy triangular faces under black bangs. Boys: wearing clothing that a decade ago and a continent away had been high style—rugby shirts, jams. Boys: none seeming above ten years old, though he knew better. Perhaps some were twelve. Boys: waiting for guns and cholera.
    “Bob!” Janet cried. Lex smiled a welcome.
    They made immediate use of him, sending him to listen to the complaints of the orphanage director, a fiery young man with a thin mustache. Robert, sitting down, surrounded by boys, riffling through his dictionary every few words, managed to make out that the problem was money, both cash and credit. Supplies were low. The last cook had made off with the radio. Robert wrote down everything the fellow said and then got hustled away to umpire a three-inning softball game. The boys were not adroit. Then Lex arranged an obstacle race. Robert was assigned to hold an inflated clown’s hand in front of his chest. This hand had come out of Janet’s backpack; she’d blown it up in three exhalations, her freckles enlarging and then diminishing on her cheeks. Each obstacle racer had to slap the hand; some kids slapped Robert by mistake. Their teeth were as white as Chiclets.
    Soon they were corralled into a grim refectory. “Cerca me!” some pleaded. He sat down next to a little beige fellow with reddish hair. All the boys were given crayons and paper.