Land of the Blind Read Online Free PDF Page A

look of sheer empathy and…fucking beatitude on his miserable face, was Eli Boyle.

3 | HIS PITIFUL PRESENCE
     
    H is pitiful presence that day was undoubtedly what kept Pete Decker from completing the remodeling project he’d begun on my face. Had I known the importance of what would happen at that bus stop that day with the appearance of Eli Boyle, I might have begun studying it myself, for it would turn out to be a near-perfect real-world expression of an experiment that microbiologists have long re-created in the lab. They know that viruses and pathogenic bacteria will adhere to damaged cells in the human body, that the real nasty bugs are attracted to those broken and bruised places that blood has trouble reaching, and that the body will sacrifice a foot, say, to save the rest, and that if you have an infection in your throat and sprain your ankle, the virus or bacteria or parasite will do its best to make the journey from your throat to your ankle.
    Eli became my broken ankle. That day, still full from the meal of me, Pete Decker retreated to the back of the tree and, presumably, picked my bones from his teeth, but I have to think he also had his eye on the horrible newcomer. Because the very next day Pete was all over Eli Boyle, knocking his glasses off, snapping the buttons off the cuffs of his flannel shirt, and grabbing his underwear and yanking them out of his pants and giving him—and here I defer to each reader’s age, socioeconomic class, and basic geographic orientation—a wedgie or a melvy or a crack-back or a slip-and-slide or a jam sandwich or a thong-along or a line-in-the-sand or a famous-anus.
    Eli took his punishment in stride, picked up his glasses, quietly pocketed the snapped button for his mother to sew on later, and left his dirty underwear wedged up his cakehole until Pete Decker had moved on to terrorize elsewhere. After my own beating I had resumed my place at the street, with the terrified little kids, who stood with chattering teeth, clinging to their lunch money and repeating in their minds, Don’t turn around, Don’t turn around. In those early days I never ventured to help Eli Boyle—although, honestly, what could I have done?
    Every day after that, Eli tried to arrive just as the bus did, hoping to limit his exposure to Pete. Our driver, Mr. Kellhorn, was notorious for his erratic timing, though, showing up at various times between 7:22 and 7:29, which might not sound like a big deal to adults, but for kids hoping to avoid having their underwear winched into their asses, it was a horror. The other bullies allowed Pete to have first—I apologize in advance for my word choice—crack at Boyle. Some days, when Pete missed school (we whispered about juvenile detention, or theorized that maybe he’d finally gone ahead and killed his parents), some lesser bully would make sure to spit on Eli or yank on his underwear or make him lick shoes.
    For his part, Eli attempted the defense that every afflicted and hunted beast attempts, the defense of a sand dollar that settles into the ocean floor or a beaten dog that cowers beneath his forepaws, the worthless twin defenses of shrinkage and anonymity. Eli stood with the little kids, his big, greasy, flaking head a foot above theirs, staring at the ground, sniffling with whatever airborne bug he was carrying that day, trying to look inconspicuous as the dandruff flaked down around his greasy head.
    I stood only a few feet away, but Eli and I never spoke. In fact, none of the underclassmen at the bus stop ever spoke, staring instead at our shoes or looking down the road, praying to the God of afflicted children that we would see our bus—the color of sweet potatoes—rising over the hill behind us and making its way to our stop. My little brother Ben would whisper under his breath: “God’s noggin, would you hurry?” He had recently become an inveterate taker-of-the-Lord’s-name, and he’d taken to jotting down new ones when they popped into