Seventy-one
Bald and hunched, his mustache white, the old man sat on a bench in the park across from the retirement home. He wore sunglasses on an overcast day. Hooked to the bench was a white cane.
Tom Bigger sat beside the blind man and said, “What do you think of all the news?”
“I’ve heard their voices. They sound like angels. The sound of them makes me happy. I wish I could see them. Are they beautiful?”
“They are. They’re the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
“The news last evening said seventy thousand pair counted so far, worldwide.”
“You hear the news this morning?” Tom asked.
“No. What now? Mirna, my wife, she says the next thing we’ll discover they can fly like birds. What do you think it means?”
“Another chance,” Tom said.
“That’s how it feels to me, too. You know what I think?”
“What do you think?” Tom asked.
“One of us ever kills one of them, then that’s the end for us, for all of us. That’s the end, right there.”
“You could be right,” Tom said. “On the news this morning, they say scientists have sequenced their genome. Know what they found?”
“Something amazing,” the blind man said. “That’s what I hope. I’ve been waiting all my life for something amazing.”
“First,” Tom said, “they don’t look anything like us. Not like us at all. But what the scientists say is their genome matches ours in every detail.”
The blind man laughed. He couldn’t stop laughing for a while. The character of his laughter was sheer delight, and Tom found it infectious.
When they had stopped laughing together, the old man said, “Have you seen one for real or just on TV?”
“I not only saw two for real, sir, but I saw them come through—from wherever they came.”
The blind man reached out, found his shoulder, pressed a hand to his arm. “Is this true? You were a witness?”
“On a bluff above the sea, farther down the coast from here. It changed my life, seeing it happen.”
“Tell me about it. Tell me all about it, please.”
“The first thing I need to tell you is, there were squirrels on the bluff, and a dozen birds, and they all became very still when it happened. But it wasn’t the appearance of the pair that transfixed them. It was something else. I sensed something was with us that I couldn’t see, something that maybe the birds and squirrels could see, something that brought the two animals or passed them through from wherever. I don’t know. I was very afraid, but at the same time … more alive inside than I had been for a long, long time. And … I was changed.”
The blind man considered this in silence for a while, and then he said, “Are you my Tom?”
“Yes, Dad. I’m your Tom.”
“Oh, I want to touch your face.”
“It’s not a good face, Dad. I’m afraid for Mom to see it.”
From behind the bench, a woman said, “I’ve seen it, my love. You passed me on the way to sit with your father. You didn’t know me, but I knew you.”
Tom allowed his father to touch his face, and his father wept, not only at his son’s suffering, but also with joy.
When Tom rose and turned to see his mother, she said, “You are so beautiful, Tom. No, look at me. You are beautiful. Your face is a face of transcendence.”