The Artful Trade

When I lived up in East Nashville there was a pack of abandoned dogs that ran that part of town each night. My street dead-ended against the highway and they would gather together and listen to the sound of tires on the asphalt all trying to get someplace else. I worked as a lineman for the electric company, upgrading wires and boxes and repairing down cable when the wind blew hard. That spring the wind kept pulling it all down. I was the kind of guy that did my 8 and 40 and 365, then came home and tried to find some relief in the overtime between shifts. Then each dawn I would climb into my rusty truck and go out trying to repair whatever got torn down in the darkness. That year I met this girl, a kind of stray, and eventually she moved in. I guess I was trying to save her or maybe just myself. I asked her a couple times to marry me. But she always said she needed more time, which is Woman for No. But I didn’t speak Woman, so I never really understood. I guess I thought ...

Blindspot There are two kinds of blindness. The first kind is full of darkness and the things you didn’t see coming. The hurtling cab as you step off the curb, the sudden unexpected pink slip, the wife’s suitcase finally packed and waiting in the front hall. The second is a blinding light. It carries only those things you cannot unsee. The losses that arrive in small black hours. The incandescent regret burned into the dark of your memory. The mistakes you can’t see past. And vision, if it ever comes, is not cheap. You must pay. And sometimes it takes a kind of blindness to finally see. Years ago I lived near a home for the blind in New York City. It was a non-descript building, so plain it was nearly invisible. It had a huge all-seeing eye on a sign and beneath it the words “We Seek Vision.” Some graffiti guy spray painted the eye black that summer. I was living in a rent-controlled apartment on the Lower East side off Delancey. There was an old man who lived next door. ...

Chapter 21 Albuquerque The ships kept coming that September, slipping each night into New York harbor after the 13-day return across the North Atlantic. The world had once again been saved from itself, but war, as its always does, took its price in blood. There was a weariness to the soldiers on the decks but an expectation too. The men who had left as boys stood looking at the lights, trying to remember what home and love felt like, telling themselves that the war was behind them now. But some part in each remained unconvinced, like the past had crossed ahead of them and waited now in the eyes of everyone they ever knew. “Look at that,” a GI from Albuquerque said. “Never seen something piled so high,them buildings.” He tugged at an empty sleeve with his good hand. “Where I’m from things is spread out, farms and fences, not all scraped together like this here.” “Yeah big cities. They sure can pile it up,” another said. “Hey Pasqual you said you’s from here right?...