Free Together by Tom Sullivan, Betty White Page B

of
blind. It tells me you're a cheerleader for the disabled of this world. And I'm
not buying any of it."
    The big man
returned to his chair. "Okay, kid," he went on after a sigh. "I
get the feeling you not only feel sorry for yourself, but you figure you're the
only person on earth who ever got a bad break. Is that right?
    "So
here's my story. I moved to Colorado because I was the number one draft choice
for the Denver Broncos, but there was also something going on called Vietnam
that involved another draft. Getting picked by the NFL didn't stop Uncle Sam
from sending my black hulk overseas. It was 1973, and with a little bit of
luck, I would still have been playing when the guys began to get the big money.
Yes siree, I would have been with John Elway and all the boys in the Super
Bowl. And then there was a little matter of a mine blowing up in my face up by
the DMZ, and it changed everything. I was kind of ugly before it went off in my
mug. But now"—he laughed again—"now it's just as well you can't see
because the scarring will never heal."
    "Sorry,"
Brenden heard himself say. "I'm very sorry."
    "You
know what?" the man went on, "the scarring inside, well, that's
healed pretty well. I'm quite a minority in this country—a 280-pound
African-American blind guy with a wife and three kids, a house in suburbia that
I can't pay for, and some bills that are overdue. All in all, I'm a pretty
lucky son of a gun, don't you think?"
    Brenden
couldn't help it. He became absorbed by the man's honesty, drawn in by his
openness. "Listen," he asked, "do you really like your life? I
mean, the way it is? No bull? You're really okay about it?"
    Brenden heard
the big man lean forward, the desk creaking under the weight of his elbows.
"Listen, Brenden," he said with sincerity in his tone, "you're
in for a rocky road if you decide to try and take your place back in the world.
Let me give you some statistics. There are a million and a half blind people in
this country. Let's say out of that group there are about eight hundred
thousand folks who could hold meaningful jobs. Yet only about 20 percent of us
work. The rest of us, well, we live on the public dole, either because we
haven't got the confidence or because we're simply lazy. You have to decide
which one of those you want to be. Not many of us get married and have
families, but frankly that's usually because we're much too focused on
ourselves. A lot of us get involved in organizations for the blind. Not bad,
but many of these organizations, well, frankly, they're pretty militant, and
they become sanctuaries for angry human beings.
    "In my
own case, before I took this job, I spent ten years working on the outside just
to prove I could. You'll still go through a lot of patronizing. You'll sit in a
restaurant with some good friends some night, and a waitress will walk up to
the table and say to them, 'What would he like to eat?' People will talk loud
because they think that being deaf is also part of being blind. I suppose you
can blame old Helen Keller for that.
    "You'll
get up some mornings, and if you're not well organized, you'll walk out of your
house dressed like somebody left a rainbow in your closet. And a lot of times
people will talk about you as if you're not really there. If you get lucky and
get married and have kids, you'll probably get hit in the head with a baseball
trying to coach Little League. And unless you're willing to work real hard here
at the Center, you'll probably be eating frozen dinners or going out most of
the time because you'll never really learn to cook. Are you getting what I'm
saying, kid?"
    Involuntarily,
Brenden nodded, but before he could correct himself, Barnes interjected.
    "I heard
you nod. Starch in your collar. Got a girl, Brenden?" Barnes asked.
    "Yeah—her
name's Lindsey. She wants to be a lawyer."
    "Well,
here's the deal with relationships. If you find the right one, I mean someone
who can really love you and appreciate you, your marriage can