Free Cannonball by Joseph McElroy

been three blind women traveling in the back of that truck as we heard? If so why were they not apprehended? As if what you didn’t see would not trouble you.
    I didn’t ask, finding myself confronted one afternoon where I had expected ancient Nature by several small depictions of murder grouped around a colorful Mesopotamian picture of men in headgear, a Muslim embassy kneeling before the throne of an Abyssinian “king of kings” seeking the extradition of certain Islam converts I learned (but could never have guessed—nor the Chinese part of it), and this plus the scene of a beloved’s funeral flanked by mourning leopards and antelopes and delicate, bending trees Liz would not have cared to know about, no more than the full range of The Inventor’s wares. A “Book of Brothers” he took from my hand with a shake of his head, objects for sale that were not for sale, a tiny white China dog like no mutt I’d ever seen in my neighborhood, long snout pointed like a turnip, short legs I imagined to be powerful for fast running, I took it up in both hands all two inches of it, and turned it to see if it had a dick and found its eyes to be minute dots of shiny black, and became aware of The Inventor shaking his head but in some prophetic apology I later surmised—Not for Sale—Don’t Touch. But if it was for sale how much would it go for? I thought, letting it go from my fingers only. Not of interest to Liz, I felt sure, but definitely to my sister, also the pained (sometimes) cast of his face, unable to speak at length of something when speaking at length was what he was good at. Except that if I had ever brought Liz here her niceness or whatever it was and casual intuitions which she herself would have forgotten a day later would have interested our host.
    The things there. Why were they so important? Maybe they weren’t. A small painting of two women blind you could tell from how they were led by a blind, hooded person. A well-thumbed 1939-40 World’s Fair catalogue with a well-built guy leaning forward on his toes about to go off the high platform of the Aquacade interested The Inventor, too. “It makes you think,” he said. We thought about that. “He played Tarzan in the movies, you know,” said The Inventor. “You used to be a diver,” he said. “No more,” I said. “You can’t do everything. You are a thinker or a healer perhaps.” (I the healer?) He’d known me since I was ten. “Go regularly to the library,” said The Inventor. “Ten dollars?” I held up the catalogue. Too much, I felt. Yes, the catalogue cost ten dollars. No discount offered, none asked for. (For some reason my uncle was a source occasionally of extra cash.) “Where is your friend Milt today?” Milt was angry because of a claim The Inventor had made for the saliva of an old man he knew the chemical composition of which could help you see better if not cure blindness itself though produced pretty weird sight where people walked up to you like low-flying aircraft and L.A. palm trees which was better than blindness probably. Yet Milt was a guardian of manners. He knew of the China dog. When one day I asked why wasn’t it for sale, Milt muttered, “Whatsa matter with you?” But The Inventor confessed he’d acquired it in exchange once for—he paused. “In… China ,” I said, not quite knowing and in that instant, an instinct, a picture that receded like a small wave on the beach or a shadow in the corner of your eye, a great thing, though—that you would do , but you can’t bring it back. What passed between The Inventor and Umo? In reply to one question I could ask The Inventor, many people nowadays, without legal ID, knew how to come and go across national borders. “Even as young as Umo,” I said. “He knows his way around,” said The Inventor.
    Umo came and went at East