Walking in the Dark

I'm used to that, I guess

“Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment—the moment when a man knows forevermore who he is.” —Borges

A Single Moment

I initially planned to share this for Father’s Day, as it involves an act of heroism and the love of a father for his son. But as I was preparing this essay, I came across a short story by Jorge Borges that left me deeply affected and added another layer to my own. So please forgive the delay, but I think you will see it was all for the better.

Note: To appreciate this story, you need to begin by reading “The Blinding”

Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-74)

Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine polymath and writer whose poetry and short stories have come to define Latin American literature and magical realism. Born in 1899, Borges began publishing essays and poetry in surrealist literary journals as a young man and published his first short-story collection at 36. His poetry gave him an international reputation, which only grew when his short story collections were translated into English. And in 1961, he received the Prix Formentor alongside Samuel Beckett, earning the author worldwide acclaim.

Nevertheless, as Borges was approaching this lofty peak, he was also going blind. In what seemed to him to be a family curse (Borges’ father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all went blind), his vision was deteriorating rapidly on account of untreated cataracts, and by 55 he was completely blind.

But Borges handled his blindness with courage and even gratitude, describing his affliction as a blessed irony:

No one should read self-pity or reproach

Into this statement of the majesty

Of God; who with such splendid irony,

Granted me books and night at one touch.

This resolve shines through Borges’ writing as he wrestles with destiny, time, and the mystery of existence. His short stories are full of danger, violence, and hopeless bravery—fateful moments where a man comes face-to-face with his destiny and all moral and philosophical questions melt away.

Weapons also feature prominently in Borges’ writing, especially knives. The conflicts between characters usually culminate in a duel or some other act of ritualized violence. But in almost every case, the characters are forced to contend with forces outside the strictures of convention and tradition and in doing so, taste their destiny.

This destiny, often revealed in a single moment of pure certainty, was irreversible and iron-clad:

“Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forevermore who he is.”

Borges’ “Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-74),” portrays such a moment in the life of a Gaucho figure pursuing a criminal across the wilds of 19th century Argentina.

The criminal, closely pursued by the soldiers, wove on horseback a long and devious labyrinth by his comings and goings; nevertheless, on the night of July 12th, the soldiers cornered him. He had taken refuge in a field of tall grass. The darkness made it almost indecipherable. Cruz and his men, wary and on foot, advanced toward the brush in whose tremulous depths the secret man was lurking or sleeping. A crested screamer cried out. Tadeo Isidoro Cruz had the feeling that he had already lived this moment. The fugitive emerged from his lair to fight. Cruz descried him, a terrible sight—the overgrown mane of hair and the gray beard seemed to consume his face. I cannot give the details of the fight. Let it suffice to recall that the deserter badly wounded or killed several of Cruz’ men. Cruz himself, as he fought in the obscurity (while his body fought in the obscurity), began to understand. He understood that one destiny is no better than another but that every man should revere the destiny he bears within him. He understood that the other cavalrymen and his own uniform were now a burden to him. He understood his intimate destiny, that of wolf and not of gregarious dog. He understood that the other man was himself. The dawn broke over the enormous plain. Cruz threw down his kepi, cried out that he would not be party to the crime of killing a brave man, and began to fight the soldiers alongside the deserter, Martin Fierro.

This scene gripped me, and I kept returning to it in my mind while preparing this essay. What is it like to experience this moment? Do I know anyone who had experienced it?

Strangely enough, the man who I was writing about at the time had. My granddad had tasted his destiny in a single, terrifying moment. And, no, it wasn’t when he was blinded (the subject of my piece “The Blinding”)… instead, it was years later, when he was a husband and father, walking in the dark in a strange place he would never truly know.

I would like to share that story with you today, and I hope that it will inspire you to reexamine your own life, fight through darkness and obscurity, and with any luck, taste your destiny.

Walking in the Dark

My granddad was blind for most of his life, thrust into a world of darkness after a dynamite explosion when he was just 17.

But he carried on. He found a woman, got addicted to cocaine but broke it, married the woman, had a family, and moved away from ranch country into the city, where he made a living as a small business owner.

He was a serious man, pensive and curt, and he didn’t like complaining because he had never once complained himself. He was a rancher at heart and never gave up the laconic manner of his people. The city was comfortable, convenient, and easy, but it was also loud and felt crowded, even to a blind man.

It was in the city rather than on the windswept plains of Cedro Ranch that my granddad experienced his single moment.

I will let his wife, my grandmother, take it from here:

About half a block south of our store, Paul and Mary Mowry lived with their three children. Their little boy, Pat, was the same age as Ashley, and the little boys played together and were in and out of one another’s houses constantly.

Running along the front of the Mowry’s property was a deep irrigation ditch which was normally dry, and there was a big bridge crossing the ditch where the road turned into the Mowry property.

It was Memorial Day, and I remember Henry’s frantic screams piercing the noonday stillness.

“Ashley! Ashley! He’s drowning!”

I had just brought Dad home from the hospital a few minutes before and was busy preparing lunch in the kitchen. Running out the kitchen door, I raced more than a hundred yards to the Mowry place, which was catty-corner from ours.

Henry was desperately dashing to and fro across the bridge which covered a culvert lying at the bottom of the irrigation ditch, which was just inside Mowry’s fence. The ditch had overflowed with swiftly running water, and it was sloshing over the bridge and pooling in the street.

When I reached Henry, he immediately told me that Ashley, just three years of age, had slipped and fallen into the water while trying to retrieve a stick horse. He had been swept into the culvert but had not come out the other side.

Just before I arrived home, Dad, who was totally blind, had sent Henry over to the Mowry’s, where Ashley was playing, to bring the child home for lunch. From inside the house, Dad had heard us all frantically screaming, and so he busted through the door and went running down the narrow street, passing between several large pieces of highway equipment that had been parked along each side of the road. Turning in at the Mowry’s gate, Dad cut his arm deeply on the barbed wire as he passed through.

Plunging into the water at the upper side of the culvert, Dad was nearly pulled under before he realized the futility of trying to go in on that side. And so he quickly made his way to the other end of the culvert, slipping, falling, crawling, and groping along as he pushed through the surging water, until he had forced his body inside the small opening. I was terrified, for I feared Dad would drown, too. Reaching inside the culvert as far as he could, his hand came in contact with a large stick and he pulled it until the released debris piled behind a large fruit basket lodged deep inside the culvert. The awful pressure soon swept him out of the culvert, along with the basket, and we did not see Ashley until Henry, always alert, saw the little boy’s body being swept rapidly downstream. Henry called out to me and then, running as fast as we could, we caught little Ashley just before he was sucked inside another culvert.

Dad came running downstream right behind us, and it took all his strength to pull Ashley’s waterlogged body out of the ditch and up onto the bank. Ashley was limp and his face had turned black. He had been stuck inside the culvert for about fifteen to twenty minutes, and so I just knew he was dead.

As Ashley was lying on the bank, Mary Mowry, who was the head nurse at the hospital, immediately started working on him. Then her husband, Paul, drove up and lent a hand. Paul had been a lifeguard on Lake Eerie before he moved down south, and so he gave little Ashley mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After what seemed like an eternity, Ashley’s eyelids flickered and he uttered a feeble cry as torrents of water gushed from his mouth.

The Mowrys raced Ashley to the hospital while Dad and I ran home to change our sodden, muddy clothes. We then raced to the hospital, which was about thirteen miles from our home, but to me the drive seemed endless.

Parking in the hospital visitor’s lot, we had to walk by a long, low window to reach the entrance, and to my amazement and delight, I could see our little son, Ashley, standing up in a crib, clad in a hospital gown.

Seeing us pass by the window he clapped his hands and shouted, “There is my daddy!”

Ashley was kept in the hospital overnight for observation was discharged the very next day with a clean bill of health.

Cuddled up on his father’s lap as we drove home, Ashley said, “Daddy, I heard music in the water.” Chills ran up and down my spine, and even Dad shivered.

Weeks later Granddad was invited to fly to New York with Henry to tell the story over radio. It was his first time on a plane and first time in New York City; he wore his ranch hat the whole time.

During the program, the interviewer, Dan, asked Granddad how he found his way into the culvert.

Dan: With the water rushing along, how could you find your way, Mr. Percy?

Granddad: I felt my way, Dan. Just like walking in the dark, and I’m used to that, I guess.

Granddad never talked much about life’s deeper questions, though I’m convinced he wrestled with them in his own quiet way. How could he not, having lost his eyes at 17?

Sometimes I wonder if he saw his blindness as a curse or some kind of punishment. But then I think of the day he saved Ashley, and I cannot help but wonder if that single moment, like a revelation, put such thoughts to rest for good.