Blind and Deaf

Is he blind and deaf,  I wondered, as an old man hobbled forward to the other side of the dirt road as a stampede of bulls rushed towards him, their hooves pounding the ground so much that they sounded like an earthquake and kicked up dust like a tornado.

I ran after the man, grabbed him by the arm, and yanked him, dragged him the rest of the way across the street. There was a light thud beside us, and then I stumbled and lost my shoe, but I never slowed my pace. Wind rustled my hair and brushed against my back as the bulls went by us.

As soon as we reached the stone sidewalk, I rested my hands on my knees, gasped for breath,  and wiped my brow. My whole body trembled. 

We had almost died.

When I relaxed, I straightened and looked at the man, who was staring right at me, and he was red in the face. So, he isn’t blind, I think. Poor guy must be terrified. “Are you alright?” I asked.

“Where’s my cane?”

Strange. He didn’t answer the question. Perhaps he is deaf. I looked behind me. The man’s cane was in the middle of the dirt road, snapped in two. So that was the thud I heard. I pointed to the cane and signed, “Sorry, sir, but the bulls trampled it.”

The man glared at me. “Are you deaf or something? I don’t know sign language.”

“Oh,” I said, and I repeated what I had signed aloud.

“Don’t tell me you couldn’t have saved my cane as well as me? Now I’ll have to get a new one, no thanks to you!”

For a man who had nearly tasted death, he was quite talkative. He went on and on about how that cane had been a gift from some relative, how the wood was from a special oak tree, and how I had ruined everything by not picking up his cane as I was rushing him to safety.

Passersby glanced at the scene with laughter in their eyes and amusement on their faces.

“He probably could have grabbed the cane,” one girl said to her friend, “if he was quick about it.”

Her friend nodded and they went on chatting as they walked off.

I don’t know where those girls were when I dragged the man to the other side of the road, but I was certain that if they had had to do what I did, they’d change their tune.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” the old man said, looking at me reprovingly

I stared at him like he was insane. “Do you want me to call an ambulance for you?”

This insulted him and he went on another rant about how he was perfectly healthy and not insane and the rest of what he said was lost to me.

For, as he spoke, I realized that the old man’s problem was not shock but ungratefulness. I released myself from the task of ensuring his mental health and walked away as he complained about his imaginary inconvenience. I imagined several scenarios where he lost his brand new cane, and, in the process of fuming over it, was trampled by cattle.

That was the day I discovered that some will always find a reason to complain.