Survival Till Seventeen

It is not often you can stare into a person’s eyes without causing embarrassment, but you could with the Imagination Guy. And the reason was because he saw you only in a blur. You were less than a silhouette to him when you entered his room. You were perpetually prismed with the wrong colors, shrouded in a haze, covered with a cloud around the edges of which would come floating the sound of your voice:

“Good morning!”

“That you, kid?”

“Yes.”

“Come in and sit down and tell me how you are.”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s the ticket!”

Then he would inquire if there was a morning paper in the hall. And I would go and find that there was. Mrs. Hasenfus, his landlady, was usually making beds when I arrived, and she was glad to have someone take the Imagination Guy off her hands and entertain him until her chores were finished. He wore a bathrobe and slippers and sat in a comfortable chair. He usually remained undressed and unshaved until noon. His hair was grey, and he had a tooth missing here and there. He was in his middle fifties when I knew him.

I would return with the morning paper and seat myself in a chair opposite his.

Cataracts — that’s what the doctor said the Imagination Guy had in his eyes. Cataracts! I was always peering into his eyes intently whenever they were wide open so as to find the little Niagara Falls I supposed were flowing in each retina. But he would invariably blink at the wrong moment and spoil the experiment.

“Mind reading me the headlines?” he would say when he heard me rumpling the newspaper, while he fumbled for a cigarette and lit it.

“I’ll be glad to!” I would say. And I would unfold the paper and begin to read the largest words printed on the front page.

PLANS FOR ELEVATED GRADE-CROSSING COMPLETED. WORK ON CENTRAL SQUARE STRUCTURE TO BEGIN AT ONCE.

That was enough when you were reading to the Imagination Guy. You might then lay down the paper for a while and listen to him talk. That nimble brain of his would immediately begin to anticipate the story and tell it far better than it was written in the news.

“It’s about time they got going on that thing,” he would say, as he visualized the whole construction with closed eyes. “There’s been an average of twelve people killed down there every year as far back as I .can remember. Imagine having a railroad running right through the main street of your city! And we’re supposed to be up-to-date! That’s the worst of living in a town that was founded in sixteen hundred and twenty-nine. Never seems to want to grow up, if you know what I mean. Gets cluttered up with a lot of old fossils who want to impede our progress. I don’t expect anyone has been able to keep track of the number injured down at that crossing. I nearly got knocked off myself once. It was when the gates were down and I didn’t hear the gong ringing. Pretty hard for anyone to hear it ringing with all the racket and noise and the jangling of the street cars. I expect this new plan will cost a lot of money. Three or four hundred thousand dollars, I should imagine. But it’s worth it. They’re going to have a lot of trouble, though, enlarging the street. There’s Tobey’s tobacco store. That’s got to go. And I expect it will cut into Emerson’s lunch room. And I imagine it will block off a lot of light in some of the shops. You won’t be able to see yourself in Hooley’s bar. Then I’m afraid those pillars that hold up the tracks will cause a lot of trouble. With automobiles coming along at the rate they are, there’ll be a lot of them bumping right into those pillars. However, I’d rather bump into something than have it bump into me. And it’s a crêpe and an undertaker sure, kid, if you ever get bumped by a railroad train . . . ”

I used to sit in absolute amazement at the way the Imagination Guy could develop in soliloquy the barest suggestions from the headlines in the daily news. He seemed to have all Lynn tucked in his head, its layout, its inhabitants, its history.

“You’re a wonder!” I would say to him.

“Who?”

“You!”

“Why?”

“The way you remember everything. The way you imagine everything. The way you see everything with those cataracts in your eyes.”

“Aw, forget it!” he would say in a depreciative snarl. “After all, I’ve got nothing else to do. . . . But how about turning to the sports page and reading me about yesterday’s ball games.”

The lingo of the sports page is the most fantastic in the world. And it is all condensed like cream in the headlines. Centuries from now, when the English language has perished, I wonder if some scholiast of the future will be able to decipher one iota of meaning if he has at hand only the leaders from an American sports page. Yet there were nine innings’ worth of rapturous instruction and entertainment in every one of these phrases as I read them out loud to the Imagination Guy:

MARANVILLE’S BUNT SAVES HAVERHILL. . . . TIGERS CLAW HOSE FOR SIXTH STRAIGHT. . . . PIRATES SINK REDS IN NINTH FRAME. . . . CARRIGAN S PEG NIPS GEORGIA PEACH OFF SECOND. . . . CUBS RESCUED BY TINKER TO EVERS TO CHANCE.

Friendship with the Imagination Guy implied obligations as well as privileges. For it seemed that every place you went you should be storing up things you had noticed and liked, so as to be able to tell them to him on your return. I might have remained his scout for years were it not for the following incident.

“Been swimming?” he said one day when I returned from a dip in the ocean.

“Yes.”

“How was the water?”

“Cold.”

“I mean how did it look?”

“Same as always.”

“Was it blue or green?”

That stopped me.

“Don’t you know the difference between blue water and green water?”

“No.”

“Well, when it’s calm and the wind is down and there’s no storm brewing, the water is blue. It’s just like a mirror, and takes it color partly from the sky. But when the wind is up and it’s rough and a storm is threatening, it gets restless, frantic, green, ready to leap up in high waves!”

“I never noticed that.”

“Well, you ought to. For pity’s sake, don’t let that beach get wasted on you, kid. We’ve got the most beautiful beach on the Atlantic Coast. King’s Beach! There’s nothing like it from Maine to Florida. Ever notice how Dow’s Rock extends out on one side and Red Rock on the other, taking a large armful of ocean and hugging it right to our shore? The Bay of Naples has nothing on our little bay, I’ll tell you. And haven’t we got our own Egg Rock out in the distance, pretending it’s Vesuvius? I love every inch of sand on that beach, and all the little pebbles. I love the small boats anchored off the point, bobbing up and down in the tide. I even love the sand pails and toy shovels of the children, and the colored umbrellas that shade the ladies when they bring their families down there for a day’s outing.”

I paused long enough to allow this rapture to dissipate. And then I glared at him with a rebellious look in my eye.

“Now see here!” I said, “I was the one who went swimming today, not you! And King’s Beach isn’t nearly as lovely as you say it is. Nothing is as lovely as you say it is. You make things lovely by the way you think about them and talk about them. No wonder they call you the Imagination Guy!”

He smiled a disappointed smile, showing all the vacancies in his teeth. He realized he had lost his hold on me. He dropped his head and sighed.

“I see you’re on to me,” he said.

“Doesn’t everyone get on to you after a while?”

“Shhhh! Here comes the landlady!”