My desire to help guide the blind man when I see him through the bank doors is just tiny, nothing much, a very small seed in the core of my fruitless heart. Microscopic is the way I describe it to the police during the inquest into the fall and the so-called riotous aftermath. Not duty or a sense of right and wrong but maybe a small hint that if I do not help this man who is swaying toward that fateful first step, then in some way I will be indicted as one who did not come to the aid of a fellow human, no matter how sordid or pathetic that human might be, which was the case, because this man stank of urine and God knows what—dirty from top to bottom. This image of his face stuck with me through the whole process: here was a man with a fine estate and with so much to his name, putting aside the damage he suffered in that horrible fire, who has let himself go to seed. His face was not only blemished by the scar tissue, which would be expected in such cases, but was also dirty in an industrial sense, with grit and grime and smears of what seemed to be axle grease smashed into his pores. Coming upon him and trying to take hold of the very fine nub of his elbow, bony and sharp, I thought of that Walker Evans photo: a man in the moth-holed cap presumably just out of the coal mine, clutching his shovel handle, staring half blankly into the lens. Not a bit of charm or irony on that fucked-up face. A face void of insight. A blank face holding all the blank portents of humankind. The blind man’s face was similar but gave the impression that it might be cleaned up with a good scrubbing: just a nail brush and a bar of lava soap. My desire was only to clean up this man, to move him toward some place where he might be able to bathe, to rub his back with a brush, to scrub beneath his nails, to shave, to buff his feet with a pumice stone, to shampoo his scalp, to dab a cloth under the fold of his ears, to sprinkle aftershave across his face, to trim his nose hairs, to pluck his brows, to clip his nails, to exfoliate his skin, to brush his shiny hair; a desire to move him at least in the direction of all this had me slightly ahead of the blind man, nudging him and therefore causing him to misstep and tumble forward. Unfortunate as it is, the story does have its elements of humor, I am told: the acrobatic, clownish nature of his fall. His foppish Chaplinesque bowlegged tramp moves as he fell. The whole thing is certainly grist for the rumor mill. Many are afloat regarding the event: I pushed him./ I was angry and insisted that I help him./ I didn’t help him./ I didn’t come near him./ I was still in the bank counting my money when he fell./ I gave him a good hard kick in the ass./ He staged the whole event in order to sue me./ He was suicidal and found the most intricate manner to kill himself—so intricate he could not have planned it in such detail./ He pushed me./ I pushed him back./ We pushed each other and fell simultaneously./ He wasn’t blind./ He was a fraud./ I was the one who was blind—legally, though I could see colorless masses across my field of vision./ I wasn’t near the bank. I was in the Grand Union.