This blind guy was just about to take a tumble—I mean quivering right over the edge of the steps, not even bothering with his cane, tucking it up under his armpit, because he was using both hands to stuff some bills back into the narrow bank envelope and was having a hard time because the bills were soft and finger-worn, like a sow’s ear (or as soft as chamois). He was approaching the steps a bit sidelong, just about to the steep and narrow risers—built to look grand and stately when seen from the street. Being versed in architectonics, an engineer expert in spotting structural deficiencies, I noticed the disharmony in the whole setup, which included this man who was going toward the steps as I moved about two yards behind him. Then he did a frozen midair poise, a stasis, holding there, his seersucker suit wrinkled around his hips, a big stain of yellow across the back of the coat (one of those stains that appear when you pull the coat, reeking of moth flakes, out of winter storage). I knew the man not by name but by his reputation as the owner of the old boatyard, who had suffered from a freak accident (according to some) or by foolishness (according to others), spackling down a gluing compound while igniting a Camel Light and thereby creating a massive cloud of dull blue flame that devoured his boat and his eyesight. As a divorcé (everyone knew), he carried a lonely demeanor along with his blindness; by this I mean beside his blindness or compounded by it. You could tweeze this aspect out of him if you tried hard, separate it the way a prism might separate light, so that you knew his wife, Janice, who had remarried and might be seen picking her kid up from the front of school at times, hadn’t just left him because of the blindness (you gave her the grace of that doubt) and probably had left him for much better and clear-cut reasons, one of which was his nasty temper. He was seen taking a hammer to the last of his boats, a blue-trimmed day cruiser—blindly groping his way over the hull and smashing the bulkhead before one of his yard hands grabbed him from behind and subdued him. Rumor has it that it took at least five men to get him calmed down. He fought like a man who couldn’t see, clawing the air with his fists, kicking whatever he could, clutching whatever was there to grab. Perhaps this gave me pause, this violent tendency—or the hearsay of it, the rumor itself solidifying into something larger than this man. Rumor also had it that he hated like hell to be helped in any manner and was prone to taking his cane to the side of your head if you did so much as offer up a careful hand on the elbow, and had even fought valiantly against a warning device to help guide the sight-impaired across the streets of our fair town. The fear that he might slam his cane into my brow restrained me. I did nothing. I waited half a second and let him take that step. I did give a bit of a warning shout, just before he went down. It was a squeak, my wife said, like air being released through the taut neck of a balloon. Off he went into the air, head over heels. My shoes felt heavy on the steps. I went down and cradled his heavy head and stated firmly that someone should call 911. You’re not going to hit me with your cane, I was thinking, you’re not going to hurt anyone. But I was saying, You’re gonna be all right, pal. It’s going to be all right buddy. You ain’t slipping away from us yet. Hang in there. Hang on. Help is on the way. It’ll be here soon. Don’t move. Don’t move at all. Just stay right there and breathe easy. Take nice easy breaths. Don’t go. Don’t go at all. Just a few minutes and you’ll be on your way.