"Glasseye?
Yeah, sure. He ate lead paint as a baby. His mother sat him on the
steps outside and took donations for favors behind the door. The other
kids beat up on him because he was smaller than they were." At Martin's
apartment, after fifteen minutes of Mac knocking, despite his best efforts
to appear not at home. "His mother slept most of the day but his
grandmother took him to church on Sunday. He listened to the music and
held the hymn book upside down. They dropped a collection plate on his
head and it was so full it gave him a concussion. The emergency room
kept him waiting three hours and the nurses played cards and bet on the
Governor's conviction and the man next to him who came in first died of
a heart attack waiting.
"He
never had a room to himself anywhere he lived. One day when he thought
he was alone in the living room his father came in and caught him
pounding the pud and drove a fork through his eye, pulled it out and
headed after his mother in the bedroom. He put his finger over the hole
holding blood and viscera in, keeping the ball in the bargain. The kids
at school beat up on him because his eye was different from theirs.
"His
father disappeared before he was born. Someone stole the welfare check
from the mailbox and his mother couldn't take him to the doctor for a
staph infection in the eye that really didn't look so bad and feed and
other eight children too. His grandmother played bingo and wasn't
watching him when a splinter from the bench caught under his eyelid.
His mother left the state the day after he was born. His father had to
leave him alone in the daytime while he worked, tying Glasseye to a
bed. He started school three years late and none of the other children
would talk to him because he was bigger than they were (but not by
much), and besides, he had a congenital eye defect that made him look
funny," Martin said. "Or something like that."
