The Blind Man

      My name is Cody Anderson. I have been working on this plantation since I was very little. I remember the day I was put to work as clearly as if it were yesterday. It was the day I turned eight, or so my Master told me. I don't know how old I am, really. My Master came to me, and knelt down to look me in the eyes. He has hard, gray-blue eyes, void of anything. He told me, today was the day I would become a man. He told me, today I would finally do something worthwhile in my life. He told me that, if I behaved, I would not have to suffer. I blinked at him, and nodded.

     

      He showed me how to do simple tasks, tasks like plowing the fields. That was what he considered simple. I struggled with them; I was clumsy and weak, and when I would falter, he hit me. I cried, my small brown eyes so innocent, questioning, for I was little then and I did not know why he hurt me. The master said it was punishment for failure. He told me I would learn how to work efficiently, so that I would not have to suffer. He always says that.

     

      But not the Blind Man.

     

      The Blind Man sits out on the porch, every day and all day, staring out with a distant expression. I know not a name for him, only a face; a kind face, a face that smiles with sightless eyes, only, he is not blind. He is not blind in the way that he can watch us toil away in the fields from sun up to sun down. H watches us as we huddle in our cabin in dead of night, when it is cold out and we cannot build a fire to warm ourselves. He sees our pain when the Master cracks the whip. I know, for he looks sad when he watches us.

     

      The Master is not so forgiving. Mr. Crowel does not see like the Blind Man. He yells, and hits, and looks at us like we are no different from the snakes and rats that scuttle underfoot through the fields. He calls us never by our real names, as if wanting us to forget who we are. Mr. Crowel has cold eyes. Mr. Crowel has dead eyes.

     

      Six days a week, we work the fields; work them 'till are bodies ache with the stress. We work until we are broken and sick. When we falter, we are punished, just as the Master told me would happen. We are punished for our failure, and despair of it all scars us deeper than any cat 'o nine tails ever could. I can see it in the men's hopeless eyes, in the women's moist ones. The Blind Man can see it too.

     

      But not the Master.

     

      The Master only sees priceless machines, machines that you can break countless times over, knowing they will heal. Their torn skin will heal in lumps, and bumps, and that is all the master is concerned with. The Blind Man knows the truth. He knows we are forever losing our minds, our hearts, our souls... and that is not something our bodies can repair. We are only human. The Blind Man sees this; the Master does not.

     

      On days when the Master is feeling generous, we have time to ourselves. I work on the cabin we share, and do my best to make sure the women and children are safe from snakes and insects. On these days, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be blind. I wonder why, oh why can't the Master see like the Blind Man does? Why can't the Master, whose eyes have not been covered by God's hand, see us as we are? Why does a man who cannot not even know the colors of the sky and the grass and sun, know that color is not important? These questions rattle my head until I want to scream, but I never do.

     

      Maybe one day, the Master will go blind, and maybe then he will finally see.