Ariel Johnson
CRTW 187
Final Project
Blind Is Not Enough
Dear Doctor Pritchard,
I am sad to inform you that these are my final hours. I believe it my duty to tell you, my most loyal doctor—and though it may not be appropriate—I dare to call you my dear friend. I have come to conclusion that my life must end today. This may come as a surprise to you, I’m sure, but there is nothing left for me now. I suppose you would be wondering why? I fear I have not been entirely truthful with you, though, I assure you my dishonesty was not always on purpose, as you will see. You see, there are parts of my life’s story I have left out of our sessions and I believe it is time you learned the truth, as have I.
My name is not John Hatchet but rather Julio Antonio Hernandez-Bulkeley de a Villa Llorando Tortuga. My mother, born Mary Marie Bulkeley, a woman of Welsh descent, met my father Marceliano Estévan Hernandez, an Argentinean, in Peru. My father was on business and my mother was said to be on a church trip to help the homeless. My mother had been wandering through the market place when she quite literally ran into my father. As my father tells it, “I felt her sweet hand brush against my wrist, just below my gold watch, and I knew at that moment I never wanted her to leave my sight again.” My father took her back to live with him on his cattle ranch and that is where I raised, knee deep in manure, from the day I was born until the age of thirteen. This you know to be true, in part. I told you I had lived on my own since puberty, though you know it to be closer to the age of fifteen. I did not, however, leave to work in the Bayou as a fisherman. That came later, and not quite in the way I had told you, but we will get to that, Dr. Pritchard, we will.
I would like to tell you that I left my home due to a rebellion or a great flood, or perhaps a love affair between myself and the mayor’s beautiful, soft and only daughter, Señorita Sofía Vega Delgado de la Villa Llorando Tortuga, the luscious virgin that haunted my dreams with skin as warm as milk fresh from the utter and lips soft as the first feathers of a young Tacuarita who has not yet learned to fly. And to think she could have been mine, but that is neither here nor there, not now, anyway. I will focus.
I left home by chance one day. My mother, feet swollen with pregnancy and unable to walk, sent me into town to retrieve a salve for her engorged extremities. All the horses had been put out to pasture as it was the Sabbath and not even the horses should have to work on such a holy day, so I went into town on foot. I don’t remember it being a particularly sunny day. I was not over come with heat though there was not even a breeze to cool my brow. I remember thinking the weather must have taken a day of rest as well. The leaves on the passing shrubs did not flicker as I passed, nor did the dust stir beneath my cracked leather boots. As I walked into town I noticed my feet simply kept moving and I, hypnotized by the stillness around me, kept walking until nightfall and continued as the moon rose to greet me with her full pockmarked cheeks. I walked for days or even weeks. I walked through desert and mountain, over road and swamp and occasionally traveled by tree, swinging from branch to branch like a howler monkey in search of its mate. I did not stop until I reached the ocean and there was nowhere left for me to go.
At the coast I met a man, a Captain Ignacio Dominguez, who ran a good deal of commodities back and forth from Argentina to the United States. Though I now have a better understanding of the dangerous circumstances I was living under, he never told me exactly what his ship carried. You must remember I was a young boy, with holes in my boots, and I was grateful for any labor I could find. So I became a cabin boy aboard La Sirena del Muertos. I was hardly allowed to do anything but mop, sleep and eat the small bits of dried crusts given to me at the end of each day. However, my time aboard the ship was cut short, much like the life of our dear captain, may he rest in peace.
On the night of my fourteenth birthday there was a mutiny aboard the ship. The crewmen gathered together outside the captain’s quarters in the middle of the night. All at once they broke down the door and tied up Captain Ignacio with the hammock upon which he slept and, after sticking him several times with a knife, threw him overboard. Having never been told my true origins, the crewmen believed me to be the Captain’s favored son. They tied me up as well, holding down my flailing limbs as I tried to explain I was not the son of Ignacio Dominguez, but rather the offspring of a Welsh woman and a well to do Argentinean ranchero. They shouted at me, “¡Mentiroso!” “¡Hijo del Diablo!” One man stuck me in the left shoulder and again in the side as they threw me into the rippling water that glowed like mercury in the moonlight.
That is where I get my scars from, Doctor, the ones I’ve shown you and you stared at with such intensity. You said there must be a wonderful story behind them, but I could not remember then what I remember now. I hope the tale has lived up to your expectations.
All of my memories were lost when I was thrown in to the sea, but by some act of God I washed up on the shores of Miami beach where a large black woman in purple fishnet stockings and a studded black skirt that hugged the rolls in her thighs, stumbled up on me while having a smoke. She was a prostitute who went by the Miss Honey Beefly. I was feverish and bleeding, she took me in and spent weeks nursing me back to health. It was in her house that I met my first wife, and the second woman I would ever promise to love until the day I died. The first, of course, being Señorita Sofía Vega Delgado de la Villa Llorando Tortuga, the mayor’s beautiful, soft and only daughter. Though she never knew. I never confessed my love to her directly, only from behind the masks of barrels and sheep and muttered the words under my breath when standing at town gatherings. If only I had known! But I am getting ahead of myself again, forgive me.
As I began to regain my strength I was allowed to walk about the house freely and converse with the other women who lived there under the loving care of Miss Honey Beefly. I would do chores around the house, moping floors, washing dishes, cleaning tables, doing laundry. In the afternoons and evenings I would cross-town and spend time in the library. There was one afternoon at the library, some time after Miss Honey Beefly took me in, and this, Doctor, you may recognize, but because it is an important moment in my life I feel it best to recreate the scene once more. I had just picked off the shelf a book titled Understanding The Greek Myth when I saw him sitting in one of the over stuffed chairs. The sunlight was coming through the window at an angle that cut across his body like a sword. He wore a lavender collard shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows revealing a soft layer of pale blonde hair that rolled around his squared wrists. He had on creased pinstripe pants with a matching waistcoat that had a delicate silver chain hanging from the pocket. He was sitting with one leg cross over his knee. The glare on the tip of his shoe as he tapped his toe made me blink. Without realizing my movements, I began moving toward him.
He looked up from his book. “Hello, Old Chap.” I smiled at his accent; just like Sherlock Holmes. “Are you interested in the tales of Greece as well?” My eyes were fixated on the square part of his nose, just below the eyes. He held his book up to show me the spine. “We are reading the same book aren’t we?”
It was a feeling that I can only now describe as a daze like the one I felt when I left home, a cloudiness that engulfs the brain, suffocating thought, while keeping motor skills functioning perfectly. He motioned to the seat next to him. My knees buckled and my waist folded and landed on the cushion without warning. He began discussing the myths; Persephone, Zeus, Oedipus. “Can you imagine,” he asked, “waking up one morning only to realize you’ve been sleeping with your mother? Bloody horrifying if you ask me. I don’t blame the poor bloke, I’d poke my eyes out too.”
I would like to take a moment, Doctor, if you don’t mind, to remind you that although I came from a small town in Argentina, I did not come from a poor family. I was a well-educated young boy up until the age of thirteen when I left home in a similar daze to the one I was feeling then. The misfortunes that threw me from La Sirena de los Muertos did cause me to lose all memories of my life prior to being washed upon the shores of Miami, but I still knew how to read, write and properly analyze literature upon my arrival. The hours I spent reading in the library were just as vital to my education, as were the hours spent in Miss Honey Beefly’s basement—a rare find in southern Florida—watching video tapes of out dated British mystery shows.
But again I digress. He had asked me, and I this I remember well, “Does the name Lethe mean anything to you?” I shook my head. He took the book from my hands and flipping it open to a spot near the middle and set it back in my lap. “Take a look at that,” he said, pointing to the center of the page. It read: Lethe: One of the five rivers of Hades, the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness.
I did not understand why he would show this to me, of all the myths we could discuss, but as I lifted my head from the book, he stood up, pulling a silver pocket watch from his waistcoat as if preparing to leave. “Well, I best be off.”
I managed to ask for his name, though I was never certain the words actually left my mouth. He stuck out his hand. “Henry. Henry Jacob Anderson.”
“John Hachet,” I replied.
He seemed to nod in approval. “It’s been a pleasure, John,” he said. I would not see him again for nearly ten years.
Now I would like to pause for a moment and make something clear. I do not want you to think that I learned English simply by watching videos and reading textbooks. The women of Miss Honey Beefly’s house, many of whom were self taught in English themselves, each took turns teaching me three days a week, my favorite of these was a young Miss Candi Hart. She had fiery red hair that flowed down her back like the tail feathers of a phoenix and a laugh that danced like wind chimes on a summer night. It was she that gave me the name John Hatchet my first night there to fill the void of my forgotten identity.
On the day of my eighteenth birthday I asked Miss Candi Hart to be my wife. I proposed with a ring I bough from a twenty-five cent machine on the boardwalk. With some nudging from Miss Honey, who had always been concerned with my immigrant status, Candi accepted and so it was that I was married to the beautiful Candi Hart, or rather the beautiful Heather McTavish, as I learned her real name to be. I got a job working at a hardware store and we moved into our own apartment that looked out onto the sea. Heather, as I now called her, stopped working for Miss Honey and got a job selling make up door-to-door. In the evenings we would both come home and flop down on our second hand floral print couch. It was lopsided and had torn cushions, but we held it together with carefully placed sugar packets and strips of duct tape. I would lay there, holding her until she fell asleep in my arms. It was like cradling an angel, or a lamb, but like all things in life, our love did not last.
One night as I held her I swore that there was stardust in her hair. I told her I could see it shining in the moonlight and she sat up enraged, her blood shot eyes made the green of her irises glow like emeralds. “What are you trying to say?” she shouted. “I told you I’d never go near that stuff! I’d never go near it!” She snarled like a horse in heat. I noticed a bit of blood caked on to the corner of her flared nostril. I reached out a hand to touch her face but she slapped it away, pushing me off the couch. I struggled to my feet, trying to calm her but she would not be consoled. She kept shouting hateful nonsense. The words swarmed around in the room in circles like a frightened school of fish. “You think it’s easy living with you? Living like this, you foreign sack of shit?” Like what, I could never understand.
Heather stood and began walking toward me. Her glowing eyes would not blink. I slowly began moving backward, one step at a time, until I was on the balcony pushed up against the railing. It was high tide and the waves bit down on the sand with the force of a thousand wolf’s teeth. She worked the wedding band off her finger; there was a thin stripe of green staining the skin where it had lain. “Take it!” she yelled. “Take this stupid marriage and go drown in hell!” She threw the ring into the ocean and I dove after it, hoping the waters would erase this life like they had erased my life before.
Needless to say, Doctor, I did not stay in Miami after that night. Heather and I had been married for over a year and I was real American citizen. I used what little money I had to get out of Florida and start making my way to California, where I was to met you. You see, Dr. Pritchard, it has always been a motto of mine, or had been up until last night, that it is never too late to start life anew.
From Miami, I made my way to Louisiana where I worked with a fisherman in the Bayou, just as I said before, but I only stayed long enough for a ticket to get out. When I reached my goal, I took the first flight I could find. You see, the fisherman had a daughter who loved to knit and had taken quite a fancy to me. She made me several pairs of socks, mittens and a lovely cabled sweater, which I still have. I once asked if she would knit me a waistcoat, but she only smiled and asked, “Why would you want something like that?”
After three months of work the fisherman had arranged for his daughter and I to be married. I admit, this was not in my plans of getting to California, but she seemed so willing to follow me anywhere as long as I never asked her to eat fish. On the day of the wedding her father asked me if I had brought a ring, and I pulled from my pocket the same ring Miss Candi Hart had thrown into the sea. It was misshapen and covered in a flaky turquoise tarnish. He asked me where I had found “a fucked up piece of shit like that.” I told him it belonged to my wife and recounted the tale of how she had thrown it into the sea. The fisherman turned white with fury and ran me out of town. His daughter, ever clever with her needles, knitted a noose and hung herself in the church that night. I will admit, I found it difficult to morn the loss.
From Louisiana I fled to New Mexico, and spent some time in Santa Fe. I got a job as an insurance salesman and took literature classes at night. It was there that I found a strong love for the works of Pablo Neruda and Sherman Alexie, as you and I have discussed in our meetings. I rented a room from a small Latino family, with two young boys, who constantly asked about my heritage, though I had nothing to tell them. I lived in a guesthouse in the back yard. It barely fit a bed and desk, but it had a private bathroom and I was satisfied. On Sundays, when the family would go to church, I would round the corner and peruse the local bookstore. This is where I had my second encounter with Henry Jacob Anderson.
It was a rather empty day at the shop. The woman who normally worked the register was in back sorting through a new shipment of books. I was flipping through a copy of Dumas’ Don Quixote wondering what it would be like to travel by horse, when I heard from behind me a voice call out, “John!” The voice struck a chord in me that made my organs shift. He was backlit by the early morning sun, yellow hair glowing like a halo around his head, and though it had been years since our brief encounter at the library in Miami, I knew it was unmistakably him. He was dressed nearly the same as before, shining shoes, creased trousers, solid black this time, no pin stripes, with matching waistcoat and silver chain hanging from the pocket, his shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbow, though this time instead of light purple he wore powder blue. He had not aged a day. He was smiling. “Hello, old chap.”
I hugged him, unable to believe my eyes. I had so many questions. Where had he been? Why was it he never came back to the library? What in God’s name was he doing in Santa Fe? But he brushed them all aside with the wave of his hand. We walked around the neighborhood and I explained to him where I had been. I told him about my marriage to Heather and it’s sudden ending, and my near marriage to the fisherman’s daughter, followed by her death and my narrow escape. I told him about my job as an insurance salesman and his face cringed. “Is that was you plan to do with your life? Sell insurance?” The tone of disapproval in his voice made my heart shrink inside my chest.
You have to understand, Doctor, that even though I had only met him once before when I was just a boy, I still felt a certain closeness to him, as if he was the only true friend I had, the only man I could trust. I had thought of him often since our first encounter, I thought I had seen glimpses of his shining shoes, or the motion of a man reaching into his pocket to produce a pocket watch, but it was never true and now here he was standing beside me, lecturing me on how to live my life. “Don’t you want more?” he asked. “A man who gets run out of Louisiana by pitch forks and torches should not live out his days as an insurance salesman. You should be out sailing the seven seas, exploring uncharted lands, making love to beautiful women!” I told him of my plans to go to California and his eyes lit up like a spark of static in the night. “I’ll go with you,” he said. I stopped walking and looked at him closely. “I’ll go with you,” he said again. “I was headed that way myself. I know a place where we can stay, a small flat in San Francisco not far from the park. Will you join me?”
My voice ejected itself without command. “Yes,” I said, “I would love to.”
“Wonderful. The landlady is a bitter old hag, but not to worry, she won’t bother you.” He took a piece of paper and pen from his pocket and placed in the palm of my hand. “That’s it,” he said. “Meet me there in two weeks. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it. He picked his watch from his waist coat pocket. “Well, I best be off,” and he walked off down the street leaving me standing with my mouth agape, a crumpled piece of paper in my hand.
I will admit, Doctor, I was skeptical at first, as to whether or not I could trust him or rather whether or not I should trust him. His charms surpassed all levels of spell binding and I found such odd comfort in his voice, no doubt having everything to do with the accent, but to suddenly move out to California, I do not think I would have gone had he not stopped as he was walking away at the last corner just before he disappeared from my view and said, “It’s never to late to start your life a new, John.”
And was it not fortunate that I had listened? For here we are seeing all the pieces begin to fall into place. Can you feel it, Doctor? Everything in time working toward this moment, this abominable now. California here I come. Right back where I started from, indeed. Whoever wrote that song should be ashamed. The words are a rancid bacteria on my teeth. It sickens me to think of all the events that were to unfold in this golden state, this golden city. It is as if my life were a series of arrows hitting every target necessary with precision and grace just to have the whole field blown up by a land mine. Now I know, Doctor, that I have told you the details of my life in California, which is how you know about my roommate Henry, and of course Martina.
Oh, Martina! To rip out my heart! My tongue! My eyes! To rub my skin until it falls in pieces of fleshy ash on to the soiled ground beneath my feet would never be enough. As you know, Martina and I met by chance, simply by chance, in a coffee shop on Haight Street. She was a student at the University, majoring in foreign policy. She had hair like raven’s feathers and skin like creamy terracotta clay. She wore a purple flower nested behind her ear. “It reminds me of home,” she told me. Though I was over ten years her senior she invited me into her house to discuss poetry. Elliot, Lorca, Pushkin, she knew them all and I agreed to go. Oh why did I agree? She was so innocent, so strong, so patient, so pure. She listened as I told her all that I could remember of my life’s story. She would kiss my mysterious scars and say, “Que bueno suerte whatever happened didn’t kill you. I would hate to have lived my life never having met you.” And dear Martina I felt the same! But we did not know! Oh what we did not know!
You recall, Martina is the one who recommended I see you, Doctor. She thought talking with you might help me to regain my memories before I washed up on the shores of Miami and perhaps it had. I would hate to think our time together had been a waste, but nothing brings back memories so well as a strong blow to the head. Perhaps you would like to add that into your notes, Doctor. You also recall, after our last visit I was to head out to the docks and Martina was going to teach me how to sail. I had been so nervous but both she and Henry had been so intent upon making me go. The ocean had always put me ill at ease, but she coaxed me on board and took us out to sea.
I was so clumsy. She would giggle at me the way only a young girl can, with a fairy like fluttering and a wrinkled nose. Everything was fine until the afternoon when the winds picked up and turned the bay sapphire and white. Martina was bringing the boat around when I tripped and fell into her. She fell backward, the rope escaped from her hand and as I looked up to see if she was all right, the boom swung around and knocked me off the ship. Luckily, due to my fear of the ocean, I had been wearing a life vest the entire trip, but the blow had rendered me unconscious and according to Martina I floated like a lifeless buoy until the coat guard came and retrieved me from the water.
I came to in the hospital. Henry was seated next to my bed reading a book. He smiled when my eyes opened. “Hello, old chap, remember this?” He held up his book and pointed to the center of the page, Lethe. There were voices coming from the hallway, a nurse, and a woman crying. Henry stood, “That’ll be your lady friend. I’ll leave you two alone.”
The nurse looked over my chart and began asking me a series of questions to which I could only respond in Spanish. Martina hesitated at first, but then stepped in as a translator. She explained the accident to me. I said to her in Spanish, “I need to go home. My mother is pregnant. Her feet are swollen and I need to go home.” I was in a daze and I could tell by the look on Martina’s face that she did not understand, so I repeated, “I need to go home. My mother is pregnant. I need to go home.”
Martina, that sweet angel, held my hand and asked, “Where is your mother, John? Where is home?” At this point Martina says I was sweating as if breaking a fever. I shook my head. “Julio, me llamo Julio. I have to go back to la Villa LLorando Tortuga,” and then fell back to sleep. It took a week for my strength to come back, both mentally and physically. The doctors said I showed great promise, that not very much damage had been done. I was speaking English again with in days, but Martina kept looking at me as if I were a ghost.
One night, when Henry had gone out on his own, I invited Martina to the apartment and offered to cook her a nice Cajun dinner, a wonderful skill I picked up while living in the south, when I confronted her behavior. “Amor,” I said, “you have been so pale ever since I woke up in that dreadful hospital. You have barely eaten, or slept, or even said a word to me. Cariño, what is wrong?” She was silent, standing by the window. “I am fine,” I told her. I flapped my arms and danced a bit of salsa. “See? Please do not blame yourself for what happened.”
She could only look at me in flashes. “No. It’s just—” I sat down next to her and took her hand in mine, but she pulled away. “It’s just, there was a moment,” she said, “when you first woke up and were still speaking Spanish, do you remember? You called yourself, Julio. You said you were from la Villa Llorando Tortuga.”
I nodded. “Yes, I remember, vaguely. Does that mean anything to you?” She began to cry. I tried to comfort her. “Martina,” I told her, “I don’t understand.” She excused herself from the table and went rummaging through her purse. She returned with a faded Polaroid of a man and a woman standing on the porch of a large white house with great big green doors. The man was Latino, and wore a white cowboy hat with an orange button down shirt and bolo tie with polished cowboy boots. The woman, who only came to his shoulder, wore a long sleeved brown dress and pointed boots, she had a worn out look of sadness stretched across her weathered face. The room began to spin. I asked her where she got the picture.
Martina choked back tears. “Do you know who these people are?” she asked. My vision was fading in and out. “Do you know who these people are?” she asked again.
I stuttered, “I—I,” and fell to the floor. I awoke to Martha fanning me with an oven mitt. We moved to the couch and she let me lay my head in her lap. After a long silence she said, “I never told you about my family.” And it was true, until now, her past had been more of a mystery than my own. “I come from a small town in Argentina,” she said. “My father was a rancher and my mother loved him very much, but she always had a sadness about her. They would never talk about it, no one would, until one day, when I was a young girl, she hung her self from the highest rafter in the barn. My father was often away for business or cattle drives or something, I never knew what. He didn’t have the time to take care of me on his own, so he hired the mayor’s daughter, who had always been like a sister to me, to live with us.”
And here I whispered that beautiful name, “Sofía.”
Martina choked back a sob. “She told me about a son, my brother, who my parents had lost before I was born, a loss my mother never recovered from, a loss she could never forget and I could never replace. It followed her to her death, may she rest in peace.”
I sat up. “That woman in the picture is your mother?” Martina nodded. “And her son just disappeared without a trace?”
She nodded. “They say he went into town one day and never came back.” She said even Sofía cried over the loss. She said Sofía waited day after day for Julio’s return because she had overheard a negotiation between her father, the mayor, and Martina’s father, Señor Hernandez, that she, Sofía, was to be married to Señor Hernandez’s son, Julio, when they were both of age.
It was as if all the air had left the room, left the planet. I was suspended in a state of lifeless anti-matter when suddenly my entire being was shot out like a pinball and slammed back into the earth. My stomach filled my nose. I ran to the bathroom and began vomiting profusely. Me? Sofía was intended to marry me? Oh, the life I left behind! I remembered the stillness of that day and the walking, just walking for miles and miles. I remembered it all, the mountains, the jungle, the Captain, the scars! They burned as I squatted, heaving away my insides while Martina hiccupped and sobbed on the couch.
Doctor, can you imagine waking up one morning to find you have been sleeping with your sister? The humiliation! The disgust! The absolute sin! How does one live with such a burden? And my mother! My sweet mother, who could not live without her only son, dead because of me! And Sofía! She could have been mine! If only I had just turned my feet and walked home.
Henry found me the next morning, crumpled in a corner by toilet, an empty bottle of tequila between my knees and two more at my feet. He lifted me by the underarms into the shower. I cried to the heavens as the cold water beat down on my head. My own sister, I thought. I made love to my own sister.
“So what are you going to do?” Henry asked me over a cup of tea. I beat my head against the table in response. “It’s not enough to put your eyes out, is it?”
I told him, “No, it is not.”
He repeated, “So what are you going to do?”
I told him, “I am going to kill myself, and may el Diablo have his way with me.”
Henry straightened his waistcoat. “That’s a bit melodramatic don’t you think?”
I looked at him. “Do you?”
He shrugged.
I drowned my tea in liquor.
And that’s when I began writing to you, dear Doctor. I am a disgrace to myself, to my family, to the United States, Argentina and every name anyone has ever called me, particularly Julio Antonio Hernandez-Bulkeley de la Villa Llorando Tortuga.
Now that I have confessed, I wish you all the best, Doctor, and please do not view my case as a failure for there is no amount of life on Earth that could prepare you for a scenario like this. For legal purposes I would like to note that I am leaving all my belongings to my roommate and closest friend, Henry Jacob Anderson. May the fates be kinder to you, than they were to me.

Sincerely, John Hatchet Or if you would prefer, Julio Antonio Hernandez-Bulkeley de la Villa Llorando Tortuga