Over the years, Carter will come to tell anyone who takes the time with him to listen, about the Kentucky girl coming to see him and bringing him the crutches, the mahogany crutches trimmed in black leather and polished shiny like fine furniture. "These right here," he'll say even though he doesn't have to. He'll tell how the girl saved her money and brought him the crutches and held them before him and how he simply sat there and then hung his head so that the girl thought he was having the pain again and waited quietly beside him as she had before. He'll tell how that was the first time the shame had set in, the first time. And how it was worse than the pain.
Carter will tell whoever will listen how the girl finally said to him: "I just don't know what to say" and touched him on the shoulder softly before she left, and he'll reach back when he tells this and touch his own shoulder and not feel a tear come to his eye because it's too long ago now.
"This is all thirty years back," he'll explain, and smile. And he'll show the overcoat, from his coat rack, how it was rewoven and cleaned so there's not even a trace of the bullet hole, and he'll say that he wears that coat in all the Chicago winters and tell how it keeps him warm even to this day.
*
When Carter got to Chicago, Ashby Slabaugh the famous society photographer said, "I'll give you a place to stay. Don't worry about a thing."
And the muscles in Carter's arms are the only things that gained strength, having to move him down Oak Street to the Jewel Grocery Market for his food and back up the three flights of stairs to the tiny room on the third floor among the paying tenants Ashby Slabaugh has, the young executives who want to live near the nightclubs. "It's the best I can do Carter," Ashby Slabaugh told him as he watched him begin the long struggle up the stairs from the studio for the first time.
Just like that, it was Ashby Slabaugh who at the start took away Carter's first name. All of a sudden it was just gone. But Carter didn't seem to mind. With all the other things to worry about and the really important things having been taken from him and long gone already.
*
At the beginning, the wracking pains from the shred of nerve the bullet didn't destroy had raced through Carter's body and into his brain three or four times an hour. They'd torn at the muscles in Carter's face as he gasped against them, twisting him into something ghastly and frightful. Carter learned eventually to hide his head in his arms without having to be told he was making a scene.
"We can't give you anything for that." All the doctors told him this at the beginning when he continued to ask.
"Can't you just cut the nerves and give me some respite?" Carter had asked.
"If we did that, you'd have to be in a chair," said the doctors. "You wouldn't be able to use the crutches any more."
For a minute Carter had pondered this, and the doctors looked at each other.
"When will I be over this?" Carter asked.
"Hard to tell," they all said. And some of them added that sometimes, the pains do go away. Sometimes. You just couldn't count on anything.
The pains never did go away, and Carter learned to live with them. Like the stairs, there was no alternative he could see.
*
Now, sometimes the pains come more frequently, sometimes less. The average waking interval remains fairly constant, about thirty-five minutes. The friends he's gained over the years have learned to pace the evenings they spend with him around the seizures, and Carter always emerges smiling sheepishly. Sometimes his face is flushed and tiny vessels have popped in the whites of his eyes. "Boy-oh-boy!" he always says at times like that. "That was a big one!" as if it were fireworks and he was the only one being entertained. And with the joking he strips the sympathy away that others want to give him. He never has learned to deal with sympathy, and he fears deep down that if he ever were to simply accept it from people, they would run out of it too soon and go away.
Carter is always proud of his arms and rolls up his sleeves for his friends. "Long as I keep in shape I'll never have trouble," he says. And then he flops over to the cabinet beneath the window where he keeps the coiled rope, old now, but still ready. He shows them how he has tied one end fast to the steam pipe beside the radiator. "If there's a fire I just toss this right out here," pointing down to the dark space between the buildings, "and I lower myself to safety."
*
For a little over a year, Carter went away from Ashby Slabaugh to work for a competitor, making far better wages and living in a bigger room, at the YMCA. Ashby Slabaugh's business dwindled fast, as if Carter were a great pie baker and the people suddenly realized they were only coming to the restaurant for the pies. Ashby Slabaugh begged Carter to return and offered to match his salary. "I've still got your room," he said to Carter. "I could have rented it, but I didn't." Carter had smiled at this, but he returned anyway. It is the nearest he'd come since the shooting to feeling needed by anyone.
And, as if he'd never left it, Carter was back working in the tiny retouching room that hardly was big enough to contain him even when he left the door open. Ashby Slabaugh complained constantly that he worked too slowly now that he was being paid better. But they'd made a sort of peace, so life went on.
As a coming-home gift, Carter drew some of his money out of the bank and bought a radio, a big Blaupunkt console with buttons that would retrieve stations like the radio in a fast car, and world bands to choose programs from all over the world. The radio was so big it almost didn't fit into Carter's room, but he shifted things around and found a place for it beside the cot. He bought earphones so he could listen at night, even all the night, and not bother the other tenants. Finally, music was his again, the oldies, the big band swing music he remembered, and Carter dreamed of sometime dancing again. He even moved the snapshot of the Kentucky girl down onto the top of the radio console, and for the first time in years and years, he was able to study her face. And her mouth.
Carter worked later and later every night, gathering strength for the climb to his room. Losing himself in his tasks, hoping to time his ascents to avoid encountering others.
*
The night Ashby Slabaugh failed to check the retouching room Carter was there and saw the girl come out of Ashby Slabaugh's office to put on her clothes. She wandered into the outer studio, laughing her little rasping laugh, and she gasped when she saw Carter. Slabaugh followed her, flabby and pasty and perspiring, and his eyes met Carter's. A vast sadness gripped Carter then.
The sadness was, for Carter, something like the pain.
Ashby Slabaugh shouted . "I told you not to work late except when I need you! Now get the Hell back upstairs!"
The next day, Ashby Slabaugh was friendly. Solicitous. He bought a new chair for the retouching room. With thicker cushions. "Mrs. Slabaugh doesn't have to hear about last night," he said to Carter, even though he didn't need to say it. From that point on, things would always be strained, and Carter was trapped.
*
Later Carter drew more money from his bank account and bought a tape deck and reels of tape. He stacked the tape deck onto the top of the radio console, and it almost crowded him out of his bed, but he attached the two units so that he could copy the music he wanted to keep. When he ran out of space on the tape, he bought more reels. Swing, and old jazz, from every era. The reels began to pile up on the floor and on the shelves beside the medicines. He catalogued it so that all of it, even the most obscure Bix Biederbecke, could be his for the listening whenever he wanted it. He wrote letters to his favorite stations, asking them to play selections that hadn't been requested since the years they were popular.
Carter managed to save money over the years, and he planned to buy a car with hand controls and drive it to Florida. "I don't know how many more Chicago winters I can take."
*
When the fire did come, it was late in the night. It originated in the studio and raced through the old building and caught Carter off-guard in his sleep. The smoke confused him, and even though the room was small, Carter lost his bearings and failed to locate the rope before he slipped into unconsciousness.
"There's a crippled man lives up there," people on the street told the firefighters. "He didn't come out."
"Are you sure?" said one of them.
Of course the people were sure. Everybody knew about Carter.
The firefighters carried Carter down from the third floor to the terrace on the second, where he could be passed over to rescuers who reached out for him from the building next door. Like a child, confused and nearly dead, yet still clutching tape reels to him as if they were cherished toys. His crutches and the radio and tape deck were of course destroyed. Everything.
*
There will be people who try to track him down, after they come back to town and find the burned shell of Ashby Slabaugh's building and mumble something to themselves about knowing the old scoundrel capable of something like that.
Ashby Slabaugh of course has retired with his wife and the insurance money and moved far away, after the investigation terminated inconclusively. Everybody in the neighborhood is aware of all that and has something to say about it. It's more difficult to find out details about Carter.
"I think he got out," a neighbor will say of Carter. "I think he made it." And another will say he heard that Carter moved to Florida.
*
Carter will be overjoyed to see the people who do take the time to find him. Sometime in the course of an afternoon, he'll say, "I really shouldn't say this," and then he'll refer to Ashby Slabaugh as "that old son of a bitch!"
Then Carter will tell about coming to Florida. He'll explain how he bought the car and had the controls installed. "I had to learn to drive all over again," he'll say, "but I passed the test the first time around!" And then he'll lie and say he enjoyed every minute of the freedom that driving brought back to him at last. He won't tell about the fear that seemed to paralyze him in a different way.
"And so, here I am," he'll say. "Hardly the worse for wear. Now what do you think about that?" And he'll point to the grapefruit tree in the back yard and explain how the kids in the neighborhood come over to pick it for him and take home the grapefruit for themselves.