Me and Charley

17. Another Way to Read

I followed Charlie and his dad through the door that connected Mr. Bob's office to the little conference room next to it. "All right." said Mr. Bob, "You two sit on the couch here. You're going to want to work together on this."

Ms. Helen said from in front of me, "Here's some water for you," I reached out my hands and found the large paper cup she offered, very welcome after trekking up those stairs in the heat.

"Thanks, Ma'am," I said. Sorry to be so much trouble."

Charley gulped his down, then he asked, "OK, Dad what is it?"

Mr. Bob replied, "When I told Ms. Helen what was going on with Trey, she dug out these Braille copies of the Gospels that have been in a closet since before she came to work here. Nobody seems to know why they're there. I thought it might be fun for you and Trey to try to figure out how it works."

Charley said, "Oh yeah, I heard of Braille. We studied about all that in social science."

I said, "Yeah, I heard of it too but I don't know much about it."

A heavy book was set on my lap. Charley finally seemed to have his breath back. With enthusiasm he said, "Here, lemme show you how it works." As he leaned in I caught the odor of sweat and said, "Charley, I'm so sorry I made you climb them steps."

"You didn't make me, I decided to."

"Well, I'm sorry we didn't come by the street."

"It's OK," he said. "I understand. Forget it, all right?" He opened the book, took my hand, and ran my fingers along some bumps on the paper. "OK," he said, "this is kinda like a code." He guided my index finger to feel a group of dots. "This is the letter 'p'", he said. You feel three little bumps in a row, one on top of the other?" I concentrated, and felt them. "OK, now just right of the top one, there's another. Feel it?" I did. "Now, imagine two more bumps below that one, next to the two on the other side."

"OK," I said. "I get the picture. It would be like a little rectangle, three bumps up and down, two across."

"Yeah. That's what they call a 'cell'. Every letter is some combination of those six bumps. I think there can be sixty-three combinations, somethin' like that. They look nothin' like the letters in print."

"Howdja know this is the letter 'p'?"

"I got a Bible here in front of me and I looked for the first word in Matthew with a 'p' in it," he replied. "That's 'cause I remembered how the Braille 'p' looks. They used that to show us how they go vertical and horizontal."

"You don't forget much, do you Charley?"

"Guess not. But I can see already that this don't follow letter for letter. Must be more to it than that. Let's just read along and see how much we can figure out." The next hour and a half passed swiftly as we puzzled out the code. By no means did we master Braille, but we sure enjoyed trying. Finally Mr. Bob's voice came from the doorway to his office, "It's been so quiet, I wondered if you two were still here."

"Oh yeah, Dad," Charley said. "Wow, there's a lot to figure out here."

"So Trey," said Mr. Bob, "can you read me a passage?"

"'Fraid not, sir," I said, "just a few words here and there. This is hard. We need a teacher or guidebook or somethin'."

Charley said, "I bet Mrs. Swenson at the library can find somethin' for us."

I said, "For you, maybe."

"Hey," Charley said, "you might need it someday."

Sudden anger flared from deep within me. "Shut up, Charley," I said. "Just shut up."