Me and Charley

20. Sammy and Simon

The librarian picked up the phone on her desk and dialed three digits. "Sandra," she said. "I'm sending you a couple of curious young men and their mother." She paused, then said, "Thanks, Sandra," put down the phone, and said, "Go back to the elevator and on the ground floor go to the corridor on your left. The resource room for the blind is at the end of the hall. Mrs. Freeman is expecting you." I took the miniature shopping bag of books she had packed for us and we found our way there. A tall, very fair, blonde lady with ice- blue eyes greeted us at the door, "Hello, I'm Sandra Freeman, coordinator of services for the blind and visually impaired."

"Hello, Mrs. Freeman," Ms. Rhoda replied. "I'm Rhoda McDougall and this is my son Charley and his friend Trey Ross."

"Oh," said Mrs. Freeman. "I thought you were brothers."

"They might as well be," Ms. Rhoda said, "but we're just neighbors."

"Well, come on in and look around," said Mrs. Freeman.

As we entered there was a desk and an office behind it. To our left extended a large room with hundreds of sizable volumes shelved on all four walls, surrounding half a dozen tables. The only other people were a pair of young sandy-haired boys who sat at a table at the far end of the room, each absorbed in reading something in Braille. Charley asked, "All those are Braille books, right? Sure are a lot of them."

"Yes, we're exceptionally well supplied for such a small place," Mrs. Freeman replied. "Often we're the only library in the region to have a particular item. Mr. Morris Lachaine left a huge endowment for it back in the early twenties, and it's been handled well over the years. He was adamant, though, that the materials were to stay here in this county." I had heard of Morris Lachaine but really knew nothing about him. "We also have many materials on tape, and we have a studio for making them." She opened the door to a smaller room, again lined with shelves holding hundreds of vinyl records and many reels of recording tape, and three tables identical to those in the larger room. "Come with me," she said, and led us to a glass partition the end of the room that separated it from a small sound studio and control booth. A young man in the studio was reading into a microphone while an older one sat before a control panel, facing the reader through a pane of glass. A large illuminated sign over the door to the booth said, "Quiet please. Recording in progress. Do not enter."

As we returned to the main room one of the boys at the far end called out, "Hey Mom, what's all that clickin' and clackin' over there?" Mrs. Freeman rolled her eyes and said, "Come meet my sons." As we headed their way the two boys, who appeared to be look-alike twins, stood up and grasped the blind canes that hung on the back of their chairs. "Stay there, boys, we're coming," said Mrs. Freeman. When we got to them Mrs. Freeman said, "Mrs. McDougall, Charley and Trey, these are my sons Simon and Samuel. Boys, meet Mrs. Rhoda McDougall and her son Charley, and their friend Trey Ross. I couldn't help but stare at their eyes. Where the pupils and irises of their eyes should have been there were round patches of very pale blue. They focused on nothing as each extended his right hand in our general direction. Charley took charge as always as he grasped a hand and said, "I'm Charley, which one are you?"

"Sammy," the boy replied as he shook Charley's hand, then took it in his other hand and felt Charley's palm with his fingertips. "Wow, your hand is rough. Do you do a lot of gardening or somethin'?"

"I use crutches to walk," Charley explained. He tapped one up and down on the floor to produce the clicking sound.

"Oh," Sammy said. "Didja you break your leg or somethin'?"

Poor Simon had stood there with his hand extended through all this. Finally I took it and said, "I'm Trey, and you must be Simon."

"Kee-rect, Sherlock," Simon replied. "Hey Charley, let me feel your hands." Charley rolled his eyes and complied. "Yeah," he said. "They're rough. Howdja break your leg?"