Turn a Blind Eye
Jute Logan was a man of few words. It’s not that he didn’t have anything to say, but his words held great significance, and he was careful who he trusted to carry the weight. It took a few years to earn that responsibility but I’m proud to say I’m one of those people.
My name’s Marcus Mackey. My friends call me Early because I’m always late. I also go by Mark or Mack, but I don’t mind being Early. I’ve known Jute for longer than I can remember so I can’t tell you when it began. I can tell you where, though, and that’s where I am right now.
Jute’s Junction is smack dab in the middle of the high desert on Highway 212. It’s no one’s destination unless you have nowhere else to go, but it’s the first place to buy gas or take a piss since the last small town, and the last before you get to the next one which is a good hour away. It’s also the only place within a country mile to get a cold beer or a Slim Jim, if that’s what you’re in the mood for. But that’s not what makes it special.
Jute has been here forever, or so it seems. He’ll tell you, if he thinks you deserve to know, that his ancestors were Germans and they settled in Britain way back when the Romans cleared out, then found their way to America on a ship full of Irishmen.
He’ll also tell you, if he’s had a little whiskey, that Jute is the Hindu word for a rope that couldn’t hold a heifer, and that’s why his folks named him such. How they found their way to Oregon’s high desert is a mystery, though. One that either can’t be solved or won’t be revealed.
I’m here right now because Jute’s dying. He hasn’t said so, but his niece Lotus is telling everyone in town she’s taking him to the big hospital in The Dalles. Anyway, you can tell it’s true because of his change in manner. She says it’s cancer, but what it is exactly I suppose doesn’t matter.
Jute heard me pull up and come in the store, but before I had the chance to say hello, I could see he was fighting hard with the expression on his face, so I let him be.
He didn’t look all that much different when I found him today, and his eyes were closed as they often are. That’s due partly to the fact he’d been blind in the right one since he was born, and the left had gone bad the past few years because of the pesticides they use around here. But mostly because with his eyes closed, he said he could see the whole world as beautiful and ignore all the details that make it so ugly.
There’s a table near the door where Jute’s parked when there isn’t gas to pump or something to sell, and that was most of the time. Normally I’d ask permission to join him but today I invited myself. I set a bottle of Jim Beam down loud enough to see if he wanted a snort. He didn’t budge but I took that as a yes. I got two dirty glasses from behind the counter and poured a couple of fingers in each.
I took my drink in one swallow and waited to see what he would do, but he took no notice of my silent offer. When Jute was sorting out an argument inside his head, he had the habit of folding his hands on the table and fidgeting with them. They acted like wrestlers too tired to continue but too proud to stop, and I knew better than to interrupt. I poured myself more whiskey and had a look around.
There’s not much to admire about Jute’s Junction and that suits him just fine. The store, if you want to call it that, is nothing more than a couple of big bookshelves on both sides of a small shack crammed with dusty boxes and cans they look tired of holding up.
The counter is against the back wall and draws your eye only because of all the tattered posters tacked to the front. And there’s the rickety table by the window with mismatched chairs where we’re sitting now. Out front, are just two pumps, one for regular gas and one for diesel, a water hose that works sometimes, and an air hose that hasn’t for as long as I can remember.
I’m used to surveying this scene but somehow today it took on a different shape. Jute was still busy with his thoughts, and my eyes wandered out the window to the juniper flat and tumbleweed where a couple of swayback horses were huddled in the dust. I watched that movie about the Okies some years back and have always thought these parts look an awful lot like where they lived before getting chased off their land. Jute was born during those Dust Bowl days, and it seems like he never left that time. But it doesn’t seem to trouble him.
When my eyes wandered back inside the store, Jute’s were waiting for me, and it seemed like they were smiling at me from somewhere inside his head.
He tapped his glass, so I gave it a good fill. I knew he wouldn’t want to talk about being sick, and sure as hell not if he was dying, so I tried to think of something else to say. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hide that thought from all the rest. I finally just asked him if everything was alright. He winced a little and took a sip of whiskey, then looked straight at me again with those eyes that can’t see much but somehow see everything and speak the honest truth. That made me real uneasy. It took him a while but he asked back why wouldn’t he be alright and that didn’t do much to make it more comfortable. Out of the blue I told him he’d had a hard life but should be proud of what he’d done and that made him smile on the outside. But it wasn’t a happy smile. Jute valued his peace and quiet but had no use for happy.
“If life was easy, boy, any kind of man could find what he was looking for.”
His gravelly voice was loaded with more meaning than I could understand. I turned the words over in my head a couple of times with no luck.
Jute took another careful sip and closed his eyes once more. His expression slowly changed to something I couldn’t remember seeing before and it seemed to fill the whole room. There’s no other way to describe it except that his soul was too much for his body to hold. I took it to mean he was getting ready to move on.
Jute obviously wasn’t in the mood for heavy drink, but I topped off his glass and refilled mine. His hands were working hard again so I sat back to wait. I looked at the photograph on the wall behind him. The one with Jute and a bunch of cowboys at the Pendleton Roundup. It wasn’t the only one on the wall, but it was the only one with Jute in it.
He wore a lot of scars, both inside and out, but that picture was the only souvenir of his life really. I realized right then it was going to be all he left behind, and would somehow have to guard my memory of the man.
His fingers were quiet now and without intending to I straight up asked him what he saw when he closed his eyes. He took a bit more whiskey and put on that sad smile. Stopping at each and every word like it might be his last he told me this.
“If you listen real close, Marcus, you can hear in your soul what your eyes cannot see.”
He looked satisfied and drew a slow deep breath. Closing his eyes again, he cocked his head like he was listening real close. I closed mine too and tried best I could to hear what he did. The room was full of the usual sounds of a hot summer day, of flies and fans and faraway farm machines sweating in the sun. No telling how long my eyes were closed but slowly it started to sound like solitude.