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2024年5月23日发(作者：)
Unit 5 Fourteen Steps
Hal Manwaring
1 They say a cat has nine lives,
1
and I am inclined to think that possible since I am
now living my third life and I’m not even a cat. My first life began on a clear, cold day
in November 1934, when I arrived as the sixth of eight children of a farming family.
My father died when I was 15, and we had a hard struggle to make a living. As the
children grew up, they married, leaving only one sister and myself to support and
care for Mother, who became paralyzed in her last years and died while still in her
60s. My sister married soon after, and I followed her example within the year.
2 This was when I began to enjoy my first life. I was very happy, in excellent health,
and quite a good athlete. My wife and I became the parents of two lovely girls. I had
a good job in San Jose and a beautiful home up the peninsula in San Carlos. Life was
a pleasant dream. Then the dream ended. I became afflicted with a slowly
progressive disease of the motor nerves, affecting first my right arm and leg, and
then my other side. Thus began my second life …
3 In spite of my disease I still drove to and from work each day, with the aid of
special equipment installed in my car. And I managed to keep my healt
optimism, to a degree, because of 14 steps.
4 Crazy? Not at all. Our home was a split-level affair with 14 steps leading up from
the garage to the kitchen door. Those steps were a gauge of life. They were my
yardstick, my challenge to continue living. I felt that if the day arrived when I was
unable to lift one foot up one step and then drag the other painfully after it —
h and
repeating the process 14 times until, utterly spent, I would be through — I could then
admit defeat and lie down and die.
2
So I kept on working, kept on climbing those
steps. And time passed. The girls went to college and were happily married, and my
wife and I were alone in our beautiful home with the 14 steps.
5 You might think that here walked a man of courage and strength. Not so. Here
hobbled a bitterly disillusioned cripple, a man who held on to his sanity and his wife
and his home and his job because of 14 miserable steps leading up to the back door
from his garage.
3
As I became older, I became more disillusioned and frustrated.
6 Then on a dark night in August, 1971, I began my third life. It was raining when I
started home that night; gusty winds and slashing rain beat down on the car as I
drove slowly down one of the less-traveled roads.
4
Suddenly the steering wheel
jerked in my hands and the car swerved violently to the right. In the same instant I
heard the dreaded bang of a blowout. I fought the car to stop on the rain-slick
shoulder of the road and sat there as the enormity of the situation swept over me.
5
It
was impossible for me to change that tire! Utterly impossible! A thought that a
passing motorist might stop was dismissed at once. Why should anyone? I knew I
wouldn’t! Then I remembered that a short distance up a little side road was a house.
I started the engine and thumped slowly along, keeping well over on the shoulder
until I came to the dirt road, where I turned in — thankfully. Lighted windows
welcomed me to the house and I pulled into the driveway and honked the horn.
7 The door opened and a little girl stood there, peering at me. I rolled down the
window and called out that I had a flat tire and needed someone to change it for me
because I had a crutch and couldn’t do it myself. She went into the house and a
moment later came out bundled in raincoat and hat, followed by a man who called a
cheerful greeting. I sat there comfortable and dry, and felt a bit sorry for the man
and the little girl working so hard in the storm. Well, I would pay them for it. The
rain seemed to be slackening a bit now, and I rolled down the window all the way to
watch. It seemed to me that they were awfully slow and I was beginning to become
impatient. I heard the clank of metal from the back of the car and the little girl’s
voice came clearly to me. “Here’s the jack-handle, Grandpa.” She was answered by
the murmur of the man’s lower voice and the slow tilting of the car as it was jacked
up.
6
There followed a long interval of noises, jolts and low conversation from the
back of the car, but finally it was done. I felt the car bump as the jack was removed,
and I heard the slam of the truck lid, and then they were standing at my car window.
8 He was an old man, stooped and frail-looking under his slicker. The little girl was
about eight or ten, I judged, with a merry face and a wide smile as she looked up at
me. He said, “This is a bad night for car trouble, but you’re all set now.” “Thanks,” I
said. “How much do I owe you?” He shook his head. “Nothing. Cynthia told me you
were a cripple
—
on crutches. Glad to be of help. I know you’d do the same for me.
There’s no charge, friend.” I held out a five-dollar bill. “No! I like to pay my way.” He
made no effort to take it and the little girl stepped closer to the window and said
quietly, “Grandpa can’t see it.”
9 In the next few frozen seconds the shame and horror of that moment penetrated
and I was sick with an intensity I had never felt before.
7
A blind man and a child!
Fumbling, feeling with cold, wet fingers for bolts and tools in the dark
—
a darkness
that for him would probably never end until death. I don’t remember how long I sat
there after they said good night and left me, but it was long enough for me to search
deep within myself and find some disturbing traits. I realized that I was filled to
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