The Man Who Walked On His Knees

To describe him as odd would be to miss the mark completely. He was so much more than odd, so beyond eccentric, though decidedly not insane. He was, in a word, damned. Yet, like all the damned, he had begun in innocence.

Each year, just on the cusp of winter’s change into spring, there was a day – it varied from year to year – on which the sun shone softly from behind billowy clouds, and the snow had retreated to the point of exposing the edges of grass along the sidewalks and the roads. And the air, with the promise of a warmth yet to come, was filled with birdsong and the sweet, sweet smell of earth newly-bared. This conjunction of events so recalled to him the ecstasies of his youth that, on one such occasion, quite without plan, he squatted down on his knees in order that his eyes and nose should be at the approximate height above the ground as when he was just a boy. And with that slight change in perspective, the whole world of his youth seemed to open before him in brilliant detail. He was 7 years old again. He felt the same surge of joy, the same awakening of the senses from their winter’s sleep to the limitless possibilities of spring suggested by the smell of earth. He noticed and delighted in the way the sun reflected off of the tiny rivulets of snowmelt, off of the tiny flecks of granite embedded in the concrete, transforming them into rare gems of glittering multicolored light. His heart was filled with the fullness that, in a seven-year-old boy, causes him to skip and sing, but he was content to thrill to it in silent stillness.

It was on that very first occasion of his kneeling on the sidewalk that the neighbor’s young son had seen him and approached. He, too, had been out early, drawn by the sunshine and the promise of the day.

“I want to be an astronaut” he stated by way of inviting conversation.

“Do you, now? The moon isn’t nearly as pretty as this, do you think?”

“But I’m not going to the moon. The moon is just where you go to get fuel and supplies. Then I’m going to Saturn, and then to a different galaxy. I’m going to be the first person to do that.”

“Why are you down there?” asked the boy, finally having the courage to inquire?

“Why? Well, I wanted to see the world the way you do. Look, now we’re just about the same height! I remember being your age, and I wanted to see things like that again.”

“I’m going to be tall when I grow up. My father is 6’4” and my grandfather was 6’3”, and my mother thinks I will be taller than both of them when I grow up. Want to go for a walk?”

“No, I just want to kneel down here for a moment and enjoy the smell of the earth.”

“You could walk on your knees if you wanted to.”

“Well, now, I suppose I could – just a little.”

And they set off down the sidewalk, the man slowly and awkwardly on his knees, the boy skipping as befit the day. From that moment on, he loved that boy. And, having no family of his own, he was free to bestow his affections on the youth in neighborly ways. The weather was particularly fine that spring, and they often found themselves standing together on the grass before the world was fully awake, or walking together in the road that was as yet empty of traffic. And each time they met, at some point in their meanderings, the man could not resist kneeling down, usually only for a brief moment or two, and re-experiencing the world from the vantage point of his young friend. In such moments, he imagined the closest and most intimate union with the boy’s mind and spirit, felt himself truly to be seeing and feeling and smelling as a seven-year-old boy; although the boy remained completely unaware of the importance invested in these moments by the man or of the power they held for him, and talked and skipped and rambled as befit his age.

All through that spring and summer, the man and the boy met and talked and walked. It wasn’t long before the man grew greedy for the communion he so cherished. He rigged a pair of heavy pads for his knees, so that he could spend more time on them when he was with the boy. He became so adept at walking on his knees that he could quite keep up the pace of a leisurely stroll, which more than sufficed for their amblings, as the boy ran in circles and darted out and back, and skipped and jumped ceaselessly, and was indifferent, if not oblivious, to the fact that all that activity netted very little in the way of actually advancing from one point to another. By late autumn, as the smell of snow returned to the air, the sight of the two out strolling became so commonplace that the neighbors had all but ceased to talk about it. There had been some concern at first: perhaps the man was dangerous and ought not to be allowed near the children? But the boy’s father assured them that his neighbor was harmless, and the talk soon faded.

Winter passed, and with the advent of the new spring, the man and the boy resumed their meanderings, but now the man spent all their time together on his knees. For, being good with his hands, the man had, during the winter months, rigged a special set of padded boards on rollers that tightly strapped around his legs. These, with the aid of some carved walking sticks that he used much like ski poles, allowed the man to travel quickly, maneuver with relative ease, and most importantly, to spend hours and hours on his knees in complete comfort.

The boy was delighted with his friend’s new inventions, not the least in that they made him the center of a good deal of attention. The old fears for the safety of the neighborhood children were revived in the light of this new evidence of a deeper-running, more indelible mad streak in the man, and for a while the boy was the only child who was permitted to interact with the man - and, truth be told, the only child who would have had the courage to do so, had others been permitted. And so, the boy seemed to cherish his relationship with the man even more than before, and became so devoted to their meetings and meanderings, and made such a flourish of praising the man to the other children that the man was quite completely overcome with love for the boy and was convinced beyond a doubt that the boy possessed a most rare and sensitive soul.

Thus encouraged, the man capitulated to even greater indulgences. During the next winter, he modified his house. He shortened the legs of his table and chairs, he built platforms before all his counters – in the kitchen and bathroom, so he could wash dishes and brush his teeth without putting his feet on the floor. He lowered his mirror so that his full figure – that is, from his head to his knees – was framed in its reflection. When, the following spring, he brought his young friend in to show him the changes he had made, the look of amazement on the boy’s face and the exclamations of wonder that flew from his mouth confirmed for the man the rightness of the path he had chosen.

And so several years passed, and their friendship grew. The boy’s sense of flattery at receiving so much attention from the man changed into genuine affection with the passage of time. And, the man was interesting, with much arcane knowledge of birds and foreign places and the workings of everyday things. For his part, the man exulted in being on his knees. And when, occasionally, a mood of despair would overcome him, as it does to us all, and he saw and felt himself to be ridiculous in his stunted way of life, the image of the boy’s innocence and vitality were enough to remind him of his purpose and inspire a rededication to his chosen path. At such times he loved the boy as a drowning man loves his rescuer.

With the passing years, the boy began to fulfill the prophecy of his mother and showed signs of becoming very tall. Now when they walked together, the boy’s head was far above that of his companion’s. The man joked that soon, the boy would need a set of pads and sticks just like those the man had made for himself. On one or two occasions, the man suggested to the boy that he might squat down. But the boy assured the man that he had no need to do so, and because all of his actions bespoke the fact that he was still very much a boy, the man was content and did not press the matter.

By the time the boy had reached his teen years, he had, indeed, become quite tall, and was well on his way to becoming a young man. He was handsome and athletic, popular among the other youth of the neighborhood, and much sought after for sporting competitions and games. Nevertheless, he made time to see the man regularly. “He has nobody” his mother would remind him, and the man had been very kind to him, and the boy sensed something of the importance of the position he held in the man’s life, though he by no means apprehended the centrality of his role.

The adolescent transformation of the boy was mirrored by an equal though opposite decline in the man. When he had first started his knee walking, he had been in the final stages of that measured good health so often characteristic of middle age. But almost immediately after he began his knee walking, the transition from middle to old age became unmistakable. The man praised his luck for having discovered knee walking “just in time” to meet the spiritual challenge of encroaching old age. But there was always the question of the degree to which his knee walking itself contributed to his aches and pains and his accelerating decline.

The man succeeded in ignoring that issue until the summer the boy went away. “So, you’ll be gone the whole summer? Well, I suppose a fine boy such as yourself will find plenty to do!” The boy’s absence presented as a crisis, a point of decision: to continue on the path he had chosen, or abandon it for something different - with no assurance of its being better. Without the medium of the boy, his passion seemed like mere ritualism. He had seen something beautiful, recaptured something wonderful that was worth preserving alive, and he had seen that beauty reflected and embodied in the boy. Had his passion become mere obsequiousness, groveling for the boy’s approval, his praise, his blessing?

Renunciation now, with the boy gone, was tantamount to confessing to idolatry. And so, the man redoubled his dedication to his chosen way of life and began to do virtually everything from his knees.

But it brought him little pleasure – except for the pleasures of obstinacy - and less as time went on. In his mind, he persevered to be a beacon to the boy, who would eventually and inevitably turn to him in need. In truth, he persevered because he had no idea how not to. He had traveled too long down this tributary to be able to find his way back to the headwaters.

Then came the first fall, followed by a somewhat more serious second, and shortly thereafter, the stroke. Because he had set up his house so as to be able to live in it from his knees, he now found that, with very little adjustment, he was able to do his daily tasks from his wheelchair; he was at about the same height off the ground and had almost as much mobility as with his knee-gear.

The boy visited from time to time, out of that sense of duty that yields the satisfaction of doing good while feeling put upon. “Here, boy, these are yours now, I won’t be using them anymore” the man said, handing the boy the bundle that contained his knee-gear. “What would I do with these?” the boy asked naively, oblivious to the sting his words carried. “I’ll save them for you, then” said the man, unable to entertain the possibilities implicit in the boy’s candor.

Soon the man could no longer function in his home, and he went to finish his days in a home where he was surrounded by other aging cripples, passing the time as one does in such places, with meaningless diversions and trivial conversation. The boy visited less often now, and even his visits failed to stir the man’s spirit to any great depths.

Then one day, the young man who had been the boy came to visit. He suggested that he wheel the man out onto the grounds to take in the fresh air. He parked the wheelchair at the edge of the pavement, where the lawn began. It so happened that this day was just like those that used to thrill the man in his youth: the air was warm with the softness of Spring; the snow was retreating from the edges of the pavement, revealing the green underneath and releasing that luscious smell of earth. And then – the boy knelt down. He knelt with his back to the man, his head and the man’s at the same level, and gazed out at the sunshine and the faintest hint of buds on the bushes, gazed down at the snow giving way to the green of the grass. The man’s heart leaped; in an instant he was born anew, a child of pure spirit, untarnished by deed or worry!

“There!” said the young man, rising abruptly, having finished tying his shoe.

“Get out! Get out! Go! Never come back here!” the man shouted at the boy, while beating him with his hands, with the magazine in his lap, with his shawl. “Go! Leave! You have learned nothing from me!”

“Go to Hell!” said the boy, without looking back.