"Glasseye? Yeah, sure. He ate lead paint as a baby. His mother sat him on the steps outside and accepted donations for favors behind the door. The other kids beat up on him because he was smaller than they were."
At Martin's apartment, after fifteen minutes of listening to the knocking, despite his best efforts to appear not at home. "His mother slept most of the day but his grandmother took him to church on Sunday. He listened to the music and held the hymn book upside down. They dropped a collection plate on his head and it was so full it gave him a concussion. The emergency room kept him waiting three hours and the nurses played cards and bet on the Governor’s conviction and the man next to him who came in first died of a heart attack waiting.
"He never had a room to himself anywhere he lived. One day when he thought he was alone in the living room his father came in and caught him pounding the pud and drove a fork through his eye, pulled it out and headed after his mother in the bedroom. He put his finger over the hole, holding blood and viscera in, keeping the ball in the bargain. The kids at school beat up on him because his eye was different from theirs.
"His father disappeared before he was born. Someone stole the welfare check from the mailbox and his mother couldn't take him to the doctor for a staph infection in the eye that really didn't look so bad and feed the other eight children too. His grandmother played bingo and wasn't watching him when a splinter from the bench caught under his eyelid. His mother left the state the day after he was born. His father had to leave him alone in the daytime while he worked, tying Glasseye to a bed. He started school three years late and none of the other children would talk to him because he was bigger than they were (but not by much), and besides, he had a congenital eye defect that made him look funny," Martin said. "Or something like that."
After waiting politely Mac asked Martin another question that had been bothering him. "What? Hendrix?" He blew out smoke. "He's dead. It's been a long time. Twenty five years, about. Which damaged his career somewhat. Sells more records than ever, though."
Mac, still a little lost. "Oh. A musician. Guitarist extraordinaire. Loved white women and died on his own vomit. The likes of not heard since."
