I try to get in 9,000 steps a day, about 3 miles with the foreshortened length of my cane-assisted stride. At this rate I might be walking like a “normal person”—without a cane—by 2024. The long-term goal is a jump shot, but that’ll have to wait, probably until 2025.
I’m used to the cane by now, in fact it’s like a prosthesis that comes attached as standard equipment: I can’t contemplate a chair (how will I get out of it?) or a flight of stairs without reaching for it. No, that’s not it. It’s never out of reach, not anymore. I’m always grasping it, even if it’s over there in the corner pretending to be the MacGuffin in “Miracle on 34th Street.”
So I see more canes than ever these days, and not because there are more geezers in view. To be sure, there are more of them per capita in this tourist destination, where cruise ships disgorge their frail passengers by the hundreds, but people of every age use canes, and the devices themselves come in all shapes and colors if not sizes. And purposes: sometimes they’re just ornamental. There are claw foots, plain old knobs, pointy ski poles, carved walking sticks, hooks or handles, metal or wooden or plastic shafts, and some of them telescope or come apart. (Mine does.)
It’s mostly men who walk with a cane’s assistance, and I can usually tell what has made a guy pick it up, depending on what leg he favors, how far apart his feet land, where his gaze is fixed, how much weight the cane carries—does it come down with a bang or a whisper, does it extend beyond shoulder width?—and whether he’s bent at the waist. The legs are always involved, but back injuries and surgeries register as a soft touch with the cane and a posture that lowers a man’s horizon to the next ten feet. (After 7 such operations, I should know.) Knee and hip replacements usually manifest as a limp, and the cane comes down hard on that side, compensation visible opposite as a leg that never quite straightens out.
I was confounded today, though, as I caught up on Francisco Medina with what I took to be a man in his late-sixties, clumping along with cane at a much slower pace than me, and I move at what you’d call the speed of a stroll. He looked like he was about to sit down, his legs were so bent and far apart, but he was moving. I figured him for a guy recovering from bilateral knee or hip replacements—people do this, God knows why—because his torso was erect, and he kept looking up, and he wasn’t favoring either side.
As I overtook him, he said, “Passing lane, go ahead.” I say the same thing to the North Americans anxious to get where they’re going—you can feel them as they approach because people in a hurry, on the job or off, emit an ugly, palpable energy.
I slowed down, I noticed he wore a bushy white mustache, rimless eyeglasses, and a baseball cap with some kind of fish leaping above the brim. His polished wooden cane had a handle—not a sponge-swathed hook like my aluminum grey telescope—a splayed black rubber bottom, more like a drain stopper than a knob, and what looked like serrated teeth carved into its leading edge, as if he’d soon be stopping to slice an outsize loaf of bread. That cane swayed and hovered over the sidewalk like a metal detector or an elephant’s trunk, looking for something to sense. He didn’t need it for support or balance: it was a reminder of trauma, telling him to be careful.
I fell in step with him, and said, “So what’s with the cane, I got a good excuse for this one,” swinging mine out in front. (Geezers do not engage in dick-swinging, but they like to compare canes.)
He looked at me and my cane: the credentials were in order. “Water on the testicle,” he said, like he was reporting routine rainfall. His balls are swollen, I thought, horrified, no wonder he’s in a walking crouch, then, wait, I asked myself, you mean like water on the brain, how would you spell—never mind pronouncing—the equivalent of encephalitis taking up residence in your nuts? Is it painful? (Yes, I found out later, it’s called a hydrocele, and it’s caused by injuries or by infections, some of them sexually transmitted.)
“What the fuck, man,” I said, “that’s gotta hurt. What do you call it?”
“Water on the testicle,” he said, still calm, still moving.
“I mean, what causes it?”
‘They didn’t tell me that, just drained it. They did the same thing to my son.”
“What, is it genetic?,” I said. “Jesus.”
“I guess. Actually, they didn’t say anything about that. I don’t know.”
“Why the cane"?” I couldn’t help myself.
“You ever try to walk sitting down?”
“Uh, no, it’s hard enough standing up.” By this time, we were clumping along in step, marching to a different but lazy drummer.
“My hip bothers me, too, probably from driving a truck for 25 years, using the clutch.” He held up his toothy instrument. “The cane helps with that.”
“Long haul?”
“Yeah, in Canada, mainly, although some in the States.”
“Long-haul guys can’t make a living here, Teamsters don’t represent ‘em anymore. Hey, were you part of that crazy truckers’ strike or whatever it was last year?”
“No, I been retired ten years now. We never had a union.”
“I’m turning off here, goin’ shopping.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“I gotta get a cart, it’s better than a cane.”
“Don’t matter to me,” he said, pointing at his crotch. He looked at his left leg, shook it gently. “Shit, I still drive every day.”
“Thought you were retired.”
“I drive a school bus. 80 bucks for two and a half hours a day.”
“Goddamn, that’s civilized. You must have to get certified or something.”
“Yeah, it ain’t the States.”
“No, it ain’t. Take care, man.”
“You, too.” He moved away, toward the produce. Now he looked like he was driving, after all. That cane was the tall stick shift on an 18-wheeler, and he never got out of fourth gear.