The Mind of Alonzo Jons
by Sam Dronebarger

Alonzo was born blind. Completely blind. His left eye had no retina, and any light falling upon the eye was lost. His right eye had a retina, but it was partly detached and half of it was folded over covering the other half. Light had never reached the active surface of the retina, and the sensations of it had never reached Alonzo's remarkable brain.

Alonzo was extremely intelligent and a deeply committed Christian. He knew God in ways that other people could not know. He made efforts to tell people what he knew. And he did that very well. His speaking voice was resonant and easy to listen to. Alonzo practiced controlling its volume, pitch and tempo. He practiced the essences and nuances of speech, expressions and gestures. He could hold listeners rapt while speaking of the most mundane things. He was often called upon to provide elements of the Sunday morning worship in his church. Some people attended the church only to hear him speak.

By his thirteenth birthday Alonzo had memorized the entire Bible. All thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and all twenty-seven books of the New Testament. He knew the verses in the style of the New International Version and that of the American Standard Version. But Alonzo loved the rhythm and poetic expression of the King James Version. It was from this version that he most often quoted verses. He seemed to possess something like a concordance within his brain. He could readily cite critical verses of support for any theological point, and enjoyed debating (usually victoriously) the Christians, pseudo-Christians, and non-Christians who challenged him. A number of the latter individuals became practicing Christians due directly to Alonzo's efforts. These were Alonzo's gifts. They were not Alonzo's obsessions. He seemed to start life with two obsessions. The first was to know the fullness of God. The second obsession was to know color. Both were impossible tasks for his human body and Alonzo knew it. Yet these things occupied a large part of his thoughts from an early age. That these two obsessions should merge into one should not be too surprising. It happened when Alonzo was ten.

He was attending a church outing - the kind where people gather around a campfire and sing uplifting, spiritual songs. The songs and the fellowship were wonderful to Alonzo, but the campfire itself was the thing that really held his attention. He had never before been close to such a fire. The experience was intoxicating, the warmth moving on his skin, the sounds in his ears, the taste in his mouth, and the smells that drifted by his nose. Each was savored by Alonzo. Even the irritation that he sometimes felt in his eyes was not objectionable. He was told that the irritation was caused by smoke - a thing that rose from the fire and went into the sky. "What a wonderful and terrible thing a fire must be," he thought. Alonzo quickly felt a tie between his campfire experience and Moses' experience with the burning bush. He was convinced that what he was feeling was connected directly with God. He was musing on the nuances of the connection when someone told him the fire was mostly orange. That piece of information fixed itself in Alonzo's mind in a way that nothing else had ever done. Alonzo knew in the deepest recesses of his being that if he could see God, one of God's features must be color and that color must be the color of the fire. This experience welded his two obsessions into one. Alonzo's life became focused on learning as much as he could about the color of fire. Knowing the color of fire would bring him closer to knowing God. He studied and he read all he could. He talked with both sighted and blind people. He listened to lectures and recordings. Nothing that he read or heard and no one that he talked with gave him a satisfactory description of the color of fire.

When he was thirty-eight years old Alonzo discovered a surgeon who believed he could correct the folded retina in Alonzo's right eye. The surgery was scheduled, done, and was successful. His hospital stay was finished. Alonzo could see. Everyone said the hospital elevator accident was a freak incident and that the design of modern elevators simply would not let them fall five stories. But the accident happened in spite of the experts and their designs. Workers had gotten the doors of the wrecked elevator open and discovered that one of the two people inside had been killed outright - the other, Alonzo, was dying of his injuries. This, less than two hours after his bandages had been removed. Alonzo managed to ask one of the workers if he had a match and could he light it. The worker agreed. Alonzo gazed at the match then died quietly, slipping away with a peaceful smile. At peace because he had at last seen the color of God.