The Old Man of Crawford County

                                                                    The Old Man of Crawford County
         An elderly white man of about 85 was painfully walking down the sidewalk on a warm spring afternoon.  He was adorned in a set of neatly pressed grey pants, complete with a matching grey blazer with tan elbow pads.  He wore a brown leather newsboy cap with a button on the bill when worn the right way.  His wooden cane propped him as he walked, as squirrels darted across the street eager to feed their little squirrel families on this first truly fine spring day.  He rarely got out anymore, as his legs and joints had weakened to the point that walking was a chore.  He wasn’t stubborn or rude as most labeled him.  But when I say most, I mean only the handful that knew him as Mr. Jones in the small town of a few thousand.  He had no family, only a collection of postcards of places he never visited.  He kept to himself, mostly, but his teenage neighbor would cut his grass when it got too tall.
         Today was a day of necessity, however, as the pharmacy was his destination.  He walked with his head down to avoid getting his toe caught in the cracks between the slabs of concrete and to step around the all too frequent tree roots that hampered his slow struggle.  He walked into the store and approached the counter.  No one waited on him, so he decided against ringing the bell as he took a seat with his back to the window.  All the moving cars gave him a spell of anxiety.  He was just content to be resting his legs.
         Twenty minutes later a black woman of about the same age dressed like a purple ladybug slowly crept in carrying a bag of peanuts.  Once through the door she noticed him waiting and realized the dilemma.  She took a seat next to him and watched him quickly tense up.
         Neither spoke for over ten minutes, until she broke the silence.
         “How are your legs?” she asked an in old southern accent.
         He gave her a quick glimpse and then noticed he had been rubbing his thighs feverishly with the palms of his hands.
         “Little sore,” he said as he tried to avoid any eye contact.
         “Me too,” she confirmed.  “These warm days are nice though.  I sure do miss runnin’ around old downtown Birmingham.”  She laughed.  “But that was long ago.  I guess I won’t do much runnin’ no more.”
         His attempt at silence was unwavering.
         “You lived here long?” she asked.
         He pondered a bit.  “Long enough, I guess.”
         She thought for a moment.  “Me neither.  I guess I’ve lived about every where there is to live.  Bein’ a black lady in the world don’t make it easy to live anywhere for too long.  ‘Speshly when you ain’t got no family.  But I guess I lived about everywhere there is to live in this little old world.”  Silence overcomes the two as he seems uncomfortable.  “Where all have you lived?”
         He thinks for a second and eyes her bag of peanuts.  “Here and there I guess.  Ain’t really ever lived outside the county.  Got shipped to war in ’45 but it ended before I got there.”
         “Oh heavens, the war.  The war, the war, the war,” she said as she shook her head sadly.  “I was a nurse.”  She offered him a peanut as she caught him eying the bag.  He abruptly rejected.  Without hesitation she continued.  “I was everywhere in that war.  France, Rome, even Berlin.  Never made it to Russia, thank the heavens.  It’s so cold up there.  You know they used to say, ‘Why don’t polar bears live in Russia?  ‘Cause it’s too cold!’  That’s why they don’t live there.”  She gave a slow childlike laugh.
         She had no idea of his lifelong dream to travel.  He had no desire to tell her.  His postcards were his travels.  Just earlier in the day he visited London and Glasgow, with plans to see Barcelona and Valencia later in the afternoon.
         “You ever travelled?” she asked.
         He looked straight ahead and shook “No.”  She could tell this pained him.  The same way it pained her that she never had a family.
         She implored, “Are you married…Mr.”
         “No,” he quickly interrupted her.  “Never been married.”
         She felt the sensitivity of the subject.
         “Well, me neither.  Not yet anyway,” she said.
         He was bewildered.  “Not yet?  Don’t you think it’s a little late for that nonsense now?”
         “Well, heavens no!”  She laughed.”I ain’t in the ground yet, am I?  I may feel like I’m dead some mornings when I can’t get outta bed, or I fall when the floor changes to carpet, but I sure ain’t dead yet.  And if you ain’t dead, that surely must mean you’re livin’, huh?”
         He pondered this for a quick second.  “It’s so late to start that.  You, you gotta date, and get a ring.  And then she’s gotta say yes.  Then you gotta make the plans, and get the preacher, and…”
         He stopped when her laughing was too loud for this frail old voice to over power.
         “Mista, I’m 85 years old.  Marriage ain’t a courtship or a ceremony.  It’s an understandin’.  That’s somethin’ you need to understand.”  She continued laughing.
         He felt stupid.  Like the time he drove his new bike into Reading’s Creek on his seventh birthday.  He cried all the way home; he even thought of running away before his dad could take his belt off and make him remember how much the bike cost.  But his dad didn’t react that way.  His father told him a story of how he broke his own father’s old oil lamp that had been in the family for years, and his father said, “Son, I want you to remember this.  That lamp had been in our family for years.  And I loved that lamp.  But, I love you more.  And one day your son will break a lamp, but you must remember who you love more.”
         Mr. Jones never had a son to tell this story to.  He always planned on it.  He was actually excited to tell it.  But his lamp never got broken.
         “You know I’m surprised we’ve never ran into each other.  Seems I been comin’ to this here drugstore for a couple of years now.”  She looked at his legs.  “Look’s like you might know ‘em all by the first name.”  She laughed.
         He nodded.  “There’s a lot of people in this world I don’t know.  I recon I’ll never get to know ‘em neither.”  Silence.  She looked at him, but he stared straight ahead.
         “Did you ever dance, Mista?”
         He slowly turned to her and gave a puzzled look.
         “I never really knew how,” he said.
         She perked up.  “Me neither.  But I used to dance my socks off.  I didn’t care what I looked like, or who was watchin’.  I used to dance by myself, all night long sometimes.”  She laughed.  “With no music.  I’d just sing it in my head and move.  You know it don’t say nowhere that you gotta dance to music.”
         He looked down and rubbed his legs.  The seats hurt his back and his legs were losing circulation.  He tried to stand up, but fell back in his seat.  She watched him struggle, and she slowly rose to her feet and extended her black hand.  He looked up at her and paused.  He slowly stretched out his hand and allowed her to pull him up.  Once he was on his feet their hands remained clutched to each other as if they were holding onto each other for dear life.  A few more seconds and their eyes were locked.  A few seconds more and he was short of breath.  He had never felt this way before, dizzy and lightheaded simply from the touch of a woman.
         “Mr. Jones,” said a voice from behind the counter.  “You’re set and ready to go.”
         He snapped out of his daze; turned and looked at the man in the white lab coat; then, turned to the woman and gave her an apologetic look, and slowly let his hand slip from hers.  He scooped up his cane from the seat and slowly limped to the counter.  He grabbed the bag and headed for the door, giving the black lady one last look before he used all of his effort to push the door open into the light breeze.
         Once upon the sidewalk he had forgotten her.  She would be but another postcard.  They never even knew each other’s names.  He was Richard Alfred Romeo Jones.  And she was Juliet Sydney.