Chapter 1
As old as I am, you’d think I’d have seen everything. Though I thought I had, today, the unexpected occurred.
Let me explain to you what I saw. There was this man walking, and he looked sad, but not the kind of sad you would expect, you know, the typical shedding tears. No, this was instead an empty sort of sad. A “longing for purpose” sort of sad. A “lost with nowhere to go and no desire to go anywhere” sort of sad.
A walking question mark, he ambled as if gravity itself was too much to bear.
Or perhaps the heaviness in his heart was threatening to pull him down to a place in which he could not return.
He wore a faded Dorfman that displayed the familiar creases of memories and an era gone by. His frayed flannel coat hugged his once broad shoulders - two old friends silently sharing sorrow. His fingers bore the telltale calluses of Taylorman.
I noticed the smell of a cigar lingered in the air around him. He walked on away from me towards the lake, off in the distance, to watch the sunset.
Many more days such as this one pass by. I find myself anxiously anticipating the sickly sweet smell of Arturo Fuente. Some days he’d pass by more sad than others. One day, feeling a breeze, I reached out to tap him on the shoulder, hoping I could somehow comfort him. He turned around and looked at me blankly as though he could not see me. I tried to yell, but my voice seemed to be suppressed by the sound of silence.
As the seasons shifted from summer to fall, a new companion was brought along with the man, a guitar. As he played, I watched as a smile crept upon his face. It was something I had never seen before on him.
The guitar was then brought with him every day. It seemed to bring him a source of happiness, I don’t quite know why, but his joy brought a warmth inside of me. I watched the weight of the world fall off of his shoulders with each strum of the guitar.
I noticed something quite odd about the man. He was always talking to someone. I didn’t understand why or who he was talking to, but as he spoke to him, tears streamed down his face. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help it. He talked of his past, and I slowly learned where the creases of the faded Dorfman came from.
Eventually, as he spoke to this mystery person, the tears stopped running, and he smiled more and more often. I wanted to show him that he could still lean on me if he needed me, but I could not express it in a way in which he could understand me.
Soon enough, the tears stopped entirely, and he smiled again. I had seen a man who seemed to live without a soul develop a renewed spirit.
As fall turned into winter, and the snow fell upon my branches, I knew I would not see the man, for I no longer had the leaves to shelter him.
