Seas would rise when I gave the word.
Now in the morning I sleep alone,
Sweep the streets I used to own."
He was an old man that liked to sit outside of the local feed store when the weather was good and inside the coffee shop when it was bad. He was a professional people watcher, a sometimes philosopher, a political expert if asked. Actually an expert of whatever you happened to ask him about it seemed. No one knew where he was from originally. He hadn't grown up in the town, hadn't moved in young and raised up a family. He'd simply appeared one day, no one could say when or how. He had turned into a local fixture, a predictable part of the landscape. He didn't seem to work, but was helpful to a fault. The local garden club that maintained the cities flowerbeds praised his green thumb and tireless weeding. The little league was grateful for his help selling tickets and keeping the infield mowed and the lines painted during baseball season. He helped the PTA with bake sales and attended every city council meeting, sitting in the back observing, never saying a word.
Then one day he was gone.
No one noticed at first. He'd been gone before. Had a doctor's appointment over in the next town, or come down with the virus that was being passed around. But he'd always mentioned to someone he'd not be around, or been seen at the pharmacy and made sure to tell a local gossip of his maladies so soon the whole town knew. After he'd not been seen for two days the owner of the feed store began to worry. The old man had to be in his late 70's, maybe his 80's. Anything could have happened to him.
The feed store man called the coffee shop owner. No, he wasn't there. No, he hadn't seen the old guy. And no, he wasn't sure where he lived. Come to think of it, did anyone even know what his name was? A dozen possibilities, half remembered scraps of conversation. More people were contacted. None could recall more than few vague details of the old man. The barber that cut his hair every two weeks. The local grocer who recalled a request for steaks cut extra thick once. In all a whole town of people could tell you a hundred things about the old man, less than half of which could be agreed on by everyone and in total described a man who may as well never been real for all the substance it provided.
The police were called. But with no name, no address, no car clearly recalled or a direction certain as to where he might have walked, they could do nothing. For a week or more people searched around, they speculated. Then the local tire shop owner's house burned, his young wife dieing in the fire. And the mayor got a divorce. And all the goings on of a small town swept away the memory of the old man no one ever knew and he was soon forgotten by almost everyone, save the food store man, the coffee shop owner, a few people who noticed the flower beds needed weeding.
A month later someone walked in with the day's news from the nearby big city. On the front page was a story about how the exiled former ruler of a country in Eastern Europe few of the towns people had ever heard of, let alone been to had been found dead in his home at an advanced age by his daughter who had come to see him. The house was about five miles from their town. It was an out of the way place that no one ever noticed, set back behind a screen of big oaks and huge azalea's. A place only the older members of the town remembered even being a house, let alone anyone living there.
At the bottom of the article was a picture of a man in a thousand dollar suit, a younger man, but without a doubt, the old man. But instead of the friendly smile that he had perpetually seemed to be wearing, a scowl creased his brow. The article described a man known as the Tyrant from the Hills, who had come to power through a military coup and increased his power by crushing all opposition. He had been vilified by most of the world for his action and cared not a bit. But after 20 years of rule he had stepped down to allow a democratic government to sweep in and and went into self imposed exile for reasons that were never clear.
The people of the town were stunned that this man had been among him. Some couldn't believe it, some expressed self grandizing opinions that there was always somethign odd about that old man. Some dismissed it all and said he's dead, so what. Two men cried over it, at the feed store and the coffee shop. They cried not for a tyrant they had never known, but for the old man they had called a friend.
A week later a black BMW pulled into town stopping at the feed store, the coffee shop. Folks saw a well dressed woman get out both places and go inside, staying for thirty minutes or so at each place, then leaving town. Who she was, or what was said was never known. But the next month the feed store owner took he and his family on a two week vacation to Hawaii, the coffee shop owner went on a cruise. And at Christmas that year both men combined to give a free dinner to all who wanted to eat Christmas day and a thousand dollar bonus to each of their employees. When asked how they could suddenly afford this, both men simply shrugged their shoulders and smiled a bewildered smile.
Sometimes the people you never know know what you need the most.
Later...
*edit* after bowing to pressure, I corrected a few errors in spelling. knot lieke it wos a biig deel.
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