I don't know how he managed to totter up the hill, nor could I really decide which was the older, he or the dirt, dry as heart of a woman scorned; each step sending up a puff of fine dusty grit that got in between ones lips and gums and stuck, acting like glue when moisture from his eye came in contact with the grit of time itself, with a tenacity that would live beyond his span by many years.
He wheezed and panted, sounding like a pig that's met Malachai's Mallat but doesn't know it's dead yet. Everyday I expected to see him stop and sort of topple over backwards, like a great pine cut at its base making its one and only descent to the earth itself. I expected his falling to resound throughout the valley, to shake the windows and doors around us, solid though they were.
But he never did.
Clothes more like rags, worn so long that the original colours could be nothing but a guess, stained and torn and patched so often that I sometimes wondered if there was any original shirt left or if it was all patches held together by nothing but eachother.
His boots, brown like the dirt he trudged through, never had laces laced and sometimes had no toes, but he always had them on. Worn almost flat by time and tread, they made no sound at all as he trudged up the hill, day after day.
The bag on his back he used to carry his wares, his living, and his life. In there were the most amazing things. Wonders from far away, sometimes magic captured in coloured bottles and vials and sometimes dead animals with many legs and fierce biting jaws that no sane man would ever want to meet in real life. You never knew what he would pull out of that big brown bag, brown as the dirt on the road up which he trod in his brown boots day after day after day.
Some days he would pant and wheeze his way up through the town, crying his wares, or ware I should say because in spite of the fact that he had a seemingly bottomless bag of wonders, he only ever cried out for sale one thing per day.
"Carrots," pant pant wheeze he'd breathe as he climbed and called, "beauti-wheeze-ful carrots wheeze pant" and on he'd go, selling his carrots to those in need. And he seemed to have an uncanny knack at knowing what was needed by whom.
The marriage of Goody Smithswife first born daughter is one occasion where he knew. Never before had he carried black silk ribbon, no one had ever called for it, no one had ever worn it. But, unknown to all, except the old man, Goody Smithswife first born daughter had a dream. A small and harmless one, but a dream nonetheless. She dreamed of wearing her Grandmothers Cameo on a Black Silk Ribbon as she walked down the isle.
She had told no one of this small but important dream.
The old man knew.
He knew when to bring extra cloth for baby clothes not too many months later too.
And so it went, up he trudged, bringing what was needed to those who lacked.
Then one day he started calling out for salt. "Salt for sale, special salt for sale now, not for just anyone, only for one anyone, salt for sale," he went on up the hill and over and out of site for the night.
Next day the same thing.
And the day after.
And the day after that.
Then I began to wonder what was wrong. The old man, in all the years I had watched him hike up that dirty dusty road, had never cried the same thing two days in a row, much less 4.
So I stopped the old man, let him take a few minutes to stop his panting and wheezing and I said to him, "Old Man, why the salt for so long?"
"It's a special blend, made for only one person but he won't come claim it," the Old Man said. "I've been trying 4 days in a row and he won't admit he needs it or deserves it or however it works, I'm just the delivery boy," he muttered, beginning to chew his beard.
"You see," he began, spitting out his now wet and used paintbrush resembling beard, "some people are so masochistic, so very much narcissitic, so very much in need of having everything be about them no matter the pain or discomfort involved," at which point having said more words in a row than anyone had ever heard him utter, he wheezed and panted a bit before continuing, "some people," he began again, "are sooooooo hooked on pain and being seen as martyrs that I sometimes have special salt just for them."
He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder, the weight of it almost spinning his spindly old legs in a complete circle before he staggared upright, he asked, "you don't happen to know where that sharphorn guy is do you? This load of salt is for his wounds. Something about him wanting to be seen salting his own wounds in public or some such nonsense."
Wheeze pant trudge "salt, salt for your wounds......sharphorn, salt for your wounds......wheeze wheeze
