Someone's Story

"Do I know you?" he asked.

I had hoped to virtually ignore the lawn mower's intrusion of my private photo shoot in the cemetery, but the driver had other ideas. There may not be many people in these parts, but they sure can be nosy, I thought. I turned and squinted through the dusk at a face rendered Mowgli-like by long brown hair. To my surprise, I did know him--barely. He was taller and thinner. And his eyes were sad, blatantly sad. Down at the bottom all the way to the top sad.

"I've picked up more bad habits," he informed me. And proved it before our chat ended by smoking a cigarette.

We listened to songs on his phone; they seemed a litany of sad, lovely melodies and rejection-laced lyrics. And he told me bits of this and that. He'd been out fishing. I could see the mud splashed on his jeans and skin, a bit of it caught in his long bangs. He told me smoking helped him with his life's pain and stress.

The pain and problems partially told were too much for my twenty-five years, let alone his eleven or so. Absence, poor choices, and death had trickled down from a few older people and eroded his life for far too long. It seemed to me that he was almost determined to allow their poison to shape his life.

We took a pictures of tomb stones and grass and sky, I with my camera, he with his phone. He finished his cigarette. Then we parted ways. It was nearly dark. A sense of hopelessness gripped me on behalf of my young friend. Where are you, God? I thought, as the boy's vehicle rumbled away. And then, Where are we, your people? Where are You in us?

My thoughts turned toward what I had thought was a calling for my life: Here am I writing pretty stories while little boys plunge toward hell. Next to the ugliness I had glimpsed, I wondered if my stories of something better had any real value. I looked toward the horizon. The first star shone bright above the last flames of sunset, evoking the hobbit Sam's words as he traveled in a dark and evil land: "Look, Mr. Frodo, there's light and beauty up there."

After the boy rumbled out of the cemetery and onto the road, I heard the mower's blades kick into motion. I walked in the freshly cut swatch at the edge of the unmown ditch, a lone strip of order cut by a small figure on his way home.

"His eyes were so sad," I told Mom when I got back to the warm glow of our kitchen.

"I've noticed it too," she replied. "He went for a walk and talked with me last week. A man from church said he's willing to meet with him."