I thought it was a wink

So I was at "work" the other day, "working" among other things, when all of a sudden an aged, derelict man approached me. At first I didn't notice him. He shuffled up so quietly, like a stalking animal, and being that I was fully engrossed in my considerable labors, I remained focused on polishing the floor's square tiles with a soap-drenched mop. It wasn't until I heard his unique mixture of mumbles, grunts and words when I realized I was sharing a moment with a famous local crazy person. He is a very tall, very old man with a striking beard, which were it not atop the chin of 'ole Wacky McWackerton, would no doubt be cared for with fragrant oils in preparation for his duties as Santa in shopping malls and other shopping malls. But no, his beard does not smell of fragrant oils and because I do not have the nerves, guts or courage to lean up and with my nostrils drink in his earthy, rustic odor, I cannot with a clean conscience speculate as to what his gnarled, ragged beard stinks of. Suffice to say that it stinks, probably.

When I finally did gaze into his warm, blue eyes, which as always were flitting unpredictably as a hummingbird gathering nectar, I also noticed that a stream of coffee was working its way down the fine textures of his beard, collecting into plump droplets, losing their grip and falling away, way down to the floor. As fortune would have it, the mop in my hands was designed expressly for the purpose of cleaning such unwanted droplets, and so with each splatter of milky coffee, I was there to mop it up. For sometime we stood like this, a drop of his beard river falling like a shooting star to our feet, and there like a steward to the gods was I with my mop, doggedly wiping it away. All the while McWackerton was counseling me with his usual mixture of mumbles and words. It would go like this, "You know if Gretta would ghms, sdsdi sfdf.... (?)" with each sentence, though begun in good order, would trickle its way into oblivion, much like the lonely droplets of coffee which fell from his bobbing chin.

I thought that this interaction was leading nowhere, I thought, "Man he's crazy," and I had made up my mind to step around him and continue my mopping duties. Just as I made to leave I felt his surprisingly soft touch against my right hand, at first two fingers which soon scissored as though to grip me more firmly. The thing was, his grip was as gentle as a newborn's, in fact I've held the hands of a few infants whose tiny fingers appeared to reflect a desire to crush bones, so violently and aggressively did their miniature knuckles contract. His touch was of an earthbound angel, indescribably gentle, and were it not out of a fear (irrational as per usual) of contracting herpes or AIDS, I might have stood there with him for eternity, as his bony, chalk white fingers lightly played a tune against my hand. But then, as thoughts of vagrancy and disease began to throb in my mind and I made to pull my hand away, he held out to me a gift, a coffee mug. Behind him I could see where a similar mug was missing and realized that the 'ole madman had, probably with a similar delicate gentleness, picked it up and brought it to me.

Now I understood why he was speaking in tongues at me, why he was softly touching my hand, it was because he wanted to give me a present. Actually, it turned out that he wanted to give me the mug only for safe-keeping, it was actually meant for someone else. Try as I might I could not make clear who it was for, the beginning of each of his sentences starting off promisingly would invariably lead into an opaque mystery towards the middle, and in the end he emitted only the sound of winds through empty forests and worms burrowing beneath our feet. So he left me with the mug, a gentle and sincere smile, and what I think was a wink, as though to seal our secret. He shuffled out, his pants low around his buttocks, just like the young men who ape the culture of poor-urban America circa 1993. Bon voyage McWackerton, till we touch again.