Sweat dripped down the back of my neck and pooled between my breasts as I swatted mosquitoes away from my face, the intermittent buzzing in my ears a particularly cruel form of torture. As my shoes crunched gravel and dirt I pulled myself out of the shade of trees and into sunlight, where the gnats and mosquitoes and other creepy little insects with wings could attack me with the added benefit of stifling heat. I don’t know what I was thinking, taking a walk when it was already above 90 degrees and only about 10 o’clock in the morning. Muttering and swatting at the things I hoped to God that no one would turn up to witness what could be construed as insanity. I took a deep breath and decided to ignore the bugs, try to ignore the heat, and just enjoy the walk.
That was why I was out here, after all. Having spent the entire summer watching other people swim off the heat, I had decided that on my day off I was going to enjoy being outside in the summer sun. Unfortunately my house was in the woods, right by a couple of small ponds and streams, making for perfect insect breeding grounds. Right now it was all I could do not to turn around and sprint back up the long hill and lock myself inside my house.
I pressed on, and started to welcome the sunlight even with the pressing heat once I noticed less of the bugs in the sunlight than in the shade. I was pretty sure I could shower with the amount of sweat pouring out of my body, but even so I started to enjoy my walk, and had managed to find a semi-meditative state in which the mosquitoes didn’t actually exist to me.
I stopped at a little bridge riddled with potholes to admire the stream that ran into a big pond. I remembered that once driving through here my sister and I had spotted a crane. No crane in sight today, but it was just as beautiful with the greens and blues glinting in yellow sun. I was in the middle of the road now, so I started moving again. I walked past a giant house that always reminded me of a southern plantation with its white painted sides and green vines wrapping around a huge porch. Giant magnolia trees were plopping their pink and white blossoms down onto the ground. It looked like someone had set up a pale pink featherbed around the foot of the trees.
When I rounded the corner my lips puckered in confusion. Ahead of me was an old man, half shuffling, half-limping, carrying a huge iron shovel in one hand, its weight hefted so that the shovel itself was parallel to the ground. His thin back was hunched over, bony shoulders wide and rounded. A dog was walking a bit in front of him, weaving along the dirt road. He must have been at least 80, and I was pretty sure that if I blew out a breath at the wrong angle he would keel over. He was turned towards me already, so I smiled and called out hello to him, though I had no idea who he was.
“Hello! Its hot out today, isn’t it”
He leaned forward a little as if he had had a difficult time hearing me, and I slowed my pace when I neared him so that his shuffling gait could keep up with me. His hair was that ambiguous gray that gave no hint of previous hair color; black, brown, blonde: it could have been any of them. He had watery blue eyes, a color that made me want to keep looking. I couldn’t help but wonder what they might have looked like without the cloudiness. His reply came slow, and I had to watch his mouth as he spoke, tearing my gaze from the eyes, his voice so rough and weak I could barely hear what he was saying. Hoping it was just amiable agreement I talked on, introducing myself and telling him I lived on the other side of the development.
He told me his name, though I couldn’t quite catch it, even after asking a couple of times so I gave up and asked if he lived here. He said no; he was visiting his sister. I asked him if he could use some help carrying the shovel. He looked ready to pass out and my summer job as a lifeguard had me constantly ready for heat stroke and drowning, and I was having visions of trying to run for help while he collapsed in the heat. But he said no, and I asked why he was carrying it.
“Just used to having it in my hand as I walk. I always walk with one in Pennsylvania.”
He smiled when he said it, as if it were a normal thing that someone would be carrying such a heavy object when it was so damn hot out. I asked him then if that’s where he lived normally, and he said yes, he lived out on a farm there, which wasn’t a very big surprise. Throughout the conversation I had to keep leaning in to hear him, and the path we were on happened to be without shade. I could feel sweat running down the backs of my legs, and the flies seemed to love that spot right at the back of my knees. Somehow my companion didn’t seem to mind them. He walked on, not paying any attention to the buzzing around his ears, or the flies hitting at various parts of bare skin. His nonchalance somehow made me care less, and though the insects whined at my ears, they didn’t bother me as before. My attention going towards understanding what this old man said. As we walked I told him that I was a college student and that I was home for the summer. The sun beat down on us as we continued the conversation.
When we reached a fork in the road I realized that I was going to have an inner debate with myself over whether to walk the man to his sister’s house or part ways so I could go to my own. I don’t know which self won, but I shook his hand goodbye, wished him a good week with his sister, and watched him amble down the dirt road towards the house, dragging his feet slightly in the dust, his body half tilted to one side to accommodate the weight of the shovel. Finally I decided that I was being over-imaginative. He’d made it that far. He could make it a couple more steps to the house where he was staying.
Shaking my head, I turned to the direction of my house, grateful for the shade over the road now from the trees even as insects started flying at me with distressing fervor. I started muttering and swatting at them again, my meditative ignorance of discomfort now completely gone. I threw my hands down in exasperation. The bugs weren’t going anywhere. As I dropped them, I pictured the man again, so unbothered by the creatures. I smiled a little at the memory of an old man with a broken gait. I tried to picture him at my age, walking along the borders of his farm with a giant shovel in his hand and a dog at his heels. Were his eyes brighter? Would his hair have been longer, curling around his ears in their mystery color? It was a slightly silly and romantic thought. I wondered why he was walking all by himself with a dog and a shovel, visiting his sister. I hadn’t had the courage to ask him that when he was there. And I wondered if he had company to walk with him when he was home. I wished I had caught his name.
