The old man was sat under the tree.
This wasn’t by any means an unusual occurrence. He sat under the tree every day, whether it rained or snowed, or stayed hot- and it was usually hot; Hantown was in the south of Louisiana, near Houton, and the average temperature there was enough to melt the glue in the spine of your book before you finished reading.
And it wasn’t such an extraordinary place to sit. The tree was on the edge of Lake Charlie, an oversized pond a mile from the town, and a place frequented by fishermen and boaters alike. The scene which you could see from this vantage point wasn’t at all interesting; just plain yellow corn fields, cloudless sky, clear blue water and the occasional horse and rider. The tree wasn’t anything special, either; an old willow which hung over the water, looking depressed, despondent and not at all inviting.
So it wasn’t the curiosity of the scene which interested Billy-Joe; not at all. He didn’t care about the old man. He cared very little for anyone who was mad enough to hide from the hot midday sun under a big tree. No, what interested Billy-Joe was that the man was chewing tobacco.
Billy-Joe was nine, small, brown haired and freckled. Dressed in a white shirt pockmarked with holes, ragged shorts that had seen better days, and greying boat shoes, he was the embodiment of typical male immaturity. And he was curious. Big men from Hantown where often seen chewing tobacco, and Billy-Joe wanted to know what it was like.
“Hey there!” he called out to the man. There was no response. Maybe he was too far away; the water he was paddling in was a good twenty feet from the guy. So he moved forward some, and tried again. “Hey there, old man, good morning to you!” Still no reply. Billy-Joe scowled, and moved forward more. “Hey there old man, why don’t you answer when a fella tries talkin’ to you?”
This attracted the man’s attention. He looked up, and the sun fell on his face through the shadow of the tree, lighting up his dark brown, leathery skin and pale grey eyes. He had thin, dry lips and a nose that looked like it had been ironed flat, and the ear closest to Billy-Joe had a chunk missing from the rim. His hair was hidden by a straw hat; but, Billy-Joe reasoned, he was probably so old that there wasn’t much to see anyway, and what there was wouldn’t be worth looking at.
“Mornin’,” the old man said, his voice deep and hoarse, before he looked away, leaned back against the tree bark, and closed his eyes, his jaw still moving up and down as he continued to chew.
Billy-Joe grinned, taking the reply as an invitation, and went to sit down beside the man. There was no reaction from the other party as he sat; the rhythm of the chewing remained constant, and there was no speech or movement or even twitch to show that the old man had even realised Billy-Joe was there.
Billy-Joe stared at him for a while, wondering what it felt like to be quite so old and quite so boring. The old man’s clothes were old and worn; a simple grey shirt, braces and hessian shorts. Billy-Joe’s sharp eyes homed in on a small leather pouch in the man’s lap, focusing on the few traitorous leaves poking out the top.
“What’s it like?” he asked, looking pointedly at the pouch.
“’s’good,” replied the man, chewing all the while.
There was a silence, in which the movement of the man’s jaw did not once waver. Up, down, up down. You could have set your clock by it.
Billy-Joe decided to be blunt; the poor old beggar was obviously just plain stupid. “Can I try?”
“Sure.” The man lifted up the pouch with a brown, leathery hand, and handed it to the Billy-Joe, who took it, wide eyed.
He peeked inside the pouch. It was just a bunch of brown leaves; nothing too appetising. He took one leaf tentatively out and looked to the man for advice. But it was no use- his eyes were shut, chewing just as he had been before. Billy-Joe turned back to the leaf, holding it in his fingers and twiddling it around. It definitely didn’t look like something he wanted in his mouth. It looked, frankly, disgusting. He looked again at the man. He was as still as a corpse; he could have been one but for the up, down, up, down of his jaw.
“What’m I supposed to do with it?”
“Chew it.” The old man didn’t open his eyes as he replied.
Billy-Joe stared at the leaf for a second, frowned, and put it quickly in his mouth before he could think about it. He bit down hard, gagged, and spat it out. “That’s Goddarn nasty!” he said, coughing and violently spitting out the fragments of leaf still in his mouth.
He looked up to see the old man watching him, vibrating slightly with silent laughter. Billy-Joe scowled, shoved the pouch back to the man, and turned away, sitting with his arms crossed and brow furrowed.
“Hey now, don’t be like that.” The man said, still chuckling. “I just ain’t seen something so Goddarn funny in a long time, is all.”
Billy-Joe turned to scowl disdainfully at the man, -who was smiling, showing an array of crooked, brown teeth- then turned back to the water, and stared at it for a long while. There was nothing interesting at all about it; the reflection in it never changed, the water never broke out of its glassy smoothness. He looked back to the old man again; he was sat back, eyes closed, chewing. Billy-Joe fiddled with a piece of grass. He whistled softly. He threw stone into the lake. He threw another one in. Still, the man sat, and chewed.
Eventually Billy-Joe had reached a point of tedium which he could not stand, and demanded of the man, “Why’re you sat there doing nothing?”
The man didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t even stop chewing. “I’m a’waiting for something.”
“What’re you a’waiting for?”
The man didn’t reply. Billy-Joe repeated the question again, and then once more. Eventually, he became so frustrated that he leaned in to the man’s ear, filled his lungs, and yelled, “What’re you waiting for?” accompanying the question with a punch on the arm.
The man sighed, sat up straight, leaned forward and spat out his chewed tobacco leaf. It landed in the water, and ripples grew around the spot where it had disappeared, pulsing and spreading.
The old man turned to look at Billy-Joe, and smiled.
“You see that there field?” He reached out a long brown arm, pointing in the direction of a corn field that edged the horizon. The sun fell on his hand as it escaped the shadow of the tree, illuminating sun spots and freckles which were dotted over his skin.
Billy-Joe looked. “Sure, I see it.”
“I’m a’waiting for something that’s gonna come over it.”
“What’s gonna come over it?”
The old man looked at Billy-Joe, apparently sizing him up. He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, and then appeared to make a decision. “I’m a waiting for a horse.”
“You lost your horse?” Billy-Joe asked, wondering just how careless the man must be, to lose a whole horse. But the man merely shook his head and chuckled.
“No, kid, it’s the person atop the horse I’m a’waiting for.”
“Well, how long is it gonna be before they get here?”
The old man shrugged. “A sure while, I guess.”
Billy-Joe sighed, and leaned against the tree, and the old man sighed, and did the same. Billy-Joe closed his own eyes, and he guessed that the man was doing so as well. He peeked out of one eye to make sure; yeah, he was sat just like before, and he appeared to have a new leaf, because he was chewing again.
Time went by, and Billy-Joe relaxed against the tree, letting his mind wander. It was surprisingly enjoyable to sit there and listen to the water, the birds, and the occasional clip-clop of a far off horse. It was so quiet and peaceful, so hot and dry, that Billy-Joe felt himself slowly drifting off.
He shook his head. It would be an awful waste of a day, to sleep through it. He turned to look at the man again.
“How much longer will they be?”
The old man opened his bleary eyes. “They’ll come when they’re ready.”
“They sure are taking their time,” Billy-Joe noted. “How long’ve they already been?”
“What d’ya man?”
“Well, how long have you already been a’waiting?”
The old man sighed. “Well,” he replied, “I’d guess it’s been near on twenty years now.”
