He nodded his good bye.
Reluctantly, I turned my back on him. Fear skittered along my spine as I walked away, feet whispering through the grass until I reached the paved walk. When I looked back, he no longer stood by the pond, but I’d monitored his progress with my sight as he left the park, heading west, now that I knew what to look for.
My already complicated life had just gotten more so. I took a huge risk meeting with a complete stranger, but how could I refuse? Learning about him and his kind might give me more insight, if not actual answers about my abilities. They’d caused me so much grief over the years that I really wanted an explanation.
When I got home, it was later than I thought. Barb and Tim waited for me in the kitchen.
When I walked in, they fed me dinner sitting at the table with me while I explained what kept me. I didn’t mention a werewolf, just an old friend of my grandfather who I’d bumped into.
I mentioned my plans to meet up with him at the hospital next week to talk some more. Barb looked at Tim with worry a moment before Tim asked when they’d get to meet him. I asked for their patience, saying I wanted to get to know Sam again first.
Three weeks later, I exited the sliding glass hospital doors with Sam walking beside me. We both eyed the dark clouds. The charged air filled me with anticipation. The imminent downpour cleared the usually bustling sidewalks.
I turned to Sam, “What do you think? Still want to go? We will probably get wet.”
Sam, dressed in his unusually trendy attire for an old guy, continued to study the sky as we walked toward the bus stop.
He had been kind and informative the first two meetings. Telling me as much as he could in such a public place about his “relatives” in the hour I allotted for our meetings.
Typically wary of outsiders, many of his kind chose to live in a closed community across the Canadian border. The rural population allowed them more space to roam as they wanted. Although remote, a few of the community’s members ventured out to find work in nearby towns, supplementing the income needed to support their not fully self-sufficient way of life.
Since the “marriage” of their leader - he’d hesitated using the term marriage - more than twenty years ago some of his “relatives” had branched out further to better acquaint themselves with society. Recently, he’d been sent even further from the community to get the lay of the land in a more urban setting.
Trying to blend, he’d decided he needed to dress more like the people of the area. At that point in his narrative, I’d wondered what he’d been wearing. Furs? Anyway, when he’d gone shopping, he’d asked a sales clerk’s advice regarding what to buy. The sales clerk had been about my age. It explained Sam’s trendy choice of clothes.
After the marriage of their leader, they began to realize they’d slipped too far from society and started making other adjustments as well. Several of the structures in the community needed remodeling and collectively, his “relatives” just didn’t have the money for it.
A few of the men not yet “married,” again he hesitated to use the word, had been sent out looking for work, and when the leader’s sons were old enough, they too were sent out. The leader’s wife showed them that the path they’d been on would lead to nothing but the ruination of his family. Their only choice to survive was to adapt.
It amazed me how much I’d learned about the man walking next to me just by sitting and listening to him talk. The way he’d spoken with such compassion for his people’s plight impressed upon me his selflessness. Watching him interact with other people around us, showed he had a sense of humor. Those defining characteristics that had decided it for me - it was time to introduce him to Tim and Barb.
We’d reached the bus stop without a drop of rain.
“A little rain ever hurt anyone,” he said answering my earlier question.
Another thing I liked about Sam. He sensed when I was lost in my own thoughts and let me to it.
I nodded and said, “Okay, I’ll text Barb and let her know you’ll be coming over. They’ve been asking about you every week.” When he looked at me questioningly, I explained, “I mentioned you that first night we met in the park. They wanted to know why I was late. I said I ran into an old acquaintance, a friend of my grandfathers.”
A city bus, this one advertising a new restaurant, drew to a halt in front of the sheltered bus stop. Taking my lead, Sam waited for the other passengers to board. He surprised me by pulling out his own city bus pass to pay. The familiar driver looked at me curiously when I took my normal place behind him and slid over on the worn grey vinyl seat to make room for Sam.