The Company of Others

I wandered out of the woods, onto the city streets. Then, I passed through the marketplace and through the city gates, and I wandered out into a wild and empty place, without home, without street, without tree, without root. Rootless and barren, I stood in it alone. And once I was there, I could not find a way out. I had no sense of where I should go next. I knew I couldn't return to the woods or to the city, even if I could find them. So, I stayed in this place, staring up into the cloudless sky. And though it was dark, I could see no stars. Night became cold, grey day, and day became night. Many days passed uneventfully. And then, one morning, while I stood staring blankly into empty heaven, I heard the sound of footsteps. I looked down from the sky.

“Hello!” called the stranger as he approached. He looked like a seller in the market, though his coat was rough and ragged, as if it had been worn through a long journey.

I looked at him silently. My voice seemed to strain from deep beneath the earth. I realized I had not spoken in ages. “Hello,” I answered faintly.

“I didn't expect to find you here,” he said.

I looked at him blankly. “You didn't,” I replied.

“No,” he said plainly and leaned his body heavily against a grey boulder that lay nearby. He pulled an apple and a small dirty blade from a fold in his coat and began to cut a piece off. “It's a long way to go,” he added with a thumb cast lightly back in the direction from which he had come. I noticed beads of sweat glistening on his forehead, lit by the faint grey light of the sky. 

“What is?” I asked, my body now beginning to turn slightly toward him.

The stranger appeared not to have heard me. After a moment, I started again, “What…”

“Huh?” he said, as if noticing me for the first time. “O. It's a long way here from my shop in the market square.”

The stranger scanned me up and down; a look of concern clouded his expression. “How long have you been wandering around out here, anyway?” he asked. “It's a long way to go,” he echoed his earlier words with a note of sadness.

I had been alone, lost, for so long, it felt so strange to speak. I struggled to answer.

The stranger looked at me with growing sadness in his eyes. “Why did you leave us?” he asked after a long silence. “What was so awful about us that it drove you out into this godless place?”

“God,” I stammered. The word seemed significant, as if it was attached to things that once meant something to me. I tried to make the connection. I looked into the eyes of the merchant.  His gaze seemed to go only as far as the place where my thoughts clamored to become words. I could feel the limit of his understanding. He could not see what I could not say.

“That IS why...” I mumbled, then turned away. A single bird appeared in the sky and glided over the horizon. I clenched my fists and grit my teeth, then went limp again. “I don't remember,” I muttered and shook my head.

The stranger stood and walked up behind me. He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Come back with me, friend,” he said with gentleness in his voice. “Come back to us.”

My footsteps grazed the ground like dried leaves in the wind, barely touching the desert sand and leaving no impression. I was like a brown, empty husk. Beside me, the merchant walked with proud purpose. It was as if he challenged the sun ahead on the horizon to roll to us, so he could kick it into space. He was fearless and relentless. Occasionally, he placed a hand on my back and gave a gentle shove to speed me on my way. I was lost in thought, but he didn't notice. He talked to me with eyes ahead.

“Now, you've got to remember one thing, my friend,” I heard him say. “A man needs the company of others. A man needs to be with a family. He needs to wake in the morning and go to the market and do an honest day's work…”

His voice became a drone in my ears. It continued to hum and buzz even as my body, leaf-like and lifeless, began to float up from the surface of the earth. He took my hand in his as much to lead me on as to keep me from drifting away.

I went with him to the market square, where the crowds of people became a single, throbbing body of getting and spending, of coming and going, of money exchanged for goods, of street talk and laughter. I watched them all from a distance, as if I still stood out in that wild and empty place from which the merchant had plucked me. I was back in the company of others, though I had not returned. I didn't know whether I ever could...