A Summer’s Evening

Sam

Sitting at dusk in the early summer evening on the porch Sam came to me on that porch.

He appeared as if an apparition. Sam had no long and tortuous crawl from the primordial ooze. He owed no long line of creatures that preceded him his eventual being. He on this pleasant summer night seemingly against all probability condensed, fully formed in an instant. All the treads of the universe that pulling tight where they crossed became Sam. It was as if it was a dream, a natural place where the most unusual of circumstances were the most usual. Sam was familiar and friendly like an old friend, a friend I had not seen in some time. We had catching up to do but no shared experience, friends in common but none who knew both of us.

By the time I had mustered the composure to speak, Sam spoke; “I feel I know you, but I am sure I don’t. I’m Sam. I’ve come, but I’m not sure where I am. May I sit? I feel as though I’ve come a long way.”

I found myself in an odd silence, wanting to speak but without the means, the sort of odd paralysis that comes in the waking consciousness after a deep sleep with the profound inability to move.

“What the hell just happened here? Are you lost?” As I woke from my waking dream not so much agitated as confused, I thought I had merely lost track of the moment and found my self confronted with a stranger.

Sam stood, moving back so slightly.

”Sorry, sure, have a seat. I must have dosed off. You look familiar.” I said.

He sat down on the chair across the table from me. “Thanks.” He said. “You didn’t look asleep.”

“Can I get you something to drink?” I asked.

Jake, the kid down the street, road by on his bike shouting as he went by, “Who’s your friend?” I looked up as he road out of sight. I did not have a good answer.

“What would you like: Coke, Pepsi, iced tea. I have some ginger ale, tonic water. Some booze but not much selection. No three two beer but some other. I like the Pepsi and so does Jake but Georgia who stops by occasionally likes the Coke. I’m sure she would come without the Coke but I have it anyway.” I said, running on as if I was being paid by the word, uncorked in some peculiar way.

“Ginger ale with ice, thanks.” He said.

“I’ll be back in a minute. Make yourself comfortable.” I said. The screen door shut with a thud behind me, punctuating my departure. I came back with a glass in hand expecting not to find Sam, a dream I had shaken with the short walk to the kitchen.

“Thanks.” he said. “I have so much to tell you.”

We talked through evening well into night, sat in the moon light as it rose, revealed the mysteries of the earth and of the heavens as if they were as plain as tomorrow’s grocery list. These were the satisfactions of life’s questions that no human had ever heard, from someone who he had never known and always knew. We sat quietly to consider the whole of evening for a few moments. Sam stood as if to stretch, shake off the dampness of the night, and then said, “I must be going now.”

At that moment the threads of the universe went slack and Sam left back through that pleasant summer night and I sat in the moon light.

Before I could collect my thoughts he was gone.

As clear in the moment that everything was that I had first heard this past evening, it was now only as a smooth round stone among so many other smooth round stones. D.C