I was sitting at a table by myself, as close to the fire as I could get without sitting inside the hearth, when a gust of cold air announced the stranger. He pulled the oak door open with a dramatic gesture, and stood for a moment, silhouetted against the gray sky and snow covered ground.
His arrival alone caused a considerable stir, as it was a small pub, on the outskirts of town, and rarely saw any more than four or five people at a time, each of which knew one another.
Once he seemed to decide that his pause had been long enough, he stepped inside and slammed the door shut. His appearance was that of a hitchhiker. Upon his back he carried a dark green and blue pack, of the kind that professional hikers wear, which he slung down by the stool he had chosen for himself at the bar. His hair was shoulder-length, and dread locked, brown matted tangles that swung around his head as he moved. His clothes were crumpled, his boots scuffed. In fact, the only part of him that didn’t look the worse for wear were his eyes. They glinted in the light from the fire, darting from side to side as he took in his surroundings.
Such a man, I decided, could not possibly fail to be interesting. And so, being the inquisitive person that I am, I strode over to him and offered to buy him a drink.
He glanced at me for a moment, as if trying to figure out what manner of person I was, before giving me a quick smile and replying that yes, he’d like that, and his name was Kimberly. Jackson- Jack- Kimberly.
I, in turn, gave my name, before ordering our respective beverages from the barkeeper. Drink in hand, I questioned him as to where he was from, and he waved a hand in a vague direction.
“Oh, just a town, somewhere.” He said, “But that was a long time ago.”
He took a sip of his drink, and continued.
“Better to say that I’ve come from New York, and Hong Kong, and London, and Paris. I come from Iceland, and Africa, and India. I come from all the four corners of the world, and everything in between them.”
I thought on this, before inquiring whether he traveled a lot.
He laughed. “How could I travel if motion is impossible? How could I have been to any of those places is every time I looked up from the road I had halved the distance between myself and my destination? No,” He gave me another of his quick smiles, “I traveled between.”
I wondered if I had perhaps chosen a lunatic as a drinking companion. I tried to think of something to say, but he started to speak again.
“I mean, really.” He took another sip, “Where do any of us come from? Do we come from where we were born? From where we live? Is where we come from where we have our house? If so, then where do the homeless come from? I said I come from a town somewhere, but I might as well have said that I come from outside, or from the road, or even from the chair on which I sit now!”
He gave the stool a pat.
“For that matter, where do you come from? I’ll tell you where you come from.”
He grinned, and in those eyes I imagined I saw sparks of insanity.
“You come from that table over there.” He gestured at the table I had been sitting at before.
“Don’t you see? That is where you were before, that is where you come from! You don’t come from America, or England, you come,” he downed the rest of his drink and pointed yet again at the table, “from over there.”
He gave me another quick smile, stood, and slung his pack onto his shoulders. Thanking me for the drink, he walked over to the door, pulled it open, stepped outside and waited a moment so that we could all see his silhouette. Then he slammed it shut, and walked off into the snow.
His exit was every bit as dramatic as his entrance.
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