Honor the Horrors of the Internet

Regrets of the dead

The first time I'd met Mr. Spencer was just after the last snowfall of the year. He was elderly and clearly showing how unkind the years had been to him and the winters here hadn't helped. I knew he had moved into this small, secluded town in Maine when he was already past forty. Small towns have a tendency to gossip even if they politely left Mr. Spencer alone (as he preferred) and so I not only learned of his mysterious arrival and secluded nature but also a carefully covered accent, a preference for bland foods as well as imported teas. The old crows in the town even whispered rumors that he had once invited a delivery man in for tea time with fruit and cinnamon biscuits but it's difficult to assign any truth to third hand conjecture.

I saw Mr. Spencer walking with great difficulty from the grocery store over the partially iced sidewalk and had decided to try my luck at speaking with him. As I approached him from behind he suddenly halted and I watched as he looked sadly upon a young family (a mother, father and two girls) passing on the opposite side of the street. It was a look of pain and loss that I took to be very personal for him. It was clear he was alone now and had been since he had arrived, perhaps even a widower, and with no rumor of any family having visited or even so much as written to him it might be safe to assume he had no living family.

I hated to break into that moment of bitter reflection but I did have a schedule to keep so I moved forward and spoke.

"Mr. Spencer, can I help walk you to your car?" I asked once, then twice before he broke out of his trance.

"Wot then? 'Oo are yer?" He said with what was clearly a foreign (for Americans) English. He visibly winced when he realized what he had done before replying without an accent "I don't have a car. I walk." He looked me up and down angrily and continued on. Undeterred I caught up to him.

"All the way to springs way? That's almost 5 blocks from here" (country block, not city block).

Turning his bed he replied angrily. "Who are you? You've been following me? Leave me alone. I don't want what you are selling."

"I'm not selling anything." I quickly glanced at my watch and inwardly cursed. "Let me give you a ride, or at least walk with you."

"I'm not interested in buying and I'm not interested in friends so you are wasting your time." His eyes were locked forward as he walked. I fell into step beside him in silence. Sometimes silence is all someone needs.

We had walked almost two miles in silence before he challenged me.

"What's your angle? What do you want?" he was breathing heavily with the effort of walking even though I had silently taken his grocery bags and started carrying them a mile back.

"No angle Sir. It's just, you've been here what, 30 years? And nobody knows anything about you. I'm curious."

"That's the way I like it." He replied, slightly less hostile than before. For a moment his eyes softened. "It's better that way. No attachments."

We continued on in silence for a while longer and he was, again, the first to speak. I suppose everyone has a limit for loneliness and all it takes is a gentle push for them to spill it all.

"If my son were alive he'd be old enough to be your...you remind me of him, or what he would have grown into. It's the eyes maybe, or the hair color. As you age the details fade." He was silent again and we continued walking, my arms were sore from the load of groceries and I had no idea how he had planned to carry this all the way to his house unless it was a deliberate attempt at suicide. Stubborn old man. But I didn't want to interrupt him now. The floodgates were opening. I just needed to be quiet and let him speak as he became comfortable with it.