The Memory Collector

The first time I saw the tall man with the hunched shoulders and the bowler hat over his eyes I was a nine-year-old driving through the Painted Desert on a family vacation. There was only a cactus standing there when I took a better look. I just thought it was a weird shaped cactus.
I didn’t see him again for a long time. So long in fact, that I didn’t connect the two. He was slipping through a forest in northern Wisconsin this time. My family and I were snowmobiling. I only caught glimpses of him through the trees and convinced myself there was nothing there.
I saw him once more when I was nineteen. It was raining on and off and he wore a bright yellow rain slicker and matching hat. He stood in the same hunch-shouldered position I’d seen him in before. When I looked closer there was a road sign of the same yellow color standing where he had been. I wondered if perhaps he’d really been there all those times after all. He showed up again, this time in my backyard.
In the far left corner of my yard, actually growing in the easement is a tree. My dad calls it a junk tree because no one planted it and no one knows what it is. It’s been there forever, standing so tall that it must have started growing before any of the houses were built. It was behind this tree that he hid when he realized I was looking in his direction.
Not bothering to be sneaky, I went and sat in the grass with my back to the tree. My spiral and pencil in hand. I could see him out of the corner of my eye around the tree’s trunk. He could pretend I couldn’t see him if he wanted to because of where I sat. Surprisingly he didn’t walk away or disappear. He just stood there. Sometimes looking at me and sometimes not. I couldn’t see him well enough to read his expression. It didn’t help that he was six feet tall, minimum.
“So you’re not going to turn into a telephone pole or a cactus today?” He jerked back, surprised. “I’m Jessica in case you wanted to know. Yes, I’ve seen you before. Three times, in fact.” When he didn’t say anything I turned back to my notebook.
“Do you have a name?” I asked two and a half pages later. He stayed quiet. Finally I turned to look straight at him.
“You know, it’s hard to have a conversation with someone who won’t answer back.”
He blinked, and was suddenly crouched down, staring into my face. “I’ve never spoken to a human your age before. You really can see me?”
“I said I could." He flipped himself about to sit with his back against my neighbor’s fence, facing me. He seemed to be fascinated in spite of himself.
“So what do humans your age think about?” he asked. “How old are you anyway?”
“Nineteen, and I think about lots of things.”
“Like?”
“Like the curse of immortality, what God wants me to do with the gift of service He has given me, whether I should live my life celibate or not, and how many words rhyme with ‘mire'. I’ve come up with fifteen so far.” His mouth slid open a bit. “You asked." It took him a few minutes to recollect himself.
“So, I’ve told you my thoughts, some of them, my age, and my name. What name do you go by?” His face darkened at that, and he seemed to slip inside himself, to some problematic inner landscape, for awhile.
“Names……True Names, are dangerous things,” he hesitated.
“So they are…but I didn’t ask for your True Name, now did I? I asked for the name you go by.”
He looked dumbfounded, a moment later murmured, “……Jessica,” then, staring at me, “She Sees.”
“That’s the Hebrew translation of my name. It suits me well enough.” He pulled off his hat and ran his fingers through short, dark hair. For some reason I had expected him to be bald.
“You are not what I expected you to be.”
“Life’s more fun that way.”
He looked at me sidelong. “Not even your thoughts are what I expected.”
“I had a friend once, Leah, who said she pitied the person who ever tried to enter my mind because they’d probably get lost in it.”
Once more he just blinked, then tilted his head back and laughed so hard tears leaked from his eyes. “I believe it!” he wheezed, trying to get his breath back. “So what do you do?” he changed the topic.
“Work part time. Go to school full time. Dream.”
“Where you dreaming before you came out here?”
“What?”
“You were staring out the window,” he pointed, “And you weren’t seeing what you were looking at.”
“……Oh! I was wondering what happens to all the memories that people forget. Did I say something wrong?”
He shook his head slowly, his expression one of astonishment and concern. “No. You just surprised me. Although at this point I probably should have expected it. So what happened to the memories? In you dream of course.”
“I don’t know.” I could feel my smile turn apologetic. “I ended up thinking that it’s probably better if we forget some things. Otherwise peoples’ heads would be so cluttered with the past we wouldn’t be able to focus on the present.”
“Memory is like an ocean,” said my guest with eyes like a sage, filled with ancient wisdom. “Stay too long and you’ll drown in it.”
“I like that,” I said, parroting his words. “I suppose there are some things that we’re better off not remembering too.” He didn’t reply. I went back to my writing.
“Leaving?” I asked as he stood, picking leaves and grass off of his coat. He looked towards the road.
“Soon. I have work that needs doing.” He turned back to me, a smile in his eyes. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after the things you’ve forgotten until you need them again.” He cut me off before I could get a question out, telling me his name.
“One more question before I go.” I nodded. “What are you writing?” I showed him and he turned to go. Stifling laughter all the way to the street.
I didn’t try to follow, knowing that by the time I reached the curb he would already be gone. Or at least have become a rain gutter or something. Flipping back in my notebook I wrote his name at the beginning of the story I had started that afternoon.

What if?

I'm one of those people who is always wondering "what if?" What if people could float on ceilings like in Mary Poppins. What if a man could make himself look like a telephone pole. What if fairy-godmothers really lived in trailer parks. What if......fill in your own blank here. I've found the best way to indulge in "what ifs" is to write stories about them, the best part being every question can have hundreds of answers. So what are your "what ifs?" How have you answered them? I would truly enjoy reading your stories and poems, so post them here, and never stop wondering "what if?"