Sunlight in January
"I found him on top of that hill he hated."
I found him on top of that hill he hated. He always complained when I dragged him to the top of it to see the view. “Time was money” he’d say. The trek was too long away from the shop. The crumbling path was a medical bill waiting to happen. Every second he wasn’t working or sleeping was a minute wasted.
But today he went himself. I found him panting, calloused hands standing weakly at his side. The wind blew but he didn’t wear a coat. He was looking out at the sky.
I put down one of two coffees next to him and joined him in the view. I wouldn’t call it breathtaking. I always found that a peculiar way to describe the mountains and snow covered trees. It was so spectacular it filled you with life. The sight made me remember my lungs, remember my heart, remember I was alive.
It didn’t seem to do the same for him. He was trying, trying harder than any other time I brought him here. But this wasn’t where he drew life from. He wasn’t used to it. His grayed eyes just looked outward desperately, glaring at the mountain in the distance.
“You should drink,” I nodded my head to the coffee on the floor. “It’ll warm you up.”
He nodded. He didn’t move.
I checked my watch. “Alan would have finished putting in the rest of the machines by now.”
“Did he now?” He kept staring into the sky. Gray clouds were on the horizon.
“I would have thought you’d be proud of him, Emerys,” I said with a note of accusation, “Business has never been better.”
“I am proud of him!” said Emerys with a sudden rise of anger. “I’ve always been proud of him.”
I took a sip of my coffee to compose my next sentence. “Well you have a funny way of showing it, sulking all alone on this hill.”
Emerys’s shoulders slumped, and for a moment I remembered how old the man was getting.
“I am proud of him,” he said finally, “He is witty, driven, and has his mother’s brains. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
“But…?”
He huffed, “It's just those damn machines he makes. They are… bad.”
“Bad?”
“Bad.”
I sipped on my coffee.
“Because they increase profits?”
“Well no-”
“Because we are more productive?”
“No I-”
“Because more people get shoes?”
“They just aren’t good, ok!” he spoke with an uncharacteristic venom. “It's too mechanical, too simple, too fast. It's not…”
“Human?”
Emerys looked away. “You think I’ve lost it don’t you. An old fool scared of change…”
“On the contrary, you remind me of my pa.”
“Mr. Dolven?”
I nodded. “He felt about the same way when you moved here.”
“Really?”
I shrugged, “A young shoemaker from a far away place making quality he couldn’t dream off? He was downright terrified of you.”
Emerys looked at his hands, clenching and unclenching them. “I… I never knew.”
I took another sip of my coffee, and watched as my breath came out in steam in the cold air. “He told my mom he felt like sunlight in January.”
Emerys frowned.
“He felt so full of light and life, brimming with potential to offer the world.” I gestured towards the rolling forests, leafless and dead. “Only to fall into an unexpected world that had no use for him.”
“He should have been a poet.”
“That was the plan before I ruined it.”
We stood there silently for a long bit. Long enough for Emerys’s untouched coffee to go cold.
“Did he… Did he ever stop feeling that way?”
I took a final sip of my coffee, feeling its richness flow down the back of my throat. The trees and mountains looked even more majestic in the dying sunlight. I took a deep breath, the crisp air snapping my brain awake and reminding me that I was here. That I was alive.
“No, I don’t think he ever did.”
“Oh.”