I Don't Know Where This Story is Going, But This is Where it Starts.....

by Bill Russo



The old man knew hunger like few people ever have. 

In the late afternoon before he left his shack, he looked at his breakfast plate, still sitting atop a rickety three legged table.

Scraping the crumbs off the dish with a rusty pocket knife, he ate them for lunch - three specks of egg and a few motes of bread washed down with river water.

There would be no supper for the reluctant hermit who lived in the lonely, crumbling hovel at the edge of the forest.

***

The eight lines above this one are not the end of a story but the beginning.  As I finished breakfast one morning I found myself staring at the few crumbs that were left on the plate.  I realized that the remains of my food are more than some people eat in a whole day.  

An image of a starving old man began to take shape in my mind.  I saw him staring at a plate.  It contained the remnants of a meager meal he had eaten many hours before.  There was no more food in his hovel, so he pushed away a few flies and scraped the scanty little scraps into a pile and ate them.

Was that his last meal?  Did he leave the house to steal? Did he go out to beg or borrow or perhaps to die? I don't know yet for I do not know where this story is going - but this is where it starts.  

Stay tuned for more.......