First Encounter (A.K.A. Tale of the Shelf)

I'd heard about Jim, obviously. I'd been living on his land for a good month. I don't know how the man managed to be elusive - his 14 acre property, densely populated by a parade grungy hippies and ex-crust punks who all decided it was a good idea to pitch a tent at the end of the line probably helped to camoflage him (even though nobody else here could hide out for more than a few hours without being bombarded by beer-wielding comrades in need of a drunken conversation) -  but regardless, he certainly wasn't what I expected.

Jim Sink, the man who had, for 40 years, been eking a spot in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest for folk who had decided that the trials and tribulations of 9-5 life were too much to deal with. Jim Sink, the man who had beat cancer by drinking his own urine. Jim Sink, the man who had been dancing with the bears since the Dancing Bears first decided that LSD would be a good method of communicating with their disciples.

Jim stood up and faced me, unhinging his hips as if his joints were freshly oiled. He looked old, but he moved young. His eyes settled on me like sunbeams settling on an introverted boulder that had been hiding beneath the foliage for two decades. I almost winced.

He looked at me first. Despite the fact that he'd been bent over, facing away and picking up garbage, and despite the fact I'd laid eyes on him first, he looked at me first.

"Oh fuck," I thought to myself, "this guy's woke."

His eyes were inscrutable opals, and buried within their depths was something timeless. Every glimmering facet of those dangerously bright orbs reflected back to me bits of myself that I hadn't considered (or had tried to desperately avoid) for several years.

"That's terrible," I bumbled, motioning towards the garbage, aggresively aware of how unprepared I was for this first engagement, "all this garbage. Who left it there?"

The look he gave me had me wondering who I was to ever place myself in such high esteem as to judge those who may or may not have had the compulsion to turn back after a gust of wind stole their chocolate bar wrappers from their pockets. I hesitated, even though I wasn't planning to say anything.

His voice was more flat than the a lake's surface beneath the solitude of a full moon in mid-May, but his eyes were still as bright as the sun on a hungover Sunday. "Very nice people," he said softly.

Silence waned for a long second, then he smiled. His smile crashed over me like a warm tsunami, and I felt my own hips beginning to unhinge. Unconsciously, I found myself picking up trash and bantering with Jim.

The trail of neglected wrappers led us to an old bookshelf. Jim paused.

"Let's move this."

"Sure," I blithely agreed, not knowing why we were moving it or to where it would go.

He knelt by one side. I knelt by the other, and we tried to lift it. It wasn't that heavy, but the shelf was resilient.

"No," it seemed to mumble. "Get some more of your people. Only then shall I move."

Jim squinted into the distance. Almost as if the rest of us staying on the land were bound to his will, an armful of people crested the bend that led into the thick of moist Pacific overgrowth. He eyed up two of them and motioned them over.

"It would be great if you could give us a hand," he chirped. His voice sang with a type of enthusiasm that I couldn't identify but made a point of remembering. I felt that if he ever asked me a favor, a thousand years worth of scrying into his mind wouldn't be enough to deduce his motives.

It seemed like everyone else was already well aware of that and had come to terms with it. Riff, a Quebecois native whose dark hair unfurled over a hoodie that may or may not have always been brown, and Tim, a four-eyed helicopter pilot with a clean shave and a well-maintained mop of crimson curls, emerged from the smattering of tired wanderers.

"Eh, Jim. What you need help with?" Riff's accent settled over the four of us like a low note drawn on a cello.

"We're moving a shelf," I contributed.

Everyone besides Jim exchanged a glance, then knelt down to grab the shelf, two on either side. The shelf, satisfied, relinquished its grip on the earth.

Holding the shelf, I imagined Jim would lead us somewhere. We stood there for a few moments as the shelf savored the sensation of being detached from the dirt. After another few moments, I looked up at Jim.

He was staring at the sky with a wide smile carved into his face.

"Isn't this great?" he asked, staring upward as if reconciling with an angel that he hadn't had tea with in a decade. Nobody said anything, and he lowered his gaze from the firmament so it could linger on his more corporeal accomplices.

"Isn't this great," he repeated, "to be standing here, holding this shelf?"

He wasn't wrong.

"Yeah, Jim," I replied enthusiastically, glad to finally be able to relate to him on a deeper level, "this is pretty sweet!"

"There's so much connection," he mused, looking at the chipped paint and wood that connected our hands, "so much spirit."

He gave a deep sigh as we all held the shelf above the ground. Riff was straight-faced. Tim was looking toward the woods, an expression of practiced patience on his face. The shelf seemed quite satisfied.

"I'm glad you're here to help me with this," Jim said, making a point to lock eyes with all of his assistants.

Another pause. "Now, where the fuck do we put it?"

He shifted his gaze a few degrees to the right, settling on a trailer across the road about ten feet away.

"Ah! Bill. I'm sure Bill can use a shelf. Let's bring it over there."

We dumped the shelf outside of Bill's trailer without so much as checking whether or not he was home (let alone whether or not he needed a shelf).
Riff and Tim looked at me, nonchalant, and strode off to join up with their companions.

"Nice to meet you," Jim said, the lines in the corner of his eyes crinkling as he smiled at me. Without another word, he turned away from me, away from his garbage pile, and strode off into the woods.

That was the last time I saw him for two weeks.