Not a Word

Now Playing: Nazareth – “Anthology”

Just a little short piece I’ve been toying with… want to thank Donna and Ms. Foo for giving it a quick once over.

The closed-mouth man wore a sign around his neck that read “The Great Orator”. Not one of the village’s inhabitants knew exactly what an orator was but the goat trader from across the river said it meant the old man was a teller of tales or a speaker of news. The villagers never actually believed the goat trader; he was well known as an exaggerator, he sold weak and watery goat’s milk and, for certain, he came from across the river. Besides that, no one in the village had ever heard a single word out of the old orator’s mouth, neither from news nor tales.

When the butcher’s wife brought him his afternoon meal, she never heard an offer of thanks. If, during the winter, the snow climbed up and piled above his wrinkled grey head he made no complaint. It was always, from day to day and year to year, complete and constant silence.

Even with his still and quiet existence, the villagers did as they could to include the old man in their daily lives. During the spring celebrations, the young girls worked his matted hair free and loose to braid fresh flowers into the colorless strands. Summer would bring the young men with the face paint and roars. They would share their colors with him, drawing angry stripes of black and red across his forehead and down his cheeks.

Mothers brought their newborns to him for mute blessings and gamblers rubbed his head for luck before a game of dice. The local drunks kept him company on cold nights and shared both their drink and their misery with him.

Through it all, though, he said nothing.

Of course, one day the old man died as old men do. The butcher’s wife was at his side cleaning his scraps. She swore later the man opened his mouth and mumbled something far too soft to be heard. Then he slumped into his dinner plate dead as stone. The butcher beat her for the lie that night and on any other night she tried to peddle the tale. The butcher never tolerated a liar and everyone in the village knew that The Great Orator had never, ever said a word.