At least it was morning. An unfamiliar path through the woods is not the place to be in the dead of night. It being a windy November day however, it felt cold as night even through my heavy overcoat.
One might ask, with reason, what I was doing in such a place at such a time. Having mid-morning business in a nearby town I had set off just before dawn in my carriage. In spite of the cold I was enjoying the solitude of my ride something spooked my horse, and sent it dashing down the road in erratic fashion. I managed to calm to animal, but not before its careening had taken the wagon off of the road and into a ditch of sufficient depth as to make extricating it myself impossible.
I waited until the first orange shine of morning for someone else to arrive. I was certain that some fellow traveler or another would happen by, and render me assistance. (For which I would have happily paid with some of the silver I carried with me.) After two hours of such waiting, and being far too removed from both my home, and my destination, (Fate having presented this difficulty to me at almost the exact halfway point of my journey), I entered the woods, where the aforementioned path began. I had contemplated it several times while I waited for help and decided at last it must lead to a country home where I might seek relief from my situation.
Fool that I often am in the mornings, I brought no saddle with me to mount the horse and ride back home. Being nothing more than adequate in the ways of horsemanship, there was little hope of riding barebacked without being thrown. I tethered the animal to a nearby tree, and set off into the unfamiliar woods.
It being the middle of November, much of the autumn pallet had passed from the leaves and foliage, leaving mostly browns and stray blood-red leaves piled up all around me. More than once I stopped to sweep the leaves away with my feet, digging the path out of its temporary grave.
Scantily clad branches on the hibernating trees clicked and scratched against one another, a diaspora of stubborn leaves clinging still to a few limbs.
I traveled for perhaps twenty minutes along the path, swooshing leaves from in front of me, only to have the wind blow them back in moments. Still no sign of human habitation. It became clear to me by this point that the path, wherever it led, would be of little use to me in my predicament. A turn in the path just ahead of me would mark the end of my search, one way of the other. Either the home I sought lie just beyond this bend, or if not, it was there that I would turn around and head back to my horse.
As I rounded the bend, I heard the distinct sound of humming. Not like an insect, but as a man may do to assuage boredom or fear. A periodic clacking sound accompanied the humming, as though one struck small rocks with a tiny hammer. After a few more paces, the source of both sounds came into view, a sight so strange I shall likely never forget it, even if I reach dotage and forget most other sights collected in my brain over a lifetime.
A man, about my age and size, (though somewhat more rotund than me) sat on a large boulder just off of the path. He wore clothing that was almost entirely white. More white than I had ever seen on one person before. More white than I would have thought a man short of royalty could afford. Save for a modest black vest, every aspect of his ensemble was not only white, but clean. Overcoat, trousers, vest and undershirt, even shoes and odd three cornered hat. Without his clothing one might have called his face white, as it was more pale than the average man. Though in comparison to his garments, there was much notable color to his flesh.
The tar-black moustache which curled to a slight degree at either end was the only other color on this spectacle. But the greatest oddity was not in fact his clothing; it was his activity. He sat juggling what appeared to be four balls of equal size. They too seemed to vary somewhat in color, though so quick were his movements that for much of the time the objects were but a blur to my eyes.
If I had not been in a rather desperate way at the time, I should think I would have done two things. The first possibility, I would have observed the man from a greater distance and relished in the absurdity. The second, and most likely, would be that I would have turned gradually around, and made my way back down the path to my awaiting horse, leaving this juggler in white to his own devices.
Yet I had business to attend, or if not, a home to return to. Thus I engaged him.
“I say there, sir, do you live nearby?”
He turned to look at me without breaking the cadence of his juggling.
“I suppose one could say they live wherever they happen to be until they die. But if you are asking me if I have a domicile here, the answer is no.”
My brother always told me he felt most sharp witted in the morning, and would often read and solve riddles at that time. It is a trait we do not share.
“In that case, do you know if there are any houses along this path?”
“I saw none during my walk along it earlier this morning, I can tell you.”
Still he juggled the four spheres in the most adept manner.
“I see. And where does the path lead in that direction?”
“That I couldn’t tell you either. I didn’t get here by way of the end of the path. I was walking through the woods until I came upon it. I followed it until I got here, than sat.”
“And were you perchance juggling those balls the entire time you made your way through the woods?”
This question bore no relevance to my situation. Yet in order to complete my already skeptical assessment of this personage, I inquired.
“Not the entire time, no. It was, for a while, too dark, and I never juggle by campfire. By torchlight on occasion.”
“Yes, well, forgive me for disturbing you. Good morrow.”
By this time, I had decided not to ask him for any assistance with my problem, as I doubted he had enough sense, let alone strength for such work. And as there seemed to be nothing for me on the path beyond him, I moved to return to my carriage. I figured by now the road would be more busy with travelers more suited to help me.
He called after me. “Are you in some sort of trouble, friend?” I couldn’t deny it given how much of a display I’d already made in my attempts to find people. I turned to him once more.
“Somewhat,” I told him. “I’m unfamiliar with these parts, and my carriage became stuck in a ditch along the road in that direction. I’m without saddle and hoping for some muscle to help me restore the carriage to the road.” Not wanting to offend him with a poor assessment of his abilities, I enlisted his help, though I was half-hearted in so doing. “Could you perhaps lend me a hand with it?”
“That is possible,” the Juggler said. “I’ll have to see the situation for myself first. May I come back with you to the scene of your roadside mishap?”
I could only hope now that he would be of some use, or in the very least be less mad than I feared him. “Come, and much thanks in advance.”
“You mustn’t thank me until I provide you with a service, if that is even possible.”
He hopped off of the boulder, still juggling, and approached me.
“What and why do you juggle, sir?”
At once the Juggler was tossing two of the balls at me without so much as a warning. The action was not malicious, though to me somewhat careless as I had been unprepared. I was taken by even more surprise by the sting in both my hands that the heavy objects caused when I caught them. Rock solid, both. When I’d recovered I examined the balls.
“Billiard balls?” I asked, looking up at him. He was still juggling both of the others.
“Precisely so,” he said.
I held an 8-ball in one hand, and the white cue ball in the other. My companion juggled the other two at a swift pace and I could not make out their numbers. But judging by the hue of the streaks they left in the air as he tossed them about, I judged the two in his hand to be another 8-ball and another cue-ball.
“No offense in the world intended, friend, but why on earth would a man opt to juggle balls of such mass? Does not a Juggler usually use bean bags and such?”
“He does tend to do so,” said the Juggler, “which is why I don’t. Billiard balls are intended for billiards, and that is one reason why I use them thus. Each thing not in its place, as one might say of me.”
I wondered where, if anywhere, this fellow would truly be in his place. I stepped toward him, both balls now in my right hand, to return them.
“Toss them to me,” he said. “Whenever you like, though one at a time, if you please.”
I tossed the 8-ball first is as gentle a manner as I could muster while still covering the distance. He absorbed it into his juggling without any loss of tempo. A moment later, he accomplished the same feat when I tossed the cue ball. My exposure to jugglers was limited, but I had no doubts he was accomplished at the art.
We walked down the path in silence for a time, the crunch of leaves and the soft patting of the billiard balls against his hands for accompaniment. Feeling the awkwardness of not speaking, I posed a question to him that I had pondered since tossing the balls back to him.
“Any particular reason you juggle two cue balls and two 8-balls? Or is that happenstance?”
To my surprise he stopped juggling, and I was uneasy for a moment. Granted most of the time men are not juggling, and this would not normally disturb me. Yet this stranger had been doing so with such consistency and skill throughout our entire short acquaintance that it seemed he would not stop at least until nighttime. I tensed myself for potential confrontation.
“Balance of the extremes,” he said, in as nonchalant a manner as he had said everything else. Do you know how to play pool? Nine ball?”
“Under standard rules, I am familiar with the game, yes.”
“Then you know that the white ball is but a tool. It puts everything into play. It’s the catalyst. Sink it into a hole and your turn is forfeit. Sink it when only one ball remains-”
“And you lose outright,” I said.
“Indeed. And the last ball is always...” He shook one of the 8-balls at me. “It’s neutral and yet deadly. Sink this one at any point in the game before the end, and...” He pointed at me.
“You lose the game.”
“Correct again. All the other balls are merely pawns. They measure out the time and energy until one gets to the 8-ball. Obstacles, truly. But the cue you always need. The 8-ball you need only until the very end. Before that one must exercise caution around it.”
Nothing he said was untrue. Still, his mere summary of the rules of billiards, with my occasional help, did not answer my question fully. I moved to repeat the question, but suppressed it. I nodded and looked forward down the path again.
“You wonder why I juggle these. They are reminders. When these two balls are left on the table, the 8-ball, dangerous throughout the game, becomes sought after. And the cue, vital or semi-dangerous throughout the game becomes deadly. Unlike the others on the table, the value and purpose of these two balls on a pool table shift dramatically from the start of the game to the end. Just as we, our lives, our purposes shift in importance and value throughout time. It is all, in the end-“ He tossed the balls up in the air and began to juggle again, “a juggling act.”
I knew not if the sense he was making was due to his wisdom or my foolishness. I considered it may have been a combination of both.
“Why four of them then?” I was emboldened to ask.
“Simple. Because two would not be juggling, and six are too heavy to carry around all day.”
Coming at the end of such philosophical symbolism a moment before, the practicality of this answer made me laugh. He too, though not laughing, did produce a smile at his own honest answer.
We walked without speaking for a another few minutes, I pondering what he had said, and he proceeding with his juggling. The wind had picked up since I first set off from my carriage, and I pulled the collar of my overcoat up to protect my neck from the elements. My companion, however, seemed indifferent to the weather. With no hunch, or shiver, or stooped walk against the cutting winds, the Juggler appeared all the more out of place for being unaffected by the wind.
“How long have you been skilled in the art of juggling?” I asked him. The silence between us had once again put me on edge.
“Let’s just say I have no memory of not doing it in some fashion. I have no proof I didn’t do so in the cradle.”
“And do you perhaps juggle anything else besides the symbolic billiard balls there?”
“Not for quite some time,” he said. “I would be capable, but I would not feel at ease with anything else by now.”
“I attempted it in my youth. To impress a girl I quite fancied at the time. I never mastered it, however. Perhaps my motivation was poor.”
“Some juggle, and some are the juggled.”
An explanation of this cryptic response I feared would require too many questions of too probing a nature for this stranger. I wished to avoid too great an intimacy with him, particularly as we were only a few minutes from my carriage by that point. I left the odd remark unchallenged.
As we came over the crest of the small hill near the road, I explained the particulars of my situation. The size of the wagon, the resting point, available tools, and the like. As I had journeyed ahead somewhat in anticipation of the end of my ordeal, he was no longer next to me. I took his lack of response as proof he was considering all of the information. However once I reached the edged of the woods, my carriage in sight, I turned to confer with him to find that he was no longer there.
“Hello?”
No answer.
I ventured back onto the path a short distance, thinking I may have left him further in my wake than I had intended. There was no sign of him. Remembering his earlier statement that he had originally found the path by walking straight through the woods, I checked the forest in all directions. The white and black clothing would certainly have stood out against the nearly colorless nature of the hibernating plant life surrounding me, yet I saw nothing.
Nor even did I see a hiding place behind which the Juggler could have place himself. I thought it impossible he could have traversed such a distance as to return to where I found him in such a short time. Yet the more I pondered it, the more I realized that he was probably out of my sight a good ten minutes. Assuming he broke off from me the moment I first turned away from him, I calculated he may have indeed been nearly back to the boulder on which I found him.
Despite this character’s heretofore whimsical nature, I took exception to the sudden abandonment. A free man may of course come and go as he pleases, yet to allow another to assume his help only to vanish before rendering same was in my mind absolute rudeness, and not to be tolerated.
“A curse upon you, jackanapes,” I shouted into the wind, my fist held in the air. “The nerve of wasting my time.” I moved then in the direction of my carriage alone, hoping to discover a way to place it back upon the road, either on my own or with the help of a more reliable assistant.
I saw something rising and falling from the carriage. The white and black spheres I’d held in my very own hands rose up and down over the back in and out of sight like grease popping about on a hot frying pan.
To this day, I know not how he overtook me on the path while escaping detection. Some indubitable trickery was afoot, and I was in no frame of mind to ponder it.
“See here,” I said. “When did you pass me, and what are you doing in my carriage?”
“Keeping my promise,” he said. “I agreed to come with you to scope the situation, to determine if there was something that could be done. I took your place in the carriage to assess this."
“It would have made far more sense to-what have you got there?”
He now juggled five objects, one of which was clearly no billiard ball. The juggled objects moving at their usual high rate of speed, I saw only blurs. He tossed each object higher and I grew weary of his games.
“I must insist you remove yourself from my carriage at once,” I told him.
At this he once again ceased his juggling and caught each ball with an agility that had become vexatious to me. The final item, when it came to a stop, vexed me even further. It was a carriage’s shaft shackle. A quick glance at the wheel confirmed it was my own.
“I demand you return that to me at once.”
Then he stood up, reared back and flung the shackle off into the woods some distance. It landed beyond a small rock enclosure.
“You damned fool! You mad, mad loggerhead. I shall throttle you but good if I come back and find you here.”
I stomped toward the rocks, hoping to locate the shackle quickly. Much to my annoyance there were several rocks together that looked similar, confusing the issue further. I turned once more to curse the Juggler, and found him no longer in my carriage, nor anywhere in the vicinity. I deemed this a blessing and continued my search.
Much raking of leaves and twigs around the first two rocks revealed nothing. I wasn’t sure, however, if I would have been able to detect the shackle even if it had been in the area; shuffling leaves from one place would pile them onto another. With every passing moment I convinced myself I may have been burying it underneath more leaves.
The third set of rocks jutted a bit further above ground. I scraped about with my feet as fast as I could, searching for the missing part. Every leaf I moved away served only as a reminder that I would miss my morning business in town. Even if I secured the shackle, and replaced it with my limited knowledge of same, I still needed to extricate the carriage from the ditch it lie in. My success in such endeavors seemed unlikely at best.
In a moment, success was forgotten. I heard moaning from nearby. Behind the rocks, in fact. Convinced as I was that it was the Juggler playing even more games with me, I clenched my first in expectation of seeing his white-clad form kneeling on the dead ground behind the rock. I stormed around to the opposite side. I did in fact find a man, but not he that had gotten me in to the mess. It was an older gentleman, his disheveled locks of white hair blowing in the wind in all directions. The flesh on his weathered face was almost as white as the hair.
His hat was some distance from him, his overcoat torn and his trousers muddied. I had rarely seen a fellow in worse shape, save the battlefield.
I knelt down beside the pitiable creature. “Sir? Can you hear me?”
Another moan, if not an answer. I worked my arm around the man’s shoulder and lifted gently. With minimal effort, as he was quite thin, I dragged him a short ways to the side of one of the rocks and leaned him up against same. I patted at his face several times in hopes of reviving him. Again I was greeted with only semi-conscious and undecipherable vocalizations. I called to him again to no avail. I shifted my weight and felt my flask bump up against my chest from within my coat. I removed and uncorked it, tipping his head backward and moving the opening to his lips. “Drink. Slowly.”
As the brandy trickled out of the flask and made contact with the gentleman’s chapped lips, he seemed by instinct to take in a swallow, most of which nonetheless ran down his chin and onto his neck. This I patted dry with my kerchief so it would not chap on the poor fellow in the wind. I tipped another sip into his mouth, and this time he was able to guide the majority of it down his throat. He coughed a bit, and blinked his eyes.
I tipped the flask a third time, but his wrinkled hand prevented it.
“Enough,” he said through a wheeze. “Thank you. Let it take its course.”
In the next few minutes color returned to the man’s cheeks. After some more coughing he rubbed his eyes. All the while I cradled him, until at last he sat up of his own power, and rested his head against the rock behind him.
“I am much obliged to you, young man,” he said. He cleared his throat. “If you hadn’t by chance come by here, I’d have fed the buzzards within an hour, that’s the truth.”
“How long have you been out here? What on earth happened to you?”
“Robbed,” he said. “During the night. Foolish to travel in the dark, I know, but I like it that way. It’s quieter. At least, until they showed up. Jumped out from these woods, they did. Pulled me off my carriage, beat me and dragged me out behind this rock. They ran off with my horses and carriage. I fear I spent most of the time unconscious. Your kicking leaves woke me a few minutes ago.”
“By any chance did one of your attackers wear nothing but white?” It would have all made sense at that point. The true nature of the Juggler’s business in the woods. “And did he carry billiard balls with him? Perhaps as weapons?”
“Pool balls?” The old man chuckled, and it denigrated into a cough. “Don’t right off recall ever being robbed with pool balls, or hearing of anyone else being so robbed. Can’t say as I remember anyone in all white, either. As I was telling you, though, it was after dark. I couldn’t be sure. Though you’d think the light of the lanterns would have lit him up like a stain glass window against all the black. No sir, I don’t recall anyone dressed in all white among the robbers.”
I didn’t know how much to trust the old man’s senses. I was willing to wager a large sum, however, that among his assailants had in fact been the Juggler with whom I had only moments previous tangled within my own carriage.
My own carriage which I had left him in unattended with my horse nearby. I swore when I realized what I’d done.
“What has struck you?” asked the old man.
“It is a long story, sir,” I told him, “but suffice to say I believe I may have encountered one of your robbers earlier this morning, not knowing what he had done. I even enlisted his help with something, though never received it. In fact, I left him in my own disabled carriage just around the bend of this path, and judging by what you’ve told me, I don’t expect to find it there still when I return. Can you stand?”
With my help, the old man got to his feet and retrieved his hat. He offered to walk with me to my carriage, in order to repay my kindness to him by helping me to free it from the ditch. I was preoccupied with the notion that horse and carriage were by now probably gone but I agreed to let him accompany me.
I had to catch him in my arms only a few steps into our walk. He slipped on something in the ground. He spat upon the ground near the offending object. I looked down to find an 8-ball. I swiped it from the ground and held it up for the old man to see.
“This belongs to that hoodlum I was speaking to you about. I don’t know when he planted it here, as I never saw him come by. Yet if I should happen upon him again, though I be beyond 100 years in age, I’ll make sure he swallows this for what he has done to me and to you this day.”
I put the 8-ball in my coat pocket, ignoring the irony. With the old man just behind me, I made my way by to the start of the path. There I found not only my carriage and horse in tact, but a team of men surrounding it on the road, having pulled it from the ditch by means of various robes and wedges.
“I say there,” I called out to them. “I say, this is my carriage.”
“Is it now?” asked one of the men. “You’re lucky then. We thought we’d have to come looking for its owner out in the woods, and expected to find nothing but early remains. Cyrus?”
“I beg your pardon, no. My name is-“
“They mean me,” said the old man. “They are my own farmhands.”
“Yours?” I asked, superfluously.
“When you didn’t return,” said one of the workers, “your son sent us along the road you always traveled to get home. We never found a trace of you. Thought this may have been you.” He indicated my carriage. “But it was too small to be yours. We pulled it out of the ditch anyway.”
“And what of mine?” asked Cyrus. “Did you find it? I was robbed by a band of men.”
“Which is what we feared most,” said the worker. “Praise God we have found you, but alas, there is no trace of your carriage or your horse anywhere to be found.”
“By any chance,” I asked the workers, “was a strange man sitting on my carriage when you came across it? Or was he standing nearby?”
The workmen looked at one another. The apparant leader of the group said, “No one.”
“And you happened to have a shaft shackle of proper size to repair it?”
The workers looked at one another even longer than they had before.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but all shackles were in place. No damage. Just stuck a bit in the old mud.”
“But how can that be?” I asked. “I saw the man throw...”
My hand reached into my pocket and pulled out the 8-ball Cyrus had tripped over. I turned to look at the rock where I’d found Cyrus.
A short time later, when I was convinced the old man was in proper hands, I bid my goodbyes to him and his farmhands. Cyrus assured me he would be well, thanks to me and my timely brandy. His workers refused payment in the silver for the services they rendered, taking from me only my thanks. (Though I convinced Cyrus to provide them all with bonus payments in the near future.)
Once the workers and Cyrus clopped off down the road and out of site, I reached behind the seat of my now freed carriage and scooped up a handful of oats. These were normally reserved for the animal’s evening meal while traveling, but given the trying circumstances of the morning, I felt I owed it to him.
I slid into my seat and took the reigns, determined to at least attempt to conduct my business in the neighboring town, all be it later than agreed upon. I shook the reigns, and my horse, no worse for the wear, moved into motion down the road. We hit a small bump a moment later and the carriage shook. I felt something bump against my hip. I glanced down to discover the source of the sensation. I brought the carriage to a halt.
Beside me on the seat lay a white cue ball. I pulled the 8-ball from my pocket and studied both objects side by side, thinking of what the Juggler said about balance, and how it was the role of the white ball not to win, but set the proper things into motion in order to win. Without the other balls, the cue was nothing.
I thought of his white clothing and mysterious ways. Though I did not wear black that day, I’ve often felt that I was, for a time, the 8-ball. And something tells me, the game had been won.