©The Old Fisherman, is by Mary Bartels Bray. This lovely tale was first published in June 1965 in Guideposts. Our thanks to Freddie Bendell and Hannoch McCarty for this information (and to Mary for writing the story).
THE OLD FISHERMAN
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of John Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to out patients
at the clinic. One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the
door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why, he's hardly taller than
my eight-year-old," I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body. But the
appalling thing was his face -- lopsided from swelling, red and raw.
Yet his voice
was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've come to see if you've a room for just
one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the Eastern shore, and there's
no bus 'til morning."
He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with
no success, no one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face...I know it looks
terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments..."
For a moment I hesitated,
but his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in this rocking chair on the porch.
My bus leaves early in the morning."
I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest
on the porch. I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked
the old man if he would join us. "No thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a
brown paper bag.
When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with
him a few minutes. It didn't take long time to see that this old man had an oversized
heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his
daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was hopelessly crippled from a
back injury.
He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence
was prefaced with a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain accompanied
his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving
him the strength to keep going.
At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room
for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the
little man was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for
his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, "Could I please come back
and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit.
I can sleep
fine in a chair." He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel
at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to mind." I told
him he was welcome to come again. And on his next trip he arrived a little after
seven in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest
oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them that morning before he left
so that they'd be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered
what time he had to get up in order to do this for us.
In the years he came to stay
overnight with us there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters
or vegetables from his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always
by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale,
every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these,
and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly precious. When I received
these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made
after he left that first morning. "Did you keep that awful looking man last night?
I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!" Maybe we did
lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could have known him perhaps their
illness' would have been easier to bear. I know our family always will be grateful
to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept the bad without complaint
and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse,
As she showed me her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden
chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in
an old dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this were my plant, I'd put
it in the loveliest container I had!"
My friend changed my mind. "I ran short of pots,"
she explained, "and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't
mind starting out in this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I can put
it out in the garden." She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I
was imagining just such a scene in heaven. "Here's an especially beautiful one,"
God might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He won't
mind starting in this small body."
All this happened long ago -- and now, in God's
garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand.