Living alone for so many years had taught the old lady to get comfortable to the silence. Ever since her husband’s passing, the small wooden house located on the outskirts of the village only seemed emptier and emptier each year. In the past, there were people living in it and there was no silence but that was many years ago. Nowadays, the floorboards creaked and there was the sound of wind that slipped into the walls.
The condition of the house was not very good either. The center of the roof had become low and the windows froze every year to such a state that the lady had to chip the frost away from their inner part to see what was going on in the garden. She could barely live on her pension and although being feeble already, was too proud to move from the only home she knew almost all her life.
Everything in it seemed to remind her of something.
Village people understood what she was going through. At times, her neighbors would visit with a bowl of hot soup and even help pile a stack of firewood. This gesture was well-intentioned; however, they were all busy with their own lives and couldn’t really visit or help too often.
But then there was that terrible storm.
It happened out of blue one evening, changing an ordinary wintry night into something terrible. Wind was blowing with such power that it was tearing trees up by roots from the forest. Snow was falling heavily enough for roads, fences, and field to get covered in no time.
Soon enough, the whole village became cut off from the rest of the world.
The old woman was sitting right next to her stove, trying to rub some warmth back into her stiff hands. The fire was crackling quietly while the storm went crazy outside. She just listened to the wind shaking the walls and hoped the roof would make it through one more winter.
Then she heard a knock which was very loud. It was three loud, heavy thuds that actually shook the front door.
She got really scared, because who could come at that hour, especially in the middle of a blizzard.
She sat completely still in her chair for a minute, thinking she was just hearing things. But the knocking continued.
She stood up slowly and approached the door.
The wind howled outside as she opened the door cautiously and peeped through to see who it was.
There were four men at the porch. Though she couldn’t make out much from where she was standing, she could see the men looked intimidating. She saw that they were tall and burly, wearing heavy winter coats, and looked absolutely menacing. Their hands and necks were covered in tattoos and one of them was carrying a huge black sports bag slung over his shoulder.
She truly didn’t know what to expect next, but then one of the men stepped forward.
“Good evening, madam,” he said. “We’re in some difficulty. The road further ahead has been completely blocked by snow, and we need to wait here till the weather changes. Would it be possible to spend a night at your place?”
“I live alone,” she told him. “I don’t have much space for me. And, I haven’t got any food to offer.”
“We don’t want any food,” he said. “All we want is a warm place to rest till morning. We will not bother you at all, and we’ll stay away from you.”
She looked over their shoulders and saw the thick blanket of snow. It was snowing so heavily that she could hardly see beyond the entrance of her house.
Should she turn them away, these people would be left in the storm with no shelter at all.
However anxious she felt, it would simply break her heart to leave these people to the fury of the storm.
For a moment she stood there hesitating.
“Alright, come inside.”
The men silently thanked her and went inside.
It was surprising how respectful they turned out to be right from the moment they came into the house. They removed their boots as soon as they got inside, they spoke only in whispers and simply sat by the stove without requesting anything.
She laid before them some food she had in the kitchen, bread, potatoes and hot water for tea.
Not even once did they complain about it.
Also, they said almost nothing throughout the entire evening, looking as if they were simply too tired to do otherwise.
One of the men unzipped the big black bag in order to pull out a dry shirt for himself.
The woman caught a glimpse of what was inside it just then, and she could not help feeling sick to her stomach.
Amidst the clothing, there were thick stacks of money, along with some heavy metallic items which she wasn’t able to recognize completely.
She immediately turned around and pretended that she had not seen anything. From experience, she had learned that there are times when one should refrain from questioning.
There was definitely a change in the atmosphere after that. Though they remained as polite as before, she now sat pondering over the identities of the gentlemen she had invited into her home.
That night, one of them casually informed her that they had recently been released from jail. Without saying a word, the old lady only nodded and continued placing pieces of wood in the fire.
She didn’t have a good night’s sleep that night, and kept opening her eyes even at the slightest movement.
However, the night went peacefully, and in the morning, she was woken up by strange noises. She thought the storm continued throughout the night and into the morning, but she was wrong. The weather was as nice as it could be, and she realized the noises were coming from the roof.
Once she got out, she saw one of the men hammering sheets of metal where there were leaks. Another of the men was cutting wood. There was an enormous pile of chopped wood placed beside the house. The third man was carrying full buckets of water taken from the well.
Finally, the last man was repairing the front gate that had been leaning towards the left since forever. The old woman simply stood by the window and stared for some time.
She could not believe what she was seeing. It was the very same men whom she had been afraid of all night long. However, they were now working in her garden as if it was something absolutely ordinary.
They were so busy working that they didn’t even notice the woman was outside already.
When they finally saw her, they politely greeted her and then continued their activity without saying anything more.
They didn’t really say anything, nor they asked for any money, they just worked as though it was something normal.
By noon, the storm had completely dried out. The snow from the roads began to disappear and the men started packing their bags, getting ready to leave.
The woman stood at the door watching them take their last tour of the garden.
There would be no more leaking roof. The gate operated perfectly. Her woodshed was now completely filled, and her water containers were now full.
It seemed that the house had never looked better than now.
Before they left the place, the man who had talked to her first returned inside the house and placed a pile of money on the kitchen table.
Immediately, the woman shook her head and tried giving it back to him.
“No,” she replied. “That’s far too much.”
The man only smiled at her.
“It’s not a payment.”
“What then?”
“It’s a thank-you.”
She stared hard at him. “For what?”
“For considering us as humans.”
There was silence in the kitchen. After some thought, the elderly lady gave her response.
“I really have no idea of what all you guys did before,” she replied. “Perhaps you’ve erred. Perhaps you have served your time for that. But one thing I could never do was turn away people from my house, allowing them to freeze to death.”
The four men then walked along the snow-covered path for some time until they disappeared from her sight beyond the next turn.
She never met these people again.
When the villagers learned strangers spent the night at the old lady’s house, there were gossips and stories.
Many insisted that she was reckless to let those people stay overnight in her house and that she should have called the police the moment they knocked.
Everyone had something to say about it.
But none of those people actually understood what she had gone through that night.
The thing that stayed with her wasn’t the fear she felt at first.
It wasn’t the money they left on the table.
And it wasn’t even all the work they did around the house.
It was just the realization that people are usually a lot more complex than they seem on the surface.
For one thing, they appeared in front of her as the kind of people one crosses the street when seeing them coming. People would normally judge anyone who came to their door in that manner automatically.
Yet somehow, those four guys showed her more respect and appreciation than any of those who had been living around her neighborhood for years now.
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Bored Daddy
Love and Peace
