One day, Jeremiah Joseph was talking from his town to the next one over. It was a hot day, but it was morning, so it wasn’t too hot yet. It was, however, quite dusty. It hadn’t rained here in a few weeks. It was late spring, so that was a little odd. Even for the mountains, it was already hot, but at least it wasn’t that humid.
Jeremiah had brought a small amount of food with him and a small goat skin he used as a water flask. Jeremiah was wearing his usual linen tunic and rough work pants. They were beige and a bit scratchy, but they were his. As the sages and scholars say, Jeremiah Joseph wasn’t a particularly notable man. His hair was a sandy brown, his eyes a forgettable shade of eye color. He looked you in the eye when you talked, but he wasn’t one of those people who looked into your soul or had fidgety eyes, darting around. He just regarded you. He was of a medium build and medium height; his laugh could be infectious, but often it wasn’t his appearance that people remembered. His feats were what they remembered, you’d just never know by looking at him.
And so, Jeremiah was walking a dusty road, not really in the mountains, more like in the hills, between farm fields. A wheat field here, and a bean field there. Once he passed a vineyard, the grapes were just starting to form into little berries, since it was spring. His sandals were dusty, but he preferred this kind of footwear on days like this. His feet got too hot otherwise and would sweat a lot. He knew he risked injury to his toes, but the blisters that came from the sweat and chafing weren’t pleasant either.
And so, as Jeremiah was walking, he came to a small stream. There was an older man with greying hair, somewhat unkempt, a little crazy, but not in a way that signaled Jeremiah to be wary. The man had a long mustache, not long to the sides and curling, but hanging long and down, the way of the sages of old. Jeremiah had never actually seen anyone in person who did this. The only places he’d seen this were in the old texts that the monks kept in their library. Even the monks weren’t ones to keep this kind of hair. The man was older, but not ancient. He wasn’t frail, but he was somewhat slight of figure. The man was on the side of the road, where it came close to the stream. The old man was filling his own flask in the water. He looked up at Jeremiah as he approached.
“Yá’át’ééh traveler,” the old man said to Jeremiah.
Jeremiah nodded to him and said hello. “I don’t believe we have met before, good sir. I know most of the folk in this area.” Jeremiah said.
“Ah, yes,” said the old man, turning his head to look up at Jeremiah, his ankles in the stream, his feet bare and wet. The old man finished filling his water skin as Jeremiah was just watching, quietly, patiently, feeling like he was supposed to for some reason. This man didn’t look like he needed help, but he just had a feeling he should wait. It was a friendly thing to do. So, wait, he did while the old man stoppered his water skin and shook the excess water off it.
The old man stepped up out of the stream, kicking up sediment, leaving the stream temporarily cloudy, a beige plume in the water that drifted downstream, away from them. “My name is Weibe Hsu. And you’re right, I’m not from around here. I am a traveler, I go where the winds call, which I know makes no sense. I walk, I talk, I collect stories, and I give stories,” he said to Jeremiah, as he slid his feet into his sandals. Jeremiah took note of his sandals, odd footwear for long walking, but who was he to judge?
“Where are you headed?” Jeremiah asked. The old man pointed in the direction Jeremiah was headed. Jeremiah couldn’t tell if he was truthful or just pointing in the same direction he was going because he saw him coming up. Bandits and highwaymen weren’t a common thing in these parts, but it was wise to be wary. The man was by himself, however, but it could be a trap. Jeremiah looked up the road and saw no one coming. “Welp”, Jeremiah finally said, the man’s face blank but patient, “I’m going that way as well. I’m heading to the next town over to get some spices we don’t often have here. You’re welcome to walk with me, or I guess I with you if you’ll allow it”.
The old man smiled and said, “Of course, I would welcome his company. Like I said, I collect stories, and I share stories. I like to talk to people, learn things, share things, ya know.” Jeremiah nodded at the man, and they began walking. Jeremiah looked at the places where workers of old had carved out small hillocks so the road could remain flatter. He pointed out an outcrop to the old man and asked him if he knew anything about the rocks that protruded. The old man said, “I know many things, and all I can say is that that rock must have been pretty soft if they were willing to carve it to make this road flatter. Otherwise, I’d think they’d have just gone around it”. Jeremiah nodded at this, saying that that made sense to him.
The old man turned to Jeremiah, realizing he had given his name, but Jeremiah hadn’t. He said to him, “Good sir, my new traveling companion, I told you my name is Weibe Hsu, but you didn’t tell me yours. Any reason for that?” Jeremiah Joseph was a little taken aback by this and said to Weibe, “I’m sorry, master, but there wasn’t. I’m sorry, I’m used to most people already knowing me, and there aren’t many new people. My apologies. My name is Jeremiah Joseph. I live in the village, back the way we came. Forgive me.”
“Forgive you? There is nothing to be forgiven for; you did nothing wrong. Jeremiah, that’s a good name.” And they walked on for a little while, passing small rises in the land, bushes growing up along the road, weeds here and there, and farm fields being most of what they saw. The occasional house was seen off in the distance, with mountains farther out, long ridge lines light blue and green in the haze. They left a cloud of dust behind them as they walked.
Weibe turned to Jeremiah, taking in his most average of forms, and asked him, “Jeremiah, do you like stories? May I tell you a story?” Jeremiah turned to Weibe, looking down at him slightly, and he said to him, “Of course, master, I’d enjoy that. What did you have in mind?” The dust tickled his nose, and Jeremiah sneezed just then. It was the loudest sneeze Weibe had ever heard. It echoed down the canyon, came back, as if he sneezed again, and echoed back down the canyon a second time. Jeremiah looked at Weibe, his face a mask of disbelief, and just shrugged and said “Sorry”.
The old man just stopped and stared. He had never heard anyone sneeze that loud or that hard. Jeremiah literally created a dust plume from his sneeze. And the old man continued to stare, amazed that the plume didn’t make him sneeze again. He just shook his head and said “That has to be the loudest sneeze I have ever heard. “Well, anyway, have you ever heard of the story of the Cat and the String?” the old man asked. Jeremiah shook his head and said, “No, I don’t think I have.”
“Good, excellent,” he said and began telling his story.
“There once was a small boy who had a cat, and that cat loved to play with string. All cats love string. No one knows why. The scholars say that it is because it boggles their tiny minds, as basically nothing in nature is really like a string. Sticks exist. But strings? That’s a thing made by people. And it is magic. It’s floppy, and you can kick it and yet it’s still there. Cats love string. It’s the simple things, really.”
“Jeremiah,” he said, “you ever met a cat that didn’t like string?” asked the old man.
“Nope, can’t say I have,” said Jeremiah.
“So, one day the boy was playing with his cat, bouncing a bit of string in the air while the cat tried to catch it, like a bug or a bird. The boy bounced the string, and the cat leapt. Over and over, it never got old. The cat loved it, and they played until the cat just decided it was done. It went and wandered off and laid down on some laundry somewhere. The boy’s mom called to him, and he went to her. The cat came back and stole the string. It did the thing cats do when they sit up and flick things around with their little furry hands. It did this for a while, entertaining itself, unable to not react to the string. The boy’s mom saw the cat doing this and smiled. She watched the cat while it played the string. ‘Cats are so silly,’ she thought to herself. She watched as the cat chewed on the string and carried it around. It took it places with it, like it was a child or a prize. Then it left it and went to lie in the sun somewhere.”
Jeremiah continued to listen to the old man, nodding when paused, and saying ‘hmmmm’ when it was warranted. As they walked, they passed a field full of tomato plants. Jeremiah took note of those tomato plants, as there were a lot of them. It was late spring, so the berries were still green. They continued to walk, and the old man, Weibe, continued to tell his story.
“One day, the boy was playing with his cat, and the cat went and got the string. It set it down at his feet, clearly signaling that he wanted him to flick it around. So he did. He would occasionally let the cat get the string, else it got bored. It liked to chew on the string. His mother cautioned him that he should be careful, because if the cat ate the string, it could hurt it.”
“The boy nodded to his mom, and they went back to playing with the string. Things continued along as usual. The cat did weird things like racing around the house at random times or chewing on leaves. The cat, the boy noticed, liked to chew on grass. The boy never noticed, but the string the cat liked to play with had disappeared.”
“One day, the cat was making a yowling sound while near the place where it had left its excrement. The boy came over and noticed the cat squatting and struggling to poop. He was alarmed and curious. Why was this happening? He didn’t know. He went to tell his mother about this. She told him that he should have put the string away because the cat might get too excited and eat the string. The boy said, “okay” and went back to look at the cat. The cat was in the box that they had made for it and filled with sand. Ever since it had come to live with them, it preferred to stay inside. So they made a small box and filled it with sand. They showed the cat where to go, and it figured it out pretty quickly.”
“And so, the boy was looking at the box, the cat having left, and he noticed something. While the cat normally brushed over where it left its deposit, covering it with sand, there was a line in the sand leading from where the offering had been left to where the cat jumped out of the box. That was weird, thought the boy. He found his cat later and noticed the string.”
“The string was hanging out of the cat’s booty hole.”
“Six inches of string, hanging out of the back end of the cat; string that was beige before a darker beige now, and not just because it was wet. The cat yowled and clearly was not happy about this situation. The boy went and told his mother about what he had seen. She said to him, “I told you not to let the cat eat the string. Now, you’re going to have to pull it out. But be gentle, don’t pull too hard. My sister’s husband had a cat when he was a child. It did the same thing. He pulled too hard, and the cat screamed and clawed him. His arms were severely cut from the scratches, and the cat died later that evening, blood seeping from where the string had been in its butthole.” The boy looked at his mom, nervous now. “I have to pull the string out of the cat’s butt?” he asked his mom. “Yes,” she said. And so, the boy went and found the cat. It was lying in a ray of sunshine, acting like nothing at all had ever happened. The boy, a little grossed out, grabbed the end of the string and tried pulling. The cat took notice immediately and jumped up, looking at the string, turned halfway backwards, folding itself in half. It hissed. But the boy did what his mother told him. He began to pull gently. And the string began to move. The cat hissed and then yelped and leapt away. The entirety of the string was left dangling in the boy’s hand. He looked at the string, curious.”
“He took the string and showed it to his mother. She said to him, in a slightly raised tone, ‘Why did you bring that to me!? Take that thing outside!” “And so, the boy took the string outside. He walked the 400 cubits to the stream behind their house and threw the string in the stream. He watched as it floated down the stream, out of sight.”
And with that, the old man finished his story. He looked to Jeremiah and nodded. “That’s it,” Weibe said.
“That’s it?” said Jeremiah. “That’s really it? Is there a moral or a lesson to this story?” he asked, incredulous.
Weibe turned to Jeremiah, a twinkle in his eye, and said: “You just think on that now, alright”.
Jeremiah and Weibe continued to walk, and Jeremiah thought about the story. He took notice that the bushes and shrubs were thicker here on the side of the road than they were before. There were now trees lining the road, with the farm fields set further back from the road than they were before. He noticed that while there was sandstone before, it was now shale. It was all still tilted in the same manner as it was before. He noticed the road was level, gravelly, and more clayey, divits in the road more pronounced, and there was a minor glint to the dirt, less from the quartz and more now from this flaky shiny stuff known to come from the shale rock.
Jeremiah and the old man came to a crossing, where the stream Weibe had been gathering water from before now crossed the road at an angle near to perpendicular. They had both been taking swigs of water from their water skin, and now they both agreed this would be a good spot to refill their water skins and take a break to eat.
The old man had been carrying a small sack of bread and some apples, kept over from the year previous. He said he got them at a market nearby. Jeremiah had some dried fish, hard cheese, and bread as well. They decided to share amongst themselves and had a nice little lunch. They ate and talked of casual things, things like the clouds, the breeze, their preferences in cheese. Weibe preferred soft cheese, while Jeremiah preferred hard cheese. To each their own, they agreed.
When they had finished eating, they both stood up, brushing the dust from the seats of their pants, both surprised that they had seen not a single other person along the road today. The sun had been shining happily, and the clouds drifted across the sky lazily. An occasionally breeze made their sweat do its job, but while it was hot for the season, it wasn’t that hot.
They continued to walk. Jeremiah thought about the story about the cat. And so, they walked some more. The sun was getting high in the sky, but thankfully this section of the road had more trees on its sides.
Weibe said to Jeremiah, “So, what did you think of the story of the Cat and the String?”. Jeremiah thought for a while, he looked at Weibe, then looked down at his feet, and then turned to him, walking along the dusty road, devoid of any other folk. He started to say something, then decided that wasn’t the right answer. He said, “I don’t know, master, what am I supposed to say?”
Weibe furrowed his brow and said, “Think, man! Think, what was it about?”
Jeremiah thought hard, thought longer, he looked up in the trees, and eventually he said to Weibe, “It was about listening to your elders, no?” Weibe guffawed, loud, hard. Jeremiah Jeremiah stopped in the middle of the road. His face blank, confused. He tilted his head while Weibe Hsu laughed some more.
“I don’t understand, master, what is so funny?” Jeremiah said genuinely confused. Weibe looked at him, down at his feet, down at Jeremiah’s feet, and then back up at his face. Jeremiah just looked back, expectantly, waiting for an answer. He suspected it must be something profound, something deep, an arcane truth about the world. Weibe continued to look at him and then said, “You don’t know? You really don’t know?”
Jeremiah said, “No, master, I don’t understand.”
Webie looked at him with that twinkle in his eye and said, “Well, first off, I have no idea where you got this master thing from. Secondly, you just let me ramble on that utter nonsense, blah blah blah, going on, blathering about nothing. That’s the moral of the story.”
Jeremiah looked shocked and confused. “What was? The moral of the story was nothing? Just rambling?”
“Yes!” laughed Weibe, “You just let me ramble on, wondering where it was going, never asking where this might be going, wondering if I was just wasting your time.” “Well, mast- uh, Weibe, I thought I was being polite. I thought you had a point to the story.”
“Nope, I just wanted to see how long I could go on with that nonsense,” chuckled Weibe.
The sun was starting to get deeper in the sky, but there was still plenty of sunlight left. Weibe and Jeremiah stopped at a large outcrop of rock, partly overhanging the road. Weibe said, “Let’s stop here for a few minutes if you don’t mind.” Jeremiah nodded in agreement. Weibe pulled a small pouch out of the larger sack he kept his lunch in. He sat down on a rock fallen off the wall of the overhanging rock outcrop. Weibe pulled out a small pipe, long-stemmed with a small bowl. Jeremiah marveled, surprised it could fit into such a small pouch.
It was quiet here, just the sound of the wind, a few birds. Still, no one had passed them on the road, nor was anyone behind them. Jeremiah looked up and down the road. No one. No one even in the fields, yet they had seen multiple houses in the distance. From where they were sitting, the stream was across the road and dropped down a bit, and along the stream was a wall of trees. Beyond that they land rose slightly, and he could see a recently planted bean field, new shoots coming up. At the far end of the field was a villa-type house. Whoever lived there had money, and Jeremiah thought they didn’t work that land themselves. Still, it’s odd I haven’t seen anyone today. He looked back at Weibe, who was humming to himself, packing his pipe with the contents of the small leather pouch.
“What is that?” Jeremiah asked. “Jookum,” said Weibe. Jeremiah had never heard of it before. Weibe looked at Jeremiah and asked, “Have you ever picked a bean field in September?” to which Jeremiah replied, “No. Bean pickin’ ain’t until October here. That’s what the sages and the scholars tell us, so we wait until then.”
And so it went for the next while as Weibe smoked his pipe full of Jookum. He took a few dip pulls, holding the first for a second before letting it out. He stared off into the distance and said nothing. He took a few more pulls, just sitting, listening to the creek and the birds. Jeremiah watched but said nothing.
Weibe then packed his little smoking kit back up and continued on their way. Weibe said to Jeremiah, “Now, you tell me a story”.
And so, Jeremiah Jeremiah told the old man, Weibe Hsu, the story of the Shaggy Dog. He told him in great detail of the boy who had a dog that everyone told him was so shaggy. Everyone the boy met told him his dog was so shaggy and that he should enter his dog into the shaggy dog contest. And so he did, and so on and so forth. He spun the yarn, he added details here and details there, describing things, dragging the story on for an excruciating length. The boy made the town contest, then went on to the county, and won, onto the state, and won, and so on and so far.
Jeremiah told his story with the matter-of-fact voice of a professional orator. He told of how the boy made it to the very top, he went to the international championship. People were amazed, but when the judges came by, they were wholly unimpressed. “He just ain’t that shaggy, kid.” He was devastated, the boy with the dog. And that was that. Jeremiah wrapped his story up, the sun getting lower in the sky. He knew by the landmarks that they were getting close to the next town. Weibe just nodded his head and said, “Now that’s how ya do it.” They walked on for a while. They came to the town a little while later. They shook hands and promised to share stories together next time they met. Jeremiah Jeremiah watched Weibe Hsu disappear around a building. He never saw him again.