Byron

I first saw Byron a year before I spoke to him. He was sitting on a stool, legs spread, in the green house of a local plant nursery, while he watered the flowers around him.  Behind him the early morning sun streamed through the windows interrupted only by the slow steady curl of smoke from the cigarette that dangled between his lips. It was a beautiful moment that demanded a photo as urgently as a booboo needs a kiss. Pacing up and down the isles of flowers I kept glancing over at him, checking but never taking. I’ve spoken to other photographers about this phenomenon, of not reaching into our pockets to grab a camera, a heady mixture of fear and laziness constraining us as we bargain our way out of doing something we have already fallen in love with. I’ll come back tomorrow, they might get annoyed, angry even, eventually overthinking our way into heart break and loss. Adding salt to the wound when he left his flowery work 20 mins later he did so under the roar of a Harley Davidson, two worlds colliding without a camera in sight.

Since then every visit to the nursery I have side eyed him waiting for him to get back into that same position, a flower groupie hanging around a little bit longer than necessary. Finally though I realized it was time to let that old story go and allow a new one to bloom ( pun indeed intended!). Approaching him with a nonchalance I did not feel, I told him my story of last years stage fright, my words tumbling out in stuttering stops n starts. Confused but amused he humored me while he watered, cigarette bobbing up and down as he talked. He began working there over 25 years ago as a truck driver and mulch deliverer. Back then it was owned by two people who decided to split and go their separate ways. He was given a choice to go with either one and decided to stay where he was, which as he says was a good thing ‘cause the other guy went out of business quickly. I asked him if he liked working there, shrugging his shoulders he said,

“ …sure, beats working at Cumberland Farms up the road.”

Before I left he told me that smoking while watering plants was his only vice left, an admission that was like a slap in the face to wake up and taste the breadcrumbs. What kind of stories must linger in the past of a man who mused over lost vices while working with flowers and driving Harleys? This wasn’t a goodbye, this was an introduction, a provocation to dig a little deeper. I just had to be brave enough to ask.