text: There's a little neglected drag of cobble half a mile up from the banks of Possible's stream, where the eddies gurgle rapturous and wide making glee faces at men that dangle their little heads over the edge of possible's bridge. The little cobble streets that bob and teeter like a broad with a gut full of beer have become otiose, wringing not person, other than the cheese maker of hungry french memories. Horny lads, feet clicking, cluck, cluck, as they sauntered sheepishly in the evening, searching for a lass to loosen their wallets for. The new age saunterers in their barely worn pea-coats, pry grimaces from the cheese maker. The sound of flats and flimsy conversation bouncing off the old street and into the cheese maker's ears. He hated them. The cheese maker had lived alone since his wife had died 8 years ago. I would see him now and then as he stopped in the diner I worked at and had a cup of coffee. Nobody really knew his name. Nobody really cared enough to inquire. His presence seemed to go unnoticed as he strolled through town. Maybe he likes it that way. I called him the cheese maker because that had been his profession. He owned a small farm outside of town that he had purchased after returning home from WWII. His sons ran the farm now and they routinely delivered the cheese and milk we used in the diner. They had booted their father out into a nursing home. I learned all of this because they would engage in small talk with my manager who was an old childhood friend of theirs. I can't tell you exactly why I had become so infatuated with his life story. I would get off work and walk past his nursing home. Sometimes I would see him out and about, smoking a cigar outside a grocery store, or rummaging through a thrift store. I never had the audacity to approach him. It's been a few weeks since I last seen him, sipping on his coffee. I wondered where he had been. What he had been doing since he left the diner. I finished my shift without one sight of him. As I was walking home, I heard a yelling sound coming from the yard of the nursing home. I moved in closer to get a look. It was the cheese maker and another elderly man yelling back and forth at each over the white picket fence built around the nursing home. "You filthy fucking rat!" stammered the cheese maker. "Don't call me a rat, you goddamn wrinkled shit." I hid behind a tree and listened as best I could. "She loved me, Chester. She was married to me. She had my children." said the cheese maker. "You only stole her from me! She was going to marry me, if I hadn't thrown my ring into that goddamn stream!" yelled chester in fury. "I go to her grave every morning. And you, the guy she married won't even bother to visit her!" "FUCK YOU, CHESTER, FUCK YOU, you sniveling little fuck." The cheese maker picked up a rock from the ground and hurled it at chester. The rock missed chester and landed in the street behind him. By this time, the care taker's had come out and were ushering the cheese maker, who was mumbling curses, back to the house. Chester inched his way down the sidewalk past me. He had a cane in his left hand and leaned half his body on it as he walked. He didn't see me and I passed him and went home. I was so fascinated. The two men, in this perpetual state of conflict all over a woman that had passed away years ago. A few weeks had passed since their last quarrel. I couldn't pacify my intrigue. The sullen moments at work and the blandness of the regular social interactions between people left me craving their passion, their hatred. I began cutting by the nursing home more and more often. Checking to see if they would be there yet again, like a rerun of an old show. Then one day he appeared. The cheese maker himself. He waddled into the diner and sat in his regular spot and ordered a black coffee with two sugars. I brought it out to him. He didn't look at me. He stared straight out the window, almost as though he was expecting someone to walk in. He finished his coffee and left. Chester had died that day. I read it in the obituary later that night. He had a bad heart they said. I thought this was ironic. I went to the burial. I stood in the back away from everyone else. I took a cigarette out and puffed on it. I looked over to my left and noticed the cheese maker walk up beside me. "You got another one of those?" he asked motioning towards my pocket. "Yeah, sure." I handed him a cigarette and we both stood there silently.