"Is that a fact, sir?" His tone indicated that he knew better, but would let me slide this time.
Needing to keep the conversation from slipping into confessions of my doubts about the writing project and growing suspicions about him, or my struggle with grand existentialist issues, I said, "Well, yes, sir, but please sit. I've been thinking a lot about you and Andrew Johnson." I resumed my seat, extending my hand to invite him to join me. He made his way without haste to what would be our lab until well past dark-a park bench.
"Oh Johnson. Yes, my Johnson." His face showed a warm remembering. "Met him in Nashville the fall of 1835 at our first session of the State House of Representatives. He hailed from Greene County, up in east Tennessee near North Carolina. Greene County was older than Tennessee, a North Carolina county before 1796. I'd come up to speak in the General Assembly for Lincoln County. We were so very young, he just twenty-seven and I twenty-nine. Both of us were truly rough around the edges. He dressed very well since he was a tailor, and a fine one, but not in the latest of fashion. He was from a pretty isolated part of the world. Someone once said even daylight is late there in the Smokey Mountains.
"There was wildness about him, a toughness that shaped his soul. It was as if he was a lonely, restrained, uneasy soul forced to be involved with living. That seasoned with years, but there was always a tough, hard center from which he engaged the world. As for me, well, I did have a new suit of clothes that was an approximate fit, but I was a most shabby sight beside him or the dozens of aristocrats and would-be grand lords of the law that peopled the General Assembly.
"Be it what it would, we both were unfinished works, sir, outside our little worlds for the first time. There were, even then, scores of folks stalking the lobby of the old capital pushing this toll road legislation or that request for a river ferry franchise or a railroad subsidy. Many different enterprises or causes needing attention had advocates. Railroads were becoming the thing during those years we served in the General Assembly." He stopped speaking and looked out across the trees along the horizon. We shared a few moments of silence in the settling twilight.
"I noticed him the day of our swearing in; his eyes were what fascinated me," he said, resuming his story. "They were so very dark and penetrating that at first I shied from his gaze. His complexion was swarthy and his look hard. But I'd dealt with some pretty tough farmers from around Fayetteville and figured I could manage. Rather than walk away, I crossed to him, extended my hand with a smile, 'Sir, I'm Jones from Old Lincoln; honored I am to meet you.' He blinked and looked relieved, as if coming out of a dark place into the midday sun. At length he said, 'Well, friend Jones, I'm Johnson of Old, Old Greene. I return the honor on making your acquaintance.' "With those words, Johnson smiled with genuine warmth of spirit and right then and there we sealed a friendship. Pray tell it is really remarkable, looking back now, how we became joined for a lifetime of accomplishments and troubles in those few seconds. I suppose I may have been the first one in Nashville who was not scared off by his rough-edged, powerful, wild energy. Me, I just walked through what the others round about us avoided. Most intriguing!" He went thoughtful as if returning to a time or a sentiment…or perhaps a rediscovery of something important.