Walking Foster

"Foster is my name- and, walking is my game man!

Foster is my name and, the game will never change!"

He sang it over and over as his big, dirty boots clomped along through the country side. When he tired of singing it, he kept the melody going with the rhythm of his walk by whistling. After a while he would tire of the incessant chirping and begin to sing again. Upon breaking back into song, his arms would swing with more force and he would accent the steps of his march even more than before.

"Foster is my name- and, walking is my game man!

Foster is my name and, the game will never change!"

Somewhere in his forties, (Foster himself was not exactly sure of his own age, having grown up as an orphan and without anyone to watch over him besides kind strangers) he had walked the corners of the British Isles. Sometimes he would stay in villages he knew, or did not know. He traveled without direction or reason. He would simply wake up one day, and decide to follow a road. Sometimes he was continuing on the same path, other times he turned around and backtracked along many miles which he had already just traversed. So some people would see the simpleton man leave their town, only to see him return a few days later. He socialized some, especially with those who bore him kindness with gifts of food, or perhaps a warm barn to sleep in. But he never wore out his welcome, Foster always traveled on.

This day found him on a path he had never walked before. He was heading a few miles inland from the east coast of Scotland. Roughly southward he went, from Weik to Old Weik. There was no settlement nearby so he traveled alone through the lightly treed area. In some spots the foliage was thick enough to obscure view, leaving only pockets of blackness in the little forest that grew on either side of the two-rut wagon trail. Other times the trees were sparse enough to view glimpses of distant fields that sloped up small foothills, to the horizon and the ominous grey clouds that hung there like dead weights in the low sky.

The gloomy, lonely scene did not daunt Foster the wanderer. He loved to walk, and was quite enjoying his marching song. The man had written it when he was but a small child, and had sung it many times a day, ever since. He was said to be simple of mind; but there were some who also said that Foster was smarter than most in some ways. For instance, he remembered every place he had ever been in his travels; right down to when he had been a small child. He also remembered people. He would sometimes stutter their names, and act sheepish, but he recalled each and every one of them. He was not proud of his talent; he simply accepted it as a part of his simple life.

The man carried on a long bend in the road. His singing never wavering,

"Foster is my name- and, walking is my game man!

Foster is my name and, the game will never change!"

The curve of the trail obscured his view ahead as this was a particularly thick part of the forest. Now a few long branches stuck out in untended and overgrown tangles from the left, obscuring even more of the view of the left hand turn.