Peppermints and Mules” for the ones who never meant to leave a mark, but did anyway

There was a man who came through our neighborhood in a wagon pulled by a mule who looked like he'd seen the dust of every dirt road in Arkansas. And his skin was as dark as the tar that covered the road in front of my house.

The man sat upright, shoulders square—not proud, but sturdy. He was a junk man. He collected what other folks threw out—old fans, twisted wire, metal bedposts, rusted tools. Clang by clang, he built a kind of living from the bones of broken things.

He didn’t talk much. Just rode in his wagon, stopping when he saw something on the side of the road. He would look it over like he never saw such a thing and if he deemed it of value, he threw it in the back of his wagon. And the wagon was never empty.
He didn’t ask for a thing. But he accepted what the world had for him.
And if you gave something—like I did, a carrot or an old biscuit for the mule—he noticed. And he must have noticed me, because if he saw me by the side of the road, he would stop. And wait. And let me pet the mule. And I would rub my cheek on the mule’s cheek and give him whatever I could that was in the kitchen… a leftover biscuit… a piece of fruity… a sugar cube.
And if he had a peppermint in his pocket, he’d hand it over without a word.

I always ate it right there.
Not because I couldn’t wait, but because I knew better than to take candy from a stranger.
And I knew my mama would toss it straight into the trash if she saw it.
That peppermint wouldn’t have made it past the front porch.

So I unwrapped it on the spot, letting the crinkled paper fall into my hand like a secret, and let it melt slow on my tongue while the mule blinked at me with patient, old eyes.

No one ever said his name. I don’t remember him every saying a word, actually. I didn’t tell him my name. Wait, he did tell me the mule’s name but I don’t recall what it was.

He was part of the rhythm of summer—the sound of his wagon wheels groaning down the street, the soft clop of hooves, the quiet dignity of a man who made a life out of what the world abandoned.

Then one day… he just stopped coming.

No goodbye. No story. Just absence.

And I forgot him. My world fell apart and I moved to another part of the world. And there were no men with wagon’s and mules where I went.

Life got loud. Life got fast. Life got sad. Life got bold and angry and outrageous. Life got tough.
I got older. I got a lot of things.
And I didn’t think of him again—not for years. Maybe decades.

Until one afternoon, when I was standing in my kitchen, full of nostalgia and ache. Thinking I had come a long way only to wind up back where I was as a kid.. not physically or mentally but at my core, I was who I used to be with a sweet spirit that had survived by fire.
And this kind of ache that doesn’t come from anything specific—just the kind that rises like dust when your soul’s been still too long and it is not ready to be free again.

And suddenly, there he was.
That man.
That mule.
That peppermint.

Back again, like a page in my memory had quietly flipped itself over.

And I realized something:

I didn’t remember his voice.
I didn’t remember where he went.
But I remembered how the peppermint felt—cool and sweet and given without reason.
I remembered the soft tap of hooves, the tired eyes of the mule, and the man who gave with quiet hands.

He didn’t mean to stay in my story.
But somehow, he did.

And now I know—some people don’t ask to be remembered.
They just pass through your life with dust on their boots and grace in their silence,
and leave behind something small that stays. And small things are really the best.