The Tatooine suns blazed down the young boy‗s back as he checked the moisture farm‗s machinery. Drops of sweat made their way from his damp blonde hair, down the back of his ears to his neck.
"Hey Luke!"
The blonde boy looked up from his work and squinted to see his friend Biggs standing above him. "Luke, I‗m going into town. Alger Tobian is back from his trip to Cloud City on Bespin and says he has loads of stuff to tell."
Luke hated tending the machinery. He‗d much rather be off with Biggs. Alger was only a few years older than they were and had been gone for a long time.
To Luke and Biggs, even hearing the older boys talk about chasing down womp rats or their upcoming education at the Imperial Academy was exciting enough to make the trip in to the sleepy nearby town. The stories never seemed to change much, even though the storytellers did – but here was a whole new set of stories to hear.
Anything would be better than staying at home all the time, tending to the farm. But Uncle Owen would have his hide if he didn‗t stay to finish his chores.
He kicked the machine, "I can‗t Biggs. I have to check all the collectors before supper."
Biggs rolled his eyes. His parents never seemed to care what he did. But they could afford to hire farm workers. Luke‗s aunt and uncle couldn‗t. "How long are you going to let your mean old uncle tell you what to do, anyway?" he said disgustedly as he turned around and left.
Luke kicked the machine again. It stopped working with that abuse. Luke felt like screaming in frustration. He‗d just made his afternoon even longer.
He sat down with a sigh and began taking apart the machine to fix it. Someday… he was going to get off this hot ball of dust and never come back. He was going to have adventures that would make Alger Tobian green with envy. Maybe he‗d be a freighter captain, like Uncle Owen had told him his father was. Maybe he‗d run a smuggling operation for the Hutts and find himself being chased by Imperial ships… Maybe he‗d join the Rebellion and fight those same Imperial ships…
"Luke?"
This time the voice calling him was deep and gruff.
"Yes, Uncle Owen?" Luke said, scrambling to fit the pieces back together.
The large frame of Owen Lars came up behind the boy and did not look pleased to see his farm machinery scattered around. "What happened here?"
"I‗m sorry, Uncle Owen, I know I have five more collectors to check, but this one stopped running and…"
"Well, it doesn‗t matter," Uncle Owen grunted. "The Main is down again. The hydrogen filter is past fixing. We‗ll need to shut down and go into Mos Eisley to get a new one."
"You mean, I get to go?" Luke voice jumped.
Uncle Owen nodded. "You‗re ten years old. It‗s about time you learned something about bartering."
"You‗re really going to take me into Mos Eisley?"
"I said I would, didn‗t I?" The corners of Uncle Owen‗s mouth were turned up as far as they ever did go. He was a solemn man. A farmer. Life was hard on Tatooine and smiling was simply a luxury. "Heavens know what your aunt will say about this, but maybe we just won‗t tell her where we‗re going."
Mos Eisley was Tatooine‗s main spaceport. Luke had never been there, but that was where his father had run his freighter. It was the window to the rest of the galaxy and all kinds of peoples could be found there.
As Uncle Owen guided his speeder into the outskirts of the town, Luke drank in the scenery. He couldn‗t even begin to name all the species he was seeing. But then he recognized the all-white armor of the Imperial Stormtrooper at the checkpoint. He was inspecting identification before allowing anyone to enter the spaceport. Luke shrank in his seat. Stormtroopers reminded him of skeletons… and he‗d never seen one this closely before.
Uncle Owen simply patted him on the arm as the Stormtrooper asked for their papers. The soldier briefly glanced at them, threw the papers back into the speeder and waved the pair on.
"There‗s nothing to fear from them if you follow the laws of the Empire and mind your own business," Uncle Owen told Luke.
Luke wasn‗t sure his uncle really believed his own words. But he knew he never wanted to have a run-in with a Stormtrooper. That would be a little too-much adventure.
Uncle Owen guided the speeder through crowded, noisy streets into a quiet alley where he parked in front a small agriculture-parts shop.
"Hello, Owen," the shopkeeper called from the counter were he was assisting another customer, "Be with you in a moment."
The customer wasn‗t your typical moisture farmer. Luke could tell that much with one glance. He wore a dark brown hooded robe, although the hood was hanging down the back at the moment. His hair and beard were a golden-brown color that was beginning to gray and he had piercing blue eyes.
It wasn‗t really that he didn‗t look like a farmer, Luke thought on second glance. There was nothing about his appearance that made him stand out of place. It was more the way he carried himself… His intense look… Just the aura about him.
At the sound of Owen‗s name, the customer had turned from the counter and looked the uncle and his nephew standing in the doorway. His intense eyes looked Luke over and made Luke feel as if he was being tested. If so, he must have passed approval because the stranger said, "Owen Lars, it has been a long time. And this must be Luke…"
Luke felt his uncle stiffen. He wondered why. The stranger didn‗t seem belligerent in any way. In fact his voice was kind… and elegant for a planet as forsaken as this one. He wondered how the stranger knew his name, but it seemed like his aunt and uncle were always meeting people who knew who he was that he couldn‗t remember. Aunt Beru said she‗d felt that way all the time growing up too.
Finally, Owen said, "Yes, Kenobi, this is my nephew, Luke Skywalker."
The stranger approached Luke then, placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled down at him, "Luke, I‗ve been wanting to meet you for a very long time."
Normally, if a stranger had done something like that to him, Luke would have gagged. There was nothing worse than an adult who fawned all over him. The next thing the man would say would probably be something about how grown-up he was getting. But the man in brown didn‗t, and so Luke began to respect him. This definitely was no ordinary friend of Uncle Owen‗s.
The stranger had turned his attention to Uncle Owen now, "I trust he‗s been doing well."
Owen grunted. "He‗s all boy. Good with fixing the machinery, but always wanting to run off and listen to adventure stories instead of doing chores."
The stranger smiled at that. "That sounds familiar. I can think of a couple of other boys I‗ve known, including myself, who were much like that at his age."
Luke felt his uncle stiffen up even more at that, and he couldn‗t understand why. There was an uncomfortable silence, but finally Owen spoke, "Those boys you speak of lived a more exotic life, I think. Luke needs to settle in to farm life. He doesn‗t need his head filled up with nonsense like that."
The man bowed slightly at Owen, and then turned back to Luke. He smiled again at the boy. "I‗m glad to see you‗re growing to be such a fine young man, but you must remember to honor your aunt and uncle in these things. There will be time enough for adventures when you‗re grown."
With that, he left the shop. Luke stuck his head out of the door after him, but the strange man in brown had disappeared already into the nearby noisy street.
Uncle Owen hastily found the part he was looking for and paid the asked price for it. He seemed to have forgotten his promise to teach Luke the art of bartering. His only concern now seemed to be returning home as quickly as possible.
When they were in the speeder, racing home across the desert, Luke couldn‗t help but ask, "Uncle Owen, who was that man in the shop?"
"Who?" his uncle replied, distracted.
"The man in the shop that talked to us," Luke insisted.
"Oh, that was just Crazy Old Ben Kenobi," Uncle Owen said. "He‗s a hermit who lives out by sandpeople territory."
"He lives alone out there?" Luke asked. "How does he survive?"
Uncle Owen shook his head, "All I know is people stay away from him."
"That‗s all you know? Then how come he seemed to know you… and me?"
"Luke, I don‗t know." Uncle Owen sounded tired. "He‗s probably harmless, but Old Ben is a strange one. He does a lot of odd things. If I‗d have known he was going to be in Mos Eisley today, we wouldn‗t have come."
Luke knew the conversation was over and he and his uncle stayed quiet the rest of the way home. It gave him time to think. "Old" Ben Kenobi hadn‗t seemed that strange to him.
He seemed out-of-place, maybe, but not crazy. In fact, he may have been the first adult Luke had ever met who seemed to understand him.
If anything, it had been Uncle Owen‗s behavior that had seemed odd. And Luke didn‗t really believe him when he said he didn‗t know Old Ben. But he seemed almost scared of the quiet, unassuming stranger with the piercing blue eyes. Why?
Luke intended to find out.