By GLENN J. RAGGIO

Now and again I meet extraordinary people -- people who have stories or have encountered a cruel or unusual circumstance. From time to time it is a circumstance worth writing about, worth sharing. Here is one of those stories.

All I could see as I pulled back the screen door was the back of a burgundy-colored, over-stuffed chair.

A perfect vertical line of smoke rose from the orange tip of a cigarette, attached to a branch-like hand. The line of smoke ended at a dull yellow ceiling.

The hand motioned me forward and I entered a small living room that had been fouled by decades of cigarette smoke. I had neglected to close the already open door as I entered and the sun bore in in a large block of square light. It struck the back of her chair and I had to squint until my eyes adjusted. Her smoke, now well disturbed, hung in places in the trapped sunlight.

A couch covered in a plastic wrap sat just opposite the chair and the hand motioned me to sit. I had just rested my hand to sit when I felt the slippery dust on my palm. I attempted to recover from my decision to sit -- however, with my balance committed, I fell helplessly onto the plastic cushion.

I had not really seen her yet. Between the sun and the contrasting darkness of the room I, at first, could make out only a rough outline of the figure before me. As my eyes adjusted to the dim room, I found myself staring into an ancient face. Her eyes peered at me with no surprise.

Her hair was so tightly pulled back along the sides of her head, it reflected the sunlight on the chair, which itself was riddled with worn spots and a doily anchored by several straight pins. Before me was the face of dark wood. Obviously carved by time and abundant with the signs of decades left behind. A large nose below a pair of gray eyes that seemed to fit perfectly on her round face. Her upper lip, near invisible, seemed even more crowded by its generous counterpart.

A coarse basso voice announced she was 81. She said it almost as if it would explain something in particular. I shook my head shyly from my perch on the couch. She absently brushed an ash from her dark green dress, forties-style I think, which came to rest just above her knees.

Her legs, two ebony rails, dove steeply into a pair of men's laceless wingtips. The arm propped on the chair lowered itself with its cigarette in hand and came to rest on a giant ashtray, a piece of furniture from a time when smoking was expected.

A push on one of the brass rings opened the bottom and deposited the butts into the neck of the ashtray itself. I remembered all over again what I had forgotten, what now was closer to art than function. Seeing my interest, she applied the mechanism with a stiff finger and watched with me as the remnants of ash and filters were forced to drop. It quickly snapped shut in another familiar recollection.

We sat in silence for a moment. I was left guessing as to why I had been summoned. My eyes came to rest on the mantel, where the only dusted picture was of a pair of figures. One of the figures was a president: Franklin Roosevelt. A cigarette and holder jutting from his mouth, his hat evenly set on his head. The other figure, a young black woman. Her hair escaping from the sides of a scarf, and a smile not escaping anything at all. Her overalls covered a checkered blouse, the sleeves rolled back to the elbows.

Their hands were clenched in a firm handshake, the remaining two hands both clasped a certificate of some kind; held for the benefit of the camera. I looked back into the chair and I could clearly see the face inside the face before me.

She told me she built ships, Liberty Ships. She talked about the war, the work, the world. About people I never heard of, and of change I never knew was ever anything else. She had details so sharp they still cut an even line in her memory. I listened. I bent forward to listen closer.

This was not history left to read from a book, a narrator reading for a black-and-white film. This was the proof of history, the living evidence of it.

I found myself not willing to miss a sentence, a word. All the while the couch was slowly consuming me. I kept falling deeper into it. I got angry when I had to move; the noise of the plastic would invariably keep a line secret from me. I couldn't bring myself to ask her to repeat anything. It would surely stop the ride -- she'd recall it was just me and find a new caution not to continue. I was surfing history and my "wave" seemed not to mind a little. I was a boy being read my favorite story. I was sitting across from the truth.

As quickly as it came, it stopped. A fresh cigarette in her hand. I leapt to light it for her; too late. She asked me to close the screen door as I left, "Don't want no chill at this age."

I had forgotten the nature of the call; we never got around to it. I stepped into the predicable summer afternoon and sat inside my patrol car for a time looking at the spent lawn I had just walked across. I squinted at the lace curtains and could again just make out a perfect line of smoke rising from a proud hand. It occurred to me that she had never inhaled, not once. She just held them till the fire went away.