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Next to one of the larger rocks, all the trash has been cleared away so all that remains is a circle of pristine sand. Within that circle, his back to them, a man crouches down to nurse a campfire. The flames of it are narrow but feisty, rising over the top of his head. She is about to say hello again when the man straightens, a thin, hardy piece of wood in his hand, something that would serve as an excellent walking stick. With a muscular, exaggerated movement his elbow straightens out and the stick whips forward, towards the rock, striking its face dead-on. She hears the tip of the wood splinter, and little bits of debris come to rest on the soft shoreline, pit-pit-pit. The man sweeps the ground with the stick, drawing half of a circle, and then the improvised blade is rising again, slashing against the rock face.  |
Again a splinter, more pit-pit-pit. She instinc- tively knows that he will continue striking rock with branch until the branch inevitably splinters down to nothing, and then he will pick up another stick, the process repeated, some Sisyphus-like form of penance. No, she mouths, sympathy welling up from somewhere within. He must be stopped, no one must endure something like this. Hello, she says loudly. The stranger whirls around. Gifted with the look of a bandit, his eyes shrouded in shadow, there is something doleful in his sunken cheeks, the growth on his face that is between stubble and beard. He is disheveled but quickly smooths out his hair, pulls a bit at his simple dark coat to straighten it, his movements faintly chivalrous,  |
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