27

Day by day he changed.

Walk lighter, stumble less.

Grew callous to all ordinary pain.

Lost the fastidiousness which had characterised his old life.

Washing potatoes for breakfast in a pond.

Ate a turnip like an apple.

Few acorns to assuage the pangs of hunger.

Little food is required to sustain a life on the edge.

Satisfied just by earth and water and trees and the sky over him.

Tracks worn through the forest and over the hills.

Once, in the heat of the day, he stripped off his clothes and submerged himself in the water of a lonely dam.

Wash my socks.

Bake dry upon the stones.

Looks at his feet in the sun, rubs his blisters and takes the dirt from between his toes.

Bathed by feelings.

Even the weeds moved him.

Seemed somehow removed from the passage of time.

Land taking you back to something that was familiar, something you had known at some time but forgotten.

Rest against a piece of granite.

Quiet under the long shadows of early evening.

Morning he presses on.

Avoiding inhabited places.

Walking ever deeper into the woodland.

Encountered few people.

Solitary horseman.

Campfires of gypsies squatting by little streams.

Shades of twilight were beginning to settle upon the earth.

Day tending to its end.

Loping stride.

Bounded right onto the ashes of a campfire that was still smoking.

Old man small and bent.

More frightened than I was.

Tried awkwardly to run off or to hide.

I don’t have anything, he said. You can look if you want.

Dressed in rags.

Each of his boots was of different colour.

Round the waist of his mackintosh, which was belted with string, hung a collection of pots and spoons.

Gathered some dry sticks.

Soon had a fire.

Billy of tea in the red flames.

Face in the small light streaked with black.

Oakmoss bearded.

Eye was overgrown by a cataract and he kept his head tilted as if he were trying to see around it.

Spoke in whispers.

Walkin’ this country for years.

Always on the road. You can’t stay in one place.

Nowhere to go but everywhere.

The oveja negra, no?

Scratched the back of his neck.

Began pulling off his boots.

Unwound the rags.

Horny foot.

Perfume of musk and piss.

Nice fire to warm your shins.

Start to cough.

Shaking up like a old engine.

Things he has seen.

Crossing and recrossing the country every year, south in the winter and north in the summer.

North to the mountains.

Once found, the path was easy to follow.

Drew me a map in the mud.

In the gloomy dirt with his broken fingernail saying north were that direction.

Rattling some cough from deep down.

Voice when he spoke again sounded sober and quiet and tired to death.

You need to go on, he said. I can’t go with you.

Queer gleam in his eye.

Haggard and hollow.

Waits for the soft dry throat rattle that will free him.