Chapter 9 Chapter Six

He never writes on the sand.He even hated leaving footprints.He sees it as a one-way trade; he picks up junk on the shore, and the sea supplies the raw material.The sand is the intermediary, displaying goods like long, wet shop counters.He likes the simple nature of the arrangement. Sometimes he watched ships go by on distant seas.Occasionally he wished he was in one of those little black figures, heading for some bright and strange place, or—trying harder to imagine—a quiet local port, toward the twinkling lights, the friendly laughter, the friends. and greet.But he usually ignores the smudges and continues to stroll and pick things up, noticing the washed gray-yellow slopes of the beach.The horizon is endless and empty, the wind hums among the dunes, seabirds circle and scream, and the icy sky overhead seems random and comfortingly argumentative.

Hasty and noisy housing vehicles sometimes come from the interior.The cars are shiny metal and flashing lights, colorful windows and highly decorative rails, flying flags and dripping imaginative, poorly handled spray paint, groaning and constricting, overloading, coughing, crackling Crackling and belching smoke, it stopped on the sandy road in Parktown.Adults lean out of windows, or stand on one foot on the running boards, while children run beside, or grab and tie the ladders that cover the side of the car, or sit on the roof screaming and yelling. They came to see the stranger who lived in a ridiculous wooden house in the dunes.They were fascinated, and at the same time slightly repelled, to see someone living in some weird way dug into the ground, something that couldn't—and couldn't—move.They'd stare at the line where the wood and tarpaper meet the sand, and shake their heads, trying to imagine that the landscape and the weather must be the same all year round.They opened the rickety door, sniffed the dark, smoky, human smell of the cabin, and quickly closed the door, deciding that it must be bad for the health to live in the same place, connected to the earth.Insects, decay, foul air.

He ignored them.He understood their language, but pretended not to.He knew the ever-changing populace of Outback Park called him "Tree Man," because they liked to imagine him rooted, like his wheelless shack.But he was usually out when they came to the cottage.He found that they quickly lost interest in him; they would scream as they ran to the shoreline to get their feet wet, throw stones at the waves, build little vehicles in the sand, then climb back to their house vehicles, crackling Creaking back inland again, lights flickering and horns blaring, leaving him alone again. He always finds dead seabirds and, every few days, the remains of marine mammals that wash ashore.Beachweed and sea flowers dot the sand like a stream of feasts, and—after they dry—the wind picks them up and slowly rips them apart, blowing them out to sea, or to distant islands among brightly colored clouds , waiting to decay.

Once he found a dead sailor lying swelled by the sea, limbs gnawed off, one leg heaving to the rhythm of the sea's slow foam.He stood there looking at the man for a while, then dumped out the rags he had scavenged in the canvas bag, and gently covered the man's head and upper body with the bag; the tide was ebbing, so he didn't drag the body further down the beach.He walked to Park Town, pushing the little wooden cart full of sea treasures for the first time, and notified the sheriff there. He had ignored the little chair the day he found it, but it was still there when he walked back along the beach.He kept walking, and walked towards a different slender horizon the next day, thinking that the strong wind that night would have blown it away, but he found it the next day, so he picked it up and took it to the cabin to get the hemp rope to repair it, and used a flushing machine to repair it. A new wooden leg was made from a branch that came ashore, and it stood by the door of the cabin, but never sat on it.

A woman would come to the cabin every five or six days.He'd met her in Park Town when he first got here, on the third or fourth day of the drinking carnival.He would pay her in the morning, always a higher amount than he thought she would expect, because she was afraid of the strange, immovable log cabin. She told him about her old lover, her old and new hopes, and he listened half-heartedly, knowing that she thought he couldn't understand what she was saying.When he spoke he spoke another language, and the stories themselves were even more unbelievable; the woman would lie beside him with her head resting on his smooth, unscarred chest, and he would speak to the dark air of the bed, his voice in the frail The cabin space never reverberates.He would tell her in a language she would never understand, of a magical land where everyone was a wizard, where no one faced terrible choices, where evil was almost unknown, where poverty and depravity had to be taught to children, Let them know how lucky they are and no one will be heartbroken.

He told her about a man who did many things for wizards that they were not capable of or could do themselves, and ended up never working for them again because he was in some kind of driven, personal battle to end up working for them. In throwing off a burden he didn't want to admit--even the wizards didn't see it--he found in the end that he had only added more weight to the burden, and that his capacity to carry it was not unlimited. Then he would sometimes tell her that in another time and space, in a very distant time and place, and even longer ago, four children played together in a huge and beautiful garden, but saw their idyllic landscape destroyed by war. Destroyed, and one of the boys becomes a young man and a man, but always with the girl he loves inside.Years later, he told her, a small but terrible war had spread and burned in this Far Land, leaving the garden in ruins. (And in the end, the man did get rid of the girl from his heart.) At the end, when he almost said to let himself fall asleep, and the night entered the deepest time, the girl had already escaped into the kingdom of dreams.Sometimes he would whisper to her of a great warship, a great metal warship, calm as a rock, but still formidable and frightening and powerful; And their own destiny, and the chair, and its maker.

Then he'll go to sleep.Every time he wakes up, the girl and the money are gone. Then he would turn his back on the black tar-paper walls and go on seeking sleep, but couldn't sleep, got up and dressed and went out, walking again along the beach as wide as the horizon, under blue or overcast skies, walking Beneath the hovering seabirds, the latter sang meaningless songs to the sea and the salty wind. The climate changed, since he never wanted to know, and he never knew what the seasons were, but it oscillated between warm and bright and cold and dark, with freezing rain that chilled him at times, and winds that blew around the dark cabin. , weeping from the gap between the wooden strips and the asphalt paper, disturbing the slow sand and dust on the floor of the wooden house, like a worn-out memory.

Sand would accumulate in the cabin, blowing from one direction to the other, and he would scoop it up carefully, throw it into the wind through the door like an offering, and wait for the next storm. He'd always suspected there was a pattern to these slow floods of sand, but he couldn't bring himself to think what it was.Anyway, he had to push the small wooden cart to Park Town every few days, sell the goods received from the ocean, and bring some money and food back, and the girl would come to the wooden house every five to six days. Every time he was in Parktown it changed, the streets created or evaporated under the arrival or departure of housing vehicles; it all depended on where people chose to park.Some of the town's landmarks will become permanent, like the sheriff's station, the gas station carts and blacksmith's wagons, and the glowing caravans, but even these will slowly change, and they'll change steadily, so Park Town The geographical style of the visit will never be the same at different times.He's secretly content with his incipient permanence, and doesn't hate going to town as much as he pretends.

The roads there were soft and rutted, and always getting longer; he'd been hoping that the random changes in Parktown might bring the noise and the lights closer to him, but that never happened, and he convinced himself that if the park The town moved closer to him, and those people and their pretended curiosity would get closer. There was a girl in town, the daughter of the trader he traded with, who seemed to care more about him than anyone else; she would pour him drinks and bring him preserves from her father's wagon, but hardly spoke, and slid food to the He smiled shyly and walked away quickly.Her pet seabirds -- unable to fly, each with half their wings cut off -- staggered after her, quacking.

He didn't say anything because he had nothing to say and kept looking away from her slender brown figure.He didn't know there was such a law of courtship in this place, and although accepting drinks and food was the easiest way, he didn't want to disturb the lives of too many people here.He told himself she and her family would be moving out soon, accepted her things with a nod but no smile or a word, and never finished what was given.He noticed that every time the girl gave him something, there always seemed to be a young man nearby, and he caught the boy's eyes a few times, knew the young man wanted the girl, and turned his head each time.

One day the young man caught up with him as he was walking back to the cabin in the dunes.The young man came up to him and tried to get him to speak; he tapped his shoulder and shouted into his face.He pretended not to understand.The young man draws lines in the sand in front of him, and he stands appropriately by the cart watching, winking at the young man, his hands still on the cart rails.The boy roared louder and drew another line in the sand between them. Eventually he got tired of the whole drama, and the next time the young man poked him in the shoulder, he grabbed his arm and twisted, pressing him into the sand for a while, turning the joint just enough that he hoped it wouldn't break anything, but enough To the point of immobilizing that guy for a minute or two.He pushed the cart again, walked slowly across the dunes and left. That seems to work. Two nights later—the night when the usual woman came, and he told her about the terrible battleship, the two sisters, and the unforgiven man—the girl knocked on his door.Pet seabird with clipped wings leaps and quacks outside the door as she cries that she loves him and has a fight with her dad, but she slips from his grasp when he tries to push her away , buried his head on the bed and wept. He looked up into the starless sky, into the eyes of the crippled, silent bird.He then went to the bed and dragged the girl off, pushed her out the door, slammed it shut and locked it. He cried, and the sound of the bird poured in through the cracks in the slats like sand seeping in.He plugged his ears with his fingers and pulled the dirty quilt over his head. The next night, her family, the sheriff, and about twenty people from the town came looking for him. The girl was found that night, bruised, raped and long dead, lying on the road leading to his cabin.He stood at the door of the hut, looked at the crowd with torches, saw the eyes of the young man who wanted the girl, and knew the truth. There was nothing he could do, for the evil in one eye was no match for the vengeance in too many others; so he slammed the door and started running, across the cabin and right through the flimsy slats on the other side, into the dunes and night. He fought five men that night, nearly killed two of them, and ended up fighting the young man and one of his friends, who were looking for him with little enthusiasm, near the path. He knocked the friend unconscious and grabbed the young man by the throat with his hands.He took down their knives, put one of them against the young man's throat, and made him walk back to the cabin. He set fire to the cabin. He stood on top of the tallest sand dune in the valley, still clutching the young man, when the light attracted a dozen or so people. The people of Park Town lit by flames looked up at the stranger.He dropped the boy on the sand and threw both knives at him. The boy picks up the knife; he attacks. He moves to let the opponent pass through, disarming him.He picked up two knives and threw them hilt down on the sand.The young man strikes again, a knife in each hand.Likewise - barely noticeable movement - he let the young man rush past him, and wrenched the knife from his palm.He tripped the young man and threw the knives while he was still on top of the dune, so that they stuck in the sand a centimeter from each other's head.The young man screamed, grabbed two knives and threw them at him. His head barely moved as the knife hissed past his ears.People watching in the valley lit by flames turned their heads, and followed the trajectory where the knives should fall, to the sand dunes below; but when they turned back in confusion, the knives were in the hands of strangers, and they were pulled out of the air. .He threw the knife at the young man again. The young man catches the knife, screams, turns the knife in the right direction with a bloody hand, and charges at the stranger again; the latter knocks him down, takes the knife from his hand, and kneels the young man The man's elbow was long for a moment, and the arm was raised to break it...then pushed the young man away.He picked up the knife again and placed it in the young man's open palm. He listened to the young man sobbing in the dark sand as the others watched. He was ready to run away again, and glanced behind him. Lame seabirds hopped and flapped their wings, their clipped wings flapping the air and sand to the top of the dunes.It tilted its head and looked at the stranger with one eye reflecting the burning flame. The people in the valley seemed to be still under the dancing fire shadow. The bird wobbled to the body of the boy bent over the sand, weeping, and screamed.It flapped its wings, screamed, and pecked at the boy's eyes. The boy tried to break it, but the bird jumped into the air and sang and flapped its feathers, and the boy snapped off one of its wings.When it falls on the sand away from him, it will shit on him. The boy's face fell back to the sand.His body shook with sobs. The stranger looked into the eyes of the people in the valley as his cabin collapsed and a flash of orange rose into the still night sky. At last the sheriff and the girl's father came and took the boy away; after a month the girl's family left, and after two months the tightly bound body of the young man was hung in a hole freshly dug in an adjoining mine, and then Covered with stones. People in Parktown don't talk to him anymore, though there is still a trader willing to buy his drifting debris.The frivolous and noisy housing vehicles no longer drive along the sandy road.He didn't think he'd miss them.He pitched a small tent next to the charred wreckage of the cabin. The woman no longer came to him; he never saw her again.He told himself he was making too little money to pay her and feed her at the same time. And the worst thing he found was that no one could talk to him. Almost five moons after the hut had been burned, he saw the seated figure on the far side of the beach.He hesitated, then walked on. Twenty meters from the woman, he paused to look carefully at the row of fishing nets at the tide line; the buoy, still attached, looked like a sun trapped on the ground in the low morning light. He looks at the woman.She sits with her legs crossed, her arms folded over her lap, looking out to sea.Her simple robe is the color of the sky. He walked to her and put the new canvas bag beside her.She didn't move. He sat down beside him, arranged his limbs in a similar pattern, and looked at the ocean as she did. He cleared his throat after the wave rose, broke and receded a hundred or so times. "Sometimes," he said. "I always feel like I'm being watched." Sima didn't speak for a while.Seabirds whirled in the air, calling in languages ​​he still didn't understand. "Oh, people always feel that way," Sma finally said. He smoothed out a wormhole in the sand. "I don't belong to you, Desert." "No," she said, turning to him. "You're right. You don't belong to me. All we can do is ask." "Ask for what?" "Please come back. We have a task for you." "What is it?" "Oh..." Sima smoothed the robe on her knees. "Help dragging a group of rulers from within to the next millennium." "why?" "That's important." "Which time is not important?" "We can also give you a proper reward this time." "You paid me well last time. Lots of money, and a new body. What more can wrinkles ask for?" He pointed to the canvas bag next to her, and then himself, in his salt-soaked tatters . "Don't be fooled by that. I've got nothing short of booty. I'm rich; very rich here." He waved to the waves rolling in front of him, breaking, frothing and receding again. "I just want a simple life for a while." He laughed partly, then realized it was the first time he'd laughed since he'd been here. "I know," Sma said. "But this time is different. As I said, we can give you a more suitable reward this time." He looks at her. "Enough, no more mystification. What do you mean?" Her eyes turned to look at him.He tried very hard not to turn his head away. "We found Livuetta," she said. He looked into her eyes for a moment, then blinked and turned away.He cleared his throat and looked back at the gleaming sea, had to blow his nose and dry his eyes; Sma watched the man slowly raise a hand to his chest without realizing he was doing it, and rubbed the skin there , just above the heart. "Uh-huh. Are you sure?" "Yes, we are sure." He watched the waves after that, and suddenly felt that they had nothing to bring him, no messengers of a distant storm bringing their rewards, but a way, a path, another distant calling of some opportunity . Will it be that simple?he thought to himself.One word—one simple name—from Sma's mouth, and I'm ready to go, set off and take over their jobs again?Just because of her? He let more waves roll in and out.Seabirds called.Then he sighed. "Okay," he said.He pushed a hand through his tangled, mottled hair. "Tell me about it."