2. Preoccupied

Most people paid him no heed. He was just one of many taking the clean air, the salt waters, early one morning between Christmas and New Year. The dog-end of the year; marrow-less for the lonely, the depressed, and those living under sentence. He was promenading not on the friable sands that splint the shins, yet neither on the smooth compact sands where the foam hisses.

Attired from the men’s aisle of Target, gaunt and swathed, with no concessions made for place: t-shirt and slacks rather than swimmers, sneakers rather than thongs, the reversed cane fitting awkwardly into the palm of his hand. The fawn slacks hanging from gaunt buttocks.

The sun ever-rising in front and the shadow of nimbus painting the cloud behind, he stepped in a measured manner until, without so much as a by-your-leave, clumsily about-faced and returned – somewhere.

He moved in the no-man’s-land of the preoccupied.