Steel braided hair. It hung on his head like razorwire.

The wind was blowing hard, scratching the braised skin of his forehead stung by the spider cords over his eyelids.

He brought his head back, closed his eyes and swayed.   He felt his spirit almost fall and brought his jaw forward--opening his eyes.

      Fine let them try it.

      He wasn't giving up a single thing.

He wasn't sure of himself or how it could happen but he had never lost before.   They  weren't young enough or strong enough to take his life now. He had more time and attention than them.

The bar faced the ocean, its wooden door streaked with salt. The  wind from the  waves blew yellowed grimy salt across the old tiles up to two stools at a bar made of shipwrecked planks.  The sun  was hot on the wood above but the wind saved  the place.  Noone came to it on purpose but noone left without regret.  It was of a time.

He did not drink.  He worked the days  when few came and passed his time keeping the room clean.  His thin frame hung faded rags but they  were clean.

He was at peace.  There were small signs of rhythm in the tide, in the calls from the men  at sundown.  There weren't great catches but they were steady and better in the winter.  If the men would bite the cold they could catch a small feast.

Carolyn came in telling in one sentence and to one question of her six hospital stays in the last two months.  She had  dark maroon strawberry sized bruises up her left arm and what appeared as a heavily powdered bruise on her right cheek with spider legs to her eye.    He hair was flax, structured, with a porch and  round observatory in the back.  She walked  with her feet pointed to the side in a black jumpsuit with pink flowers.

      "My son  could sell  you a  dead horse!"

Her son was 46 and had recently stolen her bankcard while she was in the hospital.  He got $2,000 together with her car which was junked for another 2,000.  His girlfriend she suspected was a prostitute  and like him an addict.

      "He complained that he had no birthday, I said well I was in the hospital--what kind of  day do you  think I had?"

He had taken her car on  Mother's Day.

      "The girlfriend's father promised five hundred if I took these kids in and then called me yesterday saying I was giving them drugs and  hung up!"

She swallowed, 'I  called him, " I did everything I said I would and you're not going to pay me anything?"'