Rui’s body had been taken over by hair. The bottom half of his face was covered in hair which had melted together into a dread, like plastic too close to a fire. The dread swung from his pointed chin and ended in a knot; whether by design or accident it was hard to tell. Down his back, another dread rested on his spine, the thickness of a wrestler’s arm, and just as lethal. It looked like a creature in that was hitching a ride towards the unknown. The end of the dread was held together by a green and silver computer chip, which caught the morning sun.
Rui sat on the stone bench, looked out over the river, that ran through the steep valley and the cliffs which towered above the village. High above, the spring blue sky seemed very out of reach. The road followed the river valley, stretched up into the steep valleys of the Cévennes.
Rui gulped coffee from a paper thin cardboard cup. He stroked the computer chip in his beard.
“I used to be a computer programmer. I had a life exactly like everyone else. But I got tired of letters arriving in the post with bad news.”
“So I set out to walk around the world. Well, I walked around Spain and Portugal but it was the world for me. 25 000 km in 2 years. I went from town to town and I looked and thought.”
He wore sneakers which had mutated. The back half was sneaker; the front half was pages of glossy magazines, sellotaped together into a kaleidoscope or red and green and black and blue. A jacket, tawny brown like a dirty lion, hung down to his knees and bulged with things held in hidden pockets.
“What on earth have you got in your backpacks? My jacket is my backpack. But if I had a backpack I’d fill it with socks. Only socks. Socks are essential for walking. I’ve got three pairs of socks that I keep close, in a pocket in my jacket. I wash them everyday. You can’t really say they’re stainless. They’re discoloured but they’re clean”.
He breathed in the clear air. Around him there was an air of stillness, I ain’t got no place to be but here right here right now on this sparking blue chill spring morning, beside the road that runs deeper into the wild Cevennes.
“You know what man’s best friend is? Cardboard! It keeps the cold out if you sellotape out the holes. Every present comes wrapped in it. You can always find it when you need it.”
Before he walked away he said, “I tried to go back into family life but I didn’t think the same as them no more.”