3
Sometime in the early afternoon, a group of local men gathered on the beach beside an old scuttled sailboat that had been there since their grandfathers’ time. They would roll their cigarettes and endlessly puff on bitter tobacco, their faces wrinkled by old sorrows.
The impending irreparable calamity of recent years was now upon them: they’d been ordered to immediately relocate to the city post, where new homes made of concrete awaited them. Some of them had already moved and began acclimatizing to the new location and lifestyle. Those who remained, still lived with a glimmer of hope, however slim, that perhaps this time, like several years before, the powers above would relent. For that reason, the stragglers hemmed and hawed and seemed in no rush.
Actually, the whole affair had beg
