61.

He walks everywhere, at all hours of the day. His gait is deceptively loping, with a diffident hitch of the shoulders and a sway that is somehow suggestive of consuming the ground in swaths. He does not hurry, but neither does he stop. I have never seen him standing still. I have passed him going up the hill as I was going down, and been passed by him going the opposite direction on a different hill around the corner, moments later. I have passed him in a white shirt and coat, and passed him again wearing a t shirt and black jeans fifteen minutes later. I have no idea how he does this, what portal he enters the moment he leaves my line of sight. We recognize each other in the way that people who use the same paths do, but we don't acknowledge one another. I am a little afraid of him, of his mystic occupation of this neighborhood that I traverse in purely ordinary ways. He is not threatening, but I find it safer not to be particularly curious. I walk, and when I see him, I note it and keep walking.