It was a chilly morning after the night's rain, and the sun hung in the sky like a pale coin lost by someone high up in the clouds.

Night was fading over the fields as if the rain had washed the darkness out of the hem of its garment.

A haggard man used one of the huts as a home. He lay on a sagging mattress, his head on his pack, surrounded by rubbish - paper, porcelain shards, food remains and unidentifiable debris. His hand was over his eyes. He looked like a failed soldier. Dirt seemed so worked into him that the lines of his face were like writing.

The very shapes of the trees were like frozen screams.

Above the front door the fanlight glowed blue, delicate as wing-bones.

He was in his mid-thirties, tall and pale and thin, with long, sandy hair and rimless glasses, dressed in brown polyester pants, cheap brown shoes, and a light tan shirt. He looked like someone had put a wig on a giraffe and run it through the local Target.