Ploughman's Lunch

A blue gunmetal blue sky, the like of which are seen once every 29 ½ years; an indigo-dyer’s blue sky, so blue that it appears green-blue; a Haitian sun so hot it seems unimaginable, a yellow specter squinting from on-high. Things getter hotter the hotter things get. The shamble leg man who knew the alms man, who knew the harridan and her sister, the sister with a stonemason’s jaw, knew no one who he didn’t already know. The sky was a steely oven, smelting slag metals, tins and coppers, aluminums and steel into car doors, side-panels and industrial joists. When the world got Haitian sun hot the shamble leg man would retreat to the cool of the museum to stare at the painting of Christ weeping that was hung next to a woodcut of a dog with three legs and the water fountain. He would bring with him a ploughman’s lunch, two hard boiled eggs, three pickled onions and persimmon (Diospyros Genitalis). He would sit, his left leg hooked round his right, take one small bite of egg, a quarter-bite of onion and a mouthful of persimmon. He ate in this manner, not once straying from his method, until the ploughman’s lunch was finished.