Blood-drenched Beard

The fishermen don’t talk much to him. Everyone he has tried to talk to about his grandfather’s death now ignores him. Some watch him with hostile looks as he walks through the village center, while others greet him with an exaggerated friendliness. At times he worries that he is being paranoid. He isn’t really sure who is who and has stopped asking questions because he is starting to feel scared.

Often, through the shutters, he overhears the conversations of fishermen or kids who come to smoke pot or sell drugs on the stairs next to Baú Rock. The fishermen’s topics of conversation are as infinite as they are unfathomable. Disputes over the division of the mullet catch, insults and effrontery, village gossip.

Another day, returning from one of his morning runs to Siriú, he stops for a swim and a stretch near the Embarcação Restaurant and sees a woman stretching by the wooden fence next to the ramp down to the beach. He approaches her and asks if she minds if he gives her a suggestion. From close up he sees that she has slightly Asian-looking eyes and milky-white skin behind her rosy cheeks. She is covered in sweat from head to toe. She has no dissonant features, and he doesn’t find anything that might help him recognize her in the future. She is stretching the backs of her legs, and he teaches her to point her supporting leg forward and straighten her torso, holding the toe of the leg she is stretching with both hands, which she is able to do without any difficulty once he has shown her how. She recognizes that she is stretching the muscle differently now. Her name is Sara and she is a pharmacist. She works in one of the town’s many pharmacy chains. She mentions her husband, who is a dentist. They both graduated a few years ago in Porto Alegre and have been in Garopaba since the previous year, motivated by the dream that brings so many dentists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and small-business owners here from capital cities: to be an independent professional living a simple life by the sea, surfing and sunbathing every week, earning less but happy, with space in the garden and on the sand to let their Belgian shepherds, Labradors, and future offspring run free. Sara started running when she moved there but is already thinking of giving up because she is experiencing strong, chronic pain in her shins. She shows him where it hurts. When he presses on the sides of her tibia, she shrieks and jumps. It appears to be a fairly serious case of shin splints, and he offers to give her some strengthening exercises to do at the gym. And it would be a good idea to ice the region and rest up for at least two weeks. She thanks him and leaves in a brand-new economy car parked on the waterfront, which greets its owner with a shrill beep. Two days later a woman strikes up a conversation with him at the gym, but he only recognizes her about five minutes later when she mentions the pain in her shins. He teaches her to stretch and strengthen her lower leg muscles with exercises. Because she attends another gym closer to her house, they arrange to meet and exchange phone numbers. He agrees to be her running coach three times a week starting the next week in front of the Embarcação, bright and early. She has a friend who also runs and is interested in working with a coach. She suggests that they start putting together a running group.