Chapter 2 - Carter
He nodded as his neighbour greeted him from her garden. He lifted the box full of empty beer bottles and left it in front of the stairs leading to his house. House might be an overstatement. A shack or a shed really… He only had a small wooden house which contained the bare minimum. The only, but most significant personal item in his environment was a painting in his bare living room. A landscape of lush green plains with a farm in the background. At first sight, you would've thought it was just another landscape painting that you would have found in any shop. But this one was a painting of his old house, up in the North, where he had buried his wife. He had been in Europe as a UN soldier but his bigger battle had been to watch the woman he thought he was fighting for -in some patriotic twisted way- die slowly. His life was now a constant effort to not kill himself and to occupy his mind, with work and alcohol, sometimes both at the same time. It was during one of his drunken shift that he realised that alcohol did not have a lot of effect on him from an outer point of view. He was still the grumpy old fifty years-old, pouring glasses and being rude to annoying people. Nothing was changing. Sometimes he wondered if his mind did not bathed itself in a natural booze to calm down all of his thoughts.
He had too many, all the time. Good, bad, mostly bad. He craved good company, somebody to laugh with, somebody to be nice to, but everytime he came close to being an agreeable person, his guilt and his self-loathing came back right to his face, slapping him with memories tainted of regret. The only way to avoid that wave of bitter thoughts was to not try to let people access that part of him. It was difficult though. People around here were way nicer and friendly than in the cities up North. They were the kind to stop everything they were doing to help you with menial things. Even people like him… He was rough around the edges. The only aspect of his appearance he was taking care of was his beard. He shaped it with a lot of precision once a month. The rest was a mess, and that made it difficult to enjoy his beard self-care skills. His hair were starting to be very long. His skin was dark and patchy because he did not hide from the sun nor would he wear sunscreen when he was spending entire days outside. The only thing that seemed to beam out of his skull were his eyes, pale green.
He started to go back into his house when he caught somebody approaching in the corner of his eyes. He saw the bright face of Ida.