White Slave Huts

Wow, Bob, you sure see a lot more in my writing than I do. But I like your insights--a lot. Where have you gone if you're giving the Rialto crowd a break?

The little square window in the center of the back wall looks like it should have bars on it. He sits in the rental truck in back of the row of white slave huts watching the kaleidoscopic colors of sunset drain into the crinkled silk of the ocean. He thinks about the men who supposedly slept here in the days when salt production was a human, hands-on job, before the advent of electric pumps, bulldozers, and ship loading conveyers. The onshore wind whips around the little plastered box with its black slate roof, swirling through the rough grasses that cling to life in the shade of the hut, kicking up sand that it flings in his face. Tears spill down his cheeks. He doesn't know if the tears are caused by the sand or by the fact that his life is in shreds. This has to be the worst time to quit smoking--ever.

I'm not sure who this is; at first I thought it was a woman, but now I think it might be Diego. His carefully constructed life, the fantasy that he has built by ignoring reality, is about to come crashing down now that he's unwittingly brought all the pieces together. Sharon is a nice person and so is Maria, but squeezing them onto such a small piece of real estate as the island can't be good. We shall see. The pictures will tell the story. It's funny, I was eager to buy the 2008 planner to get more pictures to write about and can't seem to stop going through the 2007 one, like only those fifty-some photos hold this particular tale.

--Barbara