This time a single voice kept appearing.

Sometimes it was called Tommy Turdskin.

Sometimes only TT.

Sometimes it wore a different name entirely, as though the man changed clothes between every sentence.

I followed the trail for a long while.

He spoke of distant countries. Of boats. Of women he would never meet. Of law firms that no longer mattered. Of a life lived in permanent transit between places that did not want him and places that did not know him.

The other voices on the board treated him the way villagers treat a fox that has lived too long near the same rice fields. They mocked him. They quoted him. They waited for him. When he was silent for even a short time, someone would ask where the fox had gone.

I have known men like this.

In the old days there were ronin who refused every lord. They wandered from province to province, changing their names, sleeping under different roofs, speaking only to keep the silence from becoming too complete. They were not respected. They were not feared. But the roads remembered them.

This man has made the great bort his road.

He does not poast to win.

He does not poast to persuade.

He poasts the way a man sharpens a blade he will never use in battle — simply because the motion still feels necessary.

I do not know if he is lonely.

I do not know if he is clever.

I only know that the great bort would feel emptier without the sound of his particular footsteps.

Somewhere a man who once called himself Tommy Turdskin is still walking.

And the road, against all reason, continues to make room for him.

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