"There's nothing down to the end of this road," the cab driver said, "It's a dead-end."
"So am I," Lennox grunted.
The road ended in a small circle of pits and ruts. Around it was half a mile of dry brown marsh reeds rustling listlessly in the light breeze. Beyond the marsh was the steel grey of Great South Bay. A rotting boardwalk led from the circle to a large shack built at the edge of a narrow creek that wound out through the marsh to the bay. The house was weathered silver, the windows had long since been burst in, the shutters had been blown away.
Lennox got out of the cab and walked down the boardwalk to the shack. When he reached the door, his hand automatically lifted high to grasp the doorknob. His lips twisted at this memory of the childhood flesh. He lowered his hand, pushed the door open and entered. For a paralyzing moment he thought his dead father was standing inside the house. Then he looked closer and saw that it was a stranger, a tall, thin man with white hair, fussing with a camera on a tripod.
"God has answered my prayers!" the photographer exclaimed. "Can I trouble you for just a moment, sir? Look here...." He pointed. The seaward wall of the house had collapsed. The marsh, the sea and the sky were framed in broken, silvery timber ends.
"A perfect L composition. Verticals on the left; horizontals below. The eye is led in to the middle distance from any corner. Quintessential desolation. But there's a fundamental weakness on the right. You see it?" The photographer darted to a heavy square stud and rapped it sharply at the precise spot where Jake's slicker used to hang. "This must be broken. What I need is a shoulder. Someone outside, leaning against this post, staring out to sea. We don't see him, of course. Just the part of the back and the shoulder carrying the eye back to the center. You don't mind?"
The photographer led Lennox to the stud, positioned him, and rushed back to the camera, chuckling and twittering. Lennox stood there, staring at the marsh, the creek, the remnants of the dock where his father's clam boat had been moored. He was filled with hatred and shame.
"Thank you, sir. Thank you so much," the photographer called. "If you only knew how many weeks I've been waiting for this light. And then to have you come along just in time.... What brought you, h'mm? Are you an angel or a photographer?"
"I was born and raised here," Lennox answered. "As a matter of fact, I think I own this place."
"My dear sir! Am I trespassing?"