He was soaked through, the pea coat gone black with water, rain running off the end of his nose. He had not shaved in some days. His hands, when he put them on the counter, were shaking, not much, but steadily, the way a hull shakes over an engine.
He put a quarter and a dime on the counter.
Duncan looked at the coins. He looked at the old man. Then he went into the kitchen without a word and came back with a towel, a mug of coffee, and a bowl of the caldo verde, potato and kale with slices of linguiça, that Ilda made every Saturday for the Portuguese fishermen, and set them in front of Sig, and pushed the quarter and the dime back across the counter.
"I'm not a cook's mistake today," Sig said. His voice was rough, as if he hadn't used it in a while.
"No," Duncan said. "You're not."
Sig looked at the soup for a long time. Then he picked up the towel and dried his face with it, slowly, and his hands, and folded it, and set it on the stool beside him. He ate the whole bowl without stopping, and Duncan brought him another, and he ate that too.
When he was finished he sat with both hands around the coffee mug, looking out at the rain. The channel was gone. There was nothing in the slice of window between the hardware store and the bank but gray.
"I have your sea bag," Duncan said. "In my car. I got it from the Cabrillo."
Sig turned and looked at him.
"I owed you for the soup," Duncan said. "The bean soup. You paid me with everything you had and you didn't eat half of it."
The old man's face did something then, a small slow thing around the mouth and eyes, like a sail luffing, and for a moment Duncan thought he might weep, and then he didn't.