164. 300 days a year, a warm rain fell on the beach, and the people moved in everything, work and leisure, with a practiced lassitude, the heavy drops running behind their ears, catching in the shady pits beneath their eyes. Lightening was common, and the men who worked the derricks had to keep to the rubberized ladders or risk exploding into the sea. One woman who lost her husband this way complained bitterly until the company brought in an automobile strapped to the deck of a barge. She only drove the car for two weeks before letting it sink into the sodden grass of her front yard. She preferred to walk the streets with her hair loose in mourning, the oilmen’s eyes working over her sprinkled shoulders, the black dress that held the curve of her hips.