Old Louis

Louis is the spirit of La Borde. He was born in the house we now live in in the 1930's, and has been here ever since, selling the house twenty years ago to move into the hen house opposite.
I have watched him survive the seven winters we have been here - a small fire in the corner of his blackened, chimneyless hut, the smoke escaping through the domed tiles on the roof. He lives like a bird - getting up when the sun comes up and going to bed when it gets dark. He cuts small branches off trees, indiscriminately, and uses the wood for kindling. When the snow brings down the powerlines, he is unaffected - he has never experienced electricity.
On summer days, he strips down to his waist and sits on this step at the back of his hut, he rigs up an old wheelbarrow and goes down to the cemetry to fill empty wine bidons with drinking water. Occasionally he will fill an old tin tub with his clothes, and cover them with ash, then hang them in the walnut tree to air.
Some are wary of him, of his witchcraft. I have watched him wrap an injured cat tightly in an old jacket, leave it in the sun for an hour, and then let it go, no longer limping. He himself never sees a doctor. He has shown me his foot, swollen and blackened one day, and normal the next.
I have never dared take a photo of him - worried that he might think I was stealing his soul. Today however, I made him coffee, laced with whiskey, the way he likes it and caught him on his step.