A local man does everything.

He works sixteen to eighteen hours a day, five to seven days a week. On the other days he works ten to fourteen. No stone is left unturned. He has turned them all, and several twice, and he is, by his own account, broke. By his own estimate his output is in the top hundred in the world. Nobody has checked. Nobody needs to. You can see it from the street.

At home he is on top of everything. With the little money there is, he does everything. For the people on the sidelines, the ones who could be in the game and aren't, he does everything to bring them in. When the person he lives with comes home, the evening is already planned, with people, several of them. "It's so nice having you," she says. He is building them a network. He is building everybody a network.

He did not choose this. Other people put him in this situation, and so he does everything.

He thinks about every horizon. Today's wage. Tomorrow's. Next week, next month, next year. Three years, five, twenty, fifty. There is a cliff at the end of each one, and he has walked to the edge of all of them to look.

People have noticed. People want more. This is not ingratitude, exactly. Every time he does everything, everything becomes the floor, and nobody thanks you for the floor.

Asked what any of it is for, he said that nothing he does is really for him. It is for everybody. That, he said, is one of his secrets to life.

He then went to do something.