GG Martins

Miguel Martins leads cork-harvest crews through the summer, judging which oaks are ready for a bark that comes back once in nine years, off trees his grandfather stripped before him. The operation now also runs Martins Cork Ltd., producing Martins Backgammon boards with cork playing surfaces. To Martins, it is simply another good use for a material he has spent his life understanding.

Winters belong to the village taberna and to the chair nearest the stove, which is unofficially his. On his telephone there is a photograph of a board. He lost that match, in the taberna, four years ago, to a position he can still describe move by move to anybody who will hold the screen, and he has never photographed a win. He plays quickly, talks the whole way through, handles the checkers like a man who learned before he could read and hands the cube to whoever wants it.