“Remember, mi nieto, I’m a farmer, not a barber.”
Hilcias looked into his abuelo’s eyes.
"They are farmer’s eyes," he thought.
Brown like a field that has just been turned by a donkey and plow.
Heavy lidded from years and years of looking for one more peach in a tree, one more tomato on a vine, one more fruit or vegetable to fill his basket and help him make another day’s pay.
And kind because he is a migrant worker and has learned to look into the faces of other people and see all that is human inside of them.
He then looked at himself in the small, cracked mirror in his abuelo’s big, calloused hands.
His dark hair was cut in a crooked line across his forehead and there were uneven gaps above his tiny ears.
His own brown eyes sparkled like the light of stars off a river of deep, flowing water in the middle of an El Salvadoran night.
“Yep, you’re definitely not a barber,” he smiled.
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