little salt

At the sound of Little Salt’s whistle in the early morning darkness, the lightning bugs in the old, cracked mason jar beside his cot began flashing their lights. 

A warm glow filled the gutted out school bus his family used as shelter during the summer as migrant workers on a Johns Island peach and tomato farm.

On the day he was born in the crowded favela outside the big city of San Salvador, a surprising thing happened.

He was wrapped in a blanket, snuggled by his mamí’s side.

His big, brown eyes were wide open. 

He was as still as the water in the lakes and ponds in the countryside on that hot, sunny afternoon. 

A lightning bug came into the room and lit gently on his nose. 

He blinked his eyes four short blinks.

The lightning bug blinked four short blinks back. 

He blinked three long blinks.

It blinked three long blinks back. 

Was he communicating with the lightning bug? 

Is such a thing possible? 

Maybe.

Maybe not.

You will have to decide.

The lightning bug took flight and flew out the window from which it had come.

It made it’s way into the bigger, wider world of the workers and campesinos of El Salvador.

When he was two years old, he was lying on his back under the afternoon shade of the old apple tree in the back corner of the Johns Island South Carolina farm.

His abuelo was lying beside him.

They were looking up into the branches that were heavy laden with little green apples.

“That color green there, Little Salt, is a color that can't be made with paints on an artist’s palette,” said the old man.

“Nope.

Only the universe can make colors like that.”

His abuelo was talking quietly to him, circling the pad of his calloused thumb round and round his chubby brown cheek.

A lightning bug lit on his nose and flashed its soft yellow light three times. 

Little Salt’s eyes turned inward toward the lightning bug. 

He blinked three times, as if he was sharing a soft light of his own that was yet unknown to human hearts and minds around him.

I knew then that he was a special kid, the kind of person born into the world once in a long, long while.