"Po lidda fella," said the old, weathered woman with skin as dark and wrinkled as the bark and arms as thin and knobby as the branches on the farthest reaches of the ancient Angel Oak on Johns Island.
She lived in a holey floored, crack walled, Duck taped shotgun shack left over from the days of slavery and Jim Crow.
She fished the inlet and the shoreline each morning, trying to catch red fish, sea trout and flounder to go with the fruits and vegetables from her garden.
She wove sweet grass into baskets from late morning to late afternoon.
"Jus sits dere," she continued, "Eva monin' as de sun rises ova de ocean and sits on de horizon like a ripe tomata.
Neva says a word. Jus' sits dere a'watchin de wata and a'list'nin to de waves."
One day she walked over and stood beside him.
Her shadow shaded him from the bright sunlight.
"Wha's yo name?" she asked kindly.
"My name's Mattie. Would you tell me yo name?"
He turned his earthy brown eyes to her.
He didn't say a thing.
She figured he didn't understand her.
His mamí and abuelo were migrant workers, picking peaches and tomatoes in the lowcountry summers until moving down the coasts of Georgia and Florida with the Southern winter winds.
"Ma'be he only speaks Spanish," she thought, for his family had come to the United States from the farms and fields of El Salvador.
Suddenly, he whistled.
She was astonished.
She almost fell over into the sand.
The sound was unlike any whistle she'd ever heard in her life.
A usual whistle has two notes and a high pitch.
This whistle, however, was an unusual one.
It had all kinds of notes in it.
The pitch went high and low, low and high, and all kinds of places in between.
It was as if the great composers had written his whistle at the height of their compositional powers.
"Ya know," she explained, "It was like he was a'tryin to say somepin to me in a be-yoo-tee-ful way, but I din' hab no ideé what it was."
He looked back over the water and at the sky again.
He was very still and very quiet.
She felt a deep compassion for him in her heart.
She put her hand on his shoulder as the tide rolled in and out.
"I be here," she whispered.
"I be here."
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