Gracias
His eyes were a faded blue, like the paint of a well worn chevy left to bath in sun, hidden behind his heavily tinted sunglasses and wide brimmed hat. The man was bent heavily over his music, playing to his audience of bricks and cats.
One day, as the boy dropped his change into the battered wicker basket, the old man had started so badly at the unfamiliar sound of tinkering metal that as his head whipped up, it knocked against the door behind him and fell to the ground. His wide fearful eyes melted into gratitude as the boy gently took the old man’s hand and placed the hat in his palm; careful to place the sunglasses in the hat as his mother called him away.
The boy couldn’t understand the low, gravelly voice that called out after him that day. But when the boy returned a man, with a guitar on his back and a few preciously saved bills folded carefully in his pocket, he paused in front of that door to listen to the tune — the same one that had been played so long ago as far as he knew. The man smiled in front of the old man and quietly placed the bills into the basket as he whispered softly, “Gracias.”
