The Silhouette Man.

I am used to the warm lick of the sodden southern air that drenches my skin like greasy, sizzling bacon in a hot frying pan. As I lay upon the shore of the sandy marsh, I felt beads of thick sweat dripping from me mending with the sand. Unbothered, I continue to admire the trees harmonizing with the wind. I like to imagine the wind and trees waltzing together across the beach, the winds caressing the branches of the trees like a newborn baby. I suppose this is how a child feels, watching their parents seamlessly become one as they share their love. It brings me a sense of peace, a sense of safety I can’t seem to find anymore but between the marsh and the trees that border it. Turning over so my left cheek is one with the earth I stared down the beach, watching the birds as they come and go examining little shells and pieces of trash that wandered up from the water when I felt my eyelids start to become heavy with sleep and without putting up I fight I let the marsh drift me off. 

***

I could feel tough grains of sand lapping around with the spit in my mouth, had I fallen asleep? I picked up my eyelids, the dark midnight sky greeted me. Shit, it’s dark. I am far from home, a couple of hours at most. I turned onto my back and heaved a deep breath. The trees don’t look as pretty in the thick of the night, all their color drained by the immense darkness. At least the wind still keeps the trees company, I thought to myself. Sitting up I panned the beach taking in my surroundings, the once cluttered beach was now almost vacant except for the occasional visit of the tide drifting in. Getting to my feet I started to shift through the roads in my mind leading back to-, I’m not sure where I was going back to.

The roads I walked during the day weren’t familiar to me at this hour. This is hopeless, I said to myself Just, hopeless. I started walking down the beach, following the small trail of indentations in the sand, they looked like the paws of a raccoon. I kneeled down, putting my thumb into each little part of the makeshift sand paw. Standing up again, I picked up my pace from a slow graze to a fast run, walk, when a small light flickering from the end of the beach caught my eye. I slowed, trying to see if the light had an owner. But no one accompanied it. So I carefully started towards the light, maybe they’ll have some food or freshwater. As I began to approach the light it became clear to me it was a fire joined by the silhouette of a man. He looked short, old, I could tell from his posture.

“Excuse me?” The words slipped from out of my mouth before I could catch them.

The silhouette shifted it’s a posture to a taller leaner shape, “Do I know you?”

I stayed put, feet from what looked like a camp set up, “I’m uh, not quite sure.” 

“What do you want?” His voice was swollen with the soul of the heavy south.

“Nothin’ sir, I just-” 

“You just?” 

“I just, can’t make my way out of here at night it’s too dark,” I said.

“Too dark, huh?” 

“Uh...yessir.” I felt slightly interrogated. 

“Well, you hungry I was just about to get cookin’.” He said moving to the side, a sign of welcome. 

Stepping forward into the light of the fire, I could finally see the silhouette in full form. A short, thin, black man looked to be in his 70’s. I could tell from the deep folds in his dark complexion.

“What’s a little girl like you wanderin’ around here fo?” He asked, sliding what looked like trout on a branch.

“I’m not little.” I’ve always hated it when people called little.

“Then what do you call dis?” He let out a slight chuckle, circling his long finger in the air outlining my face.

“I call it grown.” 

“Yeah? Well, last time I checked ten ain’t grown, little girl.” 

My face puffed up into a shade of crimson, I could feel my cheeks turning hot. “I’m 9.” 

“Okay, miss.” He handed me a stick decorated with a fish half the size of his. 

“Since your grown, I’m gonna assume you know how to cook a fish. Yes?” His eyebrows were raised creating more wrinkles in his already wrinkle-ridden face.

I didn’t even answer, instead, I walked over to the fire and kneeled down sticking my stick of fish over it. Watching as the orange flames immediately berated the fish, swallowing it whole. 

The man turned towards me, “Why don’t ya talk?”

“I do, sometimes,” I said still watching the mean orange flames devour my fish.

“You got jokes huh?” He said chuckling again the way old people chuckle, heavy and full of soul.

“I guess.” I turned towards him, gifting a slight smile. 

He said nothing as he returned the smile.

“Why are you out here?” I asked.

“I like it here. Right where the land meets the wata' ’.” His voice softened to a slight whisper as if he was trying not to disturb the marsh.

I knew exactly what he meant. The feeling of being between worlds so alike yet so different, it felt nurturing.

“I think your fish is ready Miss.” 

I turned towards my fish, or what was left of it. The once meaty trout was now nothing but smithereens, gone with the night sky. 

He smiled sympathetically at me, “It’s alrigh’, you can eat some of mine.” He pulled the stick of fish from over the fire and set it down on a beat-up log, grabbing a knife he sliced up the fish into small chunks the size of a jumbo marshmallow, when the sudden smell of the crisped fish wafted into my nose.

***

It was a Sunday, the thick air had started to roll in clinging onto the house seeping through cracked windows and floorboards. Crawling out of the house towards the marsh It was already sweltering and it was barely 5 am. Pa was already in the boat, smoking a cigarette while unleashing from the dock. 

Pa looked up at me cigarette lose between his lips, “You ready Bug?” 

I always loved it when he called me Bug, with that rich southern accent, “Yes, Pa.” I said throwing myself into the boat.

He kick-started the motor and soon we were off gliding through the thick of the marsh, my strawberry blonde hair tangling itself in the wind but I didn’t care. As long as we were on the boat, Pa and I. 

“Grab the fishing wire, will ya?” He said, pointing in the corner of the boat with his shaky finger.

“Yes sir.” 

We fished all day under the red sun, so when we pulled into the dock around 6 we were covered in patches of red burnt skin and bug bites.

“What y’all get me?” Ma yelled from the kitchen window overlooking the dock.

Practically falling out of the boat carrying one of the many trouts we caught, I yelled, “Pa and I caught some trout Ma!” 

She giggled, the type of giggle you see in old western Hollywood movies. Although she didn’t look like a Hollywood movie star, her hair a light shade of blonde, her lips slightly sunken in, and her face was unsymmetrical, but looking at her I couldn’t see anything but beauty, I made sure I told her often.

Smiling she said, “Good job Bug, bring it in here so it can be washed.” 

I trotted into our little brown house, the outside looked as if it had been taken over by the marsh. The brush surrounding it tall and wide, the paint melted away with the weather, but the inside was my favorite. Ma decorated it with all the stuff she had when she lived in California, pretty books lined up in neat rows, abstract art she said she found on a trip to San Diego, beautifully carved dark wooden tables, it was so cozy so, warm. I helped Ma wash and season the fish before I went to go take a shower, stripping the day away from my newly tanned skin. 

“BUG! IT’S DINNER TIME,” Ma yelled from the kitchen.

I slid on my nightdress over my towel yanking it from underneath before I made my way out of my room. As soon as I made my way out of my bedroom door I could smell crisped fish. As I walked into the kitchen, the smell filled my lungs. I closed my eyes and kept inhaling the sweet smell of garlic and butter.

“Come on now Bug, before the food gets cold,” Pa said putting out a cigarette on the leg of the table, letting it drop to the floor. 

“Don’t be doin’ that shit, Joel. This is mahogany.” Ma said slapping Pa on the back of the head.

Pa dusted the leg of the table where he put the cigarette out on and quickly pulled Ma’s freehand from her lap kissing it, “Sorry, Ma.” He said solemnly. 

“Alright.” She said, tossing Pa’s dark brown hair with a smile.

Pa smiled at me, “Bug, say grace”.

Grabbing Ma and Pa’s hands I began, “Amen, thank you, thank you, for this fish you have given us tonight and thank you for Ma and Pa, in your name amen.” 

The symphony of clinking forks against plates began, I started tunneling full spoonfuls of fish into my mouth without a second thought.

“Slow down Bug, you’re not a caveman.” Ma said putting a hand over my arm gracefully.

I smiled at her and began, to slowly start eating again letting the garlic butter from the fish melt over my tongue. “This is how I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Ma and Pa.”

***

“Miss?, Miss?” I could hear the little man calling me from the depths of my mind. 

“You alrigh’ Miss?” 

I felt warm streaks of tears plummeting down my round face, “I’m alright, I’m alright.” I bellowed. The tears wouldn’t stop falling from my eyes, I tried and I tried to catch them but I couldn’t they just kept coming in packs, hunting together. I looked down the beach, I had fallen asleep on earlier that day and I remembered the memories that brought me here, a small brown house, garlic fish, ma’s unsymmetrical face, and pa’s cigarettes. It all came rushing back sneaking discreetly into the floorboards of my mind. I looked up at the little old man, with a look of pain and I knew he knew just what happened to me one hot southern day because I too knew what happened to him many hot summer days ago, so I let myself become vulnerable and free on the shore of the marsh just between where two worlds collide and somehow never meet. I’d met my match by a lonely orange fire, a man with the world on his shoulders and sorrow in his eyes, so as I look up at the deep folds in his skin I understand where he has been. For I will be forever in his debt, he has saved me, my silhouette man.