I didn't learn his name until the last night of our long graphics installation in west Texas.. He was an older man with a slight build, who spoke no English. He worked 12-18 hours a day for the construction crew at the Big Spring church and slept on a bare mattress in the hot gymnasium at night. He helped us on occasion and we shared our water and some chocolates with him, and Tom and I marveled at his stamina. I speak just enough Spanish to communicate the barest concepts, but often we would just have to shrug at each other and shake our heads when we couldn't bridge the language barrier. By the end of our job, he would sit with us while we worked...offering to hold a light or carry a ladder or point out something we'd missed. He had earned our respect, even though we suspected that he was an illegal worker.
But I never asked his name. I just called him "Amigo."
The night before he was to leave by bus for another job, we got into a conversation of sorts. Tom would ask a question, I would translate as best I could and then Amigo would answer in his Spanish dialect, which we learned came from his home country of Honduras. We learned that he had risked everything to come here to work..a father of five and a grandfather of 26.
When I finally asked his name, he gave me a look I will not easily forget. It was with a mixture of pride and humble joy that he told us.
"Santos." He tapped his chest gently, as if to say, "That's me."
The utterance of that single word changed everything. We'd been comfortable not knowing his name up to now because of how we feel about illegal aliens. Treat them kindly but kick 'em out. But suddenly, Amigo stepped from the anonymity of an undocumented worker to being known by his real name, Santos. And you could tell how much it meant to him for us to know him by name. He somehow didn't seem like one of the millions of nameless, faceless workers that live and work here just under the radar of the law. Immediately he was a real person: a man with hopes and dreams and sorrows and feelings. We felt ashamed that we had worked alongside Santos for almost three weeks before we'd bothered to find out who he really was.
The next morning we brought him some fruit, granola bars and water for his bus ride, along with a McDonald's breakfast. I thanked him for his help and then, just like that he was gone.
But Santos reminded me of something. And I'll share it in Today's Small Thing.
