" It stinks to hell, but it tastes good.
The animal is ugly, hairy and smelly
But deep down, deep down it's tasty!
Calm down, folks.
I'm talking about the skunk!
O Mate! Oh, the lemon! Lemonade! Kill!"
He'd been singing it all over the beach while he was knocking with a lighter in the matte gallon and a nickel in lemonade. I walked barefoot in that extremely hot sand with the greatest naturality in the world, while we tourists ran and jumped so we wouldn't burn our feet. He wore orange shorts and T-shirts with the drawing of a lion and the name of the Matte Leão brand, although he did not work for them. In the head, a sassah, also orange, already soaked with sweat and a little dirty of sand. A wet and folded towel twice helped cool and wouldn't let the gallons' handles hurt their shoulders.
We, on vacation, distracted, trying to relax and forget the day-to-day commitments, just want to admire the immensity of the sea and end up not paying much attention to the people and the things that happen around us and, so sometimes, you get the impression that you only see these people on their backs or that they have no face, but this one had. The fact that he sang a song so loud and with a double-playing lyrics made him never go unnoticed, everyone wanted to know where those verses came from and looked at him. As soon as I realized that I had everyone's attention, I came towards us, already drawing a little plastic cup, from those of coffee, in which I put a little matt for us to try. He delivered the free sample with his callous hand, thick as a sole of the foot, full of cuts made by the knife that, sometimes, slipped away when he was cutting lemons as fast as he could, while taking care of the matt that boiled in the pot, to ensure that lemonade was not lacking to make the "half in half" the next day. Then he opened a huge piano smile between a white circle of sunscreen and looked at us with those eyes full of very thick veins and reddish spots upon very heavy dark circles. When I realized that we noticed these details, I would take the sunglasses around my neck, with the lenses totally blurry with sweat, and I would put it in saying that I almost didn't sleep so I wouldn't let us down when I wanted to take that ice cream matt. Each of us asked for a half-in-a-half.
While he was serving us, he told us about the difficulties he was going through to support his five children and his wife, who was unable to get a job after she had suffered an accident. He said he conquered everything he had on his own, with the sweat of his own face, without the help of anyone but the people who bought his mate. In everything he had his sweat. Everything was done with your sweat. In my head came a question: "Kill him too?" I paid, I thanked, I waited for him to take a certain distance and spilled everything in the sand: "I bought it just to help, I don't even like matt.".