He had plopped in the coins and dialed the number.  He stepped out the phone booth to hand the receiver to the old man, but got told to listen for an answer.  He listened.  He signaled each ring to the old man, eleven of them before he heard a pick-up.  Hello?, he said.  He heard a hang-up.  Call again, the old man said, This time, don’t say Hello, say…I’m sorry.  He said, Shouldn’t that come from you?  She won’t accept it from me, said the old man, I need you….  He watched the old man’s head start a nervous shake in a way that drooped the eyes.  He rang back, said I’m sorry, and got hung up on again.  The old man took to mumbling now.  He rang back: another I’m sorry, another hang-up.  And then again.  He could in later years easily recall how the old man had then started a low, fractured singing, a breaking of different songs against each other.  It felt to him to be a long moan.  He rang up again.  When she answered, he held the phone to the old man’s moaning for longer than he wanted and then heard himself say, I’m not just saying that I’m sorry — I have become…sorry.  The old man stopped his moaning and stepped up to listen for whether she would hang up.  The silence on the phone dragged on, but then they heard start a whispered, clearly joyful, song.  The old man broke out an immediate ‘Yea!’, and hung up the phone.  That’s the signal, he said.  I done my begging, and she’s now ready to do her forgiving.  The old man slowly sauntered off, looking to him worn down but with still a lightness to his step, as he had seen among natives when, having survived a grueling ritual, they’d step away from a shaman’s hut.