I always took a pretty roundabout route home from work. On one particular day I’d already sought reprieve at Horatio’s, but knowing at least 20 minutes remained to my journey, I’d cut myself off after just two whiskey gingers and was duly proud. Looking back at the valleys of my life, they’re defined not by continuously sinking lower, but by repeatedly lying to myself that I was turning things around.
I settled on taking the backroads home, just to buy a little more solitude before returning to my wife and son. It wasn’t that I didn’t love them, truly – I’d never raised a hand to either of them, and rarely did I even strike an overtly angry tone – it was simply the suffocation and claustrophobia brought on by their constant presence. Alone time had become the most valuable resource in the world, and it took painstaking thoroughness to sift through each day and extract as much as I needed. A few extra minutes in the sanctity of my car were par for that course.
It hadn’t helped that the financial situation at my office had become tenuous, and that as a result, my blood pressure was quite literally on the rise thanks to my professional hours as well as my evening hours. Hours spent in the car or at the bar had certainly become the best parts of my day. Such times made me feel almost myself again; they cleared my head and made me want to climb up out of my own selfishness.
It was in such a state of mind that, on the day in question, in the dying light, I came across a car in a ditch around a sharp curve on Poplar Road. A young man stood abaft the vehicle, his hands running through his hair in an almost comical caricature of distress.
Perhaps this was not merely an incidental happening, but a God-given opportunity to take a first step toward the good in life. I pulled my own car to the side, got out, and jogged over to the man.
Even at my help-promising approach, he remained quite flummoxed, opening his mouth but failing to form words.
I opened the dialogue. “Bad luck, huh? It’s a treacherous little turn here. Have you called anybody? Triple-A?”
He looked on the verge of tears; in response, he simply shook his head.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got stuff in the trunk that might help and I’m not in a rush. Actually…” I peered down at the crashed car, a blue Hyundai Accent. “I have a passing familiarity with your car, there – my neighbor has the same one. That won’t hurt our chances. Oh, I’m Howard, by the way.”
I stuck my hand out. The man shook his head as if to rouse himself from a stupor, then took it. “Eddy,” he said, clearly thankful. “Thanks, buddy. Much appreciated. This really couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”
“You in a rush to get somewhere?” I asked, shuffling into the ditch to inspect the front end of the car.
Eddy remained on the level ground. “Just home, but I’m… Well, I’m going to be a father very, very soon and I really need to get back.”
I looked up at his anxious visage and began clambering back up the incline. “Well then, congratulations. I was going to see if we could push this thing out, but let’s just be safe and tow it. Then you can get on home – it doesn’t look like there’s any real damage.”
“Thanks a million,” the father-to-be said, beaming at me.
“It’s my pleasure. I have a little all-in-one hauling mechanism, it ought to work in a pinch. With the angle of your car, it might be better to use towing straps or something, though. Do you happen to have any in the trunk?”
“No, no, I don’t,” Eddy replied, quickly striding past me to my vehicle. “I’m sure we can make it work if we position your contraption just right.”
“I’m certain we can.” I opened my trunk, got out the mechanism, and went about attaching the one end under my car’s rear. “I have a little boy at home. He’s five. And I can tell you from experience, it’s not easy. There’s always something to do, or think about, or pay attention to… But it’s better than not having people there, next to you. I need to start reminding myself of that.”
I looked once again into the young man’s face. His eyes were wide with something like fear, or awe, but he gave me a small smile. “You’re right, Howard. It must be better. Thank you for that. I’ve been pretty afraid about everything lately, but somehow, I just know things will work out fine now.”
It wasn’t a clean job, but five minutes later, the Accent was back on the road, none the worse for wear. He clapped me on the shoulder and said thanks again. His relief was such that he offered me a $50 bill.
“You don’t have to do that,” I told him. “The truth is, you’ll need to hold on to every penny you have soon. Might as well start now.”
He looked at me graciously and replaced the bill in his wallet. “Thank you again. I won’t forget this anytime soon.”
“Get home safe, Eddy.”
The young man nodded. Then he got in his car and drove away.
And as touched as he clearly was by my actions, I think I was nearly as affected by the whole event. I’d seen an imminent parent’s fear, eagerness, and motivation – all the qualities I’d lost – just as soon as my mind was trying desperately to be receptive to them again. That couldn’t have been anything short of cosmically significant.
Did you know that John Wilkes Booth’s son saved the life of Abraham Lincoln’s son? This is a relatively well-known historical coincidence. I remember hearing once that, even more absurdly, some random man in the early 20th Century managed to save the same stranger’s life on three unrelated occasions in three different cities. More contemporarily, it’s become something of a trope in television shows for two prominent characters, both followed by the audience but unknown to each other, to meet in a bar unwittingly – that dramatically ironic situation has occurred on Lost and Breaking Bad. The odds of such coincidences have been on my mind a lot.
About half an hour after I’d sent Eddy on his way, I turned the corner onto my home street to find a single police car parked outside my neighbor’s house, the officer to whom it belonged in conversation with my neighbor outside his front door. They both waved me over as I pulled into my driveway. As bad luck would have it, my neighbor’s car had been stolen at some point while he and his wife had been out shopping that day; they’d taken her car.
A disturbed tingle washed over me and I explained to them what I’d seen on my way home from work. My neighbor was frustrated but did his best not to direct said frustration at me. The officer radioed to his station and promptly left, though I don’t know if he expected to track anyone down at that point. But I couldn’t really process much of this, as I was troubled by a sinking feeling, one brought on by a strange observation that I didn’t become conscious of until I entered my house a few minutes later: it was 7 o’clock on a November evening, and all the lights were off.
It’s been a week since that day, and no “Eddy” in a Hyundai Accent has been found. Nor have my wife and son.