Only Some Samaritans Shave...

Five hours, 367 miles, and about twenty gallons of gas. “Virginia welcomes you.” The sign flashed by at 70 miles an hour, distorted and foggy through the rain hammering the windshield of the old Saturn. Virginia. At least ten more hours and 600 miles yet to go. Fantastic.

She reached for the illuminated buttons on her newly-installed stereo, ejected the cd that had replayed at least three times. Pulling a new cd from the holder strapped to her visor and replacing it with the old one, she sighed, anxious for something that would help keep her awake for the next few hours that promised to drag on. Rolling her head first to the right, then to the left, she felt the vertebrae in her neck crack and pop. A brief relief.

Thwap thwap thwap thwap thwap. The ominous noise interrupted the second track on her new Sarah Bareilles cd. It couldn’t be! It wasn’t possible. Not now! She desperately looked to the signs on the highway, looking for any direction to a nearby rest area, or even better yet, a gas station. “Next rest area, 92 miles”. If signs could have emotions, she was convinced that one was laughing as her sad little overpacked, now gimpy car, rattled by. 92 miles?

Downshifting, she guided her car into the emergency lane and into the grassy area on the side of the highway, gusts of wind smacking more rain against her driver’s side window as traffic continued to whiz by. She glanced under the passenger seat for her umbrella. No luck. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she turned to look in the backseat. Her eyes met the gaze of her black and gray tabby hunkered down in her carrier, stacked like another brick in the wall of boxes. “This is fun, huh?” As if totally unphased by the current predicament her owner was in, the cat scratched her ear, the bell attached to her collar jingling away, and then rearranged to curl up in the back of the carrier with her blanket.

Of course, the umbrella was jammed behind the driver’s seat between a box and her framed picture of James Dean. She sighed, pulled the hood of her UMass sweatshirt over her head and slowly opened the car door. Swollen, fat raindrops plopped through the opening. She scurried outside and slammed the car door in an effort to keep as much water out as possible. Running around the passenger side of the car, she tried to inspect the source of the thwapping noise in the creeping darkness that came with nightfall. Flat tire. There was no hope of it even being revived – it was totally flat. New…and flat. Thank you, WalMart. Scurrying back around the front of her car again and plunging inside, she dug for her cell phone in her purse as well as her Triple A service card.

“Three hours?!” she caught herself raising her voice to the attendant on the other side of the line. “Do you realize how long that is? I’m stuck on the side of the highway! I’m not at a rest stop or anything – I’m literally on the side of the road in the grass. It’s raining! There’s-” she held the phone out to face the oncoming traffic and then pressed it back to her ear. “There’s cars and trucks racing by at 90 miles an hour just a few feet away from me! I’m just supposed to sit here for three hours and wait for your truck to come? Isn’t there anything else you can do?”

45 minutes had passed. The tabby was sound asleep in the back seat of the car. Eventually she would shake away an itch, her little bell the only sound interrupting the droning rain outside. Aside from the careening lights from passing cars, the pitch black of nightfall had engulfed her car. She flipped open her phone to check the clock for the fourth time in 20 minutes. This was utter and absolute torture. Maybe, she thought, just maybe she could change the tire herself. She’d seen her dad and her most recent boyfriend change a couple tires enough to have a general idea of how to do it. That way she could at least get herself to a rest area where she could use the bathroom and be safely off of the highway. The rain was starting to let up – maybe that was a sign that things had the possibility of going in her favor after all.

Scuddling out of her car door and around the back, she pulled up the trunk hatch and stared at more boxes. She’d forgetten for that split second of mechanic enlightenment that she had a trunk-full of boxed items from her apartment separating her from her spare tire and jack. At least she’d listened to her dad, rare as it was, and packed a tarp. She pulled it from between the wheel-well and yet another box and carefully opened and laid it on the passenger side of her car in the grass. Box by box, she emptied the trunk of its contents and covered them with the unused half of the tarp, protecting it as best as she was able from the elements. Grunting, she was able to remove the spare tire and rest it on the ground while also snatching up the jack. Now came the tricky part.

The bright shine of headlights approached at first quickly and then slowed to a stop behind her car. She peeked out from where she’d lain down in the grass, her head almost completely under the car. Closing her phone, which she’d been using as a make-shift flashlight in an attempt to find where exactly to place the jack to lift the car, she scooted out and sat upright. The bright lights, such a drastic change from the dim blue glow of her screen, made her instinctively squint and shield her eyes with her grease-covered hand. The lights were far too high for it to be a car, so she could only assume it was the Triple A truck come to rescue her after all. A door slammed and the silhouette of a tall, burly man sauntered into the light. “You look like you could use some help,” said a deep, warm voice.

“You’re not with Triple A?” Her heart plunged. Before, she’d felt the grateful emotions of a rescued damsel rising in her chest. Now they were quickly being replaced with suspicion, withdrawal and fear. “Who are you then?” She stepped a few feet away from the man who had crouched down in front of her flat, new tire and was now turning the tire iron on the nuts that stubbornly held the tire on the wheel.
“Just your regular Joe. I had seen you broken down from the other side of the highway about an hour ago. I was heading towards Charlotte from Richmond for business. Got about 15 miles past here before realizing I’d left my credit card at the last gas station I’d filled up at just beyond Exit 79. Couldn’t keep going without it, so I had to turn around. Talk about a case of bad luck.” He set the tire iron down and pulled the tire from the bolts with ease as though it were feather-light. “But, from a distance, I was able to see your car still broken down, so I decided to stop and find out what the problem was.” He pushed the spare tire onto the bolts and began the process of replacing the nuts. Standing up and wiping his hands, smeared black with oil and grease, on his pants, he glanced around him. “This all your stuff?” As he stretched to full height, she was taken aback at how far he towered above her head; at least a good eight or nine inches. She felt herself shrink deeper into the night as though the darkness would shield her.
She nodded slightly, but then realized he probably couldn’t see her face in the night. “Yes. I had to pull it all out of the trunk to get at the spare.” At that, she bent down to pull away the tarp, attempting to keep as much of the standing water from dribbling down onto her boxes as possible. “Thank you for helping me with my tire,” she stated straightly.

“I think that’s the last of them.” Cole, as he’d introduced himself, patted the last box and gently closed the trunk. After at least six attempts at rearranging the various boxes, the game of tetris was complete and everything was in its place. She sighed, feeling foolish for being so obviously incompetent.
“Thank you, again, Cole. I really don’t know what I would’ve done had you not showed up.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have gotten far, that’s for sure,” he chuckled – a rumbling, jolly, vibrant sound from deep within his chest. “Now that spare will only get you so far. Don’t put any extra speed on it if you can avoid it. Definitely stop at the next gas station and see if they can’t help you with a new tire.” He stepped to the front of her Saturn. “Pop your hood for me a sec, would you?”

She needed a piece of paper to write it all down – at least three quarts of oil, a new air filter, some coolant, and maybe a drop or two of windshield washer fluid. And a bulb for her rear tail light. So much for doing some winter wardrobe shopping when she got home.

“And ask them to check on that belt. It looks a little cracked to me, but it should get you where you need to go. Hell, I went all the way from Detroit to Oklahoma City with a loose motor head gasket.” He started to laugh again, but in the light of a passing semi saw the confused blank stare on her face. “Right…. Well, darlin’, you’re in good shape as long as you get those things checked out.” He pulled out his wallet and passed her what looked like a business card between his two fingers. “I don’t fancy we’ll cross paths again, but I was happy to help.” Taking the card, she studied it for a moment, and then looked up into his markedly kind face. To think she’d been afraid of this Samaritan who so quickly jumped to help her. His eyes settled on hers for a moment, a gentleness lingering in them. A smile broke from within his trimmed beard. “You take care.” She watched him walk away, back towards his truck. Once more, his silhouette interrupted the stream of light from his headlights. As the diesel engine rumbled back to life, turned onto the highway, and melded into the shrinking slur of traffic, she could only watch and wonder.