Last Wednesday morning on the way to work I was listening to the new Sammy Rae and The Friends “Songs We Wish We Wrote” album. Windows were down, volume up, and I was wondering if we’d already had our vacation. We had, and it was as fast as I was driving. Whoosh.
Two dogs were investigating a big lump in the highway, so I pulled onto the lip, turned the sound down, and looked in the rearview mirror expecting to see a scary 18-wheeler that would take me to my reward where I’d float around among new stars and planets wondering what’s next. No vehicle was behind me.
The dogs, a Border Collie and a mongrel with a box-shaped head, were circling a doe that was laid out flat, stretching most of the lane’s width. I thought that when the next scurry of traffic came roaring through, well, wouldn’t that be grim?
The doe was recently hit, the dogs curious, and the corpse mine to move. I clutched her hind legs right above her hooves to drag her off the road. Imagine my surprise when I could barely move her. Now, I’ve dragged deer out of the woods, bucked hay, carried toddlers uphill and opened pickle jars.
Apparently, I’ve also hawked my country-survival puissance for a speedy keyboard and a phone that talks to me, so my strength probably thought I didn’t need it anymore. It left me. Dead weight is heavier than scale weight. To say I budged that doe is sheer embroidery.
Poof! A dump truck loaded with gravel and spinning on ten tires was coming downhill toward us. I blew out a one-syllable word my mother never used.
The truck downshifted, and with all its bolts and belts squealing, braked. It whizzed 30 yards past us before stopping, blocking the other lane. A man two-stepped out of the cab.
He was out-of-shape also, panting toward us like a hero about to give his best effort to save a dog or six children from a fire. He picked up the doe’s front legs and the two of us hustled her off the highway and into a grove of trees.
We laid her down tenderly and finally. We looked at her for a just a second, long enough to feel our chests and heads well up. “I couldn’t have done that without your help. Thank you, thank you so much.”
He looked right at me and said, “You’re old. You stopped. I would help you do anything.”
We had our moment of gaze, then left, driving in different directions.
I turned Sammy Rae back up. “Kick it to me, I could make it better for you, kick it to me I could make you better for it.”
I love that I loved this man I encountered but didn’t meet. It had nothing to do with race, gender, persuasion, background, religion, or money. I really don’t care who he voted for. For whom he voted.
I was just grateful he got that monster truck halted, volunteered his strength, and sparked me to write about him. And use the word puissance.
He affected me the way a kindergarten teacher, a foreigner, a bus driver might – you never see it coming but will think about what that someone said or did in one spot of time, and with luck, never get over it.