Remembered Kindnesses #3

It was a blindingly hot day. I was about 7 years old, which meant my brother was 6 and my sister Jean was a tiny baby. I don’t remember where we were going, or why my dad was not with us. My mother was driving. We kids were crammed in the back seat, sticky, miserable, eating Froot Loops out of small boxes and trying to keep ourselves occupied. We were driving on a lonely road, with ranks of pine trees on one side, wilderness, and a huge rock wall on the other side. I don’t remember the sequence of events but I do remember we suddenly were on the side of the road, with smoke pouring out of the front of the car. Overheated. The sun blazed down. No cars came. Jean was getting fussy, strapped into her car seat. There were no cell phones. I remember the heat, I remember the backs of my legs sticking to the car seat, and I remember being utterly miserable, drinking hot lemonade out of a tupperware container. My mother stood by the car, with the hood lifted up, smoke billowing out, staring up and down the empty road. Wilderness on one side, mountain rock wall on the other. Brendan and I were aimless, fussy, bored, and vaguely frightened. Where were we? And why? We peed in the woods. I do remember that. Jean was writhing about in misery and we tried to placate her. My mother changed her diaper in the back of the car. I remember my mother being upset, and not sure what to do. No cars came. It was an empty country road. It could be hours before someone drove by to help us.

I remember looking up at the rock wall at one point, the heat glimmering the facade into liquidy shapes, relentless, and I saw a man up on the top of that mini-mountain. He stared down at us. He had long hair and a long beard. He had no shirt on and was wearing cut-off shorts. He didn’t move. Just stood up there, in the glimmering heat mirage, looking down at our plight.

I had just made my first communion. My Sunday School class had had to make felt banners that were hung up in the church during the day we received the Sacrament for the first time. It was up to us what our banner would be. Lots of other kids appeared to have had some “help” in the creation of their banner, the images far beyond the ability of a child that age. Of course I didn’t think of it in those terms then, and my memory of this may be based on a snarky comment my dad made about the other banners. “Looks like they had a little help,” he said. I just know I looked at the really neat-looking and polished banners and wondered why the hell mine looked so unfinished. My banner was a blue cloth. I made a figure of Jesus out of different pieces of felt. He had long brown hair and was wearing a long blue dress. He had brown bare feet sticking out from beneath his dress. He had a long brown beard. He held one hand out, and on that hand sat a little white bird. And beneath all of this I had cut out the words in red felt: JESUS IS GENTLE. Now my banner may have been honest, but there was a rawness to it that was not reflected in the other banners, which had neat little Bible messages and obvious parental help had been called in. Thanks, Dad, for making that observation. He liked MY banner, because it was all me. He still referenced it, years later. “Jesus is gentle,” he would laugh.

The man on top of the mountain looked down at us and I wondered if I was the only one who saw him. There was no contact between us and him. We did not shout up to him, he did not shout down to us. The next time I looked up, he was gone.

Where did he go?

Maybe 25 minutes later, he appeared from the other side of the road, the wilderness side, holding two huge plastic buckets full of water.

He stood talking with my mother, as my brother and I huddled in the back seat, limp rags of hot children, hovering over our sticky baby sister. He said something to my mother about there being a creek down in the woods, and it looked like we needed some water to cool off our engine.

He had filthy bare feet, and was skinny as a rail. His hair was matted together, long and wild. He stood over our smoking engine, pouring water in, with belches of hot steam coming out. He tinkered. He poured more water on. He disappeared again, and reappeared with more buckets of water. He walked over the hot gravel with bare feet, never wincing, or hopping across the burning heat like we did as kids. He strolled up the rocky path from the woods, as though his bare feet were actually hiking boots. He was acclimated. He tinkered some more. He poured some more water in. Jean passed out in her car seat, sticky fingers in her mouth.

Mum stood out there with the man from the mountain, and they chatted a bit, but we couldn’t hear what they said. The hood was up, and Brendan and I were delirious with the need for food, water, a bath, sleep.

The man from the mountain brought the buckets to the back seat and let us put our hands in and scoop some out to drink. He smelled bad, but he had a really nice smile with friendly brown teeth. Brendan hid his face when the man smiled at us.

He had my mother get back into the car after a bit. The smoke had stopped pouring out of the engine. She tried the engine. It sputtered a bit, flipping over, grinding uncomfortably. The man from the mountain stood over to the side, encouraging her to keep turning it over, keep trying. Eventually – success. The car started again.

The long-haired man grinned at us, nodding with satisfaction, and my mother called out thanks to him, and we pulled off, back onto the road.

When I looked back for him, he was already gone.

I am still, to this day, not sure if any of it really happened.

He looked like my banner.