Days 5 - 7
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| My last "official" sighting outside Calvary |
Day 5 - Carlos had driven me to
school earlier that Thursday, because my car had had to go into the shop. So he came to pick me up after 5
o’clock. I had some boring errands
to run so he chose to wait in the car.
That’s when somehow he missed that call. He’d missed that call? We were driving
homeward and he excited and I desperate – talking but not communicating. For the life of me I couldn’t understand
why Christian would hang up the phone and not tell his father where he
was. I couldn’t fathom why Carlos
wouldn’t ask him!
“But ... it was a voicemail!” Carlos exclaimed at last.
“What? Oh, duh!” I slapped my forehead, “No wonder, I
wasn’t getting it. So when did he
leave it?”
“When you were in
the store,” Carlos said, “I don’t know why my phone didn’t ring.”
“Just now?” I
squeaked, “Why didn’t you call back?” my heart was poun My crazed mother-hands want to smack
his calm-Vcop-attitude.
ding in my ears.
“I did, but they
told me he wasn’t there any more.”
“Where? How? Who?”
I sputter.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know
where you called?”
“No, I just called
back.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“I think they said
the name, but I didn’t understand.”
“Argh!” I’m
frustrated but excited too, “So why are we just driving home? Don’t you think we should go? Find him, I mean? We’re the support
team! Don’t you think if
he’s blown out a tire or something, we should get up there and help?”
“Yes,” he paused,
never rushing into anything, “But how do we know where he is?”
“I don’t know,”
but I have faith, enormous faith, “He’s got to be somewhere near Narcoossee
Road on 192, right?” I’m scouring the map in my head with all my yellow pins on
it knowing that we’d agreed to meet on the weekend somewhere in that
neighborhood.
“Yeah.” Carlos
replied. “So, you think we should go up or should we wait?”
“Go! Go! Go! Turn around right here and get on the
highway,” I’m jumping up and down in my seat. Why am I not the driver? Why am I not in charge of this rescue mission? He’s moving like molasses to me and I
could probably jump out of the car, run around it and jump in the driver’s seat
before he’d realized what had happened.
But that’ him and this is me, yet another testament to why we get on so
well and why we fight so much.
We’re about as different as a bed and a chair.
“You think so?” he
actually begins to slow down the car.
“Yes!” I wail,
“Turn, turn here!" I almost want to tug the I point.
At last we’re on
the I-95 headed North and getting our ducks in a row.
His call came from
a number. Hah, of course it did,
but whose number? Who cared? We’d
figure this out, but the important thing was that we were reducing the
distance between him and us.
Then came iron-man’s confession. As we
turned onto 192 and into the late afternoon sun (very reminiscent of my drive
only a few days prior) Carlos confessed he’d just driven up this road before
picking me up at school.
“What? Today?”
He looked a little
sheepish as he nodded. He’d driven all the way to Narcoossee Road, but not seen anything.
“So you had a
premonition then?” I gasped.
“Yeah, maybe I
did,” he shrugged. “But I didn’t
find him.”
He must’ve had a
premonition because it was right around the time Christian was struggling with
the wretched wheels.
“Wow. That’s amazing. We definitely have to find him then.”
We were chewing up the miles by the time I called that number, steeling myself to speak to some grumpy clerk or foreigner. It was a rowdy
line when the man answered the phone.
I couldn’t understand the name of the place.
“Excuse me? Who am
I speaking to?”
“This is the Cozy
Corner.”
“Oh, hello. Is that a convenience store?”
“No, ma’am, we’re
a bar.”
“Ah, I see. I just got a phone call from my son, who
borrowed your phone…”
“Oh, yeah! The walker?” I could hear the smile in
is voice.
“Yes!” I beamed,
“That’s the one. He left without
telling us where he would be, would you happen to know where he went?”
“I sure do…” and
the angel gave me precise directions of how and where to find Christian.
Carlos and I
grinned. My eyes flicked heavenward as I shot up one of my many gratitude arrows. Two agnostics and one
Christian. I’m the Christian. You get to work out the other two. It gets confusing because Christian is
not Christian, but he's attracting all the angels. Carlos, on the other hand, wears wear a cross around his neck (and has done since the very first time I met him 35 years ago!)
My excitement
mounted the closer we got; I couldn’t wait to see him and hear how it’d
gone. Did he manage to overcome
the obstacles that no doubt had been thrown in his path? Had he enjoyed his
alone time? What did he think
about when he walked and walked?
At last the sign
for the Colonial Inn appeared, directly across the road from a field of
cows. Old, tired, but someone had
been kind enough to paint over its wrinkles.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tattat! I rapped on the door of Number 2 as
Carlos pulled up and when Christian threw open the door, the first thing he saw
was the red Mazda.
Christian whooped, Carlos
honked, I hooted. You’d think we
hadn’t seen him for months. It was
a magic moment. Who knows what we all said as we hugged, and hollered, and carried
on. It was a rowdy few minutes
with the three of us chattering at once.
 |
| 50 some miles later - tires totally ruined |
“The FOUR tires
collapsed,” he told us as he led us into his room. There was the DragonWagon looking slain, lying on its side,
wheel-less. It was a horrific
sight, each wheel worse than the previous. One flat, two chewed down to the strings and inner tubes,
one missing its ball bearings … a sad, sad sight. But ... there were two new ones on the Wagon? Huh?
“What about
these?” I pointed.
“Ah, well, there’s
the story,”
Christian said and went on to tell us about Deputy McCue, from the Osceola Sheriff's Department, who
stopped on the side of the road, to check Christian out. After all, he does look rather shifty!
How does the only person who stops on the highway
just happen to have two whole wheels
of this exact type of wagon? This
is not your typical wagon, y’know.
“Sit tight,” he’d
said to Christian (who had nothing else to do but sit tight with this
wheel-less wagon), and turned up some time later with two brand new
wheels. The perfect size. The perfect fit.
I’m sitting on the
couch watching Christian recount his tale and I’m looking at the wheels, the
old and the new. A rush of
gratitude overtakes me. More arrows heavenward. There is
good everywhere, there really is good everywhere. In a world that has become so corrupt with never-ending bad news,
frantic headlines, bleeding articles, it’s such a relief to see that good is
out there still.
We offered to
bring Christian home to make the necessary repairs and return him to this same
location. But he chose to
stay. Incredibly, right between Christian’s
motel in the middle of nowhere and the Cozy Corner there was a U-Haul rental store that was able to order him a couple of new tires.
So … who do you think is on his side?
