Good People

2 years ago, I lived in a house with other girls in my homechurch; as the group grew, my house split in two, and I was in the half that moved out.  I asked my friend Patrick to borrow his parents' minivan and help me move some stuff the night before the big day.  And oh, what a misadventure it was.  After 30 minutes loading the minivan, Pat halted by the driver's door and heard the hiss of a flat tire.  So we undid our work, drove it back down the alley that had provided the nail, and I helped change my first tire.  The donut was so flat we barely got it around the corner.  So we took the donut back off (deja vue, no?) as someone tried so hard to ignore us they almost backed into us.  All our friends weren't answering their phones and every car that passed our plight took a piece of my soul with them; everyone could see us, and no one, NO ONE, was helping.  People are selfish.  People are jerks.  I'm going to secede from the human race because people are such assholes.  And then, more than 2 hours after that first hiss, hungry and tired, hunched in the dark with our pitiful flashlight, humanity finally brought forth a shining star.  A man and his wife who lived across the street came home after dinner and took pity on us.  They were the first to acknowledge that, yes, indeed, we were not invisible, and if they had done nothing more I would've loved them just as much.  She brought us a pair of sodas, and he brought out his air compressor, and they saved the day.  As we drove the van back to his parents' house, I turned and said "Pat, I'm going to name my first child after that man, even if I have a girl."  And then broke down into ten minutes of hysterical laughter.

This past weekend Dave and I drove 4 hours to Summersville, West Virginia.  He had replaced the car battery the week before, but because of a disconcerting battery light during our vacation, we stopped in at Advance Auto Parts to have it checked out again before we left town.  After an assurance that we should make it home, no problem, we drove 2 hours toward the border of Ohio.  And we almost crossed it, too.  But while on the highway, the RPM needle suddenly dropped to zero...then the MPH needle fell like a rock...the radio was unresponsive..."Here we go," Dave said...and the car sputtered and died.  We coasted to the berm in the middle of the West Virginia hills.  I immediately sent a text to my parents asking for prayer, and prayed that the text itself would make it over the hills.  I watched the cars stream past us with a glowing coal of resentment, the same I had felt next to Pat 2 years before.

It was the alternator.  As we were merrily trucking along with the company of that firey red battery light on the dash, the alternator had conked out and left the battery to fend for itself.  With the hood up, staring at an alien mass of metal and motor, Dave called his father.  Who gave us the number to the highway patrol.  Who gave us the number for a tow truck.  But before Dave could dial the number, two cars pulled over.  Call them angels, call it luck, call it karma, call it whatever you damn well please.  What happened to us doesn't just happen.

Two engineers from the West Virginia National Guard coming back from drill were suddenly at our side and already had their heads under the hood.  We told them the problem, and at a glance the older soldier, Greg, said, "Oh good, your alternator is on top of the engine.  That means it'll be easy for us to take out."  They just happened to have the necessary socket set with them to remove it, and the know-how to do so.  For twenty minutes, they were elbow-deep in our engine and successfully removed the weathered part.  They then drove us to an auto parts store at the next exit, and as Dave opened his wallet for that expensive hunk of metal, both men chimed in and said, "Y'know, we can help pitch in on it."  Are you kidding?  Is this real?  This NEVER happens.  We politely declined, and with Dave's wallet $120 lighter we drove back to the car, where Jason and Greg easily reattached the alternator.  They wouldn't accept gas money, they wouldn't give me their information so I could thank them later.  "We've all been there before, we know what it's like," was their simple response.  We got the car started and the men drove away, leaving Dave and I to marvel.  Breakdown to back on the road took no more than an hour.

We had gotten away with replacing our alternator with neither labor cost nor the time of leaving it in a shop.  A job that my mother has been charged $300 for the labor alone Dave and I got for free on the side of the road.

From what we can gather, my mother's prayer was only moments before the soldiers pulled over; and because they wouldn't share their personal information, my mother is convinced they were angels.

Honestly - I hope they weren't.

Because that would mean that they were people.  Good people.