The Angel

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s I was travelling a lot between Cape Girardeau, MO and Little Rock, AR. I would get to know that drive very well over time. South on Interstate 55 to West Memphis, then west on Interstate 40. I knew where all the good exits were for gas and snacks. Once you get below Cape Girardeau and Benton Hill, the terrain is very flat, and the challenge is the resulting monotony. Northeast Arkansas south of Blytheville has a particularly long stretch of I-55 where there are few towns and few exits at all for that matter. There were numerous trips to Central Arkansas from St. Louis while we worked on getting a bank charter approved. Then after we finally got the bank open and we had moved the family to Little Rock, I would travel back to Cape Girardeau, Missouri a couple of times a month.  I would arrive in Cape late on Sunday nights to attend an officer’s meeting on Monday morning, pick up supplies, discuss loans, etc. Later, on Monday I would then make the drive back to Little Rock, sometimes late in the afternoon.

It was on one of these trips, that I had an adventure. It started routinely enough with meetings in Jackson and Cape, with me finally hitting the road late in the afternoon for the mind-numbing solo drive to our Arkansas home in West Little Rock. I remember making a mental note that particular evening somewhere in the boot heel of Missouri to stop in Blytheville, AR to get gas, as I was getting pretty low. I must have been daydreaming or thinking about work, because I blew past Blytheville without a thought about my gas tank. I was totally in another world when the car suddenly lost power and rolled to a stop on the right-hand side of the road. In an instant, I knew my dilemma. I was somewhere in the “Bermuda Triangle” of no exits and no gas stations between Blytheville and West Memphis. I didn’t even know how far past Blytheville I was. The fact that the sun was already setting in the west behind Crowley’s Ridge told me it was too far to walk back. This was before cell phones, so no help there. I sat there for a few minutes, while all the realities of my situation had time to settle in my mind. My wife Rita would begin to worry at some point. Wow, Randy, you really put yourself into some deep crap this time, didn’t you?

Here were my options, as I saw them at the time: Stay with the car and hope for a state patrol car to happen by, or start walking. I decided to walk. It was already dark when I took off south on the shoulder of I-55. One of my scenarios had me heading off the highway at some point toward farmhouse lights, and if the setting looked “right”, knocking on a door to use a phone and call a tow truck. I had credit cards and $45 in cash.

I had walked about 150 yards down the road, when I noticed a car travelling my direction slowing down to pull over. It was a beat-up Ford Pinto with Florida plates. I remember taking a deep breath, in and out, and saying a quick prayer. My prayer was simple: that I was trusting whatever God was putting in my path. The driver rolled his window down and asked if I was having some car trouble.

“I ran out of gas. That’s my car back there.”

“Hop in, I can take you to get gas.”

“I think the closest gas is West Memphis.”

“I can take you there, and bring you back here.”

“Are you sure? I think it’s pretty far.”

“Hop in. It will be fine.”

I got in the stranger’s car with much trepidation, remembering my prayer. I had to trust, didn’t I? The Pinto looked like it was literally lived in. It was piled with clothes, food wrappers, and smelled of body odor. The passenger’s seat had no upholstery. I noticed that the gear shift in the steering column was a large screwdriver. I learned that the man’s name was Robert, and we spent the next fifty minutes getting to know each other, as that was how long it took for this guy to take me to get gas. He had time to tell me the story of his life, a genuine tale of woe, which I will relate now:

Robert had been an engineering major and had married a girl he had met in college. They had been raising three kids and living in Michigan. He and his family were driving home one night, and he topped a hill and had a head-on collision in his station wagon. He was the only survivor of the accident. He was severely injured, including a very serious head injury. As a result, his mental capacity had diminished to the point he could no longer be an engineer. He had turned to alcohol to cope with his sorrows and had eventually spent all of his settlement. He later got himself sober and moved to Florida to try to get away from his bad memories and make a new start as a laborer. He worked in Florida for a time but was recently laid off. With no cash reserves, he needed to work. Last week, he had heard of construction jobs that needed filling in Colorado. He had driven up there, sleeping in his car when he got tired–only to find the jobs were filled, and he was driving back to his home in Florida.

We pulled in to the first open gas station in West Memphis. I paid a deposit on a gas can, bought a few gallons of gas, and we headed back to my car. After putting the gas in, I told him to meet me at the same gas station in West Memphis. Once there, I convinced him to allow me to fill his tank, and also to accept the $45 cash I had with me. He resisted at first, and later tried to get me to give him my address so that he could repay me, but I said no. I filled my tank there and drove home without incident. It took me several years to tell that story to Rita, probably a combination of not wanting to alarm her, and mostly due to the embarrassment of my being so careless.

There were many levels to this story, but the most obvious to me: the power of prayer answered by God. My prayer was instantaneously and fully answered, there can be no doubt. Luck had nothing to do with it. I cannot calculate nor conceive those odds. The man that helped me that night was somehow put in that perfect position to see my dilemma and act upon it, and he volunteered to help without hesitation. Was it his own desperate situation that made his decision easier? Would the average traveler on a dark lonely highway, comfortable with his or her life, be as likely to stop to help me? No. This was no coincidence, my friends. This man was an angel.