Archangels can come and go

May 6, 2004

Dear Leslie,

I never ride in DC's pickup truck. That's because the passenger seat is stacked with papers from her offices, gardening tools, ceramic knickknacks she hasn't told me about yet and the detritus of her four-hour weekly commute to Southern Illinois. The floorboard on the passenger side is layered with more of the same. There really is no passenger side.

Sitting at a stoplight one day last week, DC noticed a man standing there at the intersection in the rain. He just stood there at first, but when the rain began falling hard he raised his thumb. When she saw that nobody else was going to pick him up, she did.

Pushing the papers and tools toward DC, the hitchhiker somehow made room for himself. She was glad for the barrier, in part because he didn't smell good.

He looked like a normal guy in his late 20s. He wore khaki pants and a maroon knit top. He carried a backpack.

When she asked, he said he wanted to go to Jackson, a city 15 miles northwest of Cape Girardeau. He was going there because the Salvation Army in Cape Girardeau told him there was no room here.

DC said she couldn't take him to Jackson but named three places she could drop him off that were in the right direction.

"Would she give him some money?" he asked. She reached for a dollar bill sitting next to the gear shift and offered to buy him a soda.

The man accepted the dollar for the soda. As he was getting out of the truck, he said something that stunned DC.

"Why do you live this way?" he asked.

He referred, of course, to the junkyard inside her pickup truck. A homeless stranger had perceived one of the central truths about her life: She delights in chaos.

Only after he was gone did DC remember the bank deposit from her day's office receipts were in her pocket. DC realized that picking up a stranger in a rainstorm with a bag of money in your truck might not have been the best idea she'd had that day.

All of us know better than to do what DC did. It could turn out badly. But you have to trust your instincts. Her's said, "OK."

She has concluded that the stranger was an archangel come to show her a more orderly path.

It couldn't be too soon for me. Chaos threatens to overtake our house, especially now two months into our bathroom renovation.

The bathroom renovation still looks a lot like it did when we started. No shower, no tub, no sink have yet made an appearance.

Contractors must be the freest spirits in the world. They burst through your doorway at unexpected times wanting to turn off your water and electricity as you're getting ready to go to work. Then they disappear for days and weeks, and you begin wondering if they've taken your money and gone to Barbados.

Suddenly they're back, and hopes rise that maybe this week water will begin flowing to your second floor again. But no. It's a chimera. They only came by to pick up another check.

As he was headed out the door the last time I saw him, our contractor said he has some new ideas for the bathroom. I think he is an archangel come to put me on the path back to becoming a renter.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.