I got one of those phone calls from Randa yesterday. You know, the kind that makes you start thinking dollar signs right after the third syllable. I’d driven the car to work so when she needed to run an errand, she took the truck. Well, she tried to take the truck.

It started up fine, went into gear fine and the clutch engaged just fine. Just about the time she wrenched her shoulder trying to steer the thing away from the telephone pole on the opposite side of the alley, she knew something was not fine. Fortunately, the brakes still worked quite well but the power steering was shot. After she backed the truck back the fifteen feet into its parking spot, she found the large, suspicious blotch of fluid. The color was quite similar to the color of used power steering fluid.

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” she concluded.

Well, now, folks, I rarely respond positively to those unanticipated little battles of the budget. I tend toward the worst possible interpretation and projected costs. It might just be a busted hose that I can replace for twenty or thirty bucks. Could be something that will boost several sectors of the local economy.

What I do know is that just a few minutes before Randa called, I had been talking to a young man that I like quite a bit. He had just come in to let me know that his stepsister was in the hospital in Topeka. She’d been diagnosed with intestinal cancer and over the weekend, her appendix ruptured. Somehow, that had resulted in the necessity of amputating her right leg. I have no idea what the connection might be and maybe there’s not a direct link. Maybe it was the cancer and maybe yet another thing altogether. Regardless, on top of all that, his family had just reported to him that the nineteen-year-old girl’s hands were turning black.

I studied his face carefully as he stood, hands gripping the back of the office chair as if its slightest movement would turn the whole world upside down. His jaw muscles bulged rigidly but his lips contorted and his eyes shone under the film he could not keep from betraying a very deliberate stoicism.

“Are you two close?” I asked. “Yeah,” he replied, “I actually like her more than my own sister.”

He welcomed the prayer I offered, though I cannot say which of us it helped more.

H. Arnett
9/29/09