Road Trip

image by massimo venturi

Road Trip

While on a road trip to Texas, 

parked at a rest stop outside Ft. Stockton, 

along the straight concrete snake of I-10,

chewing on cold slices of Pecos cantaloupe,

we got out to stretch our legs.

My wife, who does most of the driving, 

walks for 15 minutes to shake the road kinks out,

while I find a cement bench in the shade

as refuge from the 115 degree Southwest sun.

Parked next to us was a white SUV

with one of those professional stick-on signs

on the front doors; it read

TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL

Massage and Spa

Wimberly, Texas.

An older man, perhaps in his 70’s,

with a great shock of white hair,

wearing a Hawaiian shirt and black slacks,

was struggling with the leashes for his

two small spotted dogs. He noticed

I was staring at him, so he dipped his chin,

smiling a howdy,

just as I realized that I needed to call

some of my friends in Washington State

to inform them that our trip was running long

and that I would miss an appointment 

with them the next week.

I retrieved my second wallet from my left cheek pocket,

a small leather one that holds my gas credit cards

and my little black address/phone book. I placed

the open wallet on the roof of our silver hybrid Camry,

while I struggled to figure out how to use my wife’s

new iPhone so that I could call my people.

Finished but still cranky with the heat

and my ignorance of new technology,

I slipped the address book into a shirt pocket

on my red cowboy shirt, snapping the flap

over it as I got into the vehicle while still fussing

and off down the freeway we sped.

A couple air-conditioned hours later

as we approached San Antonio,

I patted my shirt pocket

and the terrible realization that I did not have

my second wallet thumped me on top of the head.

God damn son of a bitch! 

I roared, pounding my fists

on the innocent Toyota dash.

My wife exited the freeway

as I excitedly explained that I had lost

or left my wallet, probably by leaving it

on the roof of the car back at Ft. Stockton.

I embraced full self-deprecation,

giving myself four Bozo awards,

expounding on the virtues of aging,

while also lamenting the loss

of the three crisp hundred dollar bills

in the wallet as hideout cash,

as my sweet wife pulled out

her iPad and iPhone and began

the arduous task of looking up and then contacting 

the five gas card companies

so that we could cancel those lost cards.

We had managed to cancel two of them

when the cell phone rang. 

It was my youngest daughter

who was house-sitting for us.

“I just received a strange phone call,” she said,”from a Joe Taylor who lives in  Wimberly, Texas. He said that he had found your wallet at a rest stop, then looked up your name on Google, since none of the cards had ID beyond your name, then called here to leave a message that you should call him at his office tomorrow after 9 a.m. His business is called “Touched By An Angel”.”

I just burst into copious tears of gratitude,

being a living witness to the unassailable fact

that yes, angels do walk among us.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets

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