Sometimes a small country church has a nice roadside wall
where a tired bicycle can lean and rest and I can sit beside it
since I am tired too.
And then his pickup flew by me close and parked in the yard
at the old house across the road. His road. And he glanced
over at me I saw as he grabbed his bagged tools from the
truck bed. And I worried some about that glance.
He was what we call a working man. Would not be reading
Dostoyevsky or Reinhold Niebuhr or even David Remnick.
Would not be knowing about things from anywhere but
Fox News, I thought. And might even holler across his road
to say I should not be sitting my woke ass on church property
like I was. And there could be worse things even.
The man went inside but then came back out and stood and
did holler. Hollered to ask if I was okay. As if he would
help me if I wasn’t. And I somehow managed thanks I’m
good, and he went back inside as I thought more about things
and was still thinking when he came back out and hollered
again. Asking if I needed some water he could bring me.
And I raised up my bottle to show and thanked him
anyway and soon rode on feeling good about him
but not so much about me.
You can email Ed Briggs HERE
Subscribing is free and gives you an email notification of new posts.
To share this article with a friend or on social media, select one of the options below.