| A Good Man Looking at the map, it should have been very simple to get to Luke�s house. Turn onto the highway, drive ten miles, turn left onto Betsy River Road, and then turn onto his street: very simple indeed. My friend and I hopped in the car and drove out onto the highway. About fifteen minutes later, we realized we had missed the turn, so we had to pull a �yooie� and drive back. Then we realized why we hadn�t recognized this road as our turn. It was a dirt road. It didn�t look like a dirt road on the map, but I guess none of them do, so we drove on. Much to our dismay, the road got rough pretty quickly. This road was not a well-smoothed dirt road like you find at State Parks; it was covered with long stretches of deep, loose sand. We were on a two-track in my 1996 Ford Taurus Wagon. We shuddered as the deep sand scraped on the bottom of my car. I could hear my friend praying under her breath. It didn�t work, because we stopped dead in the road, my tires spinning pathetically. Flooring it did not work, so I put it in neutral and we pushed. Nothing worked. We were stuck. We�d have to walk. The road was a thick, dark line on the map, so we assumed that there must be some houses on it somewhere. We were mistaken. Trees were the only things we saw for nearly a mile. We had almost given up when we saw a pick-up truck driving towards us. He didn�t have a cell phone, nor did he know of a house nearby. We told him of our situation, and he offered to give us a ride back to our car and pull us out of the sand. This is exactly how it starts on those videos they show you in school: a girl is stranded and accepts a ride from a strange man. Then he kills her. Looking at this man, I was pretty sure that�s what he�d do. He was wiry-looking, with buzzed red hair, a �wife-beater� tank top, and big black boots. This young man was the picture if the sort who preys on out-of-towners�a modern-day highwayman�or at least gives out wrong directions to lost �city-folk.� My friend and I exchanged nervous glances, but I knew we had very little choice. Luckily, the young man did not kill us. He drove us back to our car, chatting amiably on the way. When we got there, he looked at my car and laughed. �This yer ma�s car?� Then he tied a rope to my bumper and pulled us out of the sand with his large red truck. We thanked him and went on our way. In retrospect, I wish I had asked the young man his name, because now I don�t know the name of the man who restored my faith in humanity. It may have been foolish, but we put our trust in a total stranger, and he helped us. He did not take advantage of our weakness, he was merely a Good Samaritan, and he proved to me that a good man isn�t so hard to find. |