Proverbs
	Gary M. King
	It was the wedding cake that really broke his mind open.  What was it doing there?  Sitting in the middle of the damn road, pristine on one side and covered with soot on the other?  Sam would have been fine if he hadn’t seen that.  
	It hit too close to home, what with Chelsea and all.  Symbolism, and a joke from God?  Whatever, it was there.   
	We were driving along I-65 from Nashville to Louisville.   For the last time, I guess.  We wanted a vacation, and it was college basketball season.  The Louisville Cardinals playing the Kentucky Wildcats.  Big school rivalry.  Kentucky leads the series, as it should be.  I was the fan; Sam was just along for the ride.
	It was there in the middle of the road.  A beautiful white confection, three tiers and the little plastic bride and groom on top.   It didn’t make sense.  It couldn’t be there in such perfection unless deliberately placed.  Say a bakery truck was carrying it.  The truck brakes hard.  The cake flies forward, smashing itself into the forward wall of the truck.  The truck would have to have been put into reverse and the cake thrown off in the opposite direction for it to lay like it was in the road.  Pretty impossible.   I vote that someone deliberately placed it there.  
	I think an angel did it.  Or a demon.  Either way, I am not a religious man, and I am clueless as to how it got there.  I just dealt with the aftermath.  Sam snapped right there in the car.  Cars in front of us were moving out of the way so we changed lanes to avoid whatever was lying in the road ahead.  In the road was a wedding cake.
As we passed, we got a good look at it.  Some of the icing was still white and pastels, but smudge marks showed where exhaust pipes have wrecked their havoc.  Sam just stared at it for a second.  Then he began to talk, and the words streamed out of him and I didn’t know what to do because I was driving.
Stephen and Chelsea had known each other for years.  Hanging out a bit off and on at first, seeing each other at club meetings we all attended at school, and around campus now and then; it was from moments like those that they got to know each other.  I ran into them a few times and they seemed to be fitting together well.  A movie now and then and a long walk across the campus back to the dorm.  I saw that look in Sam’s eyes when he was talking about her, that one that says he might actually be happy for a change.
When a person has been around someone for a long time, they get to know each other.  Maybe a bit too well.  Sam was my best friend, and I could tell what kind of day he was having from how he hung his head over dinner, or how he sounded on the phone.  Usually it involved his stress over school or his feelings towards Chelsea and their future together.  When Sam falls for someone, he falls hard.  This was the hardest I’d ever seen.  
He said he was mad at her.  He was feeling mistreated, and jealous of her time spent with others or working.  He finally said he realized how stupid his attitude was, but far too late.  He had already blown his chance.  Afterwards he could scarcely contain his anger at her, for her leaving and taking that happiness away.  He was angry because the decision was made without him; angry at feeling as if he meant nothing to her, not just now but back when the times were good and the summer nights were long as they sat in the park watching for shooting stars.
Anger and self-pity carried him farther away from his friends than I realized.  I want to say I was busy with my own work, my own struggles to find love and happiness in this world.  The truth is that I was upset as well, upset for him, upset about her.  Maybe I just wasn’t a good friend, and I still am not.  
A man is more than the sum of his hardships or the opinions of others.  He is the love he gives and the love he receives.  Stephen and Chelsea were engaged.  They didn’t tell anyone.  They were going to announce it on their next anniversary.  So many tears that long night between us all, the night the engagement was broken forever.
We eventually arrived at my grandmother’s house, and after dinner we watched the news.   A lot of silence and a few comments on college basketball was the entertainment for the evening.  We went to the game and Kentucky barely took the win.  We stopped in with Chelsea’s parents, where Sam dropped off a few things of hers he found when he moved the other week.  Things that he wanted to keep but shouldn’t; irony of all the memories that he cannot get rid of.
Maybe someday he’ll see her again and can give her that apology he is holding in his heart.  Maybe that isn’t his destiny.  The Bible says a loving wife is more precious than gold.  I saw the truth in this as Sam bent over and placed the flowers on her grave.