It’s early. Still dark. No sane person should be up right now, and yet here I am. I am in the parking lot of the Hoover Met sports and fitness complex, which is currently filling up with cars.

Runners are outside their vehicles making wardrobe preparations for the big race. Pinning numbers to shirts. Doing aggressive calisthenics. A sound system is blasting “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.”

There must be a dress code inasmuch as many runners are wearing knee socks. Both men and women alike. I don’t know how schoolgirl-style knee socks became part of running, but apparently they are an integral part of the sport because I am the only one not wearing any.

There are impossibly fit bodies strutting around at the start line. People who, you can just tell, have never once in their lives said the words, “We’d like an order of queso, please.”

These are impressive specimens who are not Marines but civilians with bulging muscles, sleeve tattoos, and

Lululemon activewear. Sort of like Soccer Mom Goes Terminator.

And then you have guys like me. I am not exactly the image of athleticism. I am more of an IPA guy. I am the kind of guy who, when forced to choose between white or wheat, chooses extra ranch.

But never mind, because the thing I love about races is that they are all-inclusive.

You can attend any 5K or 10K and see people from all walks. Insurance salesmen, elementary school teachers, octogenarians, 12-year-olds, persons using wheelchairs.

I am not, however, doing the 5K, I am doing the marathon. The BHM 26.2.

This is not my first marathon, but it is certainly my oldest. I am somewhat long in the tooth compared to my co-runners, who are largely from the TikTok generation. But we all share something in common.

We’re insane.

I started running when I…

This church is 115 years old. It’s small. Impossibly small, only able to fit 25 people—30 people if they are scrawny. The church is nestled in Appalachia, and looks like a postcard.

The first thing you notice about the building is that it’s all wood. Spruce. Oak. Walnut. Which is unique in the modern world. We don’t use much wood anymore. Contractors would not use purely wood to build, for example, a Ruby Tuesday. They’d use aluminum and cement siding.

You also notice that this place is not a modern non-denom church whose name is a verb. This is not a Six Flags Over Jesus church with a hair band, strobe lights, and a Cinnabon in the lobby.

This place is earthen. Stone. Wood. Plaster. The acoustics are startlingly great. You can whisper in the back and someone at the pump organ can hear you. You would not want to have lower gastrointestinal distress during an altar call here.

The floorboards creak. The room smells

like your grandmother’s basement. The pews are worn smoothe from a lifetime of abuse from evangelical butts. Through six-paned windows you can see the Great Smoky Mountains in all their autumnal glory.

I sit in a front pew and play “Amazing Grace” on my fiddle. I play it the way I remember hearing it fiddled as a child, played by old men. Slow. Droning, like bagpipes, only sadder.

I sing all the verses. Just like I did at my own father’s funeral. I remember being a kid, looking at all those mourners, and wondering “What if I screw up?”

There are six verses to “Amazing Grace.” But most people just sing three. The seventh verse, “When we’ve been there 10,000 years…” is an add-on from a later author. Not an original. But I think the fifth verse is my favorite.

“Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
…

The Smoky Mountains are big and blue in the distance. The sun is rising in Townsend, Tennessee. And a barefoot man with a prodigiously frightening overbite is playing banjo in my motel. This man may or may not be me.

You can look at this banjo guy and you just know he isn’t exactly the brightest bulb in life’s marquee. The kind of guy who has struggled to find out who he is. The kind of guy who, when he first discovered that his toaster wasn’t waterproof, was completely shocked.

People are out for their morning exercise routines, power walking through the motel parking lot, looking at the barefoot banjoist with scowls, sitting on his balcony.

“My, oh my,” you can tell they are thinking. “What big feet he has.”

The better to squash spiders with, my dear.

“And what large buck teeth he has.”

The better to eat collards with, my precious.

“And what a big banjo he has.”

The better to file for unemployment with, my dear.

The power walkers are staring at me in much the same way you’d look at someone who emits lower gastrointestinal smells on an airplane.

“You really should keep that music down, pal,” one woman says with a sour attitude, as she and her husband stride past my motel room.

Pal.

“I feel like I’m in ‘Deliverance,’” the husband scoffs.

To be fair, they have a point. Playing banjo in the Tennessee mountains is a cinematic experience, although he’s a far cry from Burt Reynolds. But it’s 10:30 in the morning, and I’m playing quietly. I’m within my legal rights. Sort of.

“It’s just inconsiderate,” the guy says. “Knock it off.” Then he called me a bad name which is synonymous with an appendage of the body.

Then they crawled into a car with Connecticut plates and peeled rubber.

This is not my story. But it was told to me by an old man who lived it.

The year is 1987. Rural Alabama. Our main character is a young kid. He’s at a remote gas station. He tries to start his car, but it’s a no go. The car is deader than disco.

So he’s sitting on the hood of his ‘73 Piece Of Junkola when an old guy at the next pump notices there’s something odd about this kid.

Namely, the kid is wearing a tux.

The old guy is wearing a cowboy hat. There is a horse trailer attached to his Ford. There are horses in the trailer, on their way to a rodeo.

The old guy is in a hurry. He has to be in Missouri by tomorrow, or else they’ll dock his pay. He knows he should leave the gas station now, without asking questions. Because questions lead to “things,” and the old man doesn’t have time for extra “things.”

But, as I say, the kid is in a tux.

So the old guy asks a question.

“Car trouble?”

The

kid tells him yes, and he says he knows it’s the alternator. He had planned on getting it fixed, but he didn’t have the money. So he has been driving his Crap Mobile around town. But tonight was, evidently, the night the car went to be with Jesus.

“Why are you in a tux?” the old guy asks.

“Because I’m the best man.”

“Best at what?”

“It's a wedding. My brother’s getting married.”

The kid looks like he is about to cry.

The sun is setting. The Alabama countryside never looked so green. In the air, the smell of horse turds.

“Where’s the church?” the man asks.

“Mobile.”

“MOBILE?!” The man laughs.

The kid buries his face in his hands.

“Do you have anyone you can call? Anyone who will give you a ride that…

“It’s all gone.” That’s what the lady on the news said.

She was an older woman, being interviewed by a reporter. Giant news camera shoved in her face.

The lady sounded like she was in a uniquely frantic state, poised somewhere between panic and absolute exhaustion. It is a frame of mind where you experience millions of emotions at once, and yet feel none of them.

I know this because that’s how she described it.

“It’s all gone. All of it.”

This was followed by images on my screen that were apocalyptic. One of America’s most historical storms. Hurricane Helene. Destruction from Florida to Virginia.

And here I am, sitting in my comfortable living room, watching the tube, thinking about how scary all this is.

These people’s lives are ruined. These people have nothing left. These are Americans. These are my brothers and sisters.

Whole towns are gone. Highways have been upended. Floodwaters rage. Mudslides. Missing persons. Missing pets. People going hungry. People trapped. People injured.

All I can

think about are the emails and texts going back and forth between those who experienced the nightmare.

“We still haven’t heard from my mom…”

“My son hasn’t called yet…”

“It’s been days and I don’t know where my husband is…”

As I write this, the death toll tops 120. And I just read somewhere that 600 are still missing. And that’s just the ones we know about.

And as I’m watching this unfold on the television, I’m about to cry. I’m about to give up, deep inside. For there is little hope left in this world, I’m thinking.

But then I see something.

On the television, I see a kid picking up debris. He’s slight and small, maybe 6 years old. Blond hair. And he’s out there helping. Busting his tail.

I see food trucks galore,…