Nighttime. I’m driving a two-lane highway. I like two-lanes. I like old fence posts. Old barns. I like all sorts of things. I like driving. It puts me at ease.
You have no reason to care about this, but I used to worry a lot. I still do, but I worried more back when I was a kid. After my father passed, I was afraid of everything.
Confession. As a boy, sometimes I’d lie in bed and feel so scared I couldn’t catch my breath. I don’t know what I was afraid of exactly. I suppose nobody tells you grief feels just like fear.
So I was afraid. Plain and simple. Afraid
of almost everything. Afraid my family would die. Car accidents were another particular fear. I was afraid of vacant houses, doctors, hurricanes, tsunamis, realtors, two-percent milk, etc.
Of course, it wasn’t like this before my father pulled his own plug. Once upon a time, I played baseball, ate ice cream, and fished in creeks, carefree.
Fear has a way of taking over. At night, I’d wonder if death was going
to swallow me whole. Irrational, I know. But young boys aren’t rational.
But getting back to night driving. When I was fourteen, I’ll never forget when my friend and I snuck out of Saturday night prayer meeting. We were there with his grandmother. She was a sweet, white-haired woman who memorized Bible verses and smoked Winstons like a tugboat.
I remember when my pal leaned against his grandmother’s car and jingled her keys which he’d taken from her purse.
“Wanna go for a drive?” he said.
“Right now?” I said.
“Why not?”
“Um, it’s prayer meeting?”
His smile was a wild one.
I didn’t want to. I was—you can probably guess—too afraid. I was afraid we’d wreck. Afraid we’d wake up in county lock-up with orange jumpsuits and a roommate named Bad Bart McThroatslicer.
But my friend…