Just outside Chipley, Florida, three wooden crosses stand beside the highway at the intersection of Highway 77 and Talton Drive. I pulled over to look at them.

Neon-colored vests hang from a pinewood crossarm, which resembles an electrical utility pole.

Beneath the crosses are hardhats, American flags, and handwritten notes. The roadside monument was built to honor three line workers killed in a hit-and-run accident in Washington County.

You might’ve read about it. It happened months ago when a vehicle left the road and struck workers who were restoring power to an area affected by Hurricane Michael.

I am interrupted by the sound of tires on gravel.

A truck pulls beside me. The driver kills his engine and rolls his window down. I see a man with tanned cheeks and lines on his face.

He doesn’t introduce himself, he only says:

“Them lineman were working seventeen-hour days. They came from all over the nation after the storm, worked like dogs. They were good,

good men.”

Good men.

Line workers like these men invade disaster zones like armies. They work from dawn to dusk. They survive on light sleep, caffeine, and text messages from their children.

“I’ll tell ya,” the man says, “losing one of our own was harder on folks in Chipley than the storm was.”

Chipley is a town with a main street so short you could roll a bowling ball through it without much effort. The community is so tight it holds water.

When I was sixteen, I once dated a girl who lived in Chipley, she pronounced it “CHEE-yip-lee.” She was from a family who still shelled peas on the porch before supper.

After the hurricane, utility workers came by the hundreds, they blanketed Northwest Florida. In this part of the world, you couldn’t drive 10 feet without seeing cherry-pickers beside utility poles, and men working…

I’m on I-65, just outside Birmingham. I’m in the passenger seat, writing. My wife is driving.

It’s early. The sun is still low. In the last three days, we’ve been in four different cities. We just ate breakfast at Cracker Barrel.

Now, more driving.

I remember the day we married. I was standing in the groom’s dressing room. I wasn't nervous until I unzipped the tuxedo bag.

Then, my body got cold. My forehead developed a thin film of sweat.

There was a knock on my door. It was my future father-in-law.

“I’m here to tie your bowtie,” he said.

I stood before this man, rocking on my heels while he secured my neckwear.

Then, he slapped my shoulder and said, “Couldn’t ask for a better looking son, if I do say so myself.”

Son.

The preacher arrived. He straightened my collar and whispered: “I have to say this to every groom: it's not too late to change your mind if you’re not sure...”

I told him he

was wasting his time. Granted, I might not have been a smart man, but I’d never been more sure of anything.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go make history.”

And we did. I stood in a small chapel. Half of Brewton, Alabama, had driven an hour and forty minutes to watch the putz in a monkey suit marry one of their town’s fair daughters.

My family was represented by three. My mama, my sister, and my uncle. Mama’s mascara was running. My sister was in a dress.

The doors swung open. A woman walked the aisle.

I would tell you that she was beautiful, or that she took my breath away, but that would be selling her short. She was more than that.

She was everything.

She wore her trademark smile. The same smile she wears today. When…

“I’ll bet you’ve never written a column about a turtle,” said Mary, sitting across from me at the coffee shop.

No. I can’t say that I have. And I’m not sure I want to break a lucky streak.

Then Mary told me a story.

She was a thirteen-year-old when she found L.B. in her mother’s flowerbed. She was a tomboy in jeans, with scraped knees, dirty fingernails, and a bad case of freckles.

L.B. was a terrestrial box turtle.

Her parents had just divorced. Her father left town with his new girlfriend. He couldn’t have moved any farther away if he’d left planet Earth.

Life was sad. Her mother was always in a bad mood, her older brother started spending time away from home.

Most nights, she fended for herself, eating TV dinners, watching television, and waiting for her mother to get home.

When she saw the turtle nestled among the tall weeds, she noticed red nail-polish writing on his shell. Two initials which read: L.B.

He was a gentle creature, he didn’t squirm or

snap. She noticed something wrong with his shell, and blood smears on his wounded back leg.

Her first move was to call her father for advice.

“Dad!” she said into the phone. “I found something in the yard!”

“Sweetie,” he said. “We’ve been over this, you can’t keep calling long distance every fifteen minutes, I have a job, I’m very busy.”

“But Dad,” she said. “I just found a tur—”

A dial tone.

So, she took the turtle to her elderly neighbor, Miss Stanley. People said the old woman was a little crazy, and this might have been true.

Miss Stanley had dozens of animals wandering her place—dogs, cats, an iguana, exotic birds. But if anyone would’ve known how to fix L.B.’s leg, it was her.

The old woman invited Mary inside. She…

I am a man. And despite my many masculine traits, this means I am not a good sick person. I have learned this about myself.

At the first sign of a sniffle, I become bedridden and my voice gets high-pitched.

Right now, for instance, I’m in bed. A vaporizer sits on my nightstand. I’m browsing the internet for a unique, but traditional headstone made of Peruvian granite.

“Here lies Sean,” it will read. “He told his wife he was sick, and she laughed.”

My wife, Jamie, is a card-carrying woman.

Right now, she has the same fatal illness I have. And even though she’s hacking up multi-colored phlegm, running a mild fever, she is unstoppable.

Today, for example, I barely scraped together enough stamina to take a shower. She mopped, dusted, and tarred the shed roof.

I also feel obliged to tell you that it’s not my fault that I’m a wimp. I am like most men. My intolerance for stuffy noses originates with my mother.

As a boy,

my mother took illness seriously. She wouldn’t let her little “Poopie Bear” out of bed if his nose was even remotely red.

Thus, at the first sign of symptoms, I did what most boys in my position would do. I rolled onto my side and hollered, “Mama!” using the same voice I’d use if I were being eaten alive by mountain lions.

Mama would come running up the stairs—two steps at a time. She’d find me in bed, looking like I’d been shot with a giraffe tranquilizer.

She’d touch my forehead. I would moan. Maybe work up a few tears. You know, put some heart into it.

“I feel sick,” I’d say.

She’d take my pulse and declare, "You’re staying home.”

And I knew I was on Easy Street. The bed became my home. Spider-Man underpants became my wardrobe.

The television in the doctor’s office is blaring news headlines. It plays disturbing footage, followed by politicians who explain that the world itself is crumbling.

The people in this waiting room watch the TV. Most are sick. If you close your eyes, you’ll hear hacking and coughing.

Welcome to the Fifth Circle of Waiting-Room Hell.

The woman beside me is dog sick. On my other side is a boy with a snotty upper lip. His cough sounds like a ‘67 Buick Roadmaster on a cold morning.

I move to the other side of the room, away from people who look like they’re about to write their own obituaries. I sit next to a man whose eyes are closed.

He hears me.

“Hello,” he says, without opening his eyes.

His name is Dan. He’s blind.

Dan wears a smile on his unshaven face. He shoves his hand in my general direction and we shake. We start talking.

The television overhead is loud enough to drown

us out, but we manage.

“I play guitar,” Dan says. “I’m not very good, but I play. Thinking of learning piano, too. My wife bought me a keyboard for my birthday.”

His wife is beside him, reading. Silver hair. Lines around her eyes. “He can do anything,” she says. “He even drew a portrait of me.”

Dan tells me that he printed a photo of her. She pricked holes into the paper with a needle, outlining the facial features. Then he traced.

His wife shows me the portrait on her cellphone. The word impressive comes to mind.

Dan also tells me he had a dream a few nights ago.

“It wasn’t just any dream,” he says.

It was a visual dream. The first time he’s seen anything since age two. At least he thinks he saw something. Truth told, Dan doesn’t even…