Fifteen miles west of the meteor crater, the on-board computer gave up making estimates and started emitting low-fuel warnings instead. I now started relying on my knowledge of how far I could go based on where the fuel needle was on the gauge. I knew from experience that when the needle centered itself over the “E” I needed to get in front of a gas pump within fifteen miles, tops. By now my best hope and expectation was to have the car expire right in the middle of Flagstaff. Well, I reached the outskirts and the car kept driving. I passed through the population center and the business center, and the car kept driving. I was determined to run that sucker dry before I started walking, so I kept going. I reached the outskirts of Flagstaff on a road marked as SR (State Route) 87A. The GPS showed the road as winding and leading in a generally south direction. It was very late in the afternoon.
As the descending sun hit the rocky cliffs and mountain faces, it was beautiful beyond description, but the gas gauge was a mystery. Why was the car still running? Yes, I was losing altitude, but I should have run out of gas even before leaving Flagstaff. The shadows deepened and so did the mystery. I thought of Elijah and the widow’s cruse of oil. How could there always be more? Was that miracle somehow like a fractal? And was that happening to me? Another mile . . . and then another . . . and another. I stopped in Sedona, the car’s engine still rumbling contentedly, and took pictures as the last sunlight, burning pink on the skies to the west, turned the mountains into golden, orange, red, and pink jewels. Twilight showed purple on the long descent to Cottonwood and dimmed to a blackness that swallowed my headlights across the flat Verde Canyon floor. Out of a darkness like I’ve never seen before a sign caught my beams and proclaimed: Jerome, 2 miles. The long descent had become flat and now the elevation began to rise again.
Flagstaff was now a mind-bending seventy-five miles behind me and my miracle car had certainly exceeded all combined possibilities of coasting downhill and driving on fumes. This, I knew, was where I would finally be leaving the comfortable part of my journey behind.
The road began to climb swiftly and the turns became hairpins. I could see the dim lights of Jerome, first out my side window, then out the passenger’s side window, then mine again. Then I was in the strange little town of Jerome with each hairpin turn becoming the next town street, and still the engine purred along. Jerome dropped below me and the road became narrower as the darkness became even blacker. There was no shoulder to pull onto and the road was not wide enough to turn around, even in the daytime. Rocks towered above on one side and fell over the cliff on the other. I couldn’t get the car off the road when it would finally sputter and die unless I pushed it over the cliff. Which, of course, I wouldn’t consider. Not with the town of Jerome somewhere down below. But the car didn’t sputter. It just kept chugging along, climbing the ascent with smooth power. Seven miles later I crested the pass and began gliding down the other side. By now it wasn’t the darkness that made seeing the shoulders of the road difficult. I was also crying and asking myself . . . the universe . . . dared I whisper His name? . . . God? . . . what it all meant.
Exactly twenty-eight miles later, somewhere around eleven p.m., I came to a crossroad with a four-way stop. As I accelerated out of the intersection into a left-hand turn, my car coughed, sputtered, and died. Finally. Miracle expired. Apparently, fractals can come to an end. And I guess this is it, mister.
I pulled into the double-wide and firm shoulder and rolled to a stop. I sat there in the indigo darkness for a few poignant moments, preparing myself for uncut homelessness, and then drew a breath. “The rest of my life” was about to commence with the story being just me and a durable pair of shoes.
For the next ten minutes I stuffed a backpack and rearranged things in the one large wheeled suitcase to accommodate as much food and water as possible. Then I fished out the car registration and insurance papers from the glove box and clumped around to the back of the car. Fumbling in the dark, trying to prop up my cell phone as a makeshift flashlight, I began unscrewing the holders for the license plates. Just as I finished this macabre task, a State Patrol pulled up behind me, thankfully not hitting me with his siren or the revolving red arrest light.
The guy stepped up to me and said in an even voice: “What’s the story here, sir? With you taking the plates off this car?”
At that moment I didn’t feel capable of a response. He waited for a beat and then asked, now more gently: “You need some help?”
“I guess you could say that.” I was half-finished with the task, but got back to my feet. It actually felt bracing to be honest with the guy. “I’m homeless, penniless, and–as of this intersection right here–gasless. I’m taking what I can carry and the papers for the car and I plan to continue my journey on foot.” He asked where I was going and I told him hey, I didn’t really know.
He pondered this and then said, measuring his words, “Listen, why don’t I take you into Prescott to a men’s shelter? You spend the night, collect your thoughts. Tomorrow you can maybe get some day job and use the money at quitting time to buy more gas and get yourself to some help, because if you try walking across the desert this time of year, trust me, I’m going to be picking up your dead body in two or three days.”
I didn’t know what this cop meant by “day job,” but you know what they say about beggars and choosers. To his credit, he wasn’t about to simply drive off and let me limp into the void of a vagrant’s grave.
The next day I got directions to the Prescott City Library and began looking for work. Even as a homeless bum, I still had a Facebook account, so posted a brief description of where I was and what I thought my intentions were.
Feeling like one of the day laborers in Jesus’ Matthew 20 parable, I crept up to the reference desk. “Uh, ‘scuse me.”
The librarian put down his phone. “Yeah. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I’m kind of in a fix. Spent the night at a shelter and the cop who dropped me off said something about day jobs. Put in a shift, get a few bucks for supper. You know anything about where?”
He ruminated on that. “I think there’s city programs and all. Might be a brochure or mini-poster out on the bulletin board.”
I thanked him and was about to go check when he snapped his fingers. “But hey, this might work. There’s a brand new PetSmart. Just opened, still got the balloons out and all that. A hiring job fair and all that. You might check.”
“That’d work real good.”
“Well, worth the hike at least.”
“How far?”
He drew me a crude map on the back of a discarded library card. “About a mile. But stay in the shade. Most of it’s up a hill.”
Turns out he was right. I’d left my backpack and the suitcase at the shelter; even so, by the time I hoofed up to the grand opening, the June sun had wilted my polo shirt and I was a soggy mess. “Great,” I mumbled to myself, acutely aware of my beet-red face. “Soaked to the skin, my heart’s pounding at 250, ready for a coronary, and if I’m lucky I’ll be feeding hamsters at minimum wage.” In the shimmering Arizona June heat, I was feeling almost delusional as I hiked around the store, dabbing at my forehead with a discarded paper napkin.
By the way, I’m not exaggerating about my heartrate tattooing up to a scary 250. Yes, that’s a big number, the kind people make up when trying to impress others with how bad things are, without knowing what they’re talking about. Well, I’m not making this number up and I do know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m talking about tachycardia and me being mere moments away from a heart attack. It was a wheezy, frightening moment, and even after my Twilight Zone ride in a gasless chariot the night before, I wondered yet again if God was anywhere at all in the entire Grand Canyon State.
I loitered there a few more minutes before figuring out the parking lot wasn’t going to get any shadier. There was a greeter at a portable table, but I eyed the situation from a distance and realized this wasn’t actually a Jobs Fair booth with application forms. Instead, it was more of a Grand Opening info center; she had a stack of $5-off coupons and stuff like that. Signup forms for dog obedience school, maybe. But the lady almost turned pale when I approached her, still very much out of breath. “What’d you do, hike here from Los Angeles? You look exhausted.”
“Just about.” I was still huffing, and she actually left her post and fetched me a chair. “You need to sit a whole lot worse than I do.” In fact, she wouldn’t even talk to me until I had poured down a tall glass of ice water and, for good measure, accepted a wet towel. “Here. Just put this around your neck. Like so.” She must have thought I was getting ready to have a stroke right there in her corner of Prescott.
“Thanks.”
I’m not kidding you. When the manager came out to size up his breathless new recruit sitting in a puddle of personal perspiration, she pretty much freaked out. “You’re beet-red, my friend. I better call an ambulance.”
“No!” I shook my head. “Really. I’m okay. Just . . . it’s hot and I hiked up here too quickly.”
“You sure? I don’t want you keeling over on our account.”
“I’ll be fine. I just . . . . man, I could really use some work.”
“Well . . .” The two women exchanged glances. “Yes, we are trying to fill a couple spots still, but all the hiring we do is through the corporate web page.” The older woman hesitated. “You’re very welcome to put in your resumé there. I promise you I’ll take a good hard look at it, Mister . . .”
“Younggreen,” I said. “Bruce Younggreen. But look.” Okay, breathe more evenly. Give this nice lady your very best sane-and-balanced look. “What about that odd job you’ve been wanting to get done but you can’t afford to take one of your staff off the floor to do it?” My brain was whizzing, trying to think of how to best couch my offer. “I could just be that guy. ‘Cleanup on Aisle Four.’ You need a guy at the register while the others are at lunch. I’m right here, right now, ready to work.”
The boss lady still wore that skeptical look, and somehow my defenses melted away. Almost not meaning to, I began to blurt out my surreal beatnik saga. It all spilled out: my car miraculously driving for nearly a hundred miles on empty. How I honestly and truly did not have so much as a quarter left in my pockets. How I needed to get enough gas to move the car to a better location before it got towed. “I’m being perfectly honest, ma’am. I stayed at a shelter last night, but if I don’t get some honest work right this very day, the sun’s gonna go down with me being in pretty desperate straits. I kid you not.”
There was a pause between us, these two ladies and a sweat-splotched out-of-towner. At last she shook her head. “Well, it’s just not possible to hire from right here in the parking lot. Just doesn’t work that way. Like I said, you get yourself online and put in an app, I promise to keep the name ‘Bruce’ in my mind. But for right now why don’t you get over to our local Catholic church? They’re active with charity, and probably know the ropes about what your next move ought to be.”
All I could do, of course, was nod abjectly. “I don’t know a single thing about Prescott, ma’am. Except that the library’s about a mile down this steep hill right here.”
At that my new friend did offer me a comradely smile. “Wait right here, Mr. Younggreen.”
The coupon lady and I made uncomfortable small talk while I waited. A couple minutes later the manager reemerged. She handed me a slip of paper, carefully folded over twice. When I opened it up I spotted a carefully penciled address and also a $20 bill. No kidding, my eyes swam with tears right there in that PetSmart parking lot.
I managed in a choked voice to say, “Thank you, ma’am,” and she wished me the best of luck and her hope that she might see me again. I made my way back toward the library, thankful for the downhill topology of this return journey, and infinitely more grateful for this moment of tender largesse bearing the image of Andrew Jackson.
The concept of God’s existence and the reality of Calvary and Exodus 20 were still very much up-in-the-air ideas for me at this fragile juncture. But with every step I took toward that Catholic outpost of mercy, the comfort of that twenty-dollar bill in my sweaty hand, I knew one thing with absolute certainty. If there is a heaven at all, if a risen Jesus Christ does indeed construct mansions for the blessed and the redeemed, that PetSmart manager lady will have a really nice place up there.
No kidding. See, even with my screwed-up theology and the fact that I botched marriages with three wives and don’t carry around a testimony worth a nickel, I can tell you folks this. That manager will be in Heaven because of what she did for me. You see, Heaven isn’t just about obedience. It isn’t about the law or the prophets or doing tithe to a perfect ten percent with three decimal places. It isn’t about a perfect theology regarding Sabbath.
It isn’t even really about the endless fruit-salad mix of Grace vs. Faith. The Protestant plan or the Catholic blueprint. I’m almost tempted to even say: “It isn’t even about the Cross.” Which, of course, I can’t say. Because if the biblical saga of Jesus’ pinnacle moment of self-sacrifice on that Roman torture thing is real, then, yeah, that lady’s gift to me of a $20 bill flowed directly from His stream of grace. I concede that. But the kingdom of heaven–I truly do believe this–is about doing. Seeing God’s love for us and then doing the same all around us for the hurting people who stagger up the hill and collapse at our feet. It is about doing: doing something, doing anything, doing the right thing, the kind thing, the unexpectedly generous thing. Doing not with our hands but with our hearts … for the very least among us. Intercessory prayers are nice, but all by themselves, they won’t take you up to Heaven. A generic dollar for the Children’s Story offering is nice, but it won’t pay the fare to Heaven. Giving a stranger a boost; loving someone you don’t know and will never see again; changing the outcome of the inevitable … that’s the pure and instinctive Calvary response that will ultimately get you there.