Part II: Wherein My Faith In Humanity Shoots Through the Clouds

Today is Part II of II.  Didn’t read Part I?  It was posted yesterday.  Go ahead and read it – it’s short.  We'll be here when you get back...

George told me to wait a week.

I waited 10 days. 

And while I waited, my life centered around how to get from here to there. 

People do it all the time, I told myself, unfolding a bus map.  This is no big deal.

The bus scheduled revealed itself to me in all its convoluted glory and promised to add two hours – in each direction – to my day.  I studied it, further deepening the worry lines on my forehead.  Could this be right?  Would I really have to take a bus from my first-ring suburb into the city only to take another one out to a fourth-or fifth-ring suburb?

Yes, indeedy.

I hobbled rides together to work, for groceries.  People I had thought to be my friends revealed themselves to be unreliable strangers.  People I had not spent much time thinking of emerged as thoughtful and caring friends.

“George,” I said, leaning in the doorway of his office, “I don’t know how much longer I can live like this.”

“Shhh,” he said.

It was around lunch time that the first phone was dropped in shock.

In a phenomena known as “prairie dogging”, the news spread amongst the massive cube farm that was our corporate home.

The first head up above the cube walls was a man whose wife was home, seemingly hours away from delivering their first child.

“Hey!”  he shouted.  “Hey!”

A dozen people stood, only their heads visible.  “She have the baby?”

He shook his head, his mouth open in disbelief.  “The mail came.  A check came.  In the mail a check came.”

And then a phone rang.  And another phone rang.

And that’s when the shouting started.

Snatches of conversation shot above our heads, people ran by in tears.

There were checks.

Checks in the mail.

George appeared at my desk, grinning.  “I wanted to tell you,” he said.

And the story came together.  Controlling share of our company had been sold to Benetton, and our President had divvied up the profits, each according to the length of time they’d been here.  Checks for as little as a couple thousand dollars to as much as forty thousand dollars had been mailed to each employee with nothing but the notation “John 3:16” on the card holding the check.

I don’t recall how I got home that night.  I may have flown. 

What I do remember is that there was plenty of money for the down payment on a decent, working car.

George called that night.  "Hello," he said. 

"How long did you know?" I asked.

"Just a day or two before your little liaison with the fire department."

I shook my head.  "Why  I oughta..." I said.

He laughed.  "Why you little..."



I've not had a car fire since then.