I woke up thinking about this story from 2020. If you’re wondering, “Judy” is still a Facebook friend of mine. And one of these years, we’ll meet for lunch.
****
On many days, I open my ears to the requests of strangers and try to give them something in return for their asking. Maybe all I have on me is encouragement, but it’s something. Other days, I lack the mettle to deal with them confronting me for spare change or groceries or the chance to breed their dog with mine, and I avoid certain areas in my neighborhood where those questions will crop up as surely as the Creeping Charlie in the neighbor’s front yard.
I don’t remember which of those days it was the day I drove up to the mailboxes at my neighborhood’s post office, except it was in the middle of a long and icy winter where Mother Nature was cranky—and probably as tired of us Minnesotans as we were of her.
I rolled down the Honda’s window. The wind whipped through the car, and I caught my breath. A snowbank hemmed the mailboxes in, and I couldn’t see beyond the wall of white, broken only by the blue of the boxes, their mouths hungry for whatever I would feed them. I slid my stack of mail into one of the slots.
A large fur body slid over the snowbank and hit the side of the car—thump!—with both hands landing on my hood. It was a man, in a variegated fur coat, and he scooted up to my open window. I jerked my head back. How had he wedged himself so quickly between the mailboxes and my car?
His eyes lit up, and a smile stretched across his face. “I have something to ask you.”
“Just a second.” I motioned for him to squeeze out from between the car and mailboxes, so I could drive a few feet ahead, and he did it, the same smile splitting his face in two. In his ankle-length fur coat, he shuffled his feet while he waited for me to pull away from the snowbank.
Through the car’s lowered window, I asked him what he wanted to say.
“Okay, first of all, I’m not on drugs or anything.” He patted the air with both palms like he was stopping traffic. His fingerless gloves probably weren’t cutting it on a day like today. “I’m just really happy.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Okay?”
“My daughter just had a baby this morning at North Memorial, and I’m heading there now to see her, but my car ran out of gas. Do you have a few dollars so I could get some? It’s cold out here.”
“I don’t have cash,” I said.
“You could use a credit card.” He danced in place, a drip hanging on the tip of his nose, threatening to break loose and splash the snow-packed pavement. “Like five dollars’ worth is all I need.”
Skepticism, normally my companion with requests like these, skittered away. Something seemed true about this man. Maybe it was his unshakable joy in the face of adversity. “There’s no gas station close by.”
He said the name of a place about a mile down the road, but I had just read about someone being assaulted there in daylight hours by a complete stranger. “It’s too cold for me to walk all that way. And I’ve already been walking a long way to get here. Maybe you could give me a ride?”
“How would that work?” I said. “I give you a ride, buy your gas, and drop you off at your car with the gas?” When I said it out loud like that, it sounded ridiculous. How could I even consider allowing a strange man into my car when I was alone?
But something about the situation seemed real. And it was too cold for any living creature to be hanging around outside. While I walked to the car that morning, the snow under my boots had squeaked like Styrofoam. A person would have to be void of humanity to not see the man—despite the fur coat—was freezing.
He clapped his hands together in prayer position and bowed. “Yes, thank you.”
His cell phone trilled, and he answered. “My son,” he said to me, pointing at the mouthpiece.
Why wasn’t his son helping him? While the man talked, I took the free moment to phone Husband. Of all the needs I had said no to in the past, why did this one seem tempting to meet? Was this particular need a legitimate one? Strangely, it seemed so. Would Husband agree I should help this man?
But the phone rang with no answer from Husband—and no words at the other end of the line to guide me. Was that a sign? Something tugged me back to reality, pinning me to my spot.
The man clicked his phone off. “So, can you drive me to the gas station now?”
“Can your son help you? Because that makes more sense.”
His phone rang again. He held up a finger for me and answered it, explaining his wishes to the person on the other end. Still that smile. Still that exuberance. Soon, he ended the call.
“My son is coming to get me,” he said.
A sense of calm fluttered into the car. Maybe the man wasn’t what he seemed. Maybe I had been rescued from a risky decision. “Glad it worked out. Have a good one.”
“You too.” He blew on his fingers to warm them and hopped from one foot to the other; no doubt the cold had seeped through his boots by now.
I rolled up my window and drove off.
At home, I filled Husband in on the story of the post office guy in the long fur coat.
“For sure he was playing you,” he said. “You usually see that. Funny you didn’t this time.”
“Well, I guess it worked out.”
Months later, I drove to the post office. Hints of spring tinged the air, but I knew better than to believe one pleasant day in March meant I could pack away the winter coats.
Always in a love-hate relationship with the post office, I set my mouth to grim. Maybe for once the wait wouldn’t be too long. The instant hope reared its naïve head, though, I quashed it with reality. It was the post office after all, wasn’t it? There were no quick in-and-outs with this establishment anywhere in the city.
Inside, I joined the end of a line of customers that snaked around the room. I chose entertainment over grumpiness and absorbed my surroundings. My favorite employee, Byron, wasn’t working, and I grieved the loss of twenty minutes of his dry sense of humor—lost on most of the customers—something I’d get to enjoy the days he was stationed behind the counter.
“We need some music in here to get through this,” the woman in front of me said, swiveling to capture reactions from those around her. “Am I right, or am I right?”
And in one instant, I loved her. She looked to be in her early sixties, an unflappable type, forced there by the stack of boxes in her arms.
“You’re so right,” I said. And our friendship began.
The woman, Judy, said her packages were gifts for her ninety-year-old aunt who she reported looked better than she did, and she wasn’t doing half bad herself at almost seventy. She lobbed out information about her health, turning each unfortunate fact into a joke. She pointed out a skin tag on her arm, a barnacle of age, as she put it, and soon she was at the front of the line.
“This can’t be it,” I said. “We’ve just gotten to be friends.”
She laughed, allowed me to take a selfie of the two of us, and scribbled down her Facebook username, so I could find her again. She took care of business—flying her packages off to Great Aunt—and left me to mine.
I exited the post office, my arms lighter and my outlook brighter. Who knew I’d meet Judy and my day would shift? I strode to my car, unlocked it, and slid behind the wheel, happy.
But I wasn’t the only one smiling.
A man’s face pressed up against my driver’s side window, a grin plastered to it. I gasped, and a zing of electricity shot through my fingertips. I could’ve backed the car up, but he was so close I would’ve rolled over his toes.
But wait. I knew that face, that smile. He twirled his finger in the air, motioning for me to lower my window. I did.
“First of all,” he said, “I’m not on drugs or anything. I’m just really happy, because my daughter had a baby at North Memorial this morning—”
“You used that story last time,” I said.
“Oh.” He nodded and sauntered away to the next post office customer who had climbed into her car.
My trip to the post office that day told me the truth about the man in the fur coat. And it brought me a new friend. But if there’s a moral to this story, I’d love to know it.
What do you think?
