Dusty Wings

I got to have dinner with my parents Monday evening, an unexpected but uplifting surprise, since they are usually in south Texas from the first of January until sometime between late March and mid-April.  They had called me from the road last week, saying they were visiting a cousin in Phoenix and then might swing by home on the way back south to do the farm taxes that are due this month.  The next thing I know, at lunch with my sister last Sunday, I learn they've been to California in the meantime but have made it back here.  Nothing was ever said about California, not to me, anyway.  But that's the way of things:  I can generally point a direction where I think they are, but I know I may be wrong at any point in time.

But Monday evening---we discussed the usual things, their grapefruit business, school, a little politics, some family news and stories.  Then Dad says, "Hey, you know where I was the other day?"  I said that Sheri already ratted him out, that I knew they'd been to California.  He said, "Yeah, but do you know where?"  Obviously I did not.  "We were out there where that ol' boy was shooting everybody up."  I drew a blank for a moment....and honestly, Dad tells a LOT of half-truths and a few flat-out lies.  Finally, he said, "You know, that ol' cop who was shooting everyone up."  I think I might have rolled my eyes, expecting another tall tale.  But no.  "Yeah, we were up there by Big Bear where he burned that place down.  The fire truck came past us and swung back around and blocked the road so we couldn't go up there.  There were all these cops and fire trucks and no one up at the place, so I figured that's where he was holed up and that he probably wasn't gettin' out of that."       I might have looked just a bit panicked at that point, because Mom jumped in with, "Oh, we weren't that close...."   Too late, Mom!    Despite the fact that they are both in their 70's now, they're both quite competent, the most seasoned of travelers, but the world----the world just gets more and more crammed with danger.

I know in all truthfulness that I shouldn't worry.  Long ago I came to realize that my whole family has a very specific group of angels assigned to us:  they can steer a car without ever becoming visible, they sweep back trouble from our paths, they know every stretch of road from South Dakota to the Rio Grande, and they travel along with us no matter how short or long the journey.  They're road angels, the kind we need most since our family is never still for very long.  Take away our wheels and you take away our breath, our spirit, and our freedom.  And since we are all so often on the road, those road angels keep very, very busy.  I've put mine to the test numerous times, and they've not failed me, ever.

There was the time, 20+ years ago, that a suicidal deer leaped in front of my little late-80's model Accord, about 5:30 in the morning in the Missouri River hills east of the farm in South Dakota.  There were enormous drop-offs on each side of the road, perfect cover for leaping deer.  There was nowhere to go, no time to do it, no time to do anything.  Big old Bambie scooped right up the low front end of my baby car and BAM! slammed right into and slid up the windshield, flying over the roof and off down into the ravine.  If I'd had a moment to think, i.e. take charge from my angels, I might have tried to brake or swerve, sending ME off into the ravine instead.  Or from a different angle, Bambi might have come through the windshield at 60 miles per hour.  That wasn't the first time I felt their presence, but it was the most powerful incident in my young life to that point. 

A few years later, I was returning to Muldrow after spending the weekend in Tahlequah, taking the usual backroad through the "mountains" from Cookson to Sallisaw.  It was springtime, Easter weekend after a wet winter, and the county had put fresh gravel on some of the curves just north of Marble City.  Gravel roads were the first and only kind I drove on for years; I know how to handle wheels on gravel.  Others, not so much.  I was approaching the last curve before the straightaway and the turn into Marble City when a white shortbed Chevy pickup came barreling around it, and in no time it was fishtailing sideways, straight for my little Accord---another one, much too low profile for a sideways pickup crash.  I really remember that as the first time my life flashed in front of my eyes, the first time I really believed, "This is it.  This pickup is going to scoop right over the hood of this car and that's going to be it."  As time slowed to a crawl and I watched the pickup drifting right at me, I knew I had to be OK with that, to make my peace.  But then, as I live and breathe, with only inches to spare, it was as if the hand of God came down and ever-so-gently tapped that Chevy on the tailgate, giving it purchase in the gravel and sending in into the shallow ditch back on their own side of the road.  The two teenage boys inside were much more shook up than I was, I think.  They hadn't yet learned that the road angels can keep us out of a deal of trouble. 

There were a couple of incidents on the road between Muskogee and Tahlequah, back when I was still teaching night classes in BA and living in Tahlequah.   I would attest in court that in both of these cases I was no longer steering my car to avoid an accident.  Both involved driving errors on the part of others that I was able to avoid becoming a statistic to, but through absolutely none of my own effort.  There is no other explanation than that the road angels I'd learned to praise and thank and bless by then had taken matters into their own hands. 

And that's just me.  I don't think I could begin to enumerate the number of miles we all accumulate in a year.  I couldn't for that matter total up all the dangerous and deadly situations we've been protected from in our lives.  It may not always be this way, but I've told my family members several times that if anything ever happens to me on the road, it's absolutely only because it's God's will and that I truly don't fear anything there.  I'm not a careless or dangerous driver for knowing I'm protected---just willing to do my share to make my road angels' load a little lighter.