* Today's post courtesy of Angry Rapscallion *
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It’s 1977... and I’m a sailor cruising some of my usual haunts looking to buy some organic contraband for the trip home during my upcoming leave. I’m not proud to admit this (not ashamed either) but this was 1977 and pot was as common as fried chicken at an Assembly of God potluck dinner. A friend (?) introduced me to a guy who could allegedly (?) hook me up with a high grade version of the product I sought for an acceptable price. Having had a meeting of the minds we climbed into his car and drove off to do the deal.
When we got to our destination, which was notably dark and secluded, he asked to see the money before making the deal. Being an old hand at these kinds of transactions, I informed him that my money and I were inseparable. At this juncture he produced the largest folding knife I had ever seen and explained that I was either going to release custody of my money or my life. Not seeing either of these outcomes as acceptable, I ejected myself from the vehicle and began quickly surveying the area in search of a safe escape route. I remember a car was coming down the road. I waved it over and explained quite quickly that the guy who was coming towards us was probably going to kill us all and asked for a ride. He rolled up his window, accelerated, and left me standing alone in the middle of the road.
The only way out that allowed for evasive action appeared to be an alleyway across the street. I sprinted towards it, but as I turned the corner I discovered I had made what was probably going to be the worst and last mistake of my ever-shortening life. The alley, as it turned out, was a dead end between two buildings that were joined by a fenced in walkway that blocked my last chance for escape. I turned to face the thug who was openly brandishing his knife and calculating the risk factors based on my physical appearance.
They say that your life passes before your eyes in those last moments between life and all eternity, and I’m here to tell you that it does. As I watched a short mental video of all my poor life choices, I remember thinking, “What a shame it was I had eluded the valuable lessons that I could have learned from those experiences, only to end up bleeding out in some filthy Long Beach gutter, all for a $10 dollar bag of weed."
I can’t tell you much about my assailant other than he was whitish and on the larger side of terrifying. He was saying things, but I couldn’t understand them above the sound of traffic and the rapid pounding of my heart. At this point in the game I would have given him everything I possessed as long as it didn’t involve me getting closer to that gigantic knife. I mean, where do you even get a folding knife that big!? Isn’t it strange the huge amounts of data your brain can process while you are facing imminent death. I remember knowing that while this alley had not been on my itinerary for the evening, it had been the focal point of my pursuer's plan all evening long. He had the definite advantage of knowing exactly what came next. I on the other hand could only guess and try not to piss my pants. Here I was fixing to die and the thing I’m worried about most is crime photos in which I had soiled myself. The brain is an amazing thing.
And then it happened... out of nowhere I hear someone yell, and quite loudly at that... "FREEZE, LET ME SEE YOUR HANDS." As I turned to face the origin of this noise, I caught a glimpse of my attacker flipping his knife up and over a fence. I heard it rattle across the sidewalk on the other side. You cannot possibly understand how relived I was to hear it.
The man who yelled "FREEZE" was a NOT so overly large, unarmed African-American. Both myself and the “sidewalk commando” outweighed him by a few pounds and yet we somehow accepted the fact that he was in charge now. He created a safe zone by stepping into the void between myself and my attacker. I was the first to speak and began ejecting words like a machine gun. As soon as I found my voice I blurted out, “This guy was going to rob me,” apparently assuming murder was too bold an accusation, considering the fact that I was still alive. The “sidewalk commando” countered that we were old friends arguing over a past due debt. I obviously wasn’t going to stand for any of that nonsense and found the courage to add the possibility of murder to the conversation. I insisted that I had never seen this guy before, which set up the obvious next question, “Then what were you doing in his car?” Realizing that the only two reasons a man might end up in a stranger’s car on a dark street late at night were gay sex or a dope deal, I decided to let the subject go.
Once the three of us realized the truth about our circumstances was going to remain a mystery, the African-American guy told my knife-wielding buddy to get in his car and GO, which he did with astounding rapidity. He must have had warrants. Then the African-American told me to get in the back of his Dodge Charger. I resigned myself to the inevitability of ending my evening at the offices of the Long Beach USN Shore Patrol, but thought I’d give it one more chance to turn things my way. Once my rescuer had buckled in and fired up the Charger, I began what I hoped would be a successful attempt to escape the long arms (or hands) of the law. I told him if he would be so kind as to leave me at the bar where my evening had started, and keep the Navy Shore Patrol in the dark about this little mishap, I would voluntarily return to base, where I would stay out of any trouble for the rest of the night.
Imagine my shock when he laughed and said... ”You guys really believed I was a cop? I’m not a cop, but I know a possible homicide when I see one going down. It was the only thing I could think of to help you, and I was surprised it actually worked. Where do you want to be dropped off?” Barely believing my luck, I named a bar and he turned to head back in that direction. As we made our way through traffic he asked me, “You were buying dope weren’t you?” I couldn’t see the harm in telling him the truth so I meekly replied in the affirmative. He went on to tell me how in God’s world, life is an endless stream of blessings or consequences. According to the righteousness of our choices, we manufacture our own joy or misery. He suggested that I might want to ponder that paradigm in the future... were I so lucky as to have a future.
When we got to the bar I offered to buy him several drinks, which he rejected en masse. He reminded me again of the rule for joy and consequences then bid me adieu. It was a short conversation... not your expected evangelical sermon. It was short and succinct. To this day I remember every word of it. You know what I cannot remember? I can’t remember the guy’s face. Seriously, not one single facet of it. It’s as if he didn’t have one. I know I must have looked him in the eye at some point, but his features were gone as quickly as he had appeared.
Many years later in a conversation between myself and two new believers, I relayed this story along with the suspicion I had always held, that my rescuer was in fact an angel or some sort of heavenly being. I expected to be chided, but instead found out that all three of us had a similar experience, right up to the point of not being able to recall the rescuer's face.
One friend was saved from a fatal beatdown in prison. He had refused to do something he was told to do. I have no idea what that was but I suppose we could guess. He got caught alone in one of those locations that are inevitable in the prison system, and as his attackers set up their ambush, another African-American prisoner stepped in and told them to stop... and OMG... they did. They all did exactly what he told them to do. He swore that, as with me, he had never seen the man before or since. He also could not describe his face.
The other member of our trio had planned to commit suicide while on perimeter watch in the Army. He had been singled out by the drill instructor for extra special abuse and had come to the end of what he could possibly take. He could not live with the shame of more failure in his life, and he had a rope secreted in his jacket, and planned to do the deed when he got to the end of the perimeter. He sat down, ostensibly to say one last goodbye to this cruel world, and was in fits of weeping. Suddenly he became aware of someone standing beside him. It was a drill instructor, he supposed from some other unit. The guy gave him a handkerchief to wipe his eyes and promised that things would be better for him soon, and encouraged him to just hang in there. As predicted, the abuse stopped the very next day.
All three of us were white and our rescuers were black. None of us ever saw our rescuers before or after. You can make what you wish of the odds that this would happen to three guys in a racially divided world... three guys who would come together one day to share their stories and multiply their faith. I suppose there could be a logical explanation for these events, though I have no freaking idea what that could possibly be. Personally, I’ve come to think that if we were able to see all the ways in which God was directly intervening in our lives, we would go insane.
God is in everything. Every being and every moment. Man has either known or suspected this from the moment he became sentient. Seeking God for us is as necessary as finding food and drink. We manufacture our own joy or misery based on how much distance we allow between ourselves and God. Be kind to everyone you meet. They may be messengers from God.
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