The Patroller of Our Dirt Road

The Patroller of Our Dirt Road

It didn’t matter what time of day I took my walks, at some point Moses’s purple Ford Ranger would always pass by, and he’d lazily wave his cigarette out the window like an extension of his hand, the smoke unfurling on the breeze.

Later, I found out that he was the worship leader at the little white church converted from a one-room schoolhouse that’s within walking distance of our land, and that he daily scouted our back roads for wild game that I sincerely hoped he didn’t shoot from his truck.

It wasn’t this information but the random interactions that took my apprehension regarding him away. However, if his Ford Ranger was parked at the corner near the old cattle shoot, I still didn’t go the full distance. Instead, I’d wave and turn around a few yards from him.

I was eight months pregnant when I went for my daily walk and discovered that Moses was parked at the end of the lane. He was peering at my parents’ electrical box attached to the telephone pole, cigarette in hand, camo hunting cap pulled low over his sparse white hair.

I waddled up to him and asked—in a friendly but firm fashion—what he was doing. He explained that my father had asked him to fix an electrical short, since they wouldn’t be getting up to their cottage for weeks.

“You mind giving me a hand?” he asked.

Moses held out two wires for me to hold. I looked at him with obvious skepticism: I’d never heard he was an electrician in addition to worship leader and backwoodsman.

He seemed to read my thoughts for he grinned—one blue eye shooting off to the left, the other fixed right on me. “I ain’t gonna kill ya.”

I took the wires, but then turned away, batting at the smoky air, and coughed. Anybody else on the planet would’ve been able to read my nonverbal cues.

But not Moses.

Finally, still holding the wires, I said tersely, “Can you please put your cigarette out? I don’t want secondhand smoke hurting my baby.”

“You just have to ask,” he said, grinding the cigarette with his boot.

It’s been two years since I helped Moses fix that electrical short, and it still remains our longest interaction to date. I have become so accustomed to seeing him on the road during my daily walks that when I noticed he wasn’t passing me anymore, I became worried.

Was he dead?

I asked the man who leases the land for his cattle if he had heard anything about Moses, and he nodded, brushing up the yellow flaps of his hat. “He’s in the hospital,” he said. “Getting some kinda dye pumped in him.”

“A PET scan?” I asked.

He shrugged.

So I kept walking. Two weeks later, Moses still wasn’t at the corner where he normally parked. Oddly enough, his presence that had once been a little unsettling (those shifty eyes!) now brought me comfort.

I missed the patroller of our dirt road.

One week after that, I was walking along—pushing my toddler-age daughter’s stroller and wrangling the leash that was around our dog—when that purple Ford Ranger came crawling down the road.

My heart leapt; Moses was alive!

I waved him down, and he pulled over, grinning as cigarette smoke wafted out of the truck cab.

“You okay?” I asked. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

He nodded, motioning to his cap. “Got me an an-ru-ism.”

He looked down at my daughter. “Look at that doll baby.”

He asked what her name was and then tried to repeat it, like he tries to repeat it each time. “I’ll just stick to doll baby; that’s what I call my grandkids.”

“Take care of yourself,” I said.

He nodded and grinned, fixing me with that one good eye while the other shot off to the left. Then he tipped his cap and drove down the dirt road, his brake lights flashing in the gloaming as he drove around the bend.

Image Source: http://www.doncokerart.com/blog/?p=293