Thousand+ Words for Nov. 12, 2025

I Haven't been all that Eager to Write this Story Down, but I just got Back from the....

I haven't been all that eager to write this story down, but I just got back from the doctor's, and seeing as how I've officially got bone cancer now, and maybe a year left to live, there's not that much that they can do to me if they find out.

Funny how a terminal illness concentrates the mind--didn't Benjamin Franklin say something like that? Or maybe it was Twain, I forget.

The whole thing was an accident, but then, so many things are accidents. You turn left, you meet a girl who becomes your future wife, mother of your children, receiver of your alimony, and so forth. You turn right, you don't. Timing, dumb luck, and happenstance; it is generally unrecognized what a large part these things play in our lives.

Having had the ability to go back and turn right instead of left for the last few years, I've come to recognize how out-of-control our seemingly well controlled lives are. Mine used to be that way, until I happened to turn left instead of right one day and have my encounter with a person whom I have since come to call and to think of as the Trigger Man.

It was the day after my birthday. I had just turned sixty, and I was feeling it, the aches and pains of a life spent not being very careful about such things as stretching or cool-downs. I had always been an athlete, and a natural one—of course, that’s the most dangerous kind of athlete to be, the kind for whom strenuous activity comes easy, the kind with a body that heals quickly and painlessly, at least for a while. And I took full advantage of it: a football scholarship paid for college, two years as a very minor figure in the NFL to make a little money, then grad school and a position teaching at a university not far from where I grew up.

At sixty, I had tenure, and a recent divorce that had been the emotional equivalent of taking a stone out of my shoe. My neck was creaky and I wouldn't be running any more marathons, but with the right mix of pills at the right time, I could get out of bed, get myself to class, and hold court well enough. As I dictate this, I have my left hand in my pocket and there's a coin in there that I've carried around since those first days that I knew the Trigger Man. It's the thing that he used to convince me of his story, and when I saw it, I started to believe him. My full trust in him came later, but that was the start of it.

Just a coin—a dime, as a matter of fact. If I pulled it out of my pocket, which I won't do, and if I showed it to you, which I won't do, you wouldn't consider it unusual or special in the least. Just an ordinary 2013 Roosevelt dime. But it is special, and it is unusual—in a way that only I and the Trigger Man know about. I'll spill the beans on that later.

My first ex-wife was still alive in those days, and I used to go to her house, which used to be my house before it was our house before it was her house, from time to time. The house was out in the country, at the end of a long lane that split off from the main highway. It was starting to get cold then, and I was in that old Ford pickup I had and which I wrecked on Christmas day that year. I almost lost my dime that day, but I managed to find it on the floorboard of the truck while I waited for the ambulance to arrive, which was lucky because at the time, it was Christmas of 2010, three years before the dimes like that would be produced.

You might say I had an early version, thanks to the Trigger Man.

So I was driving along, not paying too much attention to anything, trying to think of what to say to get Donna to give me the suitcases that I knew damn good and well were in the upstairs hall closet, when I saw that a car was stopped on the other side of the road, just sitting there in the other lane. Something about it struck me as strange, and so I pulled my truck over to my side of the road, got out, and started to walk up to the car when a man got out of the passenger side. “Are there dogs here, do you suppose?” he asked as I approached.

I heard him, and I understood, but what he said was so nonsensical that I presumed that I must have heard him incorrectly. “Do you need some help?” I asked, coming to a stop some distance away.

“Dogs. Are there dogs here, do you suppose?” he repeated.

Great, a nut job, I thought. “Listen, you need to get your car out of the road, someone's going to rear-end you.”

“Do you suppose there are dogs here?” He seemed to be stuck on that subject.

“No, no dogs here, mister. Just us."

Right on cue, a dog barked some distance off, and the man's head turned toward it. "Isn't that a dog?"

"I don't think so," I said, seeking to pacify. "Is your car broke down?”

The man looked up and down the road and sighed a little. “No, I've just got a little problem,” he said.

"Will it start?" I asked.

"Yes, but there's some sort of smoke coming out of the tailpipe."

"Why don't you start it up and I'll take a look?" He did so, and sure enough, a huge cloud of bright white smoke billowed out of the tailpipe. The discharge was copious at first, and then it reduced to a trickle, but still plainly visibly. "Your rings are leaking. Shut it off." The man shut it off. "Okay, now pop the hood."

"The what?"

"The hood." I slapped my hand on the front of the car; it was a bit louder than I had intended. "The hood. Pop the hood."

He reached down and seemed to fumble, then I heard the truck lid pop open. "No, that's the trunk. Pop the hood. I'll see how much oil you have left."

Finally, he found the hood release and I heard it pop open. Over the course of the next few minutes, I determined that while low, his oil level was sufficient for at least several more miles. "Okay, so you need to get some oil to keep to going until you can get your rings fixed. That's going to be expensive. Do you understand?"

"Yes, thank you."

I got in my car and drove off, and I saw in my rearview mirror that he did the same, and I forgot about him.

When I got home, there was an email from an address I didn't recognize. I wouldn't have read it, but the subject line was "I Got the Rings Replaced, Thanks."

Replaced? Already? No way.

I opened the email and that was the beginning of our little relationship.

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