On my way back up to the cabin, I stopped at the supermarket in Monticello. I got out of my truck but realized I forgot my plastic bags – I typically reuse them – and went back. I was fumbling around inside the truck, as I don’t have things very organized, and was surprised by a voice right behind me. “Excuse me, mister?” It was a woman holding a set of jumper cables in a little package. “I’m trying to get back home,” she said, “and I need money for gas. Would you be willing to buy some jumper cables for five dollars? I need it for gas money. They’re brand new and everything, I don’t think they’ve ever been used. Five bucks, can’t beat that, right?”
She was probably 30, but careworn, as rural women around here. You could tell that she had known sadness and suffering. I had exactly five singles on me, and I bought the cables, thinking that was the best of the options available. I then heard her as she ran back to her boyfriend, who was rummaging around in the cushions of an old sedan: “Honey? I just got us gas money!” She sounded like a little child. And I thought of the love these women have for us deadbeat men – and all the little things they do, braving any humiliation, for this love.
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