Has God talked to you? He sounds like an old guy that’s smoked too many cigarettes, and he has a Nebraskan accent. The funny thing is that when I heard the voice I was in Lubbock driving down the loop to buy liquor.
Some people might say they’re not surprised because it’s in the bible belt. Others might doubt it since they think Lubbock is godforsaken.
I don’t know if it’s still the law there, but when I went to Texas Tech in Lubbock there was only one place way outside the loop that you could buy liquor by the bottle. One Saturday afternoon four college girls and I were driving out to pick some up.
At this point in the story I was in the back seat riding behind the driver. The loop was a new highway, built at the time about 300 yards away from a newly built subdivision. A high grass field separated the road from the homes. There was a large grass covered gully between the two directions of traffic, presumably for drainage in this flat land.
Suddenly, Pam slammed on her breaks in the middle of the road and came to a stop. As I looked up, cars going in both directions were sliding to a stop, and I saw across the gully in on-coming traffic one car just slide by a little boy, barely not a toddler,walking across the road. The girls screamed as a car slid by the boy, and then screamed at me to grab him.
I opened my door, and then shut it back just in time to avoid getting hit by another car as it slid by, its tires screeching on the pavement. I reopened the door again and froze as another car slid by.
At that instant, staring at that little boy—innocently oblivious to the cars trying to avoid him–toddling across the highway chasing what I saw was a dog, I stopped. I couldn’t even breathe.
That’s when I heard the voice. One of the girls said later that it came from a car behind us that had also stopped. I heard the cars stopping, but I never looked back. My eyes were only on the boy and the cars around him.
“Son. Get that Boy.”
That’s what he said. I can hear it now just as clearly as the moment I heard it thirty-five years ago.
It’s what I needed. I ran across the highway, grabbed the boy, and jumped off the other side of the road and rolled down the elevated grass side. I could hear cars sliding by behind me as we rolled.
At the bottom, we came to a stop, and the little boy was laughing, giggling like I was some uncle he knew, had taken him for a ride, and he wanted to do it again. He called out to his dog, a big brown Chow, who came running up to us lying in the grass. That scared me too until all the dog did was rub his head against me so I’d scratch him.
I looked around. No one else was around. No one to help. No parents chasing the boy. I looked behind me for that voice, but I couldn’t see over the hill we’d just rolled down. No old man stood at the top.
I looked the boy over, as much as his Chow would let me, and he was unhurt. I asked him where his house was, but I couldn’t understand his baby talk. He did point across the long field as he talked, so we walked to the houses.
The girls in the car had driven up the highway and circled back around. When they stopped they ran over checking the little boy and worrying where his mother was. I told them we were going to walk to the houses so the little boy could show me where his house was, and they followed in the car.
About half way across the field, the boy’s mother, screaming and crying in a panic saw us and came running for her baby.
While the little boy was playing in his backyard with his dog, she told us, the Chow had dug under the fence, and the boy followed. His mother didn’t know it until she’d checked and found them both gone.
She was hysterical and it got worse when we told her what happened. You could see in her eyes that she was also a little afraid of strangers that had her child. She grabbed him and ran back to the house. I was okay with that, she was so scared about her baby she couldn’t think. I was still shaking myself.
As we got back in the car, she came running back out to thank us. I don’t remember the words, what had happened was still settling over me. She took our names, but I never heard from her again.
I do remember that we finished our liquor run. And that voice.