Two Men In A Ditch

I feel ashamed of what I did. But I can’t shake my feelings about an odd thing that happened to Ginny and me last winter.

In a way, it has nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina but, maybe in a way it does. For some reason I’ve been dwelling on it all day.

I woke up this morning thinking about it although it was too small an incident to even record in my journal (I checked the index) and I’d really forgotten about it.

But watching wayyy too much news coverage of people complaining about rescue efforts brought it back to mind during the night and I just can’t shake the thing.

Most Fridays Ginny & I go out for dinner here or there depending on our finances. Last October or November we ate at a Kentucky Fried Chicken place. Even though there are only two of us now, we ordered the big bucket planning to dine on cold chicken over the weekend.

While Ginny was packing up our leftovers, I walked outside to smoke my pipe.

“Help! Help! For God’s Sake Help Me!”

I heard a man yelling. I ran across the parking lot to see a man down by a culvert in a drainage ditch leading to a retention pond. I scooted down the embankment and waded to him through just a foot or two of water. I grabbed him by the shoulders and tugged him up on to the embankment.

“I’m sick. I’m sick,” he moaned.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” I said.

“Don’t want no fucking ambulance. I need food. I’m sick. I’m starving,” he said.

I climbed out of the ditch and went to Ginny. She took food out of our bag – chicken, fries, biscuit – and folded it into a napkin for the man in the ditch. I carried it back down to him, again assuring him that I could call an ambulance.

Again he refused vehemently.

He was wearing one of those plastic ID bracelets showing that he’d been in a hospital recently.

He began to wolf down the food.

“I need something to drink with this stuff,” he said.

Now, I’d put my own take out cup of soda on top of our car when I came out of the restaurant so I got that for him and carried it back down into the ditch.

He took a big gulp and spit it out at me.

“This is got sugar in it! What you trying to do, Kill me. I’m a diabetic. I need the diet soda. Go get me a diet cola,” he demanded.

I straightened up.

I said, “If you die in this ditch, how is my world going to be diminished”?

“Huh”.

“If you die in this ditch, why should I care,” I said.

And I turned my back on him and walked away.

Next time we were at that Kentucky Fried, I glanced to see if there were a body clogging up the culvert.

There wasn’t.

So I suppose he got out of the ditch ok.

Or not.