Just My Luck: A Short Story about Coincidence and Convergence

 

Just my luck, Jordan Spencer thought, staring out the window at the thickening fall of snow.

I must be cursed.

Drop-kicking the souvenir bear her recently no-longer boyfriend had won for her three weeks ago at the local fireman’s fair, Jordan Spencer grabbed her overnight bag and backpack and charged out of her room, taking the stairs to the front foyer two at a time with her powerful legs.

“Mom!” She yelled toward the kitchen. “Where’s my karate uniform? Did you wash it like I asked?”

Not anticipating anything close to an Affirmative, she yanked her hair into a severe bun behind her head and thought about the volleyball scholarship she had recently been awarded.

“Five more months and I’m out of here,” she thought with a smile. “And if I take first place at this karate competition I’ll be at the national championships most of June.”

With thoughts of the future without her family warming her, she headed for the laundry room. The airport van wasn’t due for another hour… she shouldn’t asked her mother for a favor in the first place.

*****

Bertram Ferguson lovingly wiped the final bit of gun grease from the firing mechanism of his favorite Colt revolver and placed it in the gun bag customized with his initials with his Spencer carbine and a Winchester shotgun that names-lost-to-history cowboys had used to fight off outlaws on the stagecoaches of Kansas and Missouri. He stole a quick glance at the dozens of ribbons and trophies he’d won at various Western-style shooting competitions and, his eyes lingering a moment over the empty space where he hoped to place the most prestigious prize of all—the national champion’s trophy that had so slightly—and agonizingly—eluded him the past two years.

“This year,” he said to that space—“I’m gonna fill ya. I promise ya that, ghostly Cowboys of Old.”

Whistling a cowboy’s dirge he had learned as a boy, he packed his bags and neglected to notice just how quickly the snow was beginning to fall.

*****

“And that my friends, ends our sermon for today. My God bless and keep you until we meet again.”

Not waiting for the first person to stand and begin to file out of the two rows of pews in the Baptist church for which he was the minister, Omar Bey ducked down the nearest flight of stairs to the all-purpose room. Closing the door behind him, he made a beeline for the triple-decker sub sandwich with extra onions and olives and a brand new family size bag of Lays barbeque chips across the room.

Minister Bey had not eaten since breakfast—a quick snack of pudding and ‘Nilla wafers aside—and he was STARVED. Only the good Lord himself knew what time he’d be able to eat again… the snow was rapidly accumulating and, even if the airport van arrived on time, his flight could be delayed and if there wasn’t a decent restaurant near his Gate at the airport…

“Minister Bey, do you have a moment?”

I should have locked the door.

No, no, no I don’t, he thought, knowing the Widow Wilson was many things, but succinct and to the point was not amongst them.

“Of course I do, Mrs. Wilson,” he answered, eyeing the feast sitting so temptingly before him.

“What is your position on the recent comments made by that Democratic senator trying to run for president about more separation of church and state? His opponent is not pro-military enough for my taste—he wants to convert the Godless Heathens in the Middle East instead of just wiping them out, but I am wondering what is the lesser of the two evils?”

Her question was now hanging in the air, waiting for Minister Bey to pull down and address it.

Do I tell her my parents are Lebanese Muslims and I myself converted 30 years ago to Christianity? he thought, thankful he had not yet opened the bag of chips—the smell of vinegar and Genoa salami was already making his mouth begin to water…

A whiff of Carolina barbeque? He might just ask the Widow Wilson to kindly take a walk.

Glancing at the clinical clock on the grey-painted cinderblock wall just above the widow’s blue-tinged bun, Minister Bey knew that the airport van was no doubt sludging its way through the snow, coming ever, ever nearer.

No. No time for that. Just answer the question and eat.

Drawing on all of his seminary training, the Minister summoned his best Servant-of-God baritone and began:

“In these great and trying times, foretold in the Holy Books and prognosticated upon by lay pundits as well as the most blessed men of God, it has been set forth in the most fundamental of terms that the great challenge of people like yourself is to create a composite of divine ideals and then use said composite to guide one’s thinking in the electoral process and the larger, more glorious vision of what God the holy father and his son and the Holy Spirit hold for each and every one of us in their collective and individual hearts. I trust I’ve made my recommendation clear, Mrs. Wilson? I have a plane to catch, and I’ve not yet eaten lunch.”

As she shook her head as he was shaking her cold, ungenerous hand, he knew there’d be a complaint slip in the church office awaiting him upon his return. Sinking his teeth into the end of the big and beautiful sandwich and inhaling the Carolina barbeque from the bag of Lays, he quickly realized that it’d be worth it.

*****

They say that, in an accident, time slows down so that each and every sound, smell, feel, and taste is imprinted on the brain in such a way that they are often recalled at the oddest moments, even decades later.

For the three people to whom I’ve introduced you, this was true for the duration of the time they actually did have reason to think about it. For the driver of the airport shuttle van, the piece of metal six inches long and an inch and a half wide that entered his temporal lobe just seconds after the initial impact precluded any thought at all—in the very moment or any time thereafter.

None of the passengers in the van—Omar Bey, Bertram Ferrguson, or Jordan Spencer—would ever know that it was a drunken college kid, dressed like Cupid on this frigid February night, trying to keep his faux-feathered wings from tickling his thighs as he tried to beat a yellow light who broadsided the three-year-old Ford Transit van that had been carrying them to the airport.

None of them ever thought to ask the others.

“Hey. Hey, are you alright?” Bertram inquired of Jordan, once the van had stopped its quick then surreally slow roll down the highway’s snowy embankment. “Your head’s bleeding badly.”

“I… I… think so,” Jordan answered. “But I can’t feel my leg at all.”

Bertram was too afraid to look beneath the twisted mass of metal, molded plastic, and synthetic stuffing that had not so long ago been Jordan’s seat on the van. The three rivulets of bright red blood running away beneath her toward the lower point of the wreckage told him all he dared to know.

“It’s a little busted up,” he whispered, trying to keep his voice from cracking. “It’s kinda pinched between the seat and the floor… Maybe the circulation is cut off. You just rest. I need to check on the driver.”

“Don’t bother,” Omar advised, pulling himself out from under half a dozen travel bags and suitcases. “It’s a mess up there. I served in the US Marine Corps. Didn’t see any combat, but I saw my share of corpses. I suggest we pray for his soul and then extricated ourselves from this wreckage.”

Bertram, not wanting to mention his own time in the service, which had culminated in an unceremonious medical discharge for non-combat-related foot injury, said instead, “I wish it’d stop snowing. Can’t even see where we are.”

“You have your cell phone?” Omar asked. “Mine’s obliterated.”

“I don’t carry one.”

Omar shook his head. “What are you—thirty? Aren’t you hip to the times? Even an old man like me has a cell phone.”

“I spend all day advising nervous Nellies and various other stock market newbies on where to put their money in the Market. If I had a cell, they’d call me 24-7. A man needs a break from the trials and tribulations of the financial minefields at the end of the day and on weekends.”

“No family with whom to stay in contact?,” Omar asked, making his way carefully toward Jordan Spencer.

“If you must know, NO,” Bertram answered with more malice than he had intended. “Just me. I work, I clean my guns, and I fire them at competitions.”

“That what’s in that locked canvas bag over there? The one with the fancy embroidered initials?” Omar asked. “Guns?”

“Yes. Yes it is. And they are vintage guns. From the era of Westward expansion and Manifest Destiny. A time that made a helluva lot more sense than these times in which we live.”

“Are you okay, Miss?” Having no desire to engage Bertram further, Omar had turned his full attention to Jordan.

“I can’t feel my left leg,” she answered. “It’s starting to concern me. I am competing in a big competition tomorrow. Martial arts. Karate.”

“Let me take a look here. I am Reverend Bey. You can call me Omar.”

“My name is Jordan Spencer. I don’t go to church.”

“That’s alright,” Omar said with a smile, finally noticing the rivulets of blood beneath her. “I can help you even so.”

*****

Not trusting the reverend to be as discreet as he had been, Bertram struggled his way toward the back of the van, which was now the highest point due to the angle at which the smashed vehicle had come to rest. Reaching for the gun bag, he suddenly felt his heart begin to pound as Omar yelled, no doubt more loudly than he had meant to:

“OH MY BLEEDING, SUFFERING CHRIST!”

You never can count on the clergy to keep their shit together in a crisis, ex–Marine Corps or not, Bertram thought, pulling the gun-tote key from his pocket as the snowfall became a blizzard and deciding on the already loaded Colt as the quickest way out of this mess for them all.