How a Holy Spirit Disguised as a Boy Came to My Rescue

I was driving to an appointment with my periodontist when I glanced down at the gas gauge and discovered the tank was almost empty. I panicked. As a newcomer to driving, I had zero idea how to “gas up.”  Just learning how to go down the road without killing myself or someone else was in itself a major accomplishment. 

If only I’d gotten my license in adolescence, when the specter of death wasn’t clawing at my throat with every tick of the clock, things probably would have been different. But there I was, age 70, having just moved to the wilds of Connecticut after a lifetime of living in New York City—subways, buses, stores close enough to walk to!—and I was like a babe (with fallen arches and receding gums) in the woods.

Fortunately, a Valero station was just up ahead. Pulling up to a pump so that I was close enough for the hose to reach the gas tank but not so close that I slammed into it was the least of my worries. The real terror was how to fill the tank without the gasoline overflowing, thereby causing sparks to fly and the car to combust when I turned the ignition back on—something I once overheard someone say could happen, and had never forgotten.

“Help me, O Lord,” I prayed silently.

And the Lord heard me and He spoke.

“Yo, lady! Buy a candy bar for my baseball team?” 

Gazing out the car window and following the source of the voice, I saw a short, chubby boy in a Kelly green t-short and blue cap leaning against a nearby fence, a big cardboard box in hand. He looked to be about eight-years old.

“One buck, your choice,” he said, ambling over to me. “How many you want?”

Heck, I’d take the entire box if only…

“Hey, do you know how to put gas in this car?” I asked.

 He gave a little snort. “Hell yeah.”

 “Use my card to fill the tank for me and I’ll buy every Almond Joy, Mounds, and Snickers that you’ve got,” I said.

“What about the Now & Laters?” he asked, making it sound like “nihilators.” 

“For crying out loud,” I said. “Fill ’er up and I’ll take the whole damned box.”

And he did.

With panache. (He even asked me for a tissue when he was done so that he could wipe the gas cap clean.)

Practically shaking with gratitude, I handed him all the cash I had in my wallet—I think  it was about 30 bucks. He took it without counting and stuffed it in his back pocket.

After going into the station to get my receipt for the gas, I saw he had put the box on the front seat of the car and was headed down the road. I tried calling after him to give it back—this really wasn’t about my getting candy, especially considering my periodontal issues; and besides, I liked to think he could make another few bucks off of it—but he just kept walking without turning around. 

I thought about following him in the car—perhaps he hadn’t heard me—but my appointment was in the other direction and it was getting late. I really need to get moving. And so I pulled out of the station and continued on my way, but not without first glancing in the rearview mirror. I was hoping to get a final look at him, but he was nowhere to be seen.

-Marcy Krever

Marcy Krever is a 71-year-old ex-New Yorker now living in Connecticut. When she’s not learning how to drive a car—how she pines for NYC’s subways!—or replacing the broken flappers in her toilets, she writes short-form fiction. This is something she never had time for in her previous incarnations as the producer of a children’s radio show, puppeteer, and communications director for a Montessori nonprofit. Her work can be found in the Hartford Courant and education publications including Montessori Life magazine, Montessori International, and The 74.