Skeletons

We had seen a skeleton house and were about to see a skeleton man.

What we were actually trying to see was a waterfall, but we came across a stalled car on a snowy mountain road, and the driver sat inside. He had somehow run his Prius into the ditch and out of gas at exactly the same moment, and he was shaking. Apparently he had been there a while and his phone did not work, so he was planning to wait for his son to drive by, but he could not remember if his son was in or out of town or maybe hunting deer.

He told us he had leukemia, and was getting radiation treatment for a cancer on his temple, so the muscles in his left eyebrow had gone limp, giving him a lopsided droopy expression. His hair was cut short and his wife had filed for divorce over money, so their marriage was about to be cut short, too. He was Catholic and Catholics do not believe in divorce, so he had given her a nice Christmas present to try to change her mind, but she was still deciding.

We drove the man up the road to the house of his son but no one was home and the front porch was empty, except for half of a truck, so the man went to look for gas. He found some, and we drove him back to his car. We filled it with fuel, dug it out of the ditch, and gave him a push.

He never said his name and he tried to give us money, but we did not take the money.

We took the karma deposit instead, which, these days, is worth a lot more.