God and the Truck

Thelma was walking barefooted along the side of the gravel road, headed home.  Her thin cotton dress stuck to her back.  Summertime in Louisiana’s piney woods meant the air was so thick you could eat it with a spoon.  She would drink from the tin cup when she got home. 

              A year earlier, Mama had died.  Lillie Pearl was a gentle, tired woman, full of the love of the Lord.  Thelma was the youngest of ten children, eight having survived to adulthood.

              There were just the three of them in the house now:  Theo, Thelma’s sister who was two years older, Papa who worked at the sawmill, and Thelma.  Most nights, dinner was cornbread and milk.

              Brother Barney was riding the rails looking for work, but one year he came home in time for Christmas.  He broke a branch off a tree in the yard and propped it up in the corner by the fireplace.  That was their Christmas tree.

              When Theo and Thelma woke on Christmas morning, Barney told the girls to look out the window.  They could hardly believe their eyes.   It had snowed a little, just a dusting.  Barney said, “Look there.  I think I see Santa Claus’ tracks in the snow.  Go outside and see where they go.”

              Theo and Thelma ran out the door, found the tracks and followed them through the yard to the shed.  They swung open the door and found two small bags of hard candy Santa had left for them.

              But now, it was summer, and twelve-year-old Thelma was hot and thirsty.  Once in a while, a car would pass her on the deserted road.  When she heard it coming, she would stop, watch and wave.  Otherwise, the only sounds were crickets, frogs and the buzz of flies, sometimes a hunting dog in the woods.

              She was close to the bend in the road when she heard the rumbling of the truck headed in her direction.  She waited, and when it was within sight, she saw that it was a red and white Coca Cola truck.  The truck’s open sides were loaded with heavy cases of glass bottles tilted up at an angle, held in place only by gravity.

              Her mouth watering and still a ways from home, she said, “If there is a God, one of those Coke bottles will fall off the truck.”

              She stopped to watch it pass.  But, it never did.

              It was going too fast and missed the curve.  It swerved, tipped over and landed on its side.

              The tin cup would wait.  A sea of green Coke bottles rolled across the road.

*Thelma was born near Zwolle, Louisiana, in 1927.   She was my mother.