tales of nashvillian encounters: volume 1-darel

it was like any other day this summer. how was i supposed to know that i would have a conversation with a man that would change my life, not to mention the entire medical community, forever?

my services were needed for the repair of a rotting deck. i had just finished replacing some deck boards and rebuilding a few sets of stairs. finding myself tired, yet feeling rewarded, i took a cup of water and left the site only to move on to my next job...... or so i'd thought.

loading my car, i viewed a man walking toward me. he inched closer to me and i began to make out the writing on his green t-shirt. it stated, "I CARRY NO CA$H." i found it interesting that the maker of the t-shirt used a dollar sign for the s in cash.

after a minute of $tudying the man, i had no doubt$ in my mind that he, indeed, carried no ca$h.

now only a few feet from me, i asked the gentleman how is day was going. drawing out every syllable, the man declared the following:

"maaaaan, people been riding my assssss alllllll daaaaay lonnnggg."

the sentence took such a long time to exit his mouth that i had to rotate my body 180 degrees just to hear him finish. he was about five feet in front of me when i asked him about his day and a good ten feet away from me when he finished his reply.

let me go ahead and say, that i will never avoid a conversation that starts off this way. in fact, i will often times seek them out. on this occasion i feel it safe to say that we both wanted it.

i told the man to "hold up" and "get back here." darel, as i would come to know him, happily obliged. i told him i needed to know the story behind his answer and he began to tell me about his morning.

it was fool of disappointments. he was trying to make a buck or two and people had been ripping him off alllll daaaaay lonnnggg. he asked me if i would give him a job. i told him i couldn't do that. we talked a while longer. i gave him my cup of water. we talked a while and became quite close. at that point i asked if i could pray for him. he said he would like that very much. so.... he hugged me.

embracing darel back, i began to pray for him. as i closed, darel gave a very heartfelt "amen." we closed our hug and darel stepped back to examine me. he looked me up and down and i could tell something was going on in that mind of his. after about 15 seconds of silent observation, darel chimed "i want to show you something."

this is going to be good, i thought to myself as darel faced his back to me. as he began to lift up the back of his shirt, i became less convinced that this was going to be 'good' and more convinced that this was going to be quite bad.

against my better judgement, i continued to look as darel lifted his shirt to display a gigantic tumor or growth or something. i have searched and searched for an adequate description of this thing and the only comparable thing i can come up with is a butt cheek.

darel had a third butt cheek directly above his left one. it literally froze me for a while. i couldn't find anything to say. darel tucked the superfluous cheek back under the shirt and turned around waiting for me to say something.

the only words i could muster were "wow, darel, that's really impressive" as if it were some type of award given out very seldomly.

he looked almost as confused as i did and said that the doctors wanted to remove it but that he couldn't be in no wheelchair. this also confused me because it wasn't like the tumor was what propelled him down the street. he did have both of his legs. i'm assuming it was a high risk procedure because of its closeness to the spine. i told him i understood nonetheless.

we closed our encounter with darel asking me again for work and me sullenly informing him that we just didn't have a way of providing him with any. he persisted and said that if we did, he was one street over, adding: "if you see a white cadillac-blue rwoof, that's me."

i asked if he lived in the white cadillac with the blue rwoof. he only answered "white cadillac-blue rwoof, that's me. i gotta go."

and with that i bid him Godspeed, and we went on our ways. i'm not quite sure what happened to him after that. but i'll tell you this. every time i see a white cadillac with a blue rwoof, a part of me, heck all of me hopes that it is darel and that people are no longer riding his ass during any part or duration of the day.