Angels Unaware: Helen Chappell

Angels Unaware by Helen Chappell

The road is rough but beautiful. It probably started out as a deer trail, twisting and winding around corners and up and down rises, over old stream beds and through woods and open pastures. Often, it’s a path through overhanging trees. And always, the deep, deep ditches with tiny shoulders that make a narrow two-lane asphalt strip an obstacle course. I’ve seen vehicles down in those ditches. I’ve seen the wreckers pull them out, I’ve seen the deep muddy scars where some poor soul was rescued.

But I’d never slid into a ditch before that day. I thought I was charmed growing up, learning to avoid those ditches like homemade sin. Which guaranteed karma would hand me a ditch.

You remember when we had about two weeks of daily rain? When there were floods everywhere and the ditches overflowed, running like creeks down the side of the shoulderless backroads? Yeah, that time. When I was rescued by angels unawares.

And it all had to do with heroes.

There I was, driving up the road, thinking about Neil Armstrong. You remember Neil, first man on the moon. For some reason, the late hero astronaut had been passing through my mind after I saw a photograph of him in his Apollo space suit, heading for the moon. He was young, grinning, getting ready for launch into an unknown space that summer day in 1969.

That photo had snagged my attention recently when I was looking for something else. Armstrong was a bona fide hero who had gotten his pilot’s license before he could drive, flown bombing missions, risked his life as a test pilot and was designated to be the first human on the moon just a few hours after that photo was taken. He was a hero, and that day I ditched, it seemed like heroes were thin on the ground. Neil had a baby face. Not ugly or anything, just young. This hotshot guy looked so young. Which led to me, always curious, to pondering

Angels Unaware

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what he would have been like as a person, specifically, did he have a sense of humor . . .

And then bang, it happened. Coming down the middle of the road toward me was a huge white pickup, taking his half out of the middle of a narrow, winding, deep- ditched backroad. The young bro’ gave me a snarling grin as I steered desperately to the right to avoid a head-on collision with his monster truck.

There was a huge jolt and a bump as my Honda tilted to an 80-degree angle, sliding into a flooded ditch. Like most accidents, it happened in slow motion. It was as if I could see myself from some place above my head as the car pitched out of my control.

The white truck never even slowed down as I tried to catch my breath and my balance. The last I saw of that truck was a political banner in the back, waving around the curve as the monster disappeared down the hill toward town.

I lurched into the ditch and ground to a stop, buried in mud.

I was wearing my seat belt, or I would have been flung into the wheel well. As it was, I was down and dusted, and I knew it.

I was very deep in a watery ditch.

I tried my tried-and-true method of getting out of a slippery slope. I rocked the car, but to no avail. I

Angels Unaware

tried to open the driver’s door, but between the weight and the muddy embankment, I couldn’t open the door. I was eyeball deep in a flooded ditch on a two-lane blacktop. Ordinarily, it was a pretty, forested drive, but not today. Like I say, I’d seen other people ditched along this road, but I foolishly thought I was a good enough driver it would never happen to me. Ha. Here I was, trapped, arthritic, breathless and immobile. Getting out of what was essentially a four-footdeep muddy hole was going to be an event.

After some hopeless struggle, pushing fruitlessly against a door packed in mud, I realized I was going to have to do some serious gymnastics just to get out of the car. And my body was too stiff and my breathing too shallow to make crawling out a backseat window easy ~ not at my age and after quarantining from the pandemic for months.

I decided to sit and wait until someone else drove along and some of my mind calmed down enough to figure out a plan.

One, two, three SUVs passed me, and in spite of my frantic waving, no one stopped. Just stared and drove right past, a parade of Karens on their cell phones. I pride myself on doing what I’ve been trained to do in an emergency, but nothing trained me for being trapped in a ditch.

Note: this is not a picture of the actual accident. 12

Angels Unaware

I was just about to cry when a white van rolled up and, miracle of miracles, stopped. Two slender young guys in white got out and came to my rescue. It might have been the sun in my eyes, but it sure looked as if they had halos.

Mike Fitzgerald and his nephew Matt sure looked like angels to me. They somehow got the door open and pried me, stiff and breathless and upset, out of the Honda. I was so ripped up between fear and gratitude I could barely walk or talk as they guided me to sit in the back of their van while I tried to recover myself and didn’t do a very good job of it. They concerned themselves with my health, if I was cold, if I had someone I could call. Was I okay? Anything broken? They helped me call my garage and get the name of a tow truck driver, who was immediately on his way.

Long ago, I wrote a short story about a woman who ran into a ditch on a deserted road and was rescued by a pair of scruffy hermit brothers, and here was some version of that happening in real life. My angels unawares had become real. They were far from scruffy and seemed to me to have better people skills than a pair of fictional hermits. Best of all, they were there to rescue me.

If I’d tried at the time to explain this story coincidence to Mike and

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Angels Unaware

Matt, they would have been convinced that I was even crazier than I already sounded. And I think I sounded pretty shaky.

Mike and Matt refused to leave me on the road, waiting for the tow truck. Even though they had another job they were heading for, they insisted on staying on that road with me as traffic whizzed by, keeping me safe from the Karens in their SUVs.

So I found out that Mike Fitzgerald, my senior angel, is the owner of FitzMechanical, a master plumber, trenching, sewer and drain cleaner and gas piping specialist who operates out of East New Market at 443-205-9776, mfitz1787@gmail. com.

Matt, his nephew, is a journeyman for the business. We had quite a nice visit waiting for the tow truck, and they wouldn’t leave until they’d talked to Eliut Jimenez of Jimenez Towing 410-829-3359, Eliutlatundra@gmail.com, and made sure he would take care of me, which he did. Pulled that Honda right out of that ditch and testdrove it for me so I was safe to get back on the road. Another angel.

I’m just grateful for these gentlemen who rescued me from a situation I couldn’t get out of by myself. I want everyone to know not all heroes are first to set foot on the moon like Neil Armstrong. There are real heroes right here on the Eastern Shore.

But, you know, I still say you could fool me. I think these two gentlemen and their white van were angels sent to rescue me from yet another dumb stunt. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Helen Chappell is the creator of the Sam and Hollis mystery series and the Oysterback stories, as well as The Chesapeake Book of the Dead. Under her pen names, Rebecca Baldwin and Caroline Brooks, she has published a number of historical novels.

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