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    丽君主页 >> 文章 >> 开其 >> 浏览信息《A Moment of Joy》

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    星期六   晴天 
    主题 A Moment of Joy

    A Moment of Joy
    Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. It was a cowboy's life, a life for someone who wanted no boss.What I did not realize was that it was also a ministry. Because I drove the night shift, my cab became a moving confessional. Passengers climbed in, sat behind me in total anonymity, and told me about Rock drill their lives. I encountered people whose lives amazed me, ennobled me, made me laugh and weep.¡¡But none touched me more than a woman I picked up late one August night.I was responding to a call from a small brick fourplex in a quiet part of town. I assumed I was being sent to pick up some people who had been partying, or someone who had just had a fight with a lover, or a worker heading to an early shift at some factory for the industrial part of town.When I arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under such circumstances, many drivers just honk once or twice, wait a minute, then drive away. But FOAM MACHINE I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transpor- tation.Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door.This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself. So I walked to the door and knocked. ¡°Just a minute,¡± answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase.The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.Would you carry my bag out to the car?¡± she said. I china flights discounttook the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm, and we walked slowly toward the curb.She kept thanking me for my kindness. ¡°It¡¯s nothing,¡± I told her. ¡°I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.¡± ¡°Oh, you¡¯re such a good boy,¡± she said.
    When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, ¡°Can you drive through downtown?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not the shortest way,¡± I answered quickly. ¡°Oh, I don¡¯t mind,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m in no hurry. I¡¯m on my way to a hospice.¡± I looked in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were glistening. ¡°I don¡¯t have any family left,¡± she continued. ¡°The doctor says I don¡¯t have very long.I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. ¡°What route would you like me to take?¡± I asked.For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front timberland bootsof a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.¡¡Sometimes she¡¯d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, ¡°I¡¯m tired. Let¡¯s go now.We drove in silence to the address she had given me.It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair. ¡¡I didn't understand, since I'd never owned anything I cared all that much plastic injection mouldsabout. Still, planning for disaster held considerable fascination for me.The plan was to move upstairs if the river reached the seventh of the steps that led to the front porch. We would keep a rowboat downstairs so we could get from room to room. The one thing we would not do was leave the house. My father, the town's only doctor, had to be where sick people could find him.I checked on the river's rise several times a day and lived in a state of hopeful alarm that the water would climb all the way up to the house. It did not disappoint. The muddy water rose higher until, at last, the critical seventh step was reached.We worked for days carrying things upstairs, until, late one afternoon, the water edged over the threshold and rushed into the house. I watched, amazed at how rapidly it rose.After the water got about a foot deep inside the house, it was hard to sleep at night. The sound of the river moving about downstairs was frightening. Debris had broken windows, so every once in a while some floating battering ram--a log or perhaps a table--would bang into the walls and make a sound likeair jordan a distant drum.¡¡Every day I sat on the landing and watched the river rise. Mother cooked simple meals in a spare bedroom she had turned into a makeshift kitchen. She was worried, I could tell, about what would happen to us. Father came and went in a small fishing boat. He was concerned about his patients and possible outbreaks of dysentery, pneumonia or typhoid.Before long, the Red Cross began to pitch tents on high ground north of town. "We are staying right here," my father said. As the water continued to rise, I kept busy rowing through the house and looking at the furniture that had been too big to move upstairs. I liked to row around the great cozy couch, now almost submerged, and pretend it was an island in a lake.One night very late I was awakened by a tearing noise, like timbers magazine print creaking. Then there was the rumbling sound of heavy things falling. I jumped out of bed and ran into the hallway. My parents were standing in the doorway to the den, where we had stored the books and my mother's beloved china.The floor of the den had fallen through, and all the treasures we had tried to save were now on the first floor, under the stealthily rising river. My father lit our camp light, and we went to the landing to look. We could see nothing except the books bobbing like little rafts on the water.Mother had been courageous, it seemed to me, through the ordeal of the flood. She was steady and calm, and kept things going in good order. But that magazine print night she sat on the top of the stairs with her head on her crossed arms and cried. I had never seen her like that, and there was a sound in her weeping that made me afraid. I wanted to help her, but I couldn't think of what I could possibly do. I just knew I had to figure out something.
    丽君 发表于:2010-1-23 14:11:50