When you first read the story, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, you get this picture of this man who has no home, probably nothing to eat, maybe no family, even one-armed, and yet you continue to read. You get no feeling of love or security. Then you learn about this lady, she is a mother of one and from what you can tell, she has no husband. Her daughter, Lucynell, is, what you would say now a days, “Mentally Handicapped.” She was a deaf, mute who had many learning disabilities. She had no pity party for herself, because she didn’t know any better.
Then this man comes along and he was just looking for work and then he spots a car and wants to know how he might achieve the car. Then he finds this woman sitting on the porch and he starts talking to her… “You can take the car but I have a lovely daughter,” not at all mentioning that she was thirty-three, but sixteen. Well you would not have known the difference, for she did not look a day over sixteen.Do you want to get rid of your daughter so badly that you would be willing to give her to a complete stranger, who could murder her and you would not even know. But then he agreed to marry her just for the car, with the paint job.
Before they get married, he teaches her words to say just like an amazing husband would. You end up thinking ‘Wow! This man will take care of her and they will live happily ever after.’ He does some things around the house for the mother, also in their agreement. Then comes the big day! They get married, and he decides to take her for almost a honeymoon. They get to driving, the sack lunch that her mother, his new mother-in-law, had packed them lunches. She finished off her lunch first. Then decided to take her hat pluck off the cherries one by one and throwing them out the window. This innocent lady decides to fall asleep.
“Maybe she’s hungry…” he thought. So he stops at a roadside cafe, buys her lunch and pays for it. She is so tired she just decides to fall asleep on the counter at the cafe. To which he tells the man behind the counter that she is a hitchhiker. He then leaves. He comes upon a hitchhiker and picks him up and lectures him. I’m sorry but if you lecture the little guy… then maybe you should take your own advice… until then you have no place to talk. The hitchhiker jumped out of the car. A storm comes and this man believes, truly that the storm will swallow him whole. To which I’m thinking… “Oh man I really hope it does!!!”
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