We asked him if he was from Berea. He said, no, that he was a truck driver who happened to have stopped here for the night. He may have had things to deliver around these parts, I do not remember. He said his name was Jim "Jimmy" Kilgore from Gaston, Alabama. Did I mention that he was a very large man, sitting very close to me? I wasn't threatened. In fact, I asked him to bring the enormous pile of food over to our table and eat with us, for it was just sitting there two tables away, growing cold. He thanked us but said no. The reason, I soon discovered, was that he enjoyed meeting people and talking, and oddly, I found him interesting and fun to listen to. He was a natural story teller, but before we get to the story, he wanted to show me his knife. Oops. I know. Scary stuff, eh. Well, not really. He dug in his pocket and hauled out this enormous black folding knife, saying I probably hadn't seen one like that since it had a bit of pointed metal on one end for breaking car windows if you are in a wreck and the door won't open. And, it had what looked like a bottle opener on one side with a small sharp blade inside, that was useful for cutting the seat belt in the same wreck. I was duly impressed, but I said, "Is that a Smith and Wesson?" He sort of looked at me as a bit of a kindred spirit, a little bit. I said, "Here, let me show you mine." He wasn't impressed, and muttered something about a little pocket knife. I would have been more impressive if I could have hauled my knife out right away, but with my hands having no feeling and my pocket being full of stuff, it took me a bit to get to the knife, not a little pocket knife but not one as impressive as his. (Actually, the minute I saw his I was determined to have one. Oh yes. A window breaker, a seatbelt cutter, and a very large blade. I ordered one from Amazon that night.)
Mine was a spyderco, a lovely large knife that fits my wounded hands perfectly. After we had showed each other our weapons, well, tools would be a better word here, the bond was made, friends for life, sort of. I felt affection for him that I haven't felt for a new acquaintance in a very long time. and I still feel it. I suspect it has as much to do with his story as anything.
He said he was not only a truck driver but also some kind of minister back in Alabama. I asked him if he minded Catholics, some Southerners do, or used too anyway, but he was fine with Catholics, he said.
He had hurt his back, I think it was, and was in the hospital for an operation. It was one of those experiences where, even though they put you under, you are or seem to be still conscious. During his operation, he told us, as best as I can remember, that he saw Heaven and Jesus looking down at him. What was interesting about the story was that he didn't care whether we believed him or not, he was just interested in us hearing him out. We ate, he talked.
Normally I am suspicious of such stories, but in this case I was convinced that he was telling us what he really experienced. The clincher for Jimmy was that Jesus (no description) looked down at him and communicated through what I would call mental telepathy, no moving lips, he said, just mind to mind. Jimmy just heard Jesus inside his head. Jimmy said it was the best experience of his life and that he wanted to stay where they were, but Jesus said, not yet. Jimmy also said that as he thought he was coming out of his anesthesia, he heard two women walking past him in the hallway, in a bright light, talking. He could not remember about what, but when he was fully awake he found out that he was at the end of the hallway and that there was no way anyone could have walked past him in the way he described. I think he thought he had experienced the presence of angelic creatures, but he didn't quite say that.
In any case Mary and I enjoyed him and his recounted experience, found it believable and interesting, and he was such a large amiable man that it would have been impossible not to enjoy his company. When the restaurant began cleaning up Jimmy still had a mountain of untouched food. He asked the young woman doing the cleaning if they had a microwave. She said no, so the last we saw of Jimmy, as we were driving away, he was walking across the highway with his pile of chicken and fixings, looking for a gas station across the road that would very likely have a microwave, he was extremely confident of that. He was a truck driver; gas stations always have microwaves. We offered him a lift till he found one, but he said no and waved us on. He had talked to us for over an hour and a half. We got to Famous Recipe about 8:15 and said goodbye to him close to 10 o'clock. I have suspected ever since that he had a touch of divinity about him too, even with the large knife, a real source of delight for him (and now for me too) because there was a sense of joy and good humor about him that I simply don't find in people on this road, so to speak.
Whatever kind of experience he had and we then had it was memorable. Sometimes when I reflect on what happened that night I get a bit whimsical and think that perhaps we had shared the evening with our guardian angel, or even more interesting, Christ himself checking in on us as a fellow traveler.