Night of the Apple IIe

Sometimes the most sound one can make is silence. The fingers won’t dance. Nor the mind have its magical thoughts.

Nighttime in a small town. In the office next door to church and rectory, thinking, reading, a little prayer, you type a sermon on the Apple IIe. Outside a siren goes screaming by. A few minutes later screams back again. You keep thinking, typing. The office phone rings and you answer. From the rectory next door she says, “Are you sitting down? She’s fine. Tass is fine.”

"What?" You are no longer sitting down. "What?"

“She’s fine. Tass is fine. She called me from the hospital, she’s fine. Her face is cut and bleeding but she’s fine. They had an accident on the bridge. That was the ambulance that went by.”

Shaking, you run. Run. Run. Run. Thirty seconds to the hospital in your car. Down the hospital aisle in pajamas. Grab her. Hold. She’s fine. She is fine. She says, “I told them not to call, I had to call myself. My parents would have a heart attack if anything happened to me.”

She’s fine.

Her daddy