Need a jump?

Don’t ever reach the age of 64 without knowing how to jump-start your car.

On the other hand, how often does one perform that operation, that one should be expected to remember the technique? The answer is: not often enough to aver with absolute certainty whether you attach the red thingie or the black thingie first, and whether the proper sequence is from lifeless car to the Good Samaritan’s car, or the other way around. Oh, and what was it that you must never ever do or you may die? Isn’t there a cable part that is under no circumstances to touch another part?

When I was ready to leave church after painting a wall in a Sunday school room, my car was dead as a doornail, as Dickens said about old Marley. If it had to happen, a church parking lot is as good a place as any for a car to die. Still, I didn’t want to disturb members of the pastoral staff who might be in a meeting, so I waited.

After two full minutes of that, I phoned my husband. His boss, with whom he was power-washing a house, phoned his wife to come to my aid. As coincidence would have it, a car soon limped to a stop on the street in a position perpendicular to mine. It was bulging with humanity. Two doors opened on the sidewalk side and they all squirmed inside on what was a muggy 90-degree-plus day. Kids climbed over the seats like worms in a fisherman’s bucket. It never occurred to me to ask if they needed assistance.

Heidi arrived a short time later, and while my car was tethered to hers on life support, she approached the fisherman’s bucket and asked if they needed assistance. Brilliant. The father said his battery was shaky and he thought it best to let their car rest a while. A few minutes later he turned the key and the engine tried to start but quickly sputtered and gave up the ghost.

We were all sitting under a large church sign that read, “Are you looking for a church home? Come visit us.” Somehow I got the idea to go inside the building and raid the church refrigerator, in the name of Jesus. For it was Jesus who said, “And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will b

y no means lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42).

I wasn’t sure if that reward applied to giving other people’s cold Deer Park water in 16.9-ounce bottles, but there was no time to think much about that. Action was called for. In the industrial kitchen-sized fridge was a pallet of mongrel brand 7UP (which most Americans prefer to water), of which a few cans were missing. The missing cans I took as permission to take a few more. I grabbed four, and seven Styrofoam cups.

It all seemed very biblical to me, and the kids revived. But their car was not deemed by Heidi to be in a safe place on the main road, so it was decided by the ad hoc committee, which now included Heidi’s daughter and a church member who arrived in the middle of the scene, that we should all get behind the car and push it uphill and into the store parking lot across the street.

Traffic was heavy and we were making slow progress when a moving van stopped and its driver joined the effort. He was 30ish with a cigarette improbably attached to his lower lip, and he said only the following as he strained with us from the rear: “This is my good deed for the day.” I said, so he could hear, “Lord, remember this deed in his favor.”

Once my mother used to drive the Peruvian pastor who lived upstairs to immigration appointments. Though there was no guarantee he wouldn’t blow his sweet chauffeuring deal by doing this, he said to Mom one day before she was a Christian: “I really appreciate all your help to me, Paulette, but you know none of this will get you into heaven, don’t you?” She said, “I know.”

But it’s OK; she got there after all.