Story: Good Samaritan Story for Travelers Along Another Road and in Another Place

It was an idyllic summer day and my sisters and I were talking happily as we headed across South Carolina low country for a day in Charleston. Suddenly, a woman ran out in the road, frantically motioning to us. It happened so fast that I remember watching her in the rear view window as we passed her. There in the narrow mirror, and seemingly even more disjointed in the reverse reflection, was the beautiful marsh creek we were crossing on a paved causeway. But there was a van in the creek, and, even more incredibly, indisputably, it was sinking even as I watched. It took a moment to process, and another unnerving moment to realize there was a driver in the van as the van sunk past the driver's window.

We knew there was an oyster factory ahead, so we laid on the horn, parked haphazardly and illegally in their lot and went bursting into the factory office, breathless from our run. “There's a van ... in the creek,,,and it's...sinking.” The man there jumped up immediately, only muttering,”Oh no, not again.” as he raced past us and out the door to his car. He was out the door before it had even had a chance to swing shut from our entrance. He knew an entire family had been lost some years before in a similar accident on this sharp and poorly banked curve. We could have gone on to Charleston, but priorities had changed; we took one look at each other and knew we had to go back to see if the man were all right because he had become very important to us.

By the time we returned, only a narrow space showed below the car's roof as it had settled towards the sandy bottom. Other cars had gathered, precariously parked on the sloping marsh banks like skiers poised hesitantly on a beginners' slope. Our man from the oyster factory was already there, throwing off his shoes and diving shallowly into the creek swollen with a high tide. Another man joined him, and we all held our breaths as the two were able to maneuver the limp man inside to the top of the roof of his van. Finally, the words sang back to us across the marsh, "He's alive!" and we all could now exhale.The driver was unconscious and had a broken leg, and he would have died there before us on this brilliant summer day without the intervention of strangers. The rescuers hesitated then, now with the man out of the water they had the luxury of taking the time to try to figure how to get the man to the safety of the bank, but the deed was soon accomplished.

It was a pure witness to the intention of strangers to be kind and protective to other travelers along the way. As John Donne said in the seventeenth century, “No man is an island entire to itself.... Except a clod be washed away to the sea, the promontory is made the less.... Do not send to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” Each person there did everything he or she could to ensure that this man would survive. A teenage boy took off his white tee shirt to help direct traffic; others retrieved flares or towels or blankets from the trunks of their cars. The image most deeply engraved in my mind's eye was a woman in high heels and hose on her knees in the sand alongside the man and picking the biting red ants from the man's legs and arms as the ants crawled on her own legs.

The ambulance came and loaded him on a stretcher, and we watched until we could no longer see the red flashing lights. The man was still unconscious, and I have often wondered if he ever had any idea how the world stopped for him along this other road in this other place. This was in the Deep South almost three decades ago. The man happened to be Black, and most of the bystanders were white, but we were all just human beings reaching out to each other. When we travel, there can be accidents and we are far from home and family, but if this story is an example of the greater world community, as I hope it is, our safety also can become dependent on the kindness of a random sampling of humanity, and they also will do everything in their power to care for us, as we would for them.