About three weeks ago, I was going north on Route 91 near Belchertown MA, when I seen Khidr standing along the road hitch-hiking. There is of course no mistaking the man, even if you are tooling along at 87 in a 65 mile zone, with your don’t-give-a-shit meter pegged and George Thorogood on the deck. Since he had said that if I saw him again I’d die and all, I thought the matter over for a fraction of a second before I decided what to do, but as I had in fact already seen him, I figured it was probably already too late anyway, and I’d already die or I wouldn’t, and I had to splash some gravel to stop and pick him up.

He did not run to the car. You just don’t think of Jesus or Moses ever running, and the Buddha neither except as kids maybe, and Khidr didn’t run to the car either. Just looked at me like it was about fuckin’ time I had gotten there.

For the life of me, I can’t remember why I was headed to Belchertown, anyways. So maybe I was in fact overdue.

He got in the car without a word, and I kind of choked up and couldn’t say anything to him either right away, and so I drove along in silence for a while, if you count George Thorogood as silence, which he certainly isn’t.

I finally got up enough nerve to say to him "I thought if I ever saw you again I was going to die?"

He thought about it a moment, and says: "Yeah, that’s right. Thanks for reminding me."

And that got my attention, and as I felt the blood rush to my head, I kind of involuntarily jerked across the centerline and kind of over-corrected as I pulled it back, and went zigging back to the median again but it was somehow stranger… and Khidr reached out suddenly and steadied the wheel, and we swerved once and then we were headed straight again, but even he looked a little wide-eyed at it all.

When I was finally able to feel my body again through the twitching, I says "I’m really surprised that you’re surprised. You get like surprised?"

Khidr was in his own world, sitting there and looking deep into the horizon, and when I spoke with him, it kind of shocked him, like he had forgotten that I was there.  He brought out a handkerchief that he fished from a front pocket and wiped his forehead.

"Oh yes," he said, nodding slowly. "Oh yes. All the time. All the time. All the time," he sighed. "May God continually surprise us!"

This puzzled me, and Khidr sensed it.

"You don’t like surprises?" asked Khidr.

"Not if surprise means near death!" says I.  Khidr was quiet for a moment.

"And what did you notice," he asked, quietly, "at your moment of greatest surprise?"

‘When the car was headed off? At the moment of greatest surprise? What did I notice?"

"At that one particular moment. What did you see within the surprise?! Are you so dense you did not even sense it?"

And then it flashed in me the moment he was talking about. For a second there, I was actually looking at reality, or a better reality than I’m looking at now. "At one moment, yes, I sensed it…". I said, " but then I forgot about it when I stopped being scared."

I thought about it for a moment, but to be frank, speaking to me like that kind of pissed me off, even if it was Khidr who was doing the pissing.

"So. Where is it you want me to drop you?" says I, driving the car and picking up some speed.

Khidr paused.

"When you stop going north, drop me off," he says, settling back.

And then we passed a few minutes in silence. Then I said to him:

"Let me know when it stops going north, 'cause I got no sense of it."

And then he nods. And then some time goes by.

And I say to him, " that meeting with you at the Depot meant a lot to me…"

"The Depot?" he says.

"I met you at the Home Depot a couple of years ago," says I.

"Of course, of course," he says. " You are you.  I certainly know you as you.’"

"Really? " asks I.

"Kind of," says Khidr.

"You don’t remember me, do you?" says I.  I look at him, and his face kind of scrunches up.

"I’m twenty-five hundred years old," says Khidr. " Give me a freaking break."