Lord Help Him If You Can

By Peter Bowden


He stood at the gas station payphone with one hand clenched around a folded piece of paper and the other shaking on the receiver. The words were simple—directions scribbled in fading ink, a name he hadn’t said aloud in fifteen years, and a question too heavy for breath. The wind pulled at his jacket like a ghost with somewhere to be. He didn’t know if he was running toward something or just trying not to drown in what he’d left behind.

In the sky, clouds gathered like gossip. Somewhere down the highway, a diner light flickered to life, yellow and tired. He remembered that place. She had poured his coffee and called him “sugar,” not out of flirtation but mercy. He had never deserved it. Not then. Maybe not now. But the line rang once, then twice. He could still hang up. He could still walk away.

A boy in the parking lot dropped his ice cream, looked up at the man with a face that expected the world to be kind. The man stared at him, saw the boy he used to be, praying in his grandma’s kitchen with sticky hands and scraped knees. “Lord help him if you can,” she used to say. And now, with the third ring echoing into the dusk, he whispered it too—not for himself, but for the person who might pick up.


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