Helen Cooke almost arrived in Wetzel, West Virginia on a Sunday. Her husband had died nearly a year prior, his body having rejected the kidney she had miraculously been a match for and selflessly given him. In the dark days that followed she tended her ailing mother, reversing their roles as folks sometimes do near the end until the mother, too, passed on. Having nothing left to tie her to the Pennsylvania community in which she had been raised, no employer, no children, no close friends to speak of, she walked straight from the tiny cemetery where they buried her mother, climbed into her car, and headed south along US 19. Maybe she felt the pull of the hills, the gentle rocking drive along switchbacks leading deeper into unknown lands, dark and hypnagogic. Or maybe she had simply reached her end and was still breathing just enough to start the car, pull the transmission into drive, follow the double yellow lines. In her state she managed to lose track of both time and fuel consumption, and as her gauge neared E she pulled onto a gravel road parallel to Baxter’s Run looking for a filling station, a hotel, anything really. Instead she found me.

Helen was shaky and eye averted as she stepped from the old Edsel, struggling to form words into questions.

“Sorry,” she finally got out straight. “It’s been a month of a day.”

“S’alright, ma’am. You get turned around out here?”

“Maybe, I’m not sure.” She looked around at the hillsides, as if that might help. “If you could please direct me into town, I saw a sign a few miles back but it’s rusted out where it should say how far it is, and I’m nearly out of gas.”

“Well, it’s about seven, eight miles on in to Wetzel from here, but there’s not much to it once you get there. Just a stoplight and a diner, really. Tell you what, I’ve got a five gallon can out the shed there, be happy to give you enough to get you on your way.”

“That’s very good of you,” she said, relief cascading over her face, and stepped forward, her hand extended in the default greeting of our tribe. “I’m Helen.” I shook her hand without wanting to, and it folded like a Kleenex in my palm.

“Jacob Baxter, ma’am. Nice to meet you.”

I fetched the gas can down to the car and emptied it into the Edsel’s tank while she looked on. Her nerves seemed to relax a little as the liquid belched and gulped down the filling spout, trading places with the air.

”You look to me like you could use a meal, maybe some rest. I was on my way inside to cook up some rabbit, if you’d like to join me.”

“Jacob, now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve eaten in days.”

Inside, I stood over the cast iron stove, agitating the stew with an old wooden spoon while Helen told her sad tale. An early miscarriage had made her gunshy on the subject of children, so her husband and mother were all the family she had. It seemed as though she was still in a fugue state as she spoke, wide eyed and nearly monotone. I kept my words to a minimum, allowing her silences to linger until she cared for them to be broken. I ladled stew into bowls and placed bread and warm butter on the table, and as I listened I felt an old curiosity building.

“Thank you so much,” she said, finishing a bite. “There’s really not enough kindness to go around these days, is there? Well, not where I’m from anyways.”

“People up Little Washington way, all crowded together, don’t seem to have much room for each other. ‘Least not the couple times I’ve been. Can’t even imagine what it’s like in Chicago or New York.”

“All this technology, it’s just driving a wedge between folks. You sit in a dark room and watch a box full of light and sound for hours and never think to talk to the kid at the grocery store or the clerk at the hotel. They’ve got stories, too, you know.”

“Maybe their stories are dull,” I said, taking another bite.

“Maybe so, but they’re real.” As though it mattered. I had watched a few times when in town, and even I could see that television was meant to sell soap and motor oil, the programs not more than saccharine fruit in the bottom of a commercial snare. Television elevated the art of the story for the sake of the sale.

“I guess so.”

She joined me on the porch for a cigarette as the sun began to set behind the western ridge. We watched the shadows begin to stretch and bend in their encroachment on the house.

“Nearest hotel’s gonna be about thirty miles in the direction you’re headed. Or you could double back north about fifteen.”

“I really don’t know which direction I’m headed. I think I was sleepwalking, almost. I think maybe I still am.” Something in her gaze out over the property in that evening light set a hook in my belly, and I made a decision.

“Well, you’d best be on your way if you’re gonna make Clarksburg before it gets too late, if you decide to go that route. You can use the restroom to freshen up before you go.”

“If you don’t mind? I’ll just be a minute.”

She walked inside and I moved down off the porch to the Edsel and popped the hood quietly. I reached over by the air intake and pulled the coil wire from the center of the distributor cap, just enough to feel the click of disconnection, and gently eased the hood back down. I was lighting a fresh cigarette on the porch when she reemerged, blinking quickly and saying hasty thank-you’s, her eyes avoiding mine once again.

“It’s really no trouble at all, ma’am. Turns out I needed the company. Nice to hear a woman’s voice for a change.” She looked up at me earnestly now, and I could see the redness around her irises as they receded from her pupils, the dark spots dilating even in the growing dusk.

“Well,” she said, “goodnight then.” Smiling for the first time, maybe in months.

I waved from the steps as she sat in her car and turned the key.

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Tune in to Dispatches Every Sunday to Continue Reading “The Kindness of Strangers” by Lou Poster.

Start from the beginning of “The Kindness of Strangers” on SVJ’s Features.

This is Lou’s first published piece.

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Lou Poster is a Native West Virginian, current resident of the poorest county in Ohio. Appalachian songwriter/singer/storyteller. Son of a third-generation coal miner.