Читать книгу Ordinary Sins - Jim Heynen - Страница 14

THE HELPER

This man always wanted to help, whether he was asked or not. It made sense when someone was stuck in a snowbank or had trouble opening a stuck door. Just the decent thing to do. But there were other times when he surprised people with his smiling face and helping hands. Once he took the lawnmower from the grip of someone who was sweating profusely.

I’m all right, the man protested. I’m in shape and have a strong heart.

Take a break, said our helper, you deserve it.

The helper mowed the lawn and asked for nothing in return. The two parted with a handshake and a mown lawn.

It was when he picked lint off people’s sleeves in a department store or stooped to tie a runner’s shoelace that people looked at him suspiciously. There was something unthreatening about him, though—mostly his voice and the comfortable way he moved—that made it easy for people to trust him. After he helped a woman scrape ice off her windshield in midwinter, she asked him if he had read that study about how unselfish goodness released endorphins and extended a person’s life.

No, he said. When someone needs help, it’s like one person is a dusty rug and the other one is a vacuum sweeper.

One day the helper saw a toddler weeping pathetically in a crowded aisle of a grocery store. He swept up the toddler and put her on his shoulders.

Don’t cry, little one, he said, I’ll help you find your mother.

He held her feet in his hands and turned in circles so that her eyes could be a periscope checking out the sea of heads around them. Look for your mother, he said. Just look around and she’ll see you way up there.

The toddler was afraid of heights and screamed loudly and beat the top of the helper’s head with her small tear-drenched fists.

The helper felt someone from behind scoop the child from his shoulders. He assumed someone was there to help him in his helping. One officer was taking the child from his shoulders and, just as quickly, another put handcuffs on his wrists.

The strange thing about this story is that you’d think the helper would have learned a lesson. He didn’t. He was careful around little children after that, but his need to help was an addiction that no one and nothing could remedy.