Nice Guys Finish Aghast

Poor Hick. The perpetually put-upon nice guy. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

A few days ago, Hick declared that I didn't need to make his supper. He was going to cook up a feast of ham and eggs and biscuits. Let the record show that I DID buy the ham (already sliced) because Hick had asked for some bologna (they were out of the garlic variety) or ham for some lunch sandwiches. Also, I provided the biscuits, which I had bought way back when The Pony was home. We didn't have time to use them, and I'd mentioned that they needed to go. Because the last time I forgot about biscuits in the refrigerator, we had an unfortunate explosion, which resulted in the arrival of The Original FRIG.

Anyhoo... this was Hick's idea. He knows how to cook his eggs over easy, and I've only done it a couple of times. Which may be why he wants to do it himself. I could hear him upstairs in the kitchen, stumping from FRIG II to stove. Heard the oven door. It's not that I try to spy on him, just that a mother always has one ear roaming for possible trouble, and Hick is pretty much like a kid who needs some supervision. I could smell the ham frying. Let the record show that I'd made myself a bowl of chicken/refried beans/cheese/salsa/sour cream, since I knew that Hick would not be preparing any extra food to offer to me. I'm psychic like that.

Anyhoo... I heard Hick clomping down the stairs. I wondered if he'd had a kitchen catastrophe. He stepped into my lair, and said

"I just got a call from Wreck [back creek neighbor Bev's husband]. He's broke down on that stretch where you came to get me in the Mercedes that time." [1986 Mercedes, wedding-mint-yellow, boxy, bought in 2006]

"Oh. That's too bad, right at suppertime."

"I know. I just got my eggs done."

"Well, you can give them to the dogs, and make more eggs when you get back."

"Yeah. Or just warm them up."

Anyhoo... Hick left to drive six miles out to get Wreck, and drive him six miles back home. He said that Wreck's van had a broken accelerator cable. I guess that's a thing. Hick said he was holding it in his hand when he drove up. Also, that Wreck has no idea how to drive a car that's being towed, because he wouldn't keep the chain taught, and twice Hick had to stop to reconnect it. Finally, when they got to the top of the mile downhill, Hick said, "I'm unhooking you. You can coast down to the gravel road, and then we'll hook back up."

Hick also said that Wreck asked him to tow the van farther out another back road, to a mechanic, but Hick told him no. The reason being that Hick had such trouble towing Wreck a couple miles that he was not about to embark on a longer journey.

"Did he offer to pay you for your trouble?"

It was a reasonable question. Wreck had taken Hick away from his supper, after dark, in the frigid cold, on a dangerous mission on two-lane blacktop with no shoulder. And Bev and Wreck always pay Hick for the odd jobs they ask him to do. Plus, Bev was Hick's best customer for that storage unit Tupperware, having bought at least $600 worth of it new in boxes, which Hick said was also a bargain for her, being worth about three times that. Anyhoo... I just figured they probably would have offered to pay. A tow truck from town would certainly have cost money, and taken twice the time.

"No. That kind of surprised me. He thanked me a bunch of times, and said if there was ever anything I needed, to give him a call. I thought he might offer me something. But he didn't."

Here's the thing. Hick doesn't do stuff like this in hopes of being paid. He does them because he's a nice guy. He might even have refused to take anything for his trouble. Bev has given him a bunch of stuff that she doesn't want, which Hick has sold for profit at his Storage Unit Store. They don't owe him anything. They've been more than generous.

Still. An offer might have been nice.