How did I get myself into this mess? I’d just wanted to do something nice for our friend Emma, and now I’d lost her leg.
I guess I’d better explain. We’d been searching for over an hour, retracing my route, four times up and down the mile-long stretch of road leading to Emma’s place. My wife, Marian, was sure we’d stumble upon the leg somewhere.
“Maybe someone will find it for us,” she said. “Have faith.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Someone will just tap one of us on the shoulder and say they found a leg on the street.”
Not Emma’s leg, mind you. The iron leg of the bench in her front yard.
“The yard man hit it with his lawn mower this morning and cracked one of the legs in half,” Emma had explained to me.
She was a widow we’d met through our church, and I’d done a lot of little jobs for her over the years—fixed leaky drains, cleaned out gutters, things like that— but this job needed a professional welder. Luckily I knew one.
I took the leg off the bench and brought the pieces to my buddy’s shop, where he repaired them, then wire-brushed and repainted the mended leg. I loaded it into the back of my green Dodge pickup, feeling pretty good about my good deed.
Just one problem…I left the tailgate down. When I got to Emma’s the leg was gone. It must have fallen out somewhere along the road.
“It’ll turn up,” Marian insisted as we drove.
I admired her faith, but it wasn’t as if the leg had a name or an address on it. To a stranger it would look like a piece of junk. What could I do, put up posters around the area? Missing: One leg. If found… I’d be laughed out of town.
Finally I called off the search and headed to a store that carried outdoor furniture. I could see only one option. Buy a whole new bench to replace the damaged one. I cringed when I saw the price: $160. Welding the leg had only cost $20.
Early the next morning, Marian and I put the new bench together, slipped into Emma’s yard and replaced the broken one. We loaded her old bench in the back of my truck to haul it down to the dump.
“Let’s stop at the drugstore first. I have to pick up a few things,” Marian said.
When we got there, I split off from Marian to buy some razor blades. Heading for the checkout line, I saw her with a scruffy-looking stranger. The man seemed excited, waving his hands around as he spoke. I quickly paid for my things and went over to see what was wrong.
“Everything okay here?” I asked warily.
The man turned toward me. “I was walking up a hill about half a block from here a couple of days ago,” he said. “A green pickup drove past me and something fell off the back. It was an iron leg.
The truck was long gone by the time I picked it up, so I propped the leg against a tree by the side of the road. I’ve passed by that tree every day. The leg is still there. Today I saw your truck pull into the parking lot—with the one-legged bench inside it. I knew I had to find you!”
Marian smiled. “I was standing right over there when he tapped me on the shoulder,” she said, “and told me he’d found a leg on the street.”
The man led us to the tree. Sure enough, there was the lost leg.
Marian and I replaced the new bench with the old one. We thought we’d gotten away with the switch until Emma called. “How did you do that?” she asked. “My granddaughter and I sat on that new bench this morning. When I got up from my nap this afternoon the old bench was back, good as new!”
Emma liked the replacement bench so much that she bought it from me so she could have one for her backyard and one out in front. “You know, I liked that new bench too,” Marian hinted.
So I bought one for us as well. All in all, my good deed had made everyone happy, but left my wallet $180 lighter.
Marian told me I would have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had just had more faith in God.
She had me there. “I’ll remember that,” I said. “Next time I lose a leg.”
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