08-02-2021, 11:31 AM
1
Bringing Mary Home
The young man was driving carefully. He was unfamiliar with the road that was narrow, winding, dark, and unlit.He slowed right down on one particularly sharp, blind corner, and it was well that he did so, for standing right in front of him was a girl of perhaps ten years old, looking confused and frightened.
Looking around warily lest he be jumped by thugs, he eventually asked the girl if she was alright or needed help.
“My name’s Mary, can you take me home please?”
The man was rightly hesitant. What if he was stopped? How would he explain why he had a child he didn’t know in the car?
“Please,” continued the girl, “it’s not far.”
It wasn’t safe for the girl to be out here in the road on her own, so eventually he decided to give her a lift.
He opened the back door, and the girl got in. Once they set off the girl gave him brief directions, and within a few minutes they arrived at a bungalow with a short gravel drive.
Getting out, he went to open the rear door only to find the car empty. He had neither heard nor felt the door open and close, which he was sure he would have done, nor had he heard the expected crunch of feet on gravel.
He was baffled as he started to look around, when the porch light came on, the bungalow door opened, and a rather sad looking middle aged couple came out.
The young man was about to explain about the girl when the woman said, “We’ve been expecting you. Please come inside.”
Again, he was hesitant. But the couple had re-entered their home and left the door open for him to follow.
He was offered a seat opposite the homeowners, who were sitting on the edge of a sofa, when the man began to speak.
“Thirteen years ago today we lost our daughter in a hit and run just a short distance from here, and we still miss her terribly.”
The woman then spoke, fighting back tears as she did.”
“You’re the thirteenth one that’s been here, bringing Mary home”
Whilst the words are mainly mine, I got the idea from a Country and Western song of the same name I heard about fifty years ago. The last line of my story is also the last line of the song.
I wrote the story entirely from memory, but had no idea how popular this song was until I did a search after posting. There are dozens of version on t'internet if anyone is interested, but the version I remember was by a group called The Clay County Travellers.
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