Meeting Zeus in a Parking Lot

The man’s name was George. He played a guitar. And he was in love.

photo from pexels

George told me he was an up-and-coming songwriter and musician from the deepest part of Mississippi. I met him in the parking lot of Deli-On-The-Rocks, a tiny little restaurant in the middle of nowhere Maryland. He was sitting on a plastic picnic table, sweating in his cargo pants with his boots resting on a lumpy duffel bag, strumming away on an old guitar.

I told him I liked his tattoo. It was an eagle swooping through the sky on his arm.

He glanced down at it and nodded. “Thank ya, ma-yum. I gotta thing for eagles.” His accent was thicker than molasses, and every word twanged like the strum of banjo.

“What’s your shirt say?” He asked, narrowing his eyes at my tee.

It’s from a college I visited, I told him. I like talking to banjo-voiced, guitar-playing men in the middle of parking lots. They’re interesting.

“Miss-sigh-ya,” he read aloud, punctuating each syllable with a strum of his guitar. “Where’s that at?”

Pennsylvania.

“‘Sylvania? That’s where I’m headin’ next. I’m a man on a mission, ya know?”

I didn’t know.

“Yes ma-yum,” he drawled. “Gotta go get me girl.”

And then, I kid you not, he broke into song.

While I can’t remember the lyrics, I’ll never forget the story.

George and Mel met in the summer of ‘63, in the middle of a hurricane. A tree smashed into her car and she came barging through his door, soaking wet and and as wild as the wind. She grabbed George by the arm and he said it was like being struck by lightning. Together they huddled under the itty-bitty fold-out table of his trailer home while the world tore apart outside.

Mel brought magic into George’s life. In those cramped hours spent under his table, she told him her life’s story, and all George could do was sit and listen. He said her voice was music. And once that storm of a woman leapt into his life, he couldn’t let her go.

From then on they were inseparable. They spent every evening together, windows down, flying along the backroads of Mississippi. Mel’s hair would whip around his old truck as she belted along to his scratchy FM radio.

She helped him write his songs, he said, because until her, he didn’t know what he was writing about.

When he got his first gig at the open mic at the local bar, she was there, swaying her hips out on the dance floor.

And when George’s mother died, Mel sat with him at the gravesite and held his hand and cried with him.

No one could make him angrier, he said, and no one could make him happier. “She could break my heart with one look, and fix it again with another. Love puts it all on the line.”

She was a bombshell. An explosion in his life whose wake left his ears ringing and his mind reeling.

“I woulda married her, too,” George paused in his song, eyes getting a far off look. “If only…”

If only what George, I asked. If only what? If you and Mel can’t be together, then Walt Disney is a liar, life’s gone to hell, and all love is dead.

“If only it weren’t for her mean old bastard of a father,” he said. And his eyes got dark and his jaw got tight, and I swear the sky got darker and clouds rolled over the sun.

See, Mel’s mean old bastard of a father didn’t like George. Not one bit. Didn’t like that he was a musician, didn’t like that George loved Mel, and certainly didn’t like that Mel loved George. So the miser of a man sent Mel away.

“He tried to hide that girl who I loved so dear. And so he sent her packing far, far away from here. When I came t’bring her flowers, and get down on one knee, that lowlife father, he swore: he’d never let Mel marry me.”

But George didn’t let that stop him. No sirree, he couldn’t. He asked everyone he knew about his bombshell, and finally, when all hope was almost lost, he stumbled on a clue.

“That nasty pa of hers had a brother, and that’s where he sent my Mel. Ta live with her uncle in the very depths of Hell.”

Me: Where? Florida?

George: Worse. He sent her to Can’da.

So George threw some clothes in a bag and slung his guitar on his back and began driving. His truck kicked it somewhere between the Carolinas. So he left it on the side of the road and was walking the rest of the way.

“Oh Mel, dear Mel, when I first laid eyes on her, my heart fell. She’s my heaven, my hope, my sweetest angel. So I’m on my way to her, to save her from her cell. ‘Cause I gotta, just gotta, get back to my bombshell Mel.” George sighed and fell silent, lost in his thoughts.

Then, with a start, he jumped to his feet. “Well, ma’am, I best be movin’ on. A woman like Mel can’t wait forever.” He grabbed his bag and paused. “You should get the pizza. Best I’ve had.” Then he tipped an imaginary hat at me, and just… walked away.

I stared dumbfounded at the picnic table where he’d sat, when the restaurant door jingled. A teen leaned outside and looked at me.

“You gonna order somethin’?” He popped his gum loudly. His eyebrows were enormous.

“Uh, yeah… Can I have a slice of pizza?” He heaved out a “fine” and was about to slink back inside when I stopped him.

“Wait. Sorry, I just… how long was that guy sitting here?” I asked, jerking my head in the direction George had gone.

“Who?” The kid cocked a hairy eyebrow.

“The one with the guitar. George.”

The brows stared back at me, uncomprehending. Finally he sighed. “Look I don’t know who you’re talking about. Do you want pizza or not?”

“Oh. Sorry. Yeah.”

Later, when Eyebrows dropped off my pizza, I tried again. “You really didn’t see the guy sitting here, playing his guitar? Cargo pants, big boots… southern accent?”

Eyebrows blinked at me. “Look, I just work here.”

And while I ate my pizza (it was pretty good), I thought about The Odyssey and The Iliad and when gods show up on Earth looking like humans. About eagles and strangers and country music. And about hurricanes and ancient stories and a lightning-strike kind of love.