Lightning hit the guardrail so hard I thought the whole interstate had exploded.

For a second, the whole stretch of I-80 in rural Pennsylvania lit up bone white—the kind of light that makes you feel like you’re standing in front of a firing squad instead of behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler. The sky didn’t look like sky anymore. It looked ripped open, raw and bruised, dumping a solid wall of water across the asphalt.

My wipers were thrashing like crazy, but they might as well have been eyelashes. The rain just kept pounding, heavy enough that my headlights bounced right back at me. Out there, in the middle of nowhere in the United States at two in the morning, there are only two things: your rig and yourself. If one of them fails, the other usually follows.

I checked the clock on the dash again.

4:02 AM Eastern.
Delivery due at Chicago depot by 5:00 AM Central.

Even in perfect conditions, that schedule would’ve been an insult. In this storm, it was a joke. A mean one.

But Davis didn’t do jokes.

I could still hear my boss’s voice from when I’d picked up the load outside Harrisburg. I’d been standing in the depot office, smelling burnt coffee and diesel, my jacket still unzipped when he called.

“Finn,” he said without preamble, “this load is time-sensitive. Apex Electronics, high-value shipment, tight contract. You get that truck to Chicago by five. Not five-oh-five. Not five-ten. Five. You’re late, don’t bother coming in. There are twenty guys waiting to take your seat.”

That’s the thing about long-haul trucking in America. The roads are long, the nights are longer, and there’s always someone waiting to replace you. You’re not a person to guys like Davis. You’re a moving asset. A number on a chart.

I pulled my cap lower on my forehead and leaned closer to the windshield, watching the broken white lane markers disappear under my headlights. My back ached from hours of tension, and a dull throb pulsed behind my eyes. I’d been running loads all week. My body was saying stop. My bank account was saying keep going until the wheels fall off.

“Chicago by five,” I muttered. “Right.”

The rig shuddered as a gust of wind punched us sideways. I corrected automatically, muscles doing the work long before my brain caught up. The hum of the engine, the steady rumble of the tires on wet asphalt, the insistent flick of the wipers—I’d lived this soundtrack for years.

My name is Finn Riley. Thirty-nine. US-born, raised on backroads and truck stops more than playgrounds and ball fields. My dad was a driver. His dad was a driver. I swore I’d do something different. And yet here I am, hauling freight through the night, chasing impossible deadlines for a man who barely knows my first name.

Funny how life works.

I was staring into that smeared gray tunnel of rain when I saw the flicker.

At first I thought it was just a reflection—light bouncing off the slick pavement. Then it blinked again. A weak, struggling pulse in the darkness. Hazard lights.

You learn to recognize them from way off. Out here, hazard lights on the shoulder in a storm like this don’t mean inconvenience. They mean danger. They mean someone’s luck ran out.

I squinted through the rain. The shape of a dark SUV resolved on the shoulder, tilted just slightly, hood up, like the car was hanging its head in defeat.

The smart part of my brain—the part that had listened to every threat Davis ever made—started yelling immediately.

Don’t stop.
Don’t get involved.
You stop, you’re late. You’re late, you’re fired.

The company rule was simple: no unauthorized stops. It was written, repeated, drilled into us. You don’t stop for broken cars. You don’t stop for hitchhikers. You don’t stop for anything.

Except my hands had already eased off the accelerator.

“Don’t do it,” I muttered to myself. “Not tonight. You can’t afford this.”

Then my headlights swept across the inside of the SUV as I came up alongside.

I caught the woman first.
Dark hair, pale face, wide eyes. She was turned sideways, looking toward the back seat instead of the road. Beside her, in a booster seat, I saw a small shape. A kid. Five, maybe six. The child’s hand was pressed against the glass, fingers splayed.

In that split second, before my truck roared past, I saw fear. The kind that goes straight through the glass and slams into your chest.

My foot moved.
Not by decision. By instinct.

I hit the air brakes.

The rig screamed, a deep hydraulic roar swallowed instantly by thunder. The trailer shuddered. The world narrowed to my lane and that small patch of shoulder. The rear swung just an inch too far before straightening. The anti-lock system chattered beneath me.

I brought forty thousand pounds of cargo and steel to a groaning stop a hundred feet ahead of that SUV.

“Damn it,” I whispered. “Well, Finn, you’ve done it now.”

I flipped on my own hazards, grabbed my rain gear from behind the seat, and shoved open the door. The storm hit like a punch to the face—cold needles of rain and a wind that tried to grab me by the shoulders and push me back inside.

I jumped down, boots splashing into a shallow river running along the shoulder. The smell of wet asphalt and diesel filled my lungs. The SUV’s driver door flew open and a man stumbled toward me, shielding his face from the rain.

He looked like every American father I’d ever seen bringing his kids into a rest-stop diner. Late fifties, graying hair, lines around his eyes that said he’d laughed more than he’d cried, until maybe tonight.

“Engine died!” he yelled over the wind. “Everything shut off. No lights, no power, nothing. Phone’s got no signal out here. We’ve been sitting for almost an hour. Can you—”

“Get back in the car,” I shouted. “Stay with your family. I’ll take a look.”

He hesitated. He wasn’t the type to hand his family’s fate to a stranger. But we didn’t have the luxury of time or options. Finally he nodded and ran back.

Under the hood, I saw what I was afraid I’d see: a dark mess of electronics and water. Whatever shorted out wasn’t getting fixed by a driver with a flashlight. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

I slammed the hood down and went back to his window. The woman stared at me, hand on the boy’s shoulder. The kid’s cheeks were flushed; his eyes were glassy.

“Engine’s fried,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere in this storm.”

The man’s face crumpled for a split second. He looked at his kid, then back at me. Behind him, lightning split the sky again.

“Tow truck?” he asked. “I tried to call, but—”

“In this weather?” I shook my head. “You’ll be lucky if one even answers, and if they do, it’ll be hours. You can’t sit out here with a kid.”

“I don’t know what else to—”

“I’ll tow you,” I said. “There’s a town about twenty miles ahead. Motel. Lights. Heat. You stay chained to my back bumper, I’ll get you there.”

He blinked rain from his eyelashes, disbelief and hope fighting on his face.

“I can’t ask you to do that. You’ve clearly got somewhere important to be.”

“Some deadlines,” I said, “aren’t as important as others.”

For a moment we just looked at each other. Two strangers on the side of a US interstate in the worst storm of the year. Then he stuck out his hand.

“My name’s Michael,” he shouted. “Michael Warren.”

“Finn,” I answered, clasping his cold hand. “Now get everyone buckled in tight. It’s going to be a slow ride.”

The next twenty minutes were sweat, rain, and metal. I dug the heavy-duty tow chains out of the side compartment on my rig, my fingers numb and clumsy. Michael helped, slipping in the mud once and almost going to his knees. Together we slapped shackles into place, looped chains, tested every link.

When I finally climbed back into my cab, I was soaked through to my skin. The cabin smelled like wet wool and diesel. My hands shook, not from fear but from adrenaline and cold.

“You still with me?” I said into the CB mic, tuned to the open channel I’d told him to use.

His reply crackled through the speakers. “We’re here, Finn. Ready when you are.”

I pulled us back onto the interstate, this time at a crawl. Forty-five miles an hour felt reckless. Thirty felt right. Every gust of wind tugged at the rig and the SUV behind me. Every car that sped past in the left lane threw up curtains of water.

But mile by mile, we moved.

Twice, Michael checked in on the radio. Once to say thank you. Once to tell me his son had finally stopped shivering.

“You truckers keep this country alive,” he said quietly the second time. “I’ve always known that. Tonight I feel it.”

“I’m just trying not to kill us both,” I answered. But his words lodged somewhere under my ribs and stayed there.

Finally, blessedly, the glow of exit lights appeared through the rain. Gas station. Diner. A squat two-story motel with a buzzing sign: VACANCY.

We pulled into the parking lot like survivors stumbling onto land after a shipwreck. I unhooked the SUV with stiff, clumsy fingers while Michael’s wife carried their half-asleep son into the motel office. The kid looked at me over her shoulder, eyes heavy but curious.

Michael came up, fishing out a worn leather wallet.

“I don’t have much cash,” he said, peeling out a wad of bills. “But please, let me—”

I pushed his hand away.

“You owe me exactly nothing,” I said. “Get your family inside and warmed up. That’s the only payment I want.”

He stared at me for just a second. His eyes were a sharp hazel color, intense even in the flicker of the neon light.

“I will not forget this,” he said finally. “Ever.”

We shook hands again, more firmly this time. Two men freezing in a motel parking lot somewhere in America, connected by nothing except weather and circumstance and a choice neither of us would ever forget.

As I climbed back into the rig and pulled my door shut, the warmth of what I’d done lasted exactly three seconds.

Then I looked at the clock.

4:15 AM Eastern.
The Chicago depot was still hundreds of miles away.

I wasn’t late anymore.
I was doomed.

The rest of that drive was a blur of white lines, caffeine, and a sinking dread that felt heavier than the cargo in my trailer. The storm finally weakened as the sky lightened, turning from black to navy to bruised purple. By the time I hit the outskirts of Chicago, dawn was creeping over the low industrial skyline.

When I rolled through the depot gates, it was just after 9:00 AM Central.

Four hours past the delivery deadline.
Six, by Davis’s math.

Drivers on the lot stopped what they were doing to watch. Some gave me a look that said, You okay? Others just winced like they were watching a slow-motion crash. Word travels fast in a depot. A late truck is blood in the water.

I backed the rig into the bay, unhooked in a daze, and hadn’t even climbed down from the cab when my phone buzzed.

Two words.

My office.

I walked in dripping fatigue and road grime. Davis was waiting behind his cluttered desk. Small room. Big anger. The blinds were half-open, casting stripes of pale light across his already flushed face.

“Six hours late,” he said without greeting. “Do you know how much that costs us?”

I stood there, exhausted but weirdly calm.

“Thirty thousand,” I said. “Five thousand an hour. I read the contract.”

He blinked, taken aback that I knew. Then his eyes narrowed.

“I told you no delays. No excuses,” he said. “You think you’re special? You think you’re smarter than the men who write these contracts?”

I explained. I told him about the storm, the SUV, the dead engine, the child in the car seat, the towing, the motel. I told him the truth, plain and simple.

He listened without interrupting, his expression unreadable.

Then he laughed.

Not a laugh that said this is funny.
A laugh that said this is pathetic.

“I don’t pay you,” he said slowly, “to rescue every sob story on the highway. I don’t pay you to run a charity towing service. I pay you to get freight from point A to point B on time. That’s it. That’s the job, Riley.”

“It was a family,” I said, teeth clenched. “In the middle of nowhere in a storm. No tow, no signal. I made a call. A human call.”

He slapped a form down on the desk and scribbled his signature.

“And here’s mine,” he said. “One week suspension. No pay. Final written warning. Next time you prioritize ‘human calls’ over contracts, you’re done in this industry. You can go drive rideshare and tell passengers how noble you are as you ferry them to the airport.”

I took the paper.
I didn’t argue.
Arguing with men like him is like yelling at concrete.

I walked out of that office with my head high and my future hanging by a thread.

The week off wasn’t a vacation. It was a long, slow descent into panic. I sat at my small rental house in a working-class neighborhood outside Chicago, drinking bad coffee and refreshing job boards. I had a daughter to support every other weekend. A wife who’d hung in there through layoffs and dry spells. A mortgage back in Indiana I was still partly responsible for after the divorce. Bills didn’t stop because my boss was angry.

On Friday afternoon, when my email pinged, I half-expected another slap—a termination notice, maybe. Instead, I found something worse in a different way.

Head Office – New York
Mandatory Meeting – Driver Riley, F. and Regional Manager Davis
Subject: Incident Review

New York City. Corporate tower. CEO.

It might as well have read:
Please travel at your own expense to be fired in person.

The bus ride from Chicago to Manhattan took forever. I watched the country slide past my window—Ohio cornfields, Pennsylvania hills, New Jersey sprawl—thinking about all the miles I’d driven, all the loads I’d delivered on time, all the nights I’d stayed awake fifteen minutes longer than my body wanted to.

By the time I stepped into the gleaming lobby on Park Avenue, wearing my best button-down and the only tie I owned, I felt like a man walking into a courthouse. Same knot in the stomach. Same awareness that strangers were about to decide my future.

Davis was already there in the marble-floored waiting area, wearing a suit that fit him like it belonged to someone else. He gave me a smile that didn’t touch his eyes.

“Riley,” he said, fake sympathy thick in his voice. “Rough week?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“Listen,” he leaned closer. “When we go in there, let me handle it. Don’t get emotional. Don’t try to justify yourself. I’ll tell them you’re a good driver who made a bad call. Maybe we can get you out of this with a severance instead of a blacklist. Deal?”

It took everything I had not to laugh in his face.

Before I could answer, the assistant opened the double doors.

“Mr. Davis. Mr. Riley. They’re ready for you.”

The CEO’s office looked exactly like you’d think the CEO of a nationwide logistics company’s office would look. Floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of Central Park, a desk the size of a small truck, abstract art on the walls.

But my eyes locked onto the man sitting not behind the desk, but in one of the leather chairs to the side.

Fresh suit.
Polished shoes.
Calm posture.

And the same sharp hazel eyes I’d seen in a stormy motel parking lot.

Michael Warren.

The man I’d towed through the hurricane of that Pennsylvania night.

The man whose kid had pressed his hand against his SUV’s window while lightning cracked overhead.

The man whose family I’d refused to leave on the side of the road.

My heart slammed so hard I thought it might show through my shirt.

The CEO rose.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a deep, controlled voice. “Thank you for coming. Before we begin, I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Michael Warren. His firm, Northstar Capital, acquired a majority stake in this company last month. He is now our principal owner and chairman of the board.”

Davis’s jaw literally dropped. For three full seconds, he looked like someone had unplugged his brain. Then he snapped to attention, tugging his jacket, trying to paste some version of professionalism back onto his face.

Warren stood, nodding first at the CEO, then at Davis, then finally at me.

“Good to see you again, Finn,” he said.

“Sir,” I managed.

We sat. The CEO began with corporate language about contracts and penalties and reputational risk. Then he paused, glanced at Warren, and leaned back.

“I reviewed the incident report from the Chicago depot,” he said. “Mr. Davis described a serious breach of protocol. A driver made an unauthorized stop, causing a substantial financial penalty. On the surface, it appears simple.”

He picked up a different file—thinner, newer.

“Then I received an email from Mr. Warren.”

Davis swallowed.

Warren shifted forward slightly.

“Two weeks ago,” he said, “my family and I were driving from New York to Ohio. We got caught in that storm you may have seen on the news. Our SUV’s electrical system failed—completely. No power, no lights, no phone signal, nothing. We sat for nearly an hour on the shoulder of I-80 while trucks barreled past us in the dark.”

He glanced at me. My palms began to sweat.

“Every single one of them drove on,” he continued. “Except one.”

He nodded in my direction.

“Only one driver decided that my wife and my young son were more important than his schedule. He towed us to safety, refused our money, and made no mention of who he worked for. I only found out later, from a receipt at the motel, that he drove for this company.”

The CEO looked at me with new interest.

“I asked for the driver’s name,” Warren said. “Then I asked for his record. Then I asked for the records of his supervisor. That’s when I learned that the same supervisor who had just written him up for saving my family had a long history of complaints from his depot. High turnover. Toxic culture. Safety shortcuts. Reports that somehow never made it up the chain.”

Davis opened his mouth.

“I—”

“Be quiet,” the CEO said, not loudly but with a finality that made the air in the room heavier.

Warren walked over to the window, hands in his pockets, looking out at the park like it was a giant map.

“I’m an investor,” he said. “I buy failing operations and fix them. When I look at a company, I look at contracts, revenue, margins, logistics. But I also look at people. Who you promote. Who you punish. That tells me what kind of business I’m really buying.”

He turned back toward us.

“This company punished a man for saving my child,” he said simply. “And it protected the man who tried to destroy him for it. That is not an issue of one incident. That is an issue of culture.”

Davis had gone gray. His eyes darted from Warren to the CEO like he was searching for a hidden door that wasn’t there.

“You fostered fear,” Warren told him. “You trained men to value deadlines over decency. That might work for a while, but not in a company I own.”

He glanced at the CEO, who nodded once.

“Mr. Davis,” the CEO said, “effective immediately, your employment with this company is terminated. You will be escorted out by security.”

It was done that quickly.

No long argument. No screaming match. Just a cold decision backed by authority.

Security entered. Davis tried to protest, but his words came out thin and desperate.

“This isn’t fair—he broke the rules—you can’t—”

But they could. And they did.

The door closed behind him.

The room felt twice as big.

Then Warren turned to me.

“Now,” he said, “let’s talk about you, Finn.”

I straightened instinctively. Old habit. Every meeting with a superior my entire life had meant bracing for criticism.

“You’ve been driving for how many years?” he asked.

“Seventeen,” I answered.

“Any major incidents? Accidents? Safety violations?”

“No, sir.”

He nodded.

“Your record’s clean. Your performance reviews—aside from this last one—are solid. Your fellow drivers mention you by name when they’re asked who they trust. And in the worst storm of the year, alone on a dark American interstate, you made a decision that cost you money but saved lives.”

He clasped his hands behind his back.

“I can teach someone how to manage reports, schedules, budgets. I cannot teach someone to have a conscience. That part has to come ready-made.”

I didn’t know where this was going. I just knew my heart was pounding again.

“I have a problem,” he said. “Chicago is one of our most important depots. And as of about three minutes ago, it has no regional manager.”

He looked me straight in the eye.

“I’d like you to take that job.”

My brain froze.

“I—sir—I’m just a driver,” I stammered. “I don’t have a degree. I’ve never run an office. I’m not—”

He held up one hand.

“You know the roads,” he said. “You know the work. You know how it feels to stand in the rain at two in the morning and decide whether a stranger lives or dies. You understand what’s at stake better than any spreadsheet jockey.” His mouth twitched into the faintest smile. “As for the rest—payroll, scheduling, metrics—I’ll make sure you get the training. Personally.”

The CEO cleared his throat with something that might have been amusement.

“In my experience,” he said, “some of the best leaders we have started behind the wheel.”

I stood there, the suspended driver who had taken a bus to New York expecting to be fired, and realized that in the space of ten minutes my entire life had pivoted.

From the bottom rung
to the middle of the ladder
with a hand reached down from the top.

“Do you want it?” Warren asked.

I thought of the storm. Of the kid in the backseat. Of my daughter back home, drawing trucks with crayons and telling her friends, “My dad drives America’s roads.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I want it.”

He extended his hand.

“Then welcome to management, Mr. Riley.”

When I walked out of that tower on Park Avenue, the city noise sounded different. I wasn’t leaving as a condemned man. I was leaving as someone given a second chance and a responsibility I hadn’t expected but desperately wanted to live up to.

The bus ride back to Chicago didn’t feel like a funeral anymore. It felt like a beginning.

On my first morning as regional operations manager, the Chicago depot felt wary. Drivers eyed me like I’d grown a second head. Office staff half-stood when I passed, then sat down quickly, unsure whether to treat me like one of them or one of the bosses.

I could have walked into Davis’s old office, closed the door, and hidden behind it. Instead, I climbed on a pallet near the loading bay and called everyone over.

They gathered slowly—drivers with grease-stained hands, mechanics smelling of oil, dispatchers clutching clipboards. These were my people. The ones who kept freight moving across the US while most folks slept.

“You all know who I am,” I said. “You know I was one of you last week. You also know I got suspended for being late on a load.”

There were nods. Shifts. A few sympathetic grimaces.

“What you might not know,” I continued, “is why I was late. So I’m going to tell you.”

I told them everything. The storm, the SUV, the tow, the suspension, the trip to New York. Then I told them that the man I’d helped was now the owner of the company, that Davis was gone, and that Warren wanted this depot to become the model for how the company should treat its people.

“This place,” I said, “is not going to be run on fear anymore. You will not be punished for doing the right thing. We will still work hard. We will still deliver on time. But we are not going to break people to move boxes.”

Silence. Then, from the back, one of the older drivers spoke up.

“Talk is cheap, Finn,” he said. “No offense. We’ve heard nice words before.”

“Fair,” I answered. “So here’s something that’s not just words.”

I pulled the printed memo from my pocket.

“Effective today, with approval from Mr. Warren, we’re implementing a new policy,” I said. “We’re calling it the Good Samaritan Rule. If a driver is late because they stopped to help someone in real distress—verified distress—they won’t be punished. They’ll be rewarded.”

A murmur swept through the group.

“You help a family stranded on the interstate? You pull another driver out of a ditch? You stay when there’s a wreck and you’re the first one there? You document it, you get confirmation from local police or witnesses, and instead of a suspension, you get a bonus on your next paycheck.”

The room went very quiet.

One of the mechanics whistled softly. A dispatcher blinked like she’d misheard.

“You’re serious?” someone asked.

“Dead serious,” I said. “We’re not going to incentivize people to drive past emergencies just to shave five minutes off a run. Not here.”

It didn’t change everything overnight. Suspicion doesn’t evaporate with one speech. But it cracked something. You could feel it. Men who had stared at the floor started to look up. A couple of the women from the office exchanged glances that looked like hope.

The weeks that followed were the hardest I’d ever worked.

I was in early, out late. I sat with dispatch to understand their chaos. I drank bad coffee with mechanics on night shift, listening to their complaints about parts and deadlines. I rode shotgun on short hauls, just to remember what the road felt like from that seat.

We changed schedules. We adjusted routes to make them more realistic. We tightened some procedures, loosened others. We tied bonuses not just to speed, but to safety and equipment care.

It wasn’t magic.
But it mattered.

Drivers stopped flinching every time their phone buzzed. Mechanics stopped cutting corners. Dispatchers stopped snapping at drivers like they were the enemy.

Once a month, Warren flew in from New York and walked the depot with me. Not in a showy way. In a curious way. He asked questions. He listened more than he spoke. He knew people’s names. That’s rare, at his level.

One evening, after a long day of meetings, we sat in my modest office—once Davis’s cluttered cave, now cleaned up and looking out over the yard. The sun was setting over the rows of trucks, turning the lot orange and gold.

He pulled something out of a folder and slid it across my desk.

It was a photo.

Grainy, clearly taken from a security camera. My truck. His SUV. The motel sign glowing in the rain. The timestamp in the corner read 4:03 AM.

“I called the motel,” he said. “Asked if they still had footage from that night. The owner thought I was crazy. Took him two days to dig it up. But he sent it.”

I picked it up. My lungs tightened for a moment.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I wanted you to remember something,” he said. “Not the promotion. Not the policy. This.”

I turned the photo over. On the back, engraved into a small brass plate attached to the frame, were words that made my throat ache.

Character is who you are when you think no one is watching.
Thank you for being that man when no one was.

I hung it on the wall of my office the next day.

Sometimes, when deadlines pile up and the radio won’t stop crackling and someone’s yelling about a delayed load to Denver, I sit back, look at that picture, and remember the storm. The fear. The kid’s hand on the glass. The choice.

That night on a Pennsylvania interstate could have cost me my job.
Instead, it gave me a life I hadn’t dared to imagine.

A year later, our Chicago depot has the best safety record in the company. Turnover is down. Morale is up. Drivers talk to each other again instead of just grunting in passing. We’ve lost some people who preferred the old fear-based system, but most of them? They stayed. They grew. They stepped up.

At home, things changed too.

My ex-wife doesn’t look at me like I’m one paycheck away from disaster anymore. My daughter, Emma, visits my new place—a small house in a quiet block on the South Side—and proudly tells neighbors, “My dad runs the trucks that keep all the stores full.”

One evening, after I grilled burgers in the tiny backyard and Emma went inside to watch a cartoon, I sat on the stoop with a cold soda and listened to the distant hum of the city.

I thought about how close I’d come to losing everything.
How easy it would’ve been, that night, to keep driving. To let fear of my boss outweigh concern for strangers.

No one would’ve known.

I would’ve been on time.
I’d still be a driver under Davis.
Still flinching whenever my phone buzzed.

Instead, I stopped.
Instead, I chose the harder thing.
Instead, I trusted that doing the right thing, even when no one was looking, still mattered in a country that sometimes seems to forget that.

Turned out someone was looking.

Not fate. Not karma.

Just a man with a family and enough decency to remember who kept them safe.

I don’t pretend every story on America’s highways ends like mine. There are drivers who stop and see nothing back but an empty wallet and a write-up. There are bosses who never change. There are storms that take more than they give.

But I know this:

If I had to choose again between a perfect delivery record and a kid in a cold car on the side of an interstate, I’d hit those brakes a thousand times out of a thousand.

Because sometimes the load in the trailer isn’t the most important thing you’re carrying.

Sometimes, it’s the kind of man you decide to be
when the sky cracks open
and someone needs you
in the dark.