Clyde and Brutus?

Thirty-one-year-old Gerald Heffington was the manager of a gas station located in the small town of Morganfield, Kentucky.  It was a rather rough section, and every night at closing time, his wife drove eight miles round trip to pick him up, since they lived out in the country.  Gerald was hoping for a better job someday, but for now, he did his conscientious best to make sure every customer was treated well.  It was the way God would want him to act, he knew.  He was on close speaking terms with God and always had been.  Sometimes he also asked angels to guard him.  They were in the Bible, so if they protected people then, he reasoned, why not now?  

One evening at closing time, Gerald started to read the pumps and clear the cash register, just as he always did.  His wife was waiting for him inside the station.  “Just as I reached for the light switch, a dark blue Cadillac pulled up,” Gerald says.  “There was one young man behind the wheel and he seemed nervous.”  The man was looking from window to window and appeared to be talking, but there was no one else in the car! 

Gerald would wait on him, even though it was a little past closing time by now.  That would be the courteous and helpful thing to do, especially so late at night..  But as he walked toward the car, he asked God to send protection, especially for his wife who was as vulnerable inside the station as he was.

“Can I help you?” Gerald asked the driver.

The window was down and the young driver, still looking somewhat scared, thrust a one-hundred dollar bill out to Gerald.  “Give me fifty cents worth of high test,” he demanded.

Fifty cents from a hundred dollars!  Now Gerald knew something was wrong.  But he pumped the small amount, keeping his eyes on the driver---who still seemed to be talking to someone--- and tried to prepare for whatever happened next.  But as he put the nozzle back, the driver quickly turned on the engine and sped out of the gas station, tires squealing.

Gerald was astonished.  What was wrong with this guy?  He had acted so strangely---and then left his $100 bill without getting change.  Gerald went into the office, filled his wife in on the peculiar details, took $99.50 out of the register and put it in an envelop.  He  wrote a note to the dayshift manager about the extra money—and he and his wife gratefully drove home.

Two days later, Gerald was back at work.  He asked the day manager if he had seen the car, and the manager said no.  Both men laughed, and shook their heads.  But a few hours later, Gerald looked up to see the same driver, in the same blue Cadillac, pulling into the station.  He had probably come back for his change, Gerald thought, but he’d better check things out first.  “Can I help you?” he asked as he approached the vehicle. The young man, he noticed, was still looking nervously around.  Finally he stared straight at Gerald.

“Where are those two guys?” he asked.

“What two guys?” Gerald asked.  He was getting more perplexed by the minute.

“The ones working here two nights ago,” the driver answered. 

Was this man crazy?  Gerald thought he’d better humor him. “Why do you ask?” he responded.

The aggression seemed to go out of the driver.  “When I came in here then, I was planning to rob the station, and to kill you and your woman,” he said quietly.  The hair on the back of Gerald’s neck stood up.  How well he remembered that nervous feeling as he had approached the car. 

“But then,” the young man went on, “as I reached for my gun under the seat, these two big dudes—at least seven feet tall, wearing the same uniform as you, came up to the car and told me straight out: ‘We know why you are here, and if you take out that gun from the front seat, we will use your head for a basketball.’  Their names on the uniforms were Clyde and Brutus.”

Clyde and Brutus?  “But…” Gerald began.

“So keep the change for your trouble, and tell those guys that I’m never coming back here!”  The driver revved his engine, and shot out of the station.  Gerald stared after him in amazement.  Not only did he NOT know a Clyde or a Brutus, but he knew very well that he had been the only employee on the premises when that dark blue Cadillac pulled in two nights ago. 

But as he had approached the car, hadn’t he asked God, as always, to protect him from harm?  Gerald still has some unanswered questions today about that episode.  But “I never knew that angels could be named Clyde and Brutus,” he says.  And he looks forward to meeting them again someday.