He mentioned God. He mentioned God and I rolled my eyes. He mentioned God and I rolled my eyes because that’s the same thing they all do; they all bring God into the equation when they ask you for money for food or cigarettes or a taxi, or – in Hank’s case – the $23 copay he needed for his son’s asthma medication.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate a good scam. I do. The more ambitious, the better. There’s the guy that walks up to you while you’re pumping gas at the station on the corner of Meeting and Calhoun. He’s always sweaty, always carrying an empty red gas can. His car ran out of gas, a mile away. He doesn’t have money.

“Can you please just pump one gallon of gas in here?” he asks, lifting the can, offering it as proof of his dilemma. “That’s all I’m asking.”
Next time you stop there for gas, he’ll forget who you are.
You pull up to the pump. Before you get out of the car, he’s there, offering to sell you five dollars worth of gas for three dollars, cash.

I like that guy.

I didn’t like Hank. Several times a month, Phillip and I drive across the bridge and up Highway 17 to Mellow Mushroom. We always sit at the bar, always order their flight of beer, and always talk about motorcycles, and girls, and church.
For the last couple of years, I’ve been having a struggle with church, with wanting to be a part of one, or even wanting to go. Phillip’s a good person to talk to about that stuff.

While we were talking, Hank sat down on the stool next to Phillip, and asked the bartender for a glass of water.
I told Phillip about a situation recently with a church. I had spent a lot of time doing something to help them out, and they were taking advantage of me. To be honest, I felt like I was getting the shaft.

Hank interrupted us.
“Excuse me, guys, but I can’t help but hear you two are talking about church. Are you both Christians?”
“Yeah, I am,” Phillip said.
I nodded, hoping that would be the end of the conversation.
“That’s great. I’m Hank.”
We told him our names and both shook his hand.
“Are you musicians, too?” he asked.
“Yeah, I play piano at church.” Phillip’s a great musician. He also jumps out of hot air balloons, rides a bicycle 60 miles an hour, and does just about everything else every guy wishes they could do.
“Well praise God,” said Hank. “I am too. I just started playing drums at my church. And I don’t know if you guys believe in divine, God-ordained moments, but I think I was supposed to sit next to you.”

He went on to tell us that he was riding his bicycle – he’d gone six miles already – all the way to the drug store because his son had had an asthma attack.
“Trouble is,” he said, “there’s a twenty-three dollar co-pay, and I don’t get paid until next week. I was wondering if either of you could help me out.”

The waitress brought our pizza and asked if we would like to try another beer, and we both told her “Not right now.”
“I don’t have any cash, Hank, but I can definitely take you to the store and put it on my credit card,” I said. I didn’t think that would end up happening, but thought as long as I offered, and really was willing to, I could have a clear conscience.
He said that would be great, and we should take our time eating our pizza first, because he didn’t want to interrupt our time together.
I wondered what kind of dad didn’t mind waiting for someone to eat a slice of pizza before they gave his son some medicine.

While Phillip and I were talking, Hank pulled out a cell phone and made a call. He stopped in the middle of a sentence and put it down on the counter, looking defeated.
“That was my mom. My ex just took my son to the hospital, but I don’t know which one.” His phone was a pre-pay and had just run out of minutes. “I have to go back to her place instead of to the drug store. Then we’ll go to the hospital.”
I felt relieved, hoping that would be the end of everything, and hoping Phillip and I could keep talking about the church situation that had frustrated me so much.

“I could still use the twenty-three dollars,” he said. I’ve still got to buy the medicine.”

“I tell you what,” Phillip said, “You can throw your bike in the back of my truck, and I’ll get the money out of an ATM, and we can take you back to your mom’s house.”
“Brother, God bless you,” Hank said. And then he asked if Phillip could make it an even thirty dollars so he could buy a pack of cigarettes.
“I don’t drink, I gave that up long ago, but I’m going to be honest. I do still smoke cigarettes.”
I stared at him, and then at Phillip, a little angry that he was still talking to him.
Phillip told Hank that he’s a health teacher, and couldn’t give him money for cigarettes with a clear conscience.
I wanted to ask him how he could give someone money for crack with a clear conscience but not spring for a pack of Newports.

The two of them kept talking, about Hank’s ex-wife or ex-girlfriend – I’m not sure which – about how long Hank had been a Christian, and about reggae music, which they both love. I didn’t say anything for thirty minutes.

At one point, Phillip went to the bathroom. I stared at the TV, pretending I was interested in a basketball game, and tried not to talk to Hank.
“John,” he said, “I know Phillip doesn’t want to promote smoking, but let me ask you, brother. You think you could give me some extra money for cigarettes?”
I took a breath. “I’m not going to do that, Hank.” I hoped he would feel my hostility, and would leave while Phillip was in the bathroom, and I could say that he must have realized we weren’t falling for it. I wanted to question him until his story didn’t hold up.

“We could just take you to the hospital, you know?”
“I don’t know which one he’s at. My phone ran out of minutes before my mother could tell me.”
“We can call a couple of them. See if he’s there. My phone works. Or we’ll just drive there. We’ll go to East Cooper first. If he’s not there we’ll go to MUSC. We’ve got to go that way, anyway.”
“But I’ve got to go the other way first, back to my mother’s . She’s waiting on me to get back, and then we’ll go in her car.”
“How far back did you say her place was?”
“About six miles. Took me thirty minutes on my bike.”

Phillip came back, sat down, and finished his beer in one final gulp.
“You guys ready?” he asked. We paid our tab and left.

I sat in the back seat of the truck’s cab, where i could see Hank’s hands, where I could either strangle him or dive out of the truck if he pulled out a gun, depending on how brave I felt.

We pulled up to an ATM in the parking lot of a bank and I watched as the machine swallowed Phillip’s card.
He looked over at Hank. “Twenty-three dollars?”
“Yeah. Twenty-three.”
Phillip got a twenty out of the machine, reached in his pocket for a few more bills, and handed them to Hank. “Twenty-three dollars.” He put the truck in gear and we pulled away from the bank and onto the highway, heading north toward Georgetown.

While Phillip was driving, Hank looked out the passenger-side window at the moon, and asked me if I’d ever seen one that big before.

I thought about several of the men I’ve known in the past few years that really were in need of help.

There was Charlie, a man in his fifties with a greasy grey beard. He would come to our church on Sundays and after the service a group of us would take him out to eat. One day he took a shit in my car. We’d gone out for pizza. He ate three times what the rest of us ate, and his stomach couldn’t handle it. But three months later, Charlie had a job. A minimum wage job. He moved into the garage apartment of a man I knew, and started paying rent. For the next few months he gave half of his paycheck to Oliver Gospel Mission, the soup kitchen that fed him during his years on the street. When he told me he was doing that I could see the hope in his eyes.

I thought about my friend Leroy, and how I haven’t seen him in a while, even though I look for him most days when I’m around the French Quarter. He’s homeless, or was the last time I saw him, walking down Meeting Street. He hopped on the back of my motorcycle and I dropped him off on the corner of East Bay and Cumberland, where he goes to ask tourists for money. That’s the corner I met him at three years ago. Before I drove off, he asked if I wanted to get coffee and some cake. During the last three years we’ve built a close enough relationship where it’s expected that any time we eat together, we’ll laugh about life, solve the world’s problems, and I’ll pay the bill. But that day, after we ordered, when I started to pay, he pulled two bills out of his pocket and placed them on the counter.
I started to hand them back. He shook his head. “No.”
Truth is, it was uncomfortable. A homeless man buying me coffee. But when he paid, I felt like it was his way of saying “I’m in this, too.” It was his chance to feel like he contributed something to the relationship, that we were on even ground, friends.

I guess that’s what pissed me off about Hank that night. We were giving him a ride, and he was scamming Phillip out of twenty-three dollars.

I was mad at Hank, for interrupting our chance to hang out, when we only get to once or twice a month.
I was mad at Phillip, because he let our conversation be interrupted by an obviously fake story about a kid with asthma.
I wondered if Phillip’s truck would still have that new car smell after Hank got out.

“It’s coming up, on the right,” Hank said. “Just past that telephone pole.”
We pulled into a dirt driveway and passed a couple of single-wide trailers.
“That one,” he said, pointing to one in the back.
Phillip parked in front of the wooden steps leading up to the door of the trailer and killed the engine.
Why did he turn off the engine?

Hank opened the door and the interior lights of the truck came on, making everything look harsh and uncomfortable.
“Hey, wait a second,” Phillip said. Hank shut the door.

Phillip looked over at Hank and asked if he could pray for him. I didn’t want to pray for Hank. I wanted to open the door again and push Hank out, to grab Phillip’s twenty three dollars out of Hank’s hand and tell Phillip to give it to a homeless shelter, or send it to starving kids in Africa, or do anything with it other than give it to him.
“Please do,” Hank said. “Please do.” He bowed his head.

Before he prayed, Phillip asked Hank if he knew the story of Ananias and Sapphira. Hank nodded, but Phillip repeated the story anyway.

“They were these two people in the book of Acts. A husband and a wife. And they sold some property they had, and were going to give the money to the church. They told Peter, who was one of the leaders in the church, that they were giving them all of the money. But really they kept part of it for themselves. When Peter asked if they had in fact turned over all of their money, like they said they were going to, they lied. Peter called them out for their lie, and told them it would have been cool to keep some of the money, if that’s what they had said they were going to do, but instead they lied about it to make themselves look better. God killed Ananias and Sapphira on the spot. Just struck them dead.

So what I’m going to pray for is that if you aren’t being honest, that if you use this twenty-three dollars for anything other than asthma medicine for your sick kid, that God will strike you dead. I’m going to pray that he’ll just kill you tonight and you won’t see another day.”

And that’s what he prayed for. Hank sat there with his head bowed and his eyes closed. Phillip prayed Hank would die that night if he wasn’t being honest. He prayed it so fervently that I started to believe maybe Hank would die. Maybe he would just stop breathing in the passenger seat of a Toyota, or clutch at his chest, or if he wouldn’t die maybe he would at least throw the twenty-three dollars on the dashboard and run away screaming. I stared at both of them, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing did. At least not right then, and at least not to them.

Hank got out of the truck, grabbed his bike from the back, and walked towards the steps of the trailer. Phillip didn’t even wait to see if he went in the door.

On the ride home I didn’t say much, and neither did Phillip. I thought about how differently we handled that situation, and how even though I didn’t have the wrong response, I didn’t have the best one, either. Someone was screwing us over, and I wanted the moment to be made right.

Phillip wanted the moment to be made something else, something better than right. I don’t know what. Usable. Teachable. Holy. Even if it meant he got the shaft.
The thing was, it did become a moment like that. Maybe not for Hank, but it did for me.

What I decided that night was that I need to be better at looking for the moment behind the moment, for the opportunity laying just beneath the surface of whatever is going on, even if it means I get the shaft. I’m not saying that to advocate being a martyr, or someone’s doormat; I just realized that night that sometimes there are opportunities that are worth twenty-three dollars.

One DVD. One round of drinks. One chance at one eternal moment. Twenty-three dollars.

It never feels good to be taken advantage of, or even to feel like you are being. You start to think about how someone else is getting something that should come to you, or how someone is standing on your shoulders and you’re feeling crushed under the thankless weight of a person that’s getting ahead. But here’s what I learned that night: It’s ok. It’s ok. Really. I realized that my responsibility isn’t to be treated fair, it’s to treat others fairly. And that’s what I want to do.

I think that in the end, maybe we’d all be happier if we went out of our way to make sure someone else got a better deal than us. Probably not at first, it will still feel miserable for a while, but once it became a habit. Once we forgot that we were trying to let them get the better deal. Once putting others before ourselves genuinely became a part of who we were. That’s what Phillip did that night. Sure, he prayed the guy would die, but I think he was hoping he wouldn’t.

When Phillip dropped me off at my apartment I walked inside and sat at my desk with my head resting in my hands and I thought about the last few hours, about how they didn’t go the way I had planned at all. I thought about it until I was finally able to lie down and go to sleep.