It was a Sunday when I took possession of the rented home where I would spend the next six months creating and implementing a company business plan. It didn’t take long to settle in, and as I shoveled light snowdrifts off the porch, a man, a woman, and a boy arrived with a plate of cookies, a short stack of foam cups, and a covered silver pitcher.
“We’re the Simons,” the man said. “I’m Andy, and this is Sarah and Shaun. We saw you come in today and wanted to give you a welcome. You must be renting from John Moser.”
“Hello. Yes, I’m renting,” I said. “I’m going to be your neighbor for the next six months while I work on a project. This place offers the kind of quiet beauty I need right now.”
Shaun spoke up. “I made the hot chocolate. Mom made the cookies.”
Sarah held out the tray as Shaun grabbed the pitcher—that was when I noticed his prosthetic hand.
“Please, come in.”
“Thanks,” Sarah said as I held open the front door. “If you need any household stuff, let me know. We have plenty extra.”
“Thanks for the welcome,” I said as Sarah set out the refreshments. “I’ll be a quiet neighbor, but if I can help you three, my door is open.”
Shaun, an enterprising boy, grabbed the placemats piled on a box in the kitchen and set them on the table. “I know you saw my hand. I don’t like people to feel uncomfortable, so I’m happy to tell you the story.”
I was taken aback but immensely curious about this open and captivating boy.
“Do you want to know what happened? We might as well get it over with now.”
“Shaun was ten when his curiosity took him away from home one day,” Sarah said.
“Let me tell him, Mom!”
“Shaun has a fascination with mechanics,” Sarah explained. “That starts the story, son.”
“Right,” Shaun said. “Well, anyway, when I was little, I loved to watch my dad fix our car and everyone else’s. Once, I took apart Mom’s vacuum cleaner and didn’t get it back together until the carpet was so filthy that I got grounded until it was put back together, and then I had vacuuming as a chore from that day on.”
Andy broke in, “There’s a wood-processing plant down by the river. I worked two jobs so I could be here when Shaun got home after school, and we used to walk down there to watch workers maneuver the heavy machinery and lumber. On the one day I didn’t get home on time, Shaun went there without me, and that was the day he had the accident.”
“No one was around that day,” Shaun said. “I couldn’t figure it out. I walked into the yard and then into the building. My favorite machine, the horizontal resaw, was small, compact, and only as high as my shoulder. I loved watching the spiked rollers chip through lumber with slow, accurate grinding. It wasn’t running, but the material was fed into it, ready to go, and I couldn’t help but punch the small green button. And that’s when it happened.”
Andy explained that when the sound of the saw echoed in the empty plant, a few men who’d been in the foreman’s office rushed in. But they were too late to pull Shaun’s hand away. By the time the machine was stopped, it had cut away Shaun’s hand up to the mid-forearm. Thanks to the men’s fast action, an ambulance soon arrived, and Shaun was in surgery within a half hour.
“I didn’t even feel it,” Shaun said. “It was like watching a movie.”
Read the rest of Shaun’s success story in the book, The Quiet Rich: Ordinary People Reawakening an American Dream.
Kevin J. Palmer, Author
