Eight miles out of Valley Center, on a country road in the middle of nowhere, a tire went flat. I asked Edmund to hold the flashlight for me while I unpacked the spare tire, jack, and lug wrench from the trunk. While I set the jack under the back bumper, he asked me to hand him the lug wrench. “Left rear?” he asked. “Yep,” I said. As I started jacking, I heard the hub cap pop off, and the sound of the wrench being fit over the first nut.

I jacked slowly. It was late, approaching midnight, and I was tired, but more than that, I was distracted by the stars. It was a cold, clear night, miles from any city, and the late December sky blazed with stars. God, there were lots of stars. You ever look at a beach and try to see just one grain of sand? You can’t do it, the grains don’t stand out single, they clump together, and all you see is beach. The sky that night was nothing like that. The stars were too many to count. Each stood out to be seen, crisp and bright, a single point of light.

“Elsa,” I called, “get outta the car and look at these stars!”

From the back seat, came a mumbled, sleepy voice. “I can see ’em fine through the window, Bill Kirk. Quit stargazing and get me home. It’s late.”

Miss Elsa hadn’t wanted to play the benefit in Atchison. Too close to Christmas, she said, too far from home. But we couldn’t say no, not to a benefit raising money for a family burned out by a Christmas tree fire. The executive director of the radio station we worked for, WIBW in Topeka, Kansas, was all for it. It was good public relations for the station.
We’d promised our producer we’d be back in time for the morning show, and we’d keep that promise. Even with this flat, we’d still be back in Topeka by 1:30. We weren’t expected at the studio until four-thirty, to tune up and be ready for our first number after the 5:00 farm report. We called ourselves the Pleasant Valley gang. It was Miss Elsa playing a Hammond organ, me playing according, and Edmund Denny playing guitar and singing. We sang all sorts of popular and country western songs, but none of that rock and roll, mostly old favorites, and we always ended with a hymn. We’d been doing it every morning, going on twenty years..

When the wheel was raised enough, I walked around to the side of the car. Edmund was taking off the lug nuts one by one, plunking them into the up-turned hub cap beside him. The flashlight was where he’d left it lying on the shoulder of the road. I picked it up, and shined it on his work. I watched a minute, then looked up into the sky.

“Sure are a lot of stars,” I said. “Makes you understand why those Wise Men had to be wise.”

“How’s that?” asked Edmund.

“Imagine! Having to pick, from all those stars, the one that would lead them where they had to go.”

“The way I’ve heard it” said Edmund, “it was bigger than the other. Bigger and brighter.”

As the third lug nut plunked into the hub cap, and Edmund set to work on the fourth, I realized the flashlight had strayed off his work, so I re-aimed. His hands were broad and long-fingered. The nails on his right hand were short for chording his guitar. The ones on his right were a little longer, especially his thumb nail, which he sometimes used as a pick.

“Miss Elsa’ll have a fit if you break a nail,” I warned.

“I’m doing all right,” said Edmund.

I nodded. That he was. In fact, he didn’t need anyone holding a flashlight for him, because Edmund Denny was totally blind, had been since birth. I held the flashlight on his work for the sheer amazement of watching him spin the wrench with smooth tosses of his wrist till the nut came off, then drop the socket end of the wrench into the waiting palm of his hand. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off the stars. I turned my eyes back to the sky.

“What if it wasn’t bigger and brighter?” I asked. “All the Scripture says is, ‘They saw His star in the east.’ Edmund, what if just looked like any old star, but they still had to know it when they saw it, and never take their eyes off it lest they lose it, and next night find it again! I couldn’t do it.”

With a grunt, Edmund pulled the wheel off the hub, thudding the flat tire onto the ground beside him. “Here,” he said, “take the flat. Roll me the spare.”

I’d been standing with the spare leaning against my leg, so we traded. I stood with the flat as Edmund got the spare up onto the hub. I stepped a bit to the side so my light would shine directly on his work. I watched his calloused finger tips spin the lug nuts down onto the bolts. When all eight were hand-tight, he rocked back onto his haunches, and I jacked down the car.

In the yellow beam of light, I watched him tighten the nuts snug, working his way around the wheel. He popped on the hubcap with two back-handed thumps of his fist. He stood up, dusted off his hands, and said, “That does it, Bill, let’s get Miss Elsa home.”
I turned off the flashlight and put it in my coat pocket. Edmund made his way alongside the car, slipping once in the gravel on the steep shoulder, falling heavily against the back fender. Climbing in, he apologized quietly to Miss Elsa for waking her. I packed the tools and the flat into the trunk, thumping the lid closed. I stood a minute, feeling the calm, cold hush of the night, looking up into the pressing silence of the spreading stars.

How can there ever be darkness when there are so many, many stars? Edmund knew about stars. He knew that some were bigger and brighter than others. Darkness didn’t mean a thing to Edmund, but he knew what brightness was. That night, there was a star up there for Edmund, another for Miss Elsa, and one for me, but Edmund’s star shone a little bit brighter than ours. It was not a star of miracles, but it was a star of wonder, and it filled me a great and silent joy, the night I watched a blind man change a tire.