There’s a little pang of terror deep down. Letting someone in like that. In that moment it’s peculiar how your attention is drawn to the little things. You get hung up on some small detail. And it’s not the detail that keeps your breath high up in your lungs. It’s the fact that all you can focus on is something tiny like that—instead of looking for a gun in his pocket.
The frozen stripes stood hard on the pavement. All I could think was, if I could travel back in time people would freak out if they saw me driving this metal box on wheels at thirty-five miles an hour. Those yellow road stripes look so short as you speed by, but when you stop they turn out to be longer than your car. I think I was trying to focus on something else to keep my hands from shaking. They were quivering slightly anyway. I’m a big guy; I could defend myself if I had to.
He was nice enough. I would never have done it if I hadn’t seen some kindness in those foggy eyes of his. His beard obscured most of his face like brambles. But that wasn’t the first thing I noticed. He accepted my offer and slung his pack off one shoulder. I said he could toss it in the bed of my little two-seater truck if he wanted. He thought for a second, eyes darting between the tiny cab and the bed, and he and his bag proceeded to get in the front anyway.
He managed to squeeze the gargantuan backpack between his legs. The pack had been patched. Sometimes out of necessity and sometimes for aesthetic purposes. I guess if you don’t have a house to decorate, you decorate your backpack. I noticed pins from bars, American flags, worn out Harley-Davidson patches and what looked like a cufflink stuffed through a button hole. But those weren’t the first things I noticed either. It wasn’t the filthy bedroll, or the sun-bleached camo print of the material, or even the Leatherman knife in his boot—it was the smell. It was a pungent odor of wet dog and oil and earth. And despite my tight-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, all I could focus on was the smell. It had a hundred layers. It was a cave with no bottom.
And then I was suddenly ashamed. For I smelled just as foreign to him: Of shampoo and deodorant and detergent and luxury. I couldn’t change that. But I could give this man a ride, who by no choice of his was trapped in a time where cars didn’t exist. What I could do was save his boots from a few more miles of wear.
So I took a deep breath and asked, “Where ya headed?”
[Keep following. Because you have nothing better to do.]
