Tuesday, August 30, 2005
The Hitchhiker—Pie 3
I’d been driving from Colorado to Oregon. Figured I’d kick around in Eugene where I knew some people I hadn’t seen in years. Then I’d head north. Or south. Or maybe I’d find a reason to settle down for a while. Eugene’s a nice college town and maybe I’d take some classes and hang out and try to meet someone.
I’d packed everything I cared about that could be packed into the back of my beat up, old blue VW bug. Well, not quite everything. What I really cared about was still back in Colorado. But if I hadn’t left right then, I knew there was going to have to be talk of commitment. And her best friend’s going-away present to me was going to haunt all three of us. Better to cash in the change jar ($328.43), close out the bank account ($27) and head west.
Bonanza Jellybean. That was the car’s name. True to the book, hitchhiking defined her life. I’d have stewed in my thoughts alone on that drive west. Bonanza had other ideas. She always picked up every hitchhiker she passed.
We must have been 14 hours out when I pulled into an all-night gas station in God-Knows-Where for a fill-up, a bag of Oreos and a half gallon of chocolate milk. I’d been driving with the windows down and the cassette blasting Fleetwood Mac to try to keep my eyes open. The fact Kate had kept me up for two days before I left was catching up to me.
That was when the hitchhiker walked up with his dirty backpack and asked me if I could take him west. I said, “No, but if you can drive a stickshift you can take me west.” I tossed him the keys and crawled into the passenger seat not even asking his name and not caring if he was going to head west, steal my car or kill me. I was asleep before we circled the highway on ramp.
Three hours later I woke up with the sun in my eyes. The car was pulled off on the side of the road. High desert. Sage brush. Nothing but a strip of perfectly straight highway heading east and west as far as the eye could see. My hitchiker was nowhere to be seen but his backpack was on top of my pile of crap behind the seat. I got out, stretched and watered a burnt clump of dry weeds. I wondered if I should worry as I dug out the lukewarm chocolate milk from under the seat.