I Attempt to Share a Short Story: The Hitchhiker

Before I begin, a little background.

Every once in a while, I get the writing itch. Every once in a while out of those once in a whiles, that itch manifests itself as a blog post. Sometimes it's a post, and sometimes it's a chapter of a novel that hasn't fully formed itself yet, and sometimes (my favorite form) it's a short story. That happened on a plane to Italy last winter break, and the result was a short story about a hitchhiker.

I'm sharing this story now because I feel like it, and because I have a lot of stories saved up in one place that I haven't shared with just about anyone. As such, I feel like sharing my stories will give me a better sense of how my writing evolves over time; maybe a person or two in the internet ether will enjoy them, and that would be more than enough for me. The goal is to write with a goal, and posting stuff here gives me that goal to work towards. So here's The Hitchhiker, written in December 2022, a time that feels so very distant already. It was another year, so it's ok to assume that I am now 1000x better at writing than I was at that time. I won't be mad if you do so.

For best experience, put on music you'd listen to on a road trip, but just as the sun sets and the sentimentality of the moment begins to set in.

The Hitchhiker

The morning was bright. Occasional clouds drifted through that never seemed to get in the way of the sun, simply observing and basking in the sunlight themselves.

New Mexico didn’t get a lot of days like this, so I enjoyed that day the way I did whenever they came around: I took the convertible out and drove until I reached something, anything of note. Luckily for me, there wasn’t much of that out there.

That was the same day I picked up the hitchhiker. He wasn’t particularly interesting looking, just a plain kinda guy with a baseball cap, battered jeans and some faded old Zeppelin t-shirt, but he needed a ride, and I knew if I didn’t pick him up nobody else would.

It wasn’t exactly a habit of mine to pick up hitchhikers, which I considered as he hopped over the door and greeted me with a warm grin of pure gratitude. I didn’t much trust strangers, or even people I knew for that matter; people didn’t make too much sense to me. Every once in a while I’d run into someone that understood me, someone I’d keep coming back to; maybe that’s what I was looking for in a hitchhiker.

Not that the man understood me, although the shirt was certainly a nice touch. He told me he was heading to Las Cruces, and since I didn’t have anywhere else to be I figured I’d drop him off down there for kicks.

Las Cruces was about two hours away from where I was at that point. We spent the first half hour or so just taking it in, wind whipping, music up loud enough that we could hear only the guitar over the sound of the wind, and exchanging no words.

Finally, he spoke up, asking something about what I was doing driving around out here. I told him the truth, which was nothing. He didn’t inquire further.

Another half hour or so passed, both of us somewhat comfortable with the other’s presence at that point. He didn’t have much to say, and neither did I. Still, feeling somewhat duty-bound to figure out what the deal was with the random dude I grabbed off the street, I figured I should probably ask something, anything about this guy’s life.

The man said he wasn’t married, didn’t have any kids or close relatives, and was currently “between jobs”. Then he muttered something about government taxation, corporate greed, and the horrors of capitalism. Then he took a hint and shut up.

It was quiet for a long time after that. I’m not usually one to consider points of view that I don’t think of as valid, but considering there was nothing else to do but consider, I decided to consider it. There were a few possibilities. First and foremost, this guy was simply another washed-up salesman who got in too deep with an unreliable company. When said company dropped him, he blamed it on “the system.” Realistic possibility.

Another possibility was that this guy had a real job somewhere, something that was supposed to be consistent, and he just couldn’t perform to the standards of such a profession. That one, somehow, didn’t jive with me.

Lastly, this was some sort of feverish social experiment, and I’m gonna get interviewed at some point in the near future about how people need to be more compassionate or something. I really don’t know why I considered this possibility more than the second one, but I did. I decided it was probably unrealistic and went with the first one.

The silence (or, more accurately, the break in conversation) was snapped when the man sighed and pulled a revolver from his waistband.

I didn’t even notice it at first, to be honest. At some point I felt the cold metal boring into my side, and I figured it was the seat belt holder. The realization made my blood run colder than the barrel, but confusion was the first, most dominant thought to cross my mind.

I slowed down and pulled over, figuring I should probably figure out what the hell was going on. He smiled at me, suddenly confident but still lighthearted in a psychotic kinda way.

I looked away, and looked back, more closely this time. His eyes glinted with madness, and his hand shook, not with nervousness but with the tremors of a man haunted by his own mind. I wondered how I’d missed such obvious signs of a mental break before. There was no way this manifested in the last hour.

The man mumbled his demands, and I asked him to repeat them, still slightly deafened by the silence following the wind. His voice shot up wildly, commanding me to pass over my wallet and keys and step out of the car. I obliged, not exactly wanting to get shot in Nowhere, New Mexico.

He took the wallet and the keys, hopped into the driver’s seat, and peeled off. I watched him accelerate at a wild pace, rocketing forward and nearly veering out of control; and then veer he did, spinning out at what must have been a hundred miles per hour and smashing into the only sign within 20 miles: Welcome to Las Cruces!

The car exploded, leaving no doubt in my mind that the man was dead. Somewhere in my mind I pitied him, as he was no doubt plagued with mental illness. The medical side of me wondered what he suffered from, while also wondering if I was in shock. This was supposed to be a traumatic experience, and yet I never truly feared for my life, despite the barrel pressed against my ribcage.

Nobody else witnessed it, and the man had told me he had no relatives or family, and so I considered not reporting it, leaving the twisted remains of my car on the side of the road and hitching a ride home somehow. The logical side of me overrode that instinct, idiotic as it was, and I called the cops; they showed up 30 minutes later, quickly taking down my statement and inspecting the remains of the car and, presumably, the man. One of the officers gave me a ride back to the station and helped me get a rental so I could drive home.

I saw a lot of hitchhikers. Some were men, some women; some neater than others. Some made me want to pull over, and others made me speed up, an almost unconscious response. I pondered the events of the afternoon, considering what a waste of a day this had been. Not only had I almost been shot, but my car was in flames and I had to call my insurance company. A distant part of my mind wondered why that was my primary concern, but I couldn’t answer.

That night was when it all rushed back. I woke up in cold sweats, hyperventilating, my mind racing out of control, spinning and turning every which way until the darkness took on a quality far more sinister than usual. I guess I hadn’t fully processed how close I’d come to death, and how nonchalantly I’d handled such a situation. More than anything, I was horrified by the thought of that man’s death.

Once I had my bearings, I explored that thought. Why was I guilty? The man threatened my life, and he was the cause of his own death; I had done exactly nothing besides pick the man up, which was the objectively kind thing to do. My frustration boiled over; I had no answers. I didn’t sleep that night.

Over the years that followed I experienced nothing close to the magnitude of that day, and I thought about little else as I tried to sleep. Chances were that the man had been lying to me, and he might have very well had a family. The police hadn’t been able to identify him, and he’d never even given me a name, so I would never know. I think what haunted me even more was the trust that I’d lost. I passed a ton of hitchhikers in the year following, picking up none of them, even the old ones who looked like they might collapse right where they were standing. At the time I felt no guilt, because of course I was terrified; a year later, guilt was the only thing I could feel. I wanted to assume the best, but I could only remember the worst, and so I lived that year miserably.

Well, at some point I got tired of the idea that every hitchhiker had to be a murderer in disguise; thus, I resolved myself to try it again. I drove the same route and picked up another man, this one wearing a Hawaiien shirt so faded I couldn’t tell what the pattern was supposed to be. He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, and he was perhaps the least intimidating man I’d ever seen, at least in hindsight.

I immediately asked his name, learning from my mistakes. He identified himself as Thomas O’Keefe from California. He wanted to end up in Texas one way or another; I told him I probably couldn’t make that happen, but I could get him to the eastern side of New Mexico. That was fine with him.

Thomas was far more talkative than my robber, asking about my family, career, and life in general. I told him whatever he asked, and he reciprocated. Eventually, with about an hour left in the drive, I told him about my previous experience with hitchhikers, which seemed to truly shock him.

“Don’t worry, we aren’t all like that. Most of us are just down on our luck; we’re good, honest people, just like you.”

He said we, like the hitchhikers had their own union or something. I pointed that out and he laughed, launching into an explanation of the intricate relationship between hitchhikers, bound together by something I didn’t quite catch. I didn’t particularly care, but I was thankful it wasn’t something sinister, which had been my perception up to that point. It seemed like a bond forged not by desperation, but a collective decision to leave their fates up to chance. Relying on people is a dangerous gambit, after all.

We chatted from then until the end of the drive, as I slowly came to the conclusion that my first experience may have been the anomaly out of the two. He gave me his phone number, told me to stay in touch. I took it, not sure whether or not I intended on using it. We shook hands and he disembarked, leaving me with a short drive home.

Short, but giving me time alone to think, because I definitely needed more of that. I mostly thought about people. So many people I’d met were fake, using you for their own entertainment and their own purposes, with no intention of actually knowing you for you. I was tired of fake people, even more tired than I was of the murderous hitchhiker. Sure, he’s an extreme example, but at that point he only solidified my belief that I couldn’t assume the best in anyone.

Now, though, I was regaining faith in humanity, however cliche that may sound. I acknowledged the fact that I would probably lose it at some point, but it was better to have it and be validated at least once; otherwise, what was the point in even bothering?

The sky turned from pink to purple as I cruised down the highway, southbound, no cars or hitchhikers in sight.