Feeling a little bored in my Ohio hometown, I decided to hitchhike across the country. So I threw a copy of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road in my backpack along with a few extra clothes, made a Bruce Springsteen playlist on cassette tapes, and left. The freedom of the road was exhilarating. Yet there were days when things got a little tight.
One day in particular I was stranded in the rain on a deserted stretch of I-74 in Illinois. I looked at the drenched fields that surrounded me as I held out my fist and thumb to the passing traffic. I didn’t see any sign of a town or truck stop that would offer shelter from the rain. I thought of home when I packed my bag. At the time of my exuberance, taking Springsteen and Kerouac along with me seemed much more important than packing weather appropriate clothing. I felt the rain soak through my hooded jacket and thought, “You are so screwed, Rick.”
However, I didn’t walk too long before a car passed me slowly and pulled over and stopped. Some people say grace is the unmerited love and favor of God. This is true, but grace is also the broken glory of standing in the rain and seeing a beat up car with its right blinker on, pulled off the side of the road to rescue. I ran up to the car and got in.
It was a lone woman driver, which surprised me since most of the time it was men who picked me up. As she pulled back onto the interstate I thanked her profusely for stopping. “No problem,” she told me. “I hate seeing people stranded in the rain like that.” She said her name was Mary, and asked me where I was going. I told her I was headed to a small town in Nebraska that I used to live in when I was nineteen, and then to Arizona to see my cousin. These things were true, but I was too embarrassed to tell her I had no real destination in mind. The larger truth was I really had no idea where the hell I was going, that I was a lost and desperate young man drifting across the country without any sense of direction in life, searching for something I couldn’t name.
I noticed Mary was wearing sunglasses. I thought this was odd considering it was a rainy day, but I didn’t say anything. We talked for a long time and the conversation turned in many different directions, as conversations with strangers on the road always do. We eventually talked about her husband. She told me he was unstable. That’s when she looked over at me and raised her sunglasses. I saw that her left eye was black and blue and swollen. I was startled. She told me that her husband was in Vietnam and had PTSD. He had nightmares and hit her in bed. I didn’t know what to make of that. I felt the urge to say something that would help her, but I didn’t know what to say, so we talked about other things. Mary told me she was on her way to see her son at college. She asked me if I wanted to come with her. She said she had to drop some things off for him, and it would only take a few minutes. I was in no hurry so we drove to the town where her son lived.
It was an awkward meeting, at least for me. She introduced us and I felt like saying, “Hi, I’m the complete stranger your mother picked up on the side of the road.” But he didn’t show any signs of suspicion. He seemed as kind and generous as his mother.
When we left we got something to eat at a fast food restaurant. Mary tried to look at the menu above the counter but couldn’t see it through her sunglasses, so she lifted them from her eyes for a brief moment and read the sign. There were two employees behind the counter, and when they saw her black eye, they both snuck a quick glance at me.
After we ate, Mary went out of her way to drop me off in a larger town. But before I got out of the car she wrote her phone number on a small scrap of paper. She said, “Now when you get to a safe place tonight I want you to call me and let me know that you’re all right. Please Rick, call me.” She expressed many times during the trip how dangerous it was to hitchhike, and she was genuinely worried for my well being. I grabbed the number and assured her I would call. I thanked her again and said good-bye. It rained off and on as I caught a few more rides that day. I eventually made it to Galesburg where I split a cheap room that evening with a guy who had picked me up. Something was bothering me that night. I don’t remember what it was. I hastily looked through my belongings for Mary’s number, but couldn’t find it. It was written on a tiny piece of paper, but I think if I would’ve looked hard enough, I probably would have found it. But I didn’t feel like looking very hard. The next morning I continued hitchhiking west towards Nebraska. I never found her number.
