I’ll take you up there! I will, yessir! Never mind Ralph! Hell with him! You just say the word!
I wanted to get to my mother, but the thought of another twenty miles with the smell of piss in the air and cars flashing their brights at us wasn’t very pleasant. Neither was the image of the old fellow wandering and weaving across four lanes of Lisbon Street. Mostly, though, it was him. I couldn’t stand another twenty miles of crotch- snatching and that excited broken- glass voice.
Hey, no, I said, that’s okay. You go on and take care of your brother. I opened the door and what I’d feared happened he reached out and took hold of my arm with his twisted old man’s hand. It was the hand with which he kept tearing at his crotch.
You just say the word! he told me. His voice was hoarse, confidential. His fingers were pressing deep into the flesh just below my armpit. I’ll take you right to the hospital door! Ayuh! Don’t matter if I never saw you before in my life nor you me! Don’t matter aye, yes, no, nor maybe! I’ll take you right . . .
there!
It’s okay, I repeated, and all at once I was fighting an urge to bolt out of the car, leaving my shirt behind in his grip if that was what it took to get free. It was as if he were drowning. I thought that when I moved, his grip would tighten, that he might even go for the nape of my neck, but he didn’t. His fingers loosened, then slipped away entirely as I put my leg out. And I wondered, as we always do when an irrational moment of panic passes, what I had been so afraid of in the first place. He was just an elderly carbon- based life- form in an elderly Dodge’s pee- smelling ecosystem, looking disappointed that his offer had been refused. Just an old man who couldn’t get comfortable in his truss. What in God’s name had I been afraid of?
I thank you for the ride and even more for the offer, I said. But I can go out that way I pointed at Pleasant Street. and I’ll have a ride in no time.
He was quiet for a moment, then sighed and nodded. Ayuh, that’s the best way to go, he said. Stay right out of town, nobody wants to give a fella ride in town, no one wants to slow down and get honked at.
He was right about that; hitchhiking in town, even a small one like Gates Falls, was futile. I guess he had spent some time riding his thumb. But, son, are you sure? You know what they say about a bird in the hand.
I hesitated again. He was right about a bird in the hand, too. Pleasant Street became Ridge Road a mile or so west of the blinker, and Ridge Road ran through fifteen miles of woods before arriving at Route 196 on the outskirts of Lewiston. It was almost dark, and it’s always harder to get a ride at night when headlights pick you out on a country road, you look like an escapee from Wyndham Boys’ Correctional even with your hair combed and your shirt tucked in. But I didn’t want to ride with the old man anymore. Even
now, when I was safely out of his car, I thought there was something creepy about him maybe it was just the way his voice seemed full of exclamation points. Besides, I’ve always been lucky getting rides.
I’m sure, I said. And thanks again. Really. Any time, son. Any time. My wife . . . He stopped, and I saw there were tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. I thanked him again, then slammed the door shut before he could say anything else.
I hurried across the street, my shadow appearing and disappearing in the light of the blinker. On the far side I turned and looked back. The Dodge was still there, parked beside Frank’s Fountain & Fruits. By the light of the blinker and the streetlight twenty feet or so beyond the car, I could see him sitting slumped over the wheel. The thought came to me that he was dead, that I had killed him with my refusal to let him help.