Stranger Danger

Today was an average Saturday for me. I’m home for fall break from college, and have been suffering since Thursday, and I’m taking a much needed reprieve from my crazy mother at my grandmother’s house. But before I can even get there, my Pay It Forward sense of morality was tested.

I was headed to Wal-Mart at around  9:40 this evening. Driving down my street, things were normal. It was dark, and I was plugging right on along. Until I passed this street called Forest Drive (names changed for coolness). Now Forest Drive is like….a 45 degree angle hill. To the left is the VDOT sanctuary of the surrounding counties and to the right is a 45 degree ascent into heaven.

As I’m passing by Forest Drive and the VDOT yard, I see a figure in the middle of the road. The figure swayed and attempted to flag me down, and on a split second decision I stopped.

The alarm bells are going off in my head as I crack my window ,and I’m looking to make sure my phone and something bludgeon-worthy are within reach as the figure approaches my drivers’ side window.

Now, I’m sure you’re thinking: STRANGER DANGER!!! STRANGER DANGER, DAMMIT!!!111

Yeah. I wish I’d told myself that too.

So I crack my window, and this guy clad in brown (we’ll call him Jay, which is short for Jackass) appears, the left side of his face bloodied. His eye is already swollen shut, his face is a mess, and the first words out of his mouth were: “I’m drunk, I crashed my bike, and I need a ride to 7-11. Can you help me?”

Being the resourceful platypus that I am, I had already prepared an answer.
“What?”

“Seriously, man, I am so drunk. I crashed my bike, and I really need a ride.”

I consider his proposal. He’s bleeding. How do I say no to that? How do I even begin to justify telling this poor, bleeding jackass no?

Looking around my car, I look back at him and cut him a deal.
“Promise not to kill me or anything, and I’ll give you a ride.”

Great deal. Or anything.

Jesus.

So I unlock the door to my car. Because after all, it’s less than a mile to 7-11. What’s the harm?

He gets in the back, and I drive on. I can smell the booze on his breath, and I make the remark of: “Dude, you really are drunk.”
“Yeeeaahh….I’m really drunk…I wrecked my bike. My face hurts.”

“Well…you’re bleeding pretty badly. It looks like it hurts.”
“I hit my face…my head hurts. Fuck.”

Jay is so coherent, I’m falling in love with his slurs and his cussing in the back seat. No. I'm not. I'm really not.

“Hey…hey,” Jay says, leaning forward slightly.

I glance at him in the rearview mirror, an eyebrow raised. “Yeah?”

“Do you think I’ll need stitches?” He asks, utterly serious.
I think about it for a moment.

“Well…it depends. It looks pretty bad.”
“FUCK!” He yells, throwing himself back against the seat. “I can’t go to my girlfriend’s like this!”

Quick to appease his outburst, I continue.

“Well…head wounds tend to bleed a lot, you see. So it could look really bad, but not be all that bad. It could be worse than it really is,” I reply, the epitome of encouragement.

“Whaaaaat?!?! Worse than it really is?!” He cries, incredulous.

“No, no! I meant that it’s probably not as bad as it looks! My bad, my bad.”

“Maaan…..fuck. I was so drunk…I probably blacked out…”

The stoplight across from the 7-11 was gloriously short, and as I rolled into the parking lot Jay leans forward again. “Aw, man. I’m sorry. I totally meant the other 7-11.”

THE OTHER 7-11

I look over my shoulder at him in disbelief, though my voice is nothing but confidence and full of ‘go-with-the-flow’ vibes. “Really? Huh. Well, I’m heading that way anyways, so it’s chill.”

We pull out of the parking lot, and go across the bridge. His booze-breath is stinking up the back of my car, but I’m still cheerful and optimistic. I’m doing a good deed! I’m saving a bleeding drunk from the likes of something much more terrible, like death or the human trafficking network of my hometown. (It totally exists…I know it does…)

So we drive across the bridge when I hear him mutter expletives in the back seat.

“I’m sorry, man,” he begins. “My bud’s driving down from Burg Road…you know? So he’ll probably go to the 7-11 at the bottom of the hill…man, I’m sorry.”

I begin to feel as though the laws of Good Samaritanism are turning against me, and that Chaos is playing into this somehow, but I remain cheerful. I am Job, I am unshakeable, unmoveable. I will get Jay’s ass to 7-11, dammit!

I make a turnaround at a nearby road that leads down to the dark boat landing, reminiscing about sketchier times as the cop that I had been following drives on, unknowing of my plight.

Jay is still bleeding, and I’m praying that he doesn’t decide halfway through that his turn of good luck has been all for naught and that I’d be better off with a bullet in my head or my throat slit.

He had made a call to his friend earlier, which had let me know of his benign intentions.

I recalled the conversation, trying to let it comfort me as we crossed the bridge yet again.

Jay:  Hey, man. I need you to come pick me up.

….

Jay: Yeah, man. I crashed my damn bike. I’m so fucking drunk. Yeah…yeah…I got wasted, then tried to ride my bike.

….

I don't know what it really looked like.

Jay: The bike? Man, I left that mothafucka’ there. We’re going to have to get the damned thing. Fuck, man, I’m fucked up.

….

Jay: Yeah, 7-11. I need a ride.

He then hung up the phone and cussed again.

“I’m sorry, man. Fuck, my head hurts.”

Yeah. Jay is eloquent.

SO.

We make it to the 7-11, finally. I had spent most of the ride consoling him, letting him know that it wasn’t that bad (though he looked pretty effed up.)

“Yeah , yeah…it’s probably not that bad. Clean yourself up in 7-11…you know, if they’ll let you in,” I told him.

I was met with silence.

“But…I bet if you clean yourself up, it won’t look so bad!” I continued on a cheery note.

“Thanks so much for giving me a ride, man. Like…you actually stopped. I was so surprised. Why’d you stop?” He asked.

I had been preparing for this moment. I had been waiting for it with eager anticipation. This was going to be it. The moment that I changed this mofo’s life. Damn it, I was going to effing PAY IT FORWARD. YEAH!

GO GO GO! PAY IT FORWARD!!!

But I fell flat on my face. This punk had no idea what was going on. He had blacked out and crashed his damned bike. I wasn’t going to suddenly instil morals in him. Pffft.

“Well…sometimes you just have to do something nice,” I replied.

“Hmm…yeah,” he muttered. “Aggh…my head hurts,” he groaned once more, flailing in my back seat.

I prayed he didn’t get blood everywhere, and considered the application of peroxide to the upholstery in my Ford Taurus.

As we waited in the parking lot, he looked up groggily. “Heeeey….can I see how bad it is?”

I nod, reiterating how shitty he really looked.
“It looks pretty damn bad,”  I say as I angle the sun visor mirror towards him.

He squints through the dim light of my car, cursing once more.

Jay gets out, and I think that it’s all over. I’m free, I can go to Walmart and pick up the 2% milk I had originally set out for, and that will be that.

But no.

He lingers, then shuts the back door to my car, opening the front door instead.

I look over in alarm, eyes wide as he jerks the sun visor around with a bloodied hand. In this light, Jay looks really effing bad. Blacktop is embedded in his cheeks and temples, the entire left side is covered in blood, while there’s more matted in his hair. I can’t quite detect the source of the bleeding, but I’m pretty sure he lost part of his eyebrow.

With his eye swollen shut, he looks like he just got jumped by the local gang.

But no. He was drunk. And he wrecked his BICYCLE. Not even a motorcycle. A bike.

Damn.

He cussed a bit more, but just as he was settling into my front seat, Jay’s friend rolls up, looking much more sober than he.

I wave to Jay as he leans in the doorway, smiling slightly. “You look familiar,” he says with a grin.

I shrug, leaning back nonchalantly. “Well, I do live around here.”

He nods, digesting that information as he thanks me again, slamming the door and stumbling over to his buddy’s car.

They take about half a minute to turn on his buddy’s light and assess the damage and then pull out as I continue my journey to Walmart.

I reflected upon my experience, decided that my mentor and anyone I’ve ever talked to would probably thrash me for letting the drunk into my car.

But I drove off with a profound sense of doing something right.

And besides, who leaves a bleeding guy?!

Someone smarter than me.