Letter To the Stranger Who Stopped for a Boy Abandoned on Highway 22
DALLAS COUNTY, ALABAMA
by Jim Herod
I had been put out of the taxi on that lonely bit of raised highway on the Selma side of the Cahaba River Bridge. “This is as far as I’m going.” That’s what the taxi driver said. I had looked at his face, wondering if he was going to take me back to town. I knew the answer when he pointed toward the taximeter and held out his hand. I had told him when I was standing in the middle of Selma’s Broad Street watching the Trailways bus leaving me in its exhaust that I didn’t have much money. “Get in!” he had said. “I’ll catch the bus.”
He did, but the bus didn’t stop as the taxi driver blew his horn and blinked his lights. We followed the bus past both cemeteries. Past the stores and houses along the way. As far as that lonely spot on the way to Orrville. Then, the taxi stopped.
I gave the driver all the money I had – just a few coins. He switched them to his other hand and reached across me to open the door. “Somebody will pick you up,” he said. I got out. “Thank you. Thank you for trying.”
He didn’t say anything else. Just turned around in the middle of Highway 22.
I stood there in the late afternoon watching his taillights getting smaller and listening to the quiet coming in with the approaching evening. “Somebody will pick you up.” That’s what he had said. Yeah. And how did he know that? It was like Mama saying, “You’ll do good on your seventh grade Alabama History test.” She didn’t know that, and I didn’t figure he knew anymore about what was going to happen than she did.
But I did do well on those tests.
Maybe it will work again. Maybe somebody will pick me up. I hoped they would hurry.
Beloit was up there on the hill on the other side of the Cahaba River. In Summer, 1951, I was sure whoever was up there would be surprised to see a white boy come walking up. I didn’t have any money for a long-distance call to my daddy, but maybe somebody would do it for me. Daddy would pay them back.
Two cars. Three cars flew by. The horn of the last one screamed at me, lights blinking. “Get out of the highway!”
“Get out of the highway, Stupid Boy.” I didn’t hear “Stupid Boy.” But that’s what I was. A stupid boy. I should not have stayed in the Wilby Theater to see that cartoon one more time. Now, here I was standing in the center of the highway, deep in the middle of nowhere. The sun was already low, and something was watching me in the bushes from down below. That was just one more thing scaring me.
Nobody knew where I was.
I was in trouble.
Another car was coming. I moved to the side, stuck out my arm with the thumb pointing upward, and whispered please.
Please.
The car stirred the air as it flew by. Then the taillights came on. I was running toward what I hoped was going to be my ride before the car even stopped.
The inside lights came on when I pulled the handle and opened the door. “Where’re you going?” That’s what you said.
“Orrville,” I answered, hoping. “Where are you going?”
“Mobile.”
I grinned. Maybe I shouted. “You’ll go right by my house.”
“Get in.”
Oh, God! I was almost laughing as I got in. “Thank you.” I was in. I turned to you. You were shifting gears and smiling when you looked at me. You were much younger than my Daddy and much older than my brother. “What were you doing out here by yourself on this highway?”
So, I told you my Trailways/taxi driver story. “The taxi driver said someone would pick me up. You’re making him right.”
You turned to me. Maybe there was a frown. “He told you that?”
“Yes, sir.”
We were silent as we crossed the Cahaba River, went up the hill, passed Beloit. I looked at the one gas station with lights on. There were a bunch of men standing around. I was glad I didn’t have to ask one of them to call my daddy.
“Do you know the taxi driver’s name?”
“What?”
A name?
“Oh, no. No, sir.”
Silence.
“But I did thank him.”
The tall pines were slipping by on both sides of the road. It was hot. But you had all the windows closed. I was wondering why. Then you warned, “It’s gonna be hot tonight.”
I turned. “Yes, sir.” I had not seen that your shirt was unbuttoned. But it was, and I watched you scratching your chest. Then I looked away. I didn’t want you to see me watching.
“That’s okay,” you said.
What? I glanced at you, and then back to the front.
“It’s okay for you to look at me.” You tapped the rearview mirror. I saw your eyes and I saw you nod. “It’s okay.” You said it again.
I looked back at the road, embarrassed.
And then you asked me if I wanted to see you without a shirt. And you wanted me to take off mine.
No. Please, no. I didn’t want you to see me that way. I had been told at the Five Points swimming hole only a week or so earlier that I was a sack full of bones. A sack full of bones covered over by skintight skin.
Then, you said you’d pay.
That made it worse.
You said you were going to put me out if I didn’t unbutton my shirt.
I was scared. I was scared and begged not to be put out again. “Please don’t. My home is only a little bit more. And you’ll go right by it.”
Silence.
“How old are you?”
I looked at you in the mirror. “Fourteen.”
“Damn!” that’s what you said. And you moved the mirror.
You stopped at the place where I pointed. “Be careful, Boy.” That’s the last thing you said. You left the tire marks of a U-turn right there in front of my house.
“No!” I yelled. “Mobile is the other way.”
You didn’t hear me.
I told my mother I was home when I walked through the kitchen. She said she didn’t hear the Trailways bus stop, but I didn’t answer. Later I told my brother that I didn’t know why you wanted to see my skinny chest. And I didn’t know why you turned around and was going back toward Selma.
He called me an idiot. Twice.
It was more than a year before I understood what an idiot I had been. It also took me nearly that long to understand that I should have been more scared than I was.
At that preadolescent age, I had become ashamed to let even my swimming hole friends see how skinny I was. Taking off my shirt for you or any other adult would have been too embarrassing. Not a year had gone by, however, before I decided to change that. Pushups and chin-ups on a rod across the rafters in the barn got me started on working for what I wanted to be my new image. By the time I was in college, I might have been the Lupton Hall Dormitory pushup champion. And maybe you’re the reason I finished every marathon with my shirt in my hands.
I was tall for my age, so you and the taxi driver probably thought I was older than I was. Be assured that I was and still am thankful for your stopping for that boy abandoned on Highway 22. If you heard me yelling that you were going the wrong way after you put me out, you must have recognized that there were a lot of things that fourteen-year-old, Dallas County boy didn’t yet understand.