Bricks and Boxes

The weekend is too short and I can’t write while I drive. So here’s the music that keeps me awake on the dark roads.

This goes out to a poor drunk sap I encountered on the road last night.

Death From Above 1979

I was driving down a winding hillside and came across an SUV stopped in my lane. The rear gate was wide open and its cabin lights were on, but there were neither a driver nor passengers on the scene. (There were about four table lamps in the back of the cabin, but that’s neither here nor there.)

At the bottom of the hill I was flagged down at an intersection by a young man carrying a gas can. “Oh, I get it,” I thought and let him in. As he climbed into the passenger seat I notice, by smell, that the gas can has no lid. So, despite it being about 20 degrees, I have to roll down all the windows to breathe.

I do a U-turn and we head back up the hill. It’s becoming clear by his repeated apologies and gratitude that he may have run out of gas because he was too drunk to read the gauge. I begin to consider that I cannot simply leave him to drive home.

Luckily, at our return to the SUV, we are greeted by the glorious red and blue lights of a state trooper. I pulled the car over, but my passenger hesitated. It took just one more breath of gasoline for me to turn and say, “This is where you get out.” And then another trooper pulls up behind us, possibly related to my u-turn.

Finally, I asked for the troopers’ permission, and was on my way home.

I don’t know what I’d have done with this stranger if they’d not been there. He did not belong behind the wheel last night. And that gas can did not belong in my car.