Hitchhiking, rare these days of real and imaginary fear.
A woman and a kid.
We stop.
They run alongside the road to our car, wise move – hitchhikers have to show interest, appreciation, desire.
“We’ve just moved to Brownsville,” the kid says.
He switches English Spanish Spanish English, jumping around with langauges, so his Mexican-Asian eyes mother – only Spanish – will understand.
We, too, need some translation.
Smart kid.
“I’ll start school in Brownsville tomorrow. My mother and strepfather are divorced, and my father is dead, dead from drinking.”
Our car rolls on, yes, road and music and talk – and then the engine stops.
No power.
We pull over, and I tell them, “There is an unwritten hitchhiking rule that when a car breaks down you owe the driver nothing, no need to wait, so that is that.”
They get out, walk into the southeast wind, start to hitch – the mother with her hand, fingers up, and soon they have another ride.
The mother will get their new apartment arranged – after taking care of the former one.
The kid will start school.
He already has a library card.
He’s ahead of his sisters who have begun to slip into sloth.
We’ll get the car fixed.
The wind is stronger, the sun dips, cars and trucks race past ….
Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, mid-November 2011
