Hitcher
We don’t always see the evil inside
They picked up the hitchhiker outside Salado, Texas. Twelve-year-old Kenny, his head hanging out the window like a dog’s, was the first to spot the blind man. He stood on the gravel embankment at the edge of the highway, nothing around him — no gas stations, no fast-food places, no buildings — just the flat expanse of fields dotted with scraggly trees. The last rest area had been three miles back, on the other side of the interstate.
“A hitchhiker!” Kenny whooped, delighted by the unexpected vision, as if he’d spotted a flying saucer. “I think he’s blind,” Kenny added as the car zipped past the man. The hitchhiker held a white cane and thick-framed dark glasses covered his eyes.
Kenny’s father braked at the next exit and circled back. “We can’t leave him on the side of the road,” he said. “Not in this heat.”
The air conditioning in their rented Buick had died with a rattle the day before, ten miles west of Oklahoma City. Kenny’s father made a wrong turn somehow, and they were halfway to Amarillo before he swung the car around. He searched for someone else to blame, and when no one came forward, he blamed the car’s GPS, even though he’d refused to follow the directions spewed out by the Buick’s electronic voice.
