Everyone, I’m sure has at least one true story that they would rather not have the liberty of telling. The reason for this observation is because in telling certain stories the narrator is forced to re-live a memory that is filled with stopping points that sound like this, “Ok, at this point what I should have done was…” Unfortunately, I’ve got a whopper that falls into this category. The reason that I am re-living this particular memory in print is for your sake, dear reader. My hope is that if ever put in a similar situation, you may glean from this tale the knowledge of what action to take and the proper time to take such action. This is my story.
In college I found myself in the awkward position of having several homes at the same time. Most of my belongings were still at my Mom’s house, as she had storage space and I couldn’t afford a bigger place. My place was a small apartment that I shared with a very close friend, but most of my time was spent at another apartment in the same complex, in the very next building actually. This is where my then fiancé, who is now my wife, lived. Due to the complexity inherent in living in three separate places, I spent a lot of time on the road going to and from one or the other.
One morning I was driving from my mother’s house to my fiancé’s apartment at about 2:00 a.m. I stopped at a traffic light, waiting to take a left onto one of the bigger streets in Lafayette, La, the city I was living in at the time. While waiting for the light to change to green, a large, sweaty and bewildered looking man walked in front of my car to cross the street. He looked to be mid-thirties or early forties, with a receding hairline that resulted in an unusually long forehead ending in an unruly mass of unkempt, curly brown hair. He walked past my car and on down the sidewalk in front of the closed Winn-Dixie supermarket on the corner. I was idly smoking a cigarette and thus had the window of the car rolled down. Once this humble pedestrian was about fifteen feet away from my car, he turned around and walked back, this time toward my car, and more importantly, toward me. With wide, glassy eyes he asks me if he can have a ride to his friend’s house nearby. “I’d drive meself, but I’m kinda drunk and don’t wanna fuck up ma truck,” he said.
This is the first in a number of defining moments throughout the evening in which I could have and should have made a choice that seems clear now, but didn’t strike me at the time. I’m sure that most people, when presented with the opportunity to give a complete stranger, an intoxicated stranger, a ride at 2:00 a.m., would politely decline. I however, did not. My reasoning was that his decision to walk rather than drive while in his current state seemed to be a commendable act deserving a reward of kindness from anyone in a position to help. I was in a position to help and I could only admire his decision not to drink and drive, so I said, “Sure.”
With that we were off, and this is where the story gets interesting and my decision making ability appears to start at bad and take a severe nosedive into just short of crazy.
The man gets into my car and introduces himself as Walter. The light finally changes and so I ask my new companion where his friend lives. He gestures forward and grunts that it isn’t far ahead. I take this as my cue to continue driving and keep conversation to a minimum. After only a few moments of this, I began to wonder if he was ever going to instruct me to “turn right up here,” or “take this next left.” So, finally I ask where I should expect to be going, and he utters the one phrase I did not want to hear: “It’s on the other side of the [train] tracks, take the first right.” This was the moment that I began to get more than a little bit worried about my decision to help this guy out. I’m not sure about your town, but in every town that I’ve lived in, the “other side of the tracks” is no place to be at any time of day, but certainly not after dark and never at 2:00 a.m. Unfortunately, there was no turning back at this point.
After clearing the overpass that spans the train tracks, I took the first right as I was told, and then a left and another right that put us on an unlit street littered with houses every fifty feet or so. After traveling for about a mile on this road Walter tells me to slow down a bit, and I do as I’m told without knowing why. My curiosity is satisfied shortly however by the appearance of two men standing on the front lawn of a nearby house. Apparently, these men are our destination.
Up to this point I am under the impression that I would be dropping off my new found friend and then be on my way. Once again I was wrong.
As we approach the yard, my passenger side window is rolled down and one of the men approaches the car. The two men in the yard are very large African-American men, both wearing dirty blue-jeans and white t-shirts. One is tall and very thin and the other is also tall but unusually over-weight. As the portly fellow approaches the car, I notice that he only has one arm, which does not help my mental attempt to imagine that these men are kind, gentle creatures rather than what they appear to be, which is scary, unkind men hanging around at 2:00am..
Without speaking a word, my associate hands the one armed man a large wad of cash, which he accepts. Then, from beneath his tongue, the amputee spits a small white package into Walter’s hand and walks away from the car.
At this point my heart begins to race with the realization that I am now an accessory to drug-trafficking. Crack cocaine. I have witnessed and aided a crack addict in getting his fix.
Walter instructs me to drive and I do so.
After driving away from the house and the one armed man without incident, I begin to gain my composure a little. I ask Walter where he lives and he gives the name of an apartment complex that is not far away which relieves my worry even further, but not for long.
Because I spend so much time between houses, a great deal of time is spent in the car. This always results in a small pile of trash on the front passenger side floor of my car. I usually empty the trash once a week, and it mostly consists of empty Diet Dr. Pepper cans and empty to-go coffee cups, with the occasional candy wrapper tossed in for good measure. En route to his apartment, Walter picks up one of the Diet Dr. Pepper cans and begins punching small holes on the side of the can. He then opens my car ash tray and sprinkles old cigarette ashes on the holes as if it were magic fairy dust. He then removes a small portion of the contents in the package, places it on the can, lights it with my cigarette lighter, and inhales through the lid of the can.
For the less drug-savvy reader, Walter is now free-basing crack in the passenger seat of my car.
After a few long hits, Walter motions toward me with the can, implying that if I would like some I am welcome. I respectfully decline this offer and turn my attention to the road, wanting only to reach his apartment as quickly as possible. Walter begins to speak to me but I cannot hear his words as my ears are ringing with fear and my entire body is trembling. Not to be outdone, Walter begins to sporadically and involuntarily twitch in his car seat, which freaks me out even more.
Finally we reach Walter’s apartment complex. I park in the spot that I am told is in front of his apartment, and wait for Walter to get out at long last. Of course, he does not get out of the car. For my troubles, Walter would like to give me a little gas money, but his wallet is in the apartment. I tell Walter that there was no trouble at all and money will not be necessary, but he will not hear it and so I agree to go into his apartment with him.
I want only to be rid of Walter and out of this horrifying situation at this point, and so I am playing out the different scenarios of escape in my mind. The most appealing was to allow Walter to step out of the car and quickly throw the car into reverse and jet out of that parking lot as fast as my 1997 Toyota Corolla would carry me. The problem with this scenario is that I don’t know anything about Walter other than the fact that he is addicted to crack. He could be carrying a gun for all I know. He could shoot at me as I speed away, and this was a risk that did not seem worth taking.
And so with that reasoning I make the second poor decision of the evening. I go with Walter into his apartment.
The apartment looks the way that any middle-aged single man’s apartment might. Very cheap furniture aimed at the television, surrounding a small glass-top coffee table. Walter tells me to sit down and I do so, on the love-seat nearest the door. Walter disappears into an adjacent room for a few moments, leaving me alone in the living room.
This is the missed opportunity that bothers me more than any other that night. I should have taken this chance to run out of the front door, run to my car, and make my getaway. Once again I did nothing. Paralyzed by what I can only guess was fear, I sat on Walter’s love seat to await his return.
A few moments after entering the other room, Walter reappeared with five one dollar bills in his hand. He takes a seat on the sofa that is adjacent to my love-seat and tosses the cash on the coffee table. He then picks up the television remote and turns on the tube. After twitching in his seat for a while and flipping through a few channels he turns to me and says, “Grab me a coke from the fridge.” I suppose he was a bit parched after inhaling all of those cigarette ashes while free-basing earlier.
I get up and walk to the kitchen, fully expecting to find a severed head or some other equally disturbing monstrosity waiting for me in the refrigerator when I open it. But there were no heads, only a case of Pepsi and a few condiments. So I grab a Pepsi and walk back to the living room. I hand over the drink and take the opportunity to grab the money and since I was already standing, announced to Walter that I would be going. I made my way to the door without a word from the twitching form on the sofa and hastily escaped to the safety of the outside world. I made my way to my car and back home in a state of utter confusion and disbelief over what had just happened.
The lesson to be learned, if there is one, is that no matter who you are and who you come into contact with, in today’s world no one is in any position to help strangers who seem to need it. I thought that I was doing a very good thing by giving Walter a ride, but wound up being taken advantage of in the worst way possible. Since that incident I have not gone out of my way to help anyone that I don’t know, and I probably never will.
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