We picked him up at a general store at the junction of two county roads somewhere in southern Indiana.

I don’t know how old he was. Mid twenties, perhaps. Ages are hard to guess when you’re a child. He approached us as we left the store. “Where you headed?”

“North,” Dad replied. “Why?”

“Been hitching since yesterday. Got to get to Elbert tonight. Buy you a tank of gas if you’ll take me.”

Mom shrugged. Dad grinned. “Okay. I’m John, this is my wife Helen and our daughter Audrey.” The hitchhiker nodded a greeting, and we were on our way.

He wasn’t much for talking. We sat at opposite ends of the back seat, leaning against our respective doors with his guitar between us. He had long brown hair and a faded denim vest with fringe. After a while, he slipped off his sandals and examined his feet. Without warning, he drew a knife from his pocket and began cutting the calluses from his soles.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I whispered.

He shook his head. “Dead skin. See?” He stabbed at his heel. “Nothing.”

That was it for conversation for a while. My mother dozed in the front seat and my father listened to a baseball game on the radio. The hitchhiker continued cutting away dead flesh on the seat beside me.

We stopped for lunch by the side of the road. We sat on a blanket under a shady tree, eating sandwiches and potato chips. Dad took a cat-nap and Mom lay next to him with a paperback.

The hitchhiker picked up his guitar and strummed softly. I didn’t recognize the words, but he had a surprisingly sweet voice. He smiled when I began to sing along with the chorus: “Better run for your life if you can, little girl…”

“Trespassers!” The farmer had snuck up from behind us. He had a shotgun. “You’re on my property!”

My parents bolted upright. The hitchhiker stopped mid-strum.

“I’m sorry, we didn’t realize,” said my father. “No harm done. We’ll clean up and be on our way.”

The farmer smiled unpleasantly. “That’s up to me. And I say nobody’s leaving until I get a kiss from the young lady.”

My mother paled. Dad put his arm around her. “Call the police if you want to, but you’re not touching my wife.”

The shotgun made a nasty sound being cocked. “Your daughter, then.”

I screamed.

The barrel swung toward my nose, then suddenly upwards as the hitchhiker held his knife to the farmer’s throat. He’d snuck around behind him, just as he’d done to us.

“Drop it,” he said through clenched teeth.

The hitchhiker tossed the shotgun into a lake a few miles up the road and we continued on our journey. As before, he wasn’t much of one for conversation.

We dropped him in Elbert, as planned.

Never saw him again.

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.