Strange Rider

Something unusual occurred yesterday on my drive into town for a few groceries.  No more than two minutes from my house, as soon I turned onto our primary access road, I saw a man slowly limping down the road, heading in the same direction as me.  He wore a gray hoodie with the hood pulled up.  His limp was pronounced.

You don’t see people limping around out where I live.  I am in a remote area.  Remote enough that people come out here hunting deer.  Remote enough that ranchers raise cattle and horses around me.  And we are talking about a cold and frosty December morning here.   

I pulled up alongside the man and stopped when he was even with my passenger door.  I rolled down the window.  “You just out for a walk?” I asked.

The man turned toward me.  He was filthy.  Unshaven.  Maybe thirty years old. “Ummm…no,” he said, “I’m heading out.”

“Out?”

“Yeah.  I’m leaving.”

“What’s going on?  What are you doing out here?”

“I was out here drinking with friends last night.  I woke up this morning and it was just me.”

“You were at a house out here someplace?”

“No.  Not a house.  Just out here.  Driving around and drinking last night.”

I had been assessing him.  He displayed no aggressive tendencies.  If anything, he struck me as timid, confused, and cold.  I pressed the unlock button for the passenger door.  “Okay, climb in.  I’ll give you a ride someplace.”

I immediately noticed three things when the man climbed inside the cab of my truck.  One, he had a knee high rubber boot on his right foot, but his left foot was bare—not even a sock.  Two, he stank of…just…stank.  Three, he clutched a beat-up cellphone in his right hand.

I started driving again.  “Did you have a fire last night?”

“No.”

“Man, it was pretty cold out there.”

“I was dressed for it,” he said.

“Other than the missing boot.”

“Yeah.  I don’t know about that.”

“Where do you need to go?”

My disheveled passenger thought for a while.  For too long, actually.  “Maybe Sierra Road,” he finally suggested.

“Tell you what, I’ll take you to Bob’s Valley Market.”

“That would be great.”

As we drove the last of the dirt roads and then onto paved ones, I tried to mine information from passenger with conversation.  I never offered my name.  I didn’t ask for his.

He had a job as a roofer.  He lived for while in Missoula.  His brother lives here in Helena.  He didn’t have good luck with Samsung cellphones.  He worked concrete for a while.  Before that, he built roof trusses.  He liked the mountains.

As we drove on, talking, he fiddled with his phone.  Just as we neared Bob’s, the phone emitted a few tones and came to life.  He managed to send out two phone calls.  Nobody answered and he left no messages.

“Nobody there?” I asked.

“Nope.”  He watched the market approaching.  “Two girls I know,” he said, maybe thinking I would like to know that.

I pulled into the market and stopped in the middle of the lot.  “Well, here you go, sir.  Have a good rest of the day.”

He half-smiled, extended his somewhat filthy hand to me.  We shook hands. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

He got out.

I drove away.

I didn’t take time to be disturbed by any of it.

Maybe now would be the time for that.

—Mitchell Hegman