The Road Taken
The hitchhiker was barely a mile outside of Moorcroft, Wyoming when the man in the silver 93’ Honda pulled up. As it stopped on the side of the highway, its brakes grabbed the dirt and threw it into the sky, so that when the hitchhiker walked up to the car he was partially blinded, and could only see a faint outline of the driver. With eyes blinking like hummingbird wings, the hitchhiker was asked where he wanted to go. The he asked if he could be driven to Denver. The driver said he was heading in that direction and that he would take him as far as he could. The hitchhiker got into the car and they began to drive.
For the better part of the ride, neither the hitchhiker nor the driver spoke much. The two of them were left to think, the driver looking to the road, occasionally humming, and the hitchhiker, looking out the window, absentmindedly twirling his tie. The only noise came from the constant hum of the car as it passed through uninhabited lands.
How the driver drove articulated his cool-manner. He didn’t drive, he cruised. Rarely did the driver have both hands on the wheel. His window must have been broken for it remained rolled down for the duration of the ride. His shoulder-length dirty, unwashed blonde hair never relaxed, there was always a breeze carrying it, causing it to continuously flicker and ripple.
The driver had a pair of red sunglasses that shielded him from the world and when the hitchhiker would look into them, he would see his reflection dressed with confusion.
The hitchhiker thought he knew the route to his destination, but then the Driver told him he knew of a shortcut that would make the drive faster. The hitchhiker complied.
For some reason, the hitchhiker trusted the driver, and for a long while he didn’t question him.
“We are lost aren’t we?” the hitchhiker was becoming frustrated. “I can’t find this damn road anywhere on the map, where the hell are we? Is this even a road?”
“Hey man,” said the driver in a bored tone, “tell me you are Cool-Hand Luke and just relax. We’ll find our way soon. Just keep your eyes peeled. Something will turn up soon to help us out. Just chill out. Lean back and just chill.”
“Alright, fine,” said the hitchhiker. He reclined his chair and closed his eyes. He was starting to feel that feeling that he had expected to vanquish at the beginning of summer, stress.
“Hey will you check out that mountain over there? Man, if I had my gear we’d be over there in a flash,” said the driver. The driver took his eyes off the road and gazed at the mountain in the distance, leaving the car to direct itself along the barren road, “Have you ever climbed something that big?”
“Nope,” said the hitchhiker without even opening his eyes.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I haven’t had the time.” The hitchhiker was having a progressively harder time keeping his eyes closed; the driver was starting to aggravate him.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not that hard to just take some time to go out and explore something. Go out and do something different,” he said. The hitchhiker could hear the same tone of authority in the Driver’s voice as his Father’s.
“Maybe you don’t, but I always have shit to do.” The hitchhiker’s eyes were open and his chair was no longer reclined. He was now staring at the driver, the blur of the Wyoming plains whisking behind his head, but the hitchhiker did not take any notice of it. He only saw the sunglasses.
“So then you probably never fired a gun then, have ya?”
“Why do you think that?’
“So, I’m right? You haven’t.”
“Why does it matter whether or not I’ve fired a gun?”
“Why does it matter?” The driver laughed, but the hitchhiker thought it sounded more like a cackle. “You wouldn’t know why it mattered till you shot one. Till you took aim, and fired, and felt your body burn with power. That realization that if there was anything, any person, any animal, anything that you loved, that shot that you had just fired would have destroyed it. Killed it.”
“Why would anyone need to feel that?”
“Nobody absolutely needs to, but if you want something to wake yourself up, the recoil of a gun is going to do a good job.”
“But back to what you were saying, what’s keeping you so busy?” said the driver, and now he looked at the man in the passenger’s seat through his tinted vision. He didn’t need to look at the road to drive down the endless, straight path.
But when the driver looked at the hitchhiker, all the hitchhiker could see was his reflection.
“School and work. I’m paying my way through school,” said the hitchhiker.
“How is that working out for you?”
“It’s fine. I know that in the end it will pay off,” and then the hitchhiker added, “I’m not complaining, it’s a better life than most.”
“You sure you aren’t complaining?”
“Ya, I’m pretty sure.”
“Well maybe you should be.”
The hitchhiker paused. “Ya, and why is that?”
“Well, what are you going to school for?” asked the driver.
“I’m working my way into Medical School,” said the hitchhiker and he could tell where the conversation was going. It was a familiar road.
“Oh Medical School! Good for you!” said the driver, his voice etched with sarcasm. “What’s your field?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I have been thinking about going into pharmaceuticals,” said the hitchhiker, repeating the lines he had been telling people for the last year.
“Have you ever studied any other types of medicine? “
“Like what,” said the hitchhiker stiffly.
"Natural cures, that sort of thing. There is some crazy stuff out there”
“That stuff? No, I have not. Those kinds of medicines are unpredictable and inefficient,” said the hitchhiker.
This guy is full of shit, thought the hitchhiker, does he have any idea what he is saying?
“Those types of practice have been used for thousands of years and you say it doesn’t work? Is that what they teach you in school?”
“That is what they teach me in school. There are better ways of healing people than using just the basics of nature. Modern medicine has evolved beyond that.”
“Have you ever looked into it yourself?”
“Have I ever looked into it myself? I am going to medical school; I am not training to survive in the wilderness,” replied the hitchhiker. His anger was beginning to rise once again.
“It sounds like you are doing a lot of listening, but not much thinking.”
“What does that mean?” said the hitchhiker.
“It seems like you aren’t the one driving,” he said, with a smile that read “I understand the world better than you and you should listen.” The hitchhiker only saw bullshit.
“Ya…driving what?” said the hitchhiker.
“Your life,” he said, his face still holding the same wretched smile.
“Oh, ok. Do you even know what you are talking about? I’m paying for school by myself. I’m creating my own future. I am pretty sure I am the one driving.”
“You sure? I mean, I’m driving you right now,” he said, and then took off his sunglasses to reveal a pair of sky-blue eyes and the hitchhiker no longer saw his reflection.
“Ohhh. That is clever,” said the hitchhiker with sarcasm. “But so? There is a difference between life and getting from point A and point B. Life is full of variables. It twists and turns and its direction changes all the time. It’s not as simple as getting from point A to point B.”
“Your call,” he said, and put back on his sunglasses
The car went silent except for the rumble of the engine. The driver went back to surveying the desert and mountains while the hitchhiker went back to the map and to trying to figure out where he was.
About a half hour later the hitchhiker asked, “Are we any closer to where we are going?”
“I think so.”
“What does that mean?” It dawned on the hitchhiker that whenever the driver answered one of his questions, his anger rose.
“I’m not really sure.”
“Are you serious?” the hitchhiker asked, taking his eyes off of the map to stare at him, again.
“Hey if it weren’t for me you would still be stuck in the middle of the desert with your cramped thumb up."
“Ya, well you told me that you were going to Salt Lake City. And look where we are now.”
“Hey beggars can’t be choosers.”
“What does that mean? You told me you could take me to Salt Lake!”
“You’re the one that needed me, I didn’t ask you if you wanted a ride, you asked me.”
“What are you trying to say? Where are you taking me?” The hitchhiker could sense the fear within his own words.
“You know, I dropped out of school when I was seventeen? I couldn’t take it anymore. Twelve years of being told what to do was enough. I’ve made my way all over the place. But you know how we are both the same and different?”
“How?” said the hitchhiker, momentarily distracted. “Is it us both being in this car and me having a future?”
“No. Close. But no. We are both lost in this world. But I know I’m lost. You think you know where you are in your life (though at the moment, you don’t) but the sad thing is, you are really just lost like me. Your ignorance is what is preventing you from being able to get to where you want to be. You are lost Mr. Hitchhiker. I’m telling you to accept it. You’ve been told what to do your entire life. You schools tell you what to learn, how much to pay. You are forced to find a way to pay for it by doing what other people tell you to do. They are the ones controlling your life.” Then the driver reached over and gripped the hitchhiker’s tie and pulled. “Society’s got your neck in a noose.”
“You are full of shit,” said the hitchhiker, “I decided to do all those things on my own. I could have done something else with my life, but this is the road I chose. I’m taking the path that I want and I will get to my destination, despite anybody telling me how I should do things.”
“Ya?” said the driver, and then he laughed, “Ya, ya. Alright. So you choose your own roads, I can respect that. You make your own decisions and you are your own master? Is that right?
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“So, would you have chosen this road we are on now?” The driver gestured like a conductor to the open plains and sand-brown grassy fields that drowned the car and the road.
“Hell no.”
The Driver began slowing the car down. They still had not seen anything for hours.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m letting you choose your own way, man. You told me that you purposely enter into situations where others will tell you what to do because in the end, it will be for your benefit.”
The car had come to a complete stop, meanwhile the Driver pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the hitchhiker.
“I think it is time for you to get thinking.”
The hitchhiker pushed his back against the passenger door, away from the Driver’s pistol and yelled, “What the hell! You can’t d-”
“-I said get out, you’ve got some thinkin’ to do.”
The hitchhiker got out of the car. He looked around and did not see anything close to civilization. Just wide open land.
“I’m going die out here!” yelled the hitchhiker, his voice carrying out into nowhere land, “you can’t just…leave me out here, I’m going to die! Please, please don’t do this! Let me get back in the car! Come on, man!”
The Driver calmly responded, “Good luck,” and then he paused as he stared at the road and for a split-second, the hitchhiker stared at him through the car’s open door. Then the Driver took off his red sunglasses and threw them out the window and smiled at the hitchhiker.
“You are going to need these a lot more than I will.”
The hitchhiker looked through the open door at the man with naked blue eyes and the smile of the devil. The Driver took one look at the man and then he gunned the gas and the car took off, the door snapping shut from the sudden burst of speed, and dust rising up from its tires, surrounding the hitchhiker in a cloud of brown that pricked his eyes like slivers. He closed his eyes and groped the ground, searching for the sunglasses. As he put on the driver’s sun glasses, his eyes became shielded from the dust. He could see.
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