On The Ride Home

I was half an hour late getting my son to his mom’s. It was around noon; I was supposed to be there then. I find it hard to hurry when I have to do that; but it was raining when we got to the parking lot so we ran to the car.

I held his hand more than usual on the way.

The rain stopped when I got there for a moment; I hugged him outside her house. Told him I loved him, missed him already. Told him I’d see him on Sunday. That shit never gets easy.

I headed back the way I came: through the city. It started to rain again - hard. I adjusted the wipers almost to the highest speed. The Drive soundtrack was playing on my stereo: favorite movie, favorite theme song.



I’m a good driver. I see everything: potholes that could cause sudden hydroplane if you hit them wrong, stupid drivers who think they are Vin Diesel on their way back to their desk-jobs, debris. I was driving down a busy two-lane road that connected the west end with the city when I saw them: a mother and her three kids, one in a stroller. They were running while the rain poured down.

“Give them a ride,” I thought.




I didn’t slow down. There were wannabe Fast ‘n’ Furiouses behind me and it didn’t seem safe. I thought about how weird it would be for some random guy to pull over and try to give them a ride in his car.

I passed a turnaround, and then another one. “I don’t need to,” I thought, “I can just go home.”

But at the same time, my nerves were shooting through my body: “Gotta turn around; gotta go back.”

When I got to the next light I took a right, fast. There was nobody on the side streets. I went quick but safely, my foot over the brake. I knew those streets well.



I didn’t see them when I got back. The rain was still coming down hard and it blocked my vision. Then I saw them: they were huddled under a tree in the park, a hundred feet from the road. I pulled into the left lane to the curb and put my hazards on.

I rolled down my window.

“You need a ride?” I yelled to the mother. I got out of my car.

She said some street name that they were trying to get to and I said I could get them there, though I didn’t know where it was. The three girls lined up on the curb in front of a giant puddle. Traffic had stopped in the left lane. No one was honking their horns either: they knew what I was doing.

I had my Batman sweatshirt on. The youngest girl must have been two or three, the oldest couldn’t have been more than 6. I picked them up, one by one, while standing in the puddle, and put them in the back seat. I took the stroller from the mother and put it in the trunk. They all were wet. I could tell the mother was embarrassed. They were poor, very poor. She smelled bad; they all smelled bad, like they never took a bath and everyone they lived with smoked.

I turned off the hazards and pulled out from blocking the lane, carefully.

The music changed to “Where’s The Deluxe Model?”




I punched the address she had said into my GPS. God knows how many people I had driven in this car at night.

I could tell they were a little scared, the kids: a strange man picking them up.



“I’m Joe,” I said, “You guys like gum?” It was all I had. My son likes it. I passed it to their mom. I could hear the happy sound of wrappers crinkling. One of the little girls passed it back to me.




The GPS said 4 minutes, which was probably 5 times as long walking. Their mom said something about how they had to change their clothes when they got back.

I let them out. They all said "thank you." I said “don’t worry ‘bout it.” There was a time I didn’t have a car.

I drove back to Liverpool. Felt like I was floating over the road. Sun came out for a second on the way back.