One November at dusk driving south of Knox Street on Central Expressway toward the heart of Dallas. A gray beat up hatchback was on the left shoulder crowded toward the concrete divider, so I moved right into the center lane, slowing to sixty miles per hour.
A person standing in front of the car, with one foot out in traffic, was looking at a shredded right front tire. I saw terror in her eyes.
She was about 23 years old, about 40 pounds heavy and of mixed race. She was returning from her first day on a new job on the north side of town. The job was in food processing. But the people treated her well.
I was 41, about 3 pounds heavy and half Italian and half Scotch Irish. I was returning from a Lindy Hop dance class, driving in my polar white Alabama built Mercedes SUV - part of a well intentioned, but ridiculously expensive, attempt to drive the
Jerry Springer Show off the air by stemming the tide of marginalized economic refugees from the rural south... Listening to an audio tape titled
Radar Love. It is about applying the story of the Good Samaritan, and the law of love, to the people that show up on your ‘radar screen.’
She was in a stuck place. It is a concrete canyon down there. How could she get out? The walls were unscalable. The next exit was a ramp to I-35. No good place to walk to .. especially after crossing three lanes of sixty plus miles per hour, not quite bumper to bumper traffic... to discover the comfort of an unscalable wall.
It was getting dark.
I wouldn’t want to be in that spot... maybe somebody would stop? Who would stop?
Maybe somebody would hit her and not stop, or accidentally hit the back of her car on the shoulder? One hundred and twenty feet of tangled mess...
As I took the next exit that could get me north again, I noticed a full-sized beige Oldsmobile 88 just in front of me, at the underpass. With a crooked bumper... covered with
hate message bumper stickers. There were six teenagers inside. All men. Maybe they would stop?
Traveling the same route as before, the car is still there. No hazard lights. I drive past the car and over onto the shoulder, stopping a measured one hundred and eighty feet away. There seems to be someone in the driver’s seat, huddled over the steering wheel. What kind of a choice can I offer: Get in a car with a stranger, or fight traffic to face an unscalable wall. Those are not very good choices. I find an old Walmart receipt and a pen. I’ll go with an offer to call someone for her. She can write down the number and sit tight.
She sees me, and meets me ten feet in front of her car. She does not take the offer. She wants a ride out of there, not later, but now. She tells me that she had been praying when I stopped. I don’t like the situation. How can I balance the power?
How can I give her more power? And give me less.
I put myself in the drivers seat and asked her to sit in the seat directly behind the driver. I can see her eyes in the rearview mirror, and that’s it. I keep both hands on the wheel - High where she can see them -- just like with a State Trooper.
I ask if she knows of a service station near by. She says “No.”
I don’t know of one either, and I would not leave her alone at one anyway...
I wouldn’t want a stranger driving me down roads I don’t know... either.
“Where do you live?”
“About 20 minutes south.”
“Okay, you tell me every direction you want the car to go. I’ll make every turn. Help me take you home.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, no problem. I drive that far everyday.”
I search her eyes to see if the terror is gone.
She says, ”Don’t worry, I won’t steal anything.”
“I wasn’t worried about that. I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
After several turns and some light conversation, some where she confessed to not checking the air in the tires that morning, we drive past a park, with some teenagers hanging out, and turn right. “It is the third house on the right.”
We stop. She get outs and asks, ”How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing. You were in a stuck place.”
Midway into the J-turn, I look at the front door of the house she pointed to, expecting to see her at the door, perhaps knocking or turning a key, to make sure she got in safely. She had disappeared!
...probably between the houses. It did not look like the kind of neighborhood where it paid to fumble with your keys on the porch.
Thinking about where her car was stuck, unless they can change a tire while standing in the fast lane of Central Expressway, they are going to have to pay to tow it out of there. What would the Good Samaritan have done?
He paid the traveler’s stay at the Inn.
