Alfred Hitchcock's A Choice of Evils by Elana Lore

Author:Elana Lore [Lore, Elana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Dial Press
Published: 1983-01-02T21:00:00+00:00

The Driver

by William Brittain

The driver would have found it hard to explain, even to himself, why he offered a ride to the man standing with thumb extended at the side of the road. He’d heard story after lurid story about individuals and sometimes whole families that had picked up hitchhikers who had turned out to be dangerous. The lucky ones lost only their cars and personal belongings. The unlucky ones ended up on a slab in the morgue, some with bodies marred only by a single neat bullet hole and others horribly mutilated.

Perhaps it was loneliness. He’d been driving since five o’clock that afternoon, and it was now after nine. The car was almost new, with only a thin layer of dust dulling the glistening exterior, but something was wrong with the radio; it only hissed and popped when he turned it on, so there was no human voice to relieve the tedium. There was just the ribbon of cement, coming into the beam of the headlights and passing out of sight beneath the wheels, mile after brain-numbing mile of it.

Then again, maybe it was the memory of how he himself in his younger days used to thumb his way around the country. There were times when he’d have given the shirt off his back for somebody to stop and give him a lift, and he remembered how rough it was when darkness fell and he still hadn’t reached his destination.

The driver had just passed the Thruway tollgates at Spring Valley. According to the attendant, the road was clear at least to Albany. A little rain was expected between there and Utica, but nothing to worry about. The driver grasped the offered ticket, tucked it above the sun visor, and pulled out into the darkness that was punctuated only by the reflecting mileage indicators on posts at the edge of the road. Four to every tenth of a mile, they seemed to zip by him like glittering cats’ eyes. For the next four hundred miles, he’d have no worries about traffic lights, oncoming cars or crossroads; just the reflectors, four to every tenth of a mile.

As the Thruway narrowed beyond the tollgates, the car’s headlights illuminated the man standing at the edge of the road. There was a cheap cloth bag at his feet. As the car passed, the man waved his thumb, a questioning expression on his face.

On a sudden impulse, the driver braked his car to a halt. Before he could put it into reverse, the man had run up beside him and poked his head in through the open window on the passenger’s side. “Ride, mister?” he asked.

The driver turned on the overhead light and looked at the man. He was wearing a jacket and tie—that was good—and even though he needed a haircut, he wasn’t too shaggy, not like those hippie kids with their knapsacks and bedrolls. The man smiled shyly.

“Hop in,” said the driver.

Opening the door, the man placed his bag on the floor and relaxed onto the seat with a weary sigh.

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