SANTA BARBARA
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Isla Vista was a detour off the freeway but not so far that it didn't seem like a good idea to drop in for an unannounced visit. I pulled through the small community and kept my eye out for a place to grab something to drink. I found a small fastfood stand and grabbed a coke and stood against the corner sucking on the straw.
A figure tentatively came from behind one of the tables that was placed on the cement patio to the side of the food stand and asked if I was going north in a most hesitant voice. I liked riding alone and I liked thinking alone. I liked stopping when I felt like stopping and going when I felt like going. So I was almost surprised at myself when I affirmed his question and consented to give him a ride. Vietnam War had spooked me more than I had acknowledged and evasive action was on my mind. Although I hadn't considered taking on a passenger, it now seemed like a reasonable course to take. Besides, his plaintive appeal would have deserved the semblance of an excuse of which I had none.
The young man assured me that he only wanted to go as far as San Luis. He hitched a ride with me and a smugness hitched a ride with him. His rounded shoulders straightened and a brash confidence sailed into his face. I cleared out the passenger seat and he swaggered into it.
His complexion was darker than my first glance had indicated and he was bigger. Maybe he wasn't bigger, maybe it was that my perceptions became smaller. They shrank as soon as someone else entered their space.
In the distant past, the freeway ramps were like train platforms where hitchhikers waited for the next local or if they were lucky, an express. Long hairs dressed in tie-dye and jeans with their bound up knapsacks at their feet showed cardboard signs citing their destinations or posed with a large wiggling thumb. Occasionally, you could even find a single girl along the ice plant that bordered the pavement. All that has ended as a result of reports of murderers and rapists and drug addicts and robbers and arsonists and sexual deviants and shoplifters and bigamists and assassins and slanderers and extortionists and pickpockets . . . that's a little much. Pickpocketing is a lost art. Opportunists are everywhere; in cars, on freeway ramps, on newspaper staffs, in city hallS, in schools, in parents and they manage to spoil everything. I slid my eyes hard to the right. Was I prepared to jump out of my moving car at 70MPH in the event a gun was produced in an unsuspecting moment?
"What are you studying at UCSB?"
"I don't go there."
That was not the answer I particularly wanted to hear.
"My sister was the smart one. She did well in school. I did pretty good till I was a junior. Played baseball and everything. Then I got thrown off the team. Took the fun out of school. I was pretty good with numbers. My sister went to JC, married and moved to San Louis. I guess that's the way it goes."
It was a tale that could have been any kid's story. I felt relieved. As if ax-murderers don't have a narrative that is like any other kid's story. Questioning without prying should be accomplished with a disinterested tone and I did my best to casually ascertain his origins. He came from Oxnard. I had guessed he was Hispanic and being from Oxnard added evidence. We exchanged names. His name was Eddie. Now that's a good all American name: Fast Eddie, Eddie Arcaro, Eddie Murray, Ed Bradley, Eddie Cochran, Edgar Poe, Edward G. Robinson, Eddie Haskel, Eddie Munster, Mr. Ed. He better not call me "Willlburrr", I thought. At some point in our initial remarks to each other, I made the mistake of telling him I was going to Canada.
Before we cruised onto the freeway we passed one of the generic homeless with a cardboard sign that said he was willing to work for food. "Work for some money and then buy the food. Some people don't get the concept." He thought himself quite funny. I was somewhat taken aback at the meanness he emitted. Perhaps I was misjudging his circumstances but I'd have thought begging for a ride would have given him some humility. Money or no money, I guess it's a rare kid who has the price of a ticket out of his culture and Eddie undoubtedly thought like most kids his age, even if he wasn't presently rolling in dough, he was going to be in the near future.
Ed looked around as if he was noticing the car for the first time. "You could fix this up and have a nice looking ride, you know? New suspension, paint, a good uphostelry job." His despondancy had definitely gone away. I might have felt insulted if I had taken much of my self image from my car.
He continued, "I had to leave my ride in the shop. I was lucky one of my cousins was heading up to Santa Barbara."
That explained about as much as I wanted to know and settled my mind as to his history. The rest of his verbal meanderings I wasn't too concerned about.