The Hitchhiker Who Knew the Bridge Was Out

It was a filthy night, rain coming sideways, and he was standing at the junction with no coat and his thumb out, and I am the sort of fool who stops for people like that, storms being exactly when a person most needs picking up. He got in, soaking my passenger seat, mumbled a thanks, and gave a destination out past the river.

He barely spoke. I tried the usual small talk — bad night for it, where are you headed, that sort of thing — and got single words back, or nothing, and settled into the silence, watching the road, which was treacherous, streaming, the wipers losing the fight. As we came to the fork — left for the river road and the old bridge, the quick way; right for the long way round by the top of the valley — I signalled left, out of habit, the fast route home.

'Not the river road,' he said. First full sentence he'd offered. 'The bridge is gone. Take the long way.'

I looked at him. He was staring straight ahead, water running off his hair, saying it flatly, with total certainty, a young man who'd told me nothing about himself now telling me the state of a bridge I'd crossed that morning and that was, as far as I knew, perfectly fine. I very nearly ignored him — the river road is fifteen minutes quicker and it was a foul night to add fifteen minutes — but there was something in the flatness of it, the certainty, that made my hand turn the wheel right instead, the long way, up the valley, in the rain, muttering to myself about picking up strange hitchhikers who give driving directions.