I'm a Hitchhiker. I'm So Sorry.

I'm a hitch hiker. I’ve hitched my way across every twisting backroad in the United States hundreds of times since I started hitching rides when I was young. How young? I don’t recall an exact age, but I was old enough and it was well before cell phones and cameras were every-damn-where.

Nowadays, I’m older than most that still walk the dusty black veins of our motherland. There’s fewer of us every year. Back when I first started, I used to spot a fellow hitchhiker at least once a week. Now, I see one every couple’a years.

The last one I saw was sixteen months ago. She was sitting in the backseat of a cream colored beat up Buick with Idaho plates. It sped past me, its lights flooding the pitch black highway I walked alongside. I caught a split second view of the hitcher through the back window. She was crying.