The original date of publication for this essay is Sunday, May 16th. It is the 44th of what’s intended to be a year’s worth of essays, published on Sundays. That intention, like everything, is subject to change.
Last week’s essay: On Canyon de Chelly
On a morning last February—the one before this February—I gave a Lyft ride to a drunk guy. I want to call him a drunk kid. He was young, probably a little younger than me. He was drunk.
It was around seven in the morning, and I picked him up outside some apartments a few blocks south of East 6th—east East 6th, east of the highway East 6th, not Dirty 6th. He told me his shift had ended at a bar (he named the bar, I won’t name the bar) and that he’d partied afterward for a bit at someone’s place, then slept a little and woke up and now was heading home. He said he liked the bar. He said he could get me discounted drinks.
It started to smell bad inside the car. The man reeked of alcohol, but it was something else, too.
We had to get on the interstate, and it was misting the littlest mist—a damp morning, gray in the sky and gray in the pavement and gray in the air. The guy wouldn’t stop talking, not that I asked, but I wanted to ask, because it was a disturbing monologue. He looked like a number of kids I’d gone to high school with—straight, sandy hair; lean, a little broad; with a wildness about him that was probably coming through stronger in his drunk, unslept state but seemed like it was probably there all the time—that cornered-tiger energy the kids who fight on the playground have. He spoke about his girlfriend, who was probably an ex-girlfriend, because to hear him tell it, she’d gotten him in trouble with the cops for something vaguely violent. He was on probation now, and to hear him tell it, it was her fault. He didn’t like the police. His uncle, he said, had died at the gun of an Austin police officer. He, he said, was sure he’d do the same. He wasn’t going to go quietly, he said.
We got off the interstate, and traffic was starting to build on William Cannon. He’d begun commenting on the smell—the non-booze-reeking smell—and at a stoplight, he realized the source: He’d stepped in a big pile of dog shit. It was all over his shoe. It was all over the thank-God-it-was-plastic-and-thank-God-he’d-sat-up-front-because-the-back-ones-weren’t-plastic floormat in the passenger seat. He opened the door and started scraping his foot on the pavement, continuing for a moment even after the light turned green. He apologized for the delay. He resumed the monologue.
I got him home, to an overgrown house on a busy street, and I signed off of Lyft and went to the HEB over on South 1st—the one that isn’t there anymore. I got paper towels and Clorox wipes, and I wiped off the floormat and the underside of the door and the overside of the frame where he’d incidentally spread some shit upon entry or exit (or during the brief scraping at the stoplight). A guy named Sergio walked up and walked the used paper towels, wrapped in one another so as to contain the shit, over to a garbage can for me. I gave him ten dollars to get breakfast at the McDonalds down the parking lot.
The car was fine. Clean enough. I kept the windows rolled down and got back to driving and probably asked the next person if they could smell it and they must have said no, and I went on with my day. I was freaked out by the kid. Disturbed. Concerned. But he was on probation, which meant someone at least had eyes on him, and whether this made sense or not it was enough to get my mind off him.
I don’t know what to say about the kid. I hope he’s ok. I really hope his girlfriend’s ok. I wouldn’t recognize him if I saw him at that bar. But I’ve never actually been inside that bar—not even when I lived over there. I hope Sergio’s doing well, though. He wasn’t really that much help. Kind of a one-man job. But I liked that he tried.
Next week’s essay: On Crystal Lake American Little League
