Smooth Ride Home

The back roads were never lit very well, but they were hardly ever packed with cars. Professor Beatty had left San Francisco just before the sun had set and aimed to be in San Diego before he saw it again. He was never one for the scenic road, always in a rush. Time was a precious commodity that the good professor had plenty of but was clueless on how to spend it. He had lectured at most of the prestigious campuses across the globe, stayed in the illustrious cities of the world, but Professor Beatty could never tell the difference.

To compound the dangers of a darkly lit road are its convoluted paths that hug perilously close to the edges of cliffs. This is the environment that this educated driver finds himself navigating. He has driven this road dozens of times, checked the maps hundreds of times, and is even keen on the tendencies of traffic all along his route. But nothing can prepare him for the encounter that he is destined to face on the miles coming up ahead.

Beatty turns on the high beams, but to no avail as even the light has difficult piercing through the darkness. All that shone back was the asphalt of the road and the reflectors that smiled mockingly from a few feet away. Then, in the distance, there was a shimmering figure standing alongside the shoulder of the barren road. It was a man dressed completely in white. He didn’t seem to be headed in any direction. He turned towards the car as if waiting for its arrival. The stranger lifted his hand to the driver.

“There’s no way that that man was looking for a ride,” Beatty reasoned to himself, “There’s nowhere he could have come from. How did he get to be in the middle of nowhere? He must have been working for some government project.” The chatter in his mind was comforting only to him as he past the stranger by. Another mile passed and he saw another shimmering figure on the roadside just beneath the sign that declared the rising elevation of the road.

Professor Beatty saw those steel gray eyes looking softly at him, beckoning him to stop. It wasn’t until he say the figure raise his hand towards him that he recognized this man. But it couldn’t be! How could the hitchhiker he passed by just a mile ago be ahead of him on this same road? There was no indication that any vehicle had passed him on the highway. He knew that there were no other connecting roads for at least 50 miles. How did he get there so quickly?

“My mind must be playing tricks on me. It’s a symptom of my lack of sleep,” he deduced, “It’s a different worker than the previous one, just seems the same because of that suit. That is an odd suit. But they must be working on something big. This one is wearing watch. I’m sure the first guy wasn’t wearing such a nice gold watch. I’m just sure of it.” Beatty kept talking in the hopes of convincing himself that he was right about the watch.

The road was getting steeper uphill and the reflectors on the road were becoming less subtle. It was a tactic employed to alert the lone driver that there was a shear cliff just on the other side of the railing. The professor gathered his wits about him and cautiously hugged the curves of the roads. Around the first bend he felt relieved until a sharp pain shot up throughout his entire spine. He saw those steel gray eyes, looking kindly at him once more; the white suit gleaming as if made by pure light. The hand rose up once more toward the car, hailing it to stop. And hanging from the stranger’s wrist was a sparkling gold watch that Professor Beatty could not deny was the same one he say a mile prior to the bend.

Terrified, Beatty’s foot exploded into the accelerator. The rear wheels spun in place for a second, screeching rubber onto the asphalt before speeding the hulking car forward, away from the man in the white suit. He looked behind him to look for the stranger who had disappeared like smoke into the sky. There was no one on the roadside, and no trace that there ever was. Before processing the event a loud bang jolted the front of the car and the rest of it followed quickly after. The engine was still running when Beatty swiped his head towards the front of the road again.

“Just another pothole,” he told himself, “I hope I didn’t wreck the car too awfully.”

The ride seemed somehow smoother after the pothole. The darkness didn’t seem as dark, and for whatever reason an inexplicable calm overcame Professor Beatty. Then, once more, the figure in white was at the roadside. The stranger’s gray eyes seemed welcoming to Beatty. The glowing white arm was raised again, and the good professor submitted and pulled over to let the man in.

“I thought you’d never stop, Professor Beatty,” the stranger said, smiling innocently and warmly.

“I was scared, I didn’t expect to see another car on this road let alone a man,” the professor explained. “Where are you headed? And how did you know my name?”

“There’s no need to be scared, Professor. And I’m headed where you’re going right now. I’m an angel, and I’m afraid I’ve failed you.”

“Failed me?” Beatty’s skin was getting cold, the ride getting even smoother.

“I never intended to frighten you. I was trying to get you to slow down,” the angel smiled at Beatty in a comforting manner. “I thought if I could ride with you for a couple of miles you would take your time around that sheer cliff back there. Maybe I could’ve convinced you to pullover and rest your weary eyes.”

The man in the white suit thumbed back to the rear window. Beatty looked back and saw the edge of the cliff. The railings intended to keep cars on the road was broken and frayed out over the edge. He slowly turned his head to the front of the car and saw the tops of jagged rocks hurling towards him.

“That pothole back there… wasn’t really a pothole, was it?” Professor Beatty began to realize. The angel sat calmly in the passenger seat smiling warmly at him and placed his hand on the professor’s shoulder.

“No, you went straight through the railing,” the angel explained, “But I thought this would be easier on you. You have nothing to worry about, Professor Beatty. I assure you, you will be very well cared for where you’re headed. I’ll see to it personally.”

Professor Beatty became the casualty of not just drowsiness behind the wheel, but was caught too often with his eyes either too far behind him or too far ahead. What he should have been concerned with was the opportunities at hand. He learned all too late, that one cannot plan to stop and smell the proverbial roses, that spontaneity cannot be easily penciled into a little black book. Fortunately, for the good professor he picked up a companion on the road who helped him enjoy one more smooth ride before he reached his ultimate destination.