Free Ride
“Due to severe weather in the area, the flight from Atlanta to Birmingham has been canceled. Please see me at the desk to book the next available flight for tomorrow morning.”
A collective groan went up from the people in the waiting area. The clock said 1:05 am. The flight had already been delayed 3 times. Some people started to form a line at the gate to rebook their flight. A man in a blue shirt and kahkis said loudly to the group of waiting passengers “Hey, if anybody is interested, I’m going to rent a car and drive home tonight. Everybody chip in $10 bucks and we’ll be home in 2 hours.”
A group of us, all going to Birmingham, followed the man to the car rental counter. We were all tired and getting home in 2 hours seemed a better option than sleeping in the airport. Somebody looked him up and he was the cousin of someone who worked in a local engineering firm. No need to worry.
The rental van was supposed to seat 8, but by the time we made it all the way through the airport, almost everyone had politely dropped back and then there were only 2 of us left in the group that had followed him to the rental counter — me and Tracy.
The two of us nervously loaded our luggage into the back of the van and thanked him for the trouble of driving us. “I’m Tracy”, said the other girl. “and I’m Amanda”, I said as we introduced ourselves. “Nice to meet you Tracy & Amanda”, he said, “I’m John.” We tried to hand over our $10 for the ride, but he said, “Ah, don’t worry about it. I’ll just expense it back to my company.”
The rain fell hard on the windshield and Tracy & I sat in the back while he drove. We kept giving each other nervous looks as he picked up the highway back to home. “He could drive us anywhere. This was a really dumb thing to do” we kept silently mouthing to each other, but there was nothing that could be done about it now.
All the way home, we listened to equal parts radio, silence, rain, more radio, stories about corporate America, working, traveling, flight cancellations. We started to calm down; our nervousness died away, we were making too much out of nothing. He was a nice guy, giving us a ride home, for free. As the exit signs on the highway became more and more familiar, we started to feel safer and safer. Maybe this was going to be OK after all.
The rain was coming down even harder now, and we were a few miles from the airport exit where both of our cars were parked in the Birmingham airport parking garage. When he took the wrong exit, Tracy said, “Hey, I think you meant to take the airport road exit, not this one.”
He continued driving the exit ramp, until he reached the end of the exit, and then turned left, away from the airport.
He pulled the car to the side of the road, along side a muddy ditch. He clicked off the engine.
“So”, he said in a very different voice than he had used when he was making jokes about flight cancellations, “You girls know how to party”?
