The lady I decided to kill but didn’t

In the fall of my freshman year of college, I hitchhiked home. We did that back then. Don’t ever do it now. It’s dangerous now. And it was dangerous then as it turned out for me.

Thanks to Atlas Green for sharing work on Unsplash.

It was Friday afternoon, around 5:30 pm, and it was starting to get dark. My ride deposited me a busy intersection. The corner of Cedar Lane and Lee Highway between Merrifield and Fairfax, VA. Two miles from home, I knew I had a walk ahead of me. On the south side of Lee Highway, I needed to cross its’ busy lanes and waited for the right moment to cross it. I wanted to head north on Cedar Lane, which while busy, was much less than Lee Highway.

Once across, I started towards Cedar Lane and paused when I realized there was a middle-aged woman across the highway yelling for my attention. She put her arm out with a flat palm and entered the traffic lane. Two cars needed to lock their brakes to avoid hitting her and she just kept walking towards me. I thought, “holy shit” and stood frozen. She entered the next lane, switching her arm and palm, again without looking and with some more hard braking by traffic.

She was agitated, fired up by something. I knew I hadn’t ever seen her before. She was reasonably dressed in a skirt and pullover sweater. She had a large black purse under her left arm. I stood facing the road and she with her back to it. The Lee Highway traffic was fast and mostly continuous and she didn’t seem bothered at all by the cars passing a few feet behind her.

She demanded, “You need to help me”

“With what?” I asked.

“There is a man in that bar, a black man, and you need to help me get him ou t of there”, she continued pointing at a bar diagonally across the inter section.

“Look, I gotta get home, I can’t help you,” I told her.

“If you help me, you won’t get hurt,” She said.

“What the hell are you saying lady?” I responded. I was uneasy but not scared. She wasn’t an imposing figure and we were in a pretty public place.

What she said next changed that.

“I’ve killed two people before and I will kill you. I have a gun in my purse. And I will kill you if you don’t help me.” Ok, now I was scared,

My heart was pounding and I was considering my options. I could run, I could help her or I could push her into traffic and kill her. My goals were, of course, don’t get killed and get the hell out of there.

The first decision I made was that I would push her into traffic if she went for the gun. The purse was over her left shoulder, so the reach with her right hand across her body would give me some reaction time.

The second decision I made was to act spontaneously and fake an offer to h elp her. At the red light, off my left shoulder on Cedar Lane, where two young guys in a pipickupck up truck. I said to her, “Hey, those guys at the light are my friends, they’ll help us.” I ran over to them with my backpack over my shoulder. I didn’t look back.

I excitedly told the guys, that the lady over my shoulder was threatening to kill me with her gun and that I would appreciate a ride out there. I looked back and she was marching over towards us.

They said, “Jump in the back”.

I did so pretty quickly. I feel her coming over. She was close now.

The driver revved the engine, dropped it into gear and the rear tires began spinning. She stopped in her tracks a few feet away. The light changed to green. The driver eased off the gas and we launched ourselves out of there. The truck passenger leaned out the window as we took off, stuck his arm out, flipped the bird and shouted , “Fuck you”. It was a touch I appreciated then as now.

They gave me a ride home from there.

It was the only time I ever thought of killing anyone. And, of course, the only time I decided I might do so. I didn’t hitchhike after that.