We left the cemetery and headed back towards. . . to be honest, I’d lost all sense of direction and place. We passed some familiar territory though, in what appeared to be the opposite direction. On one of the many un-striped roads we spotted a man in the distance, walking ahead of us as if with purpose. Ted slowed down alongside him. The man was dressed in a well-worn white tee-shirt, loose, faded jeans and sneakers. He sported a fanny pack, the pack was centered in the front.
“Do you need assistance sir?” It seemed to be a good bet, since it was three-thirty in the morning and we were a few miles from anything with lights on. We hadn’t even come across any other vehicles for over an hour.
“Aww, They just left me, that’s all.” Was his cryptic reply. Cops sure get a lot of cryptic replies.
“Who left you sir?”
“Uh, I don’t know.” He looked up and down the road. He didn’t appear drunk or high, just a bit confused and winded. “Just a couple of guys wanted me to come help them with their truck, don’t know ‘em. I didn’t want to but I couldn’t figure out how to tell ‘em that, so I came and helped them then they just left me here.”
“Where you headed now?” Ted asked.
“Home, where else, ‘cept it’s a mile up the road and across the bridge. I don’t suppose you could give me a lift, could ya?”
I could see that Ted didn’t really want to, this was a police cruiser, not a taxi cab. As a rule deputies don’t give rides except in the case of an emergency. But Ted’s also a decent guy. This man was stranded more than a mile from the nearest phone, looked tired, and did not appear to me to be a serious threat.
“Well sir, I can because of your situation, but I’ll have to ask you what’s in your fanny pack.” Ted pointed to it.
“Oh, that’s my gun.” The man answered. The hairs on my neck stood up.
“May I see it please sir?”
“Sure, it’s okay, I’ve got a CCW.”
A CCW is a concealed carry permit, quite common around these parts.
The man started to open the fanny pack, Ted advised him sharply to not do so. The man’s hands went straight up into the air.
“You mind if I open it sir?” Ted asked him. My heart skipped a couple of beats.
Ted got out of the car and opened the pack. He pulled out the man’s Taurus .380, a light but lethal semi-automatic handgun designed for concealed carry, a pocket-pistol. The gun itself didn’t bother me much, I’ve got one very much like it. Ted ejected the six round magazine and tossed it onto the driver’s seat. He checked the weapon for a chambered round then gave it a quick visual check to make sure it was empty. He returned the weapon, without the ammo, to the pack. I got out and moved once again to the back seat.
Once seated and belted in, the man talked quite a bit, but the whole story about who he was helping and where his own vehicle were just got muddier. We did find out that crossing that bridge he’d mentioned would take us into St. Francois County, This bothered Ted a little, I wondered if he would just take him halfway across the bridge and leave him there. County lines are drawn out in accordance with political concerns, not geographical ones. On back roads it’s often difficult to tell, if discernable at all, where the lines are.
We crossed the short bridge and stopped in our tracks. Not because of the line, but because of the tail end of a small SUV sticking up almost vertically. By all appearances it had run off the road and started down the ravine at the end of the bridge. There didn’t seem to be any damage, no trees, poles or signs. A young man was standing behind it, now blinded by the cruiser’s headlights. On the other side of the road was a local, independent tow-truck.
“Hey, that’s one of the guys!” The man in the front seat called out.
Ted looked confused. So did I.
“That’s one of the men that stranded you?” He asked.
“Uh, yeah, I think…yeah, that’s one of them.”
“Is that the truck you helped them with?”
“What? No, that’s the other one.”
I was really confused, but not as confused as the man in the front seat seemed to be. We passed the car and drove the man to his house just a couple hundred yards away. Ted gave him back his bullets and wished him a good evening.
We returned to the bridge, the tow truck driver was backing up to the near-vertical SUV. We stopped.
“Hey Rick.” Ted called out to the truck operator. “What’s going on?”
Rick approached the cruiser.
“Helping a poor guy out again.”
“Again?”
“Yeah, this is the second vehicle I’ve pulled out of a ditch for him tonight.”
“What’s his problem?” Ted asked.
“I have no idea.”
The situation was not getting any clearer.
“Tell me Rick, what county are we in right now?”
“Oh yeah, you’re out of your territory. Jefferson County’s across the bridge, this is St. Francois.”
“Glad to hear it.” Ted said as we drove away.
“Did you make any sense out of that whole thing?” I asked a few quiet minutes later.
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