Benevolence

My husband is not a very trusting man.

            He despises my constant want to help others. Still, I know it was one of the reasons he fell in love with me. We are strikingly different, and it is in this simple fact that we work so well together. I am optimistic, he is pessimistic. I will trust anything and anyone without second thought, it took him four years before he could even trust me. I love art and literature, he prefers cigarettes and sports. Still, in our perfectly inharmonious matrimony we are happy and love in a way that is unparalleled.

            The car smelled of tacos and my scented lotion. It’d been a long day shopping for cribs, diapers, paint, and other assorted baby items. Neither one of us felt like making dinner so Taco Bell was our next best choice. Adam had leaned over the middle console and was rubbing my protruding stomach from the passenger seat, whispering soft words in hopes that the baby would understand how kind his father was.

“I don’t think he can hear you, and even if he could, I’ve already told him not to listen to you because everything you say is nonsense,” I said, in a sassy tone and a contradicting smirk. He simply looked up at me with those big green eyes and smiled that smile that’s always increased the speed of my heart and melted it all at once.

“That’s funny, because I was just letting him know that his mother was a mentally unsound lunatic, and that he should not be listening to anything that she says.” His voice was as deep and sincere as his body portrayed him to be, but there was always a tone behind it that warned you of his intelligence and intensity. He brushed his curly brown hair away from his face and sat back in the passenger seat with a smile of amusement and satisfaction.

 I replied, “you should not be using such language around the baby, their ears are sensitive you know.”

He laughed his deep laugh of regale, “his ears, or your ears? And I thought you said he couldn’t hear me.” He always had a way of stopping me cold and shutting me up. I loved this about him, he always had a retort. I accepted defeat from the conversation and we continued down the road hand in hand with babies, home, and tacos in mind.

 

                Even from a distance you could see him. His bag hoisted over his shoulder, a cooler in his left hand and his hood raised over his head. The sky was gray and the clouds seemed to be impatiently waiting to lighten themselves from rain. Many times we have had the conversation, Adam and I. It always goes the same.

 “Can we please stop?” I would say, with a feeble attempt. “I know it’s dangerous but he looks so sad and lonely. Just a few dollars and then we’ll leave him be. If we don’t stop to help him who will? If you’re here then nothing can happen to us right? You’ll protect us.” Usually flattery doesn’t go far with him but desperate times call for desperate measures.

He would always roll his eyes the same way, “we have done nothing to harm him and we will do nothing to help him either. It’s dangerous baby, you never know what a man is capable of and I don’t want your naïve kindness to get you killed, or worse. I know you want to help him and that’s very sweet of you, but the day that you stop and assist a stranger on the side of the road you’ll regret it. We are not stopping.” And so the conversation would be finished and we would leave the poor man behind to rot. I know that Adam is not a cruel man, somewhere deep inside him he does want to help. He just knows that some men are not what they seem to be, and he always has my best interest at heart.

                This man, though, was different. As we passed him he made no gesture to our car, only looked up slightly with a look of destruction across his face. He was young, too young to be helpless and homeless and the bag he was carrying looked heavy while he looked weak. I glanced over at Adam with an expression on my face that he was sure to recognize, before he could decline my proposition that he knew was coming I stopped him dead in his tracks. “If we don’t stop now, while you’re here with me, then someday I am going to do it while I’m by myself. Would you rather we help someone while we’re together and strong, or while I’m alone and vulnerable?” My heart was racing because I was crossing a line that should not have been touched. I could see the emotions on his face waving through his body in an attempt to weigh the situation. He knew that I was being serious. He knew that I was not bluffing. All along he knew that a time like this would come, when I would be able to read him better than he could read me. He lifted his hand to his forehead and pressed on his temples as if a headache had just crept up on him.

In a low, irritated grumble, he said, “turn around.”

            In less than half a minute we were approaching the homeless man from behind. It had begun to rain. Large, fat rain that would sting if it were to hit you and covered our windshield quicker than I could wipe it away. With excitement and adrenaline flowing through my veins I could feel the contradicting tension of heat vibrating off of Adam’s body. I looked at him with a soft smile and rested my hand on top of his, “It’s okay sweetheart, everything’s going to be fine, you’re here to protect us, and you would never let anything happen to our family.” Reluctantly and uneasily he smiled back, and placed his other hand on top of mine so to reassure the protection that he would provide.

            “I have a ten in my wallet, you can give him that.” Adam surprised me with this sudden generosity, more than likely he just wanted the situation to subside so we could make our way back home and enjoy our lukewarm tacos.

“Thanks baby,” I said with a smile and took the ten from his quivering hand.

“You’re such a good man,” I said, once again attempting to win him over with flattery. At the moment it seemed to be getting me somewhere as he sat back and let out a deep sigh of exhaustion.

             I pulled the car over just a few steps away from the homeless man. There was no one else on the street but us, two people that knew one another too well and a stranger. He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of my car approaching and was at the window before I had a chance to roll it down. At a loss for words I simply stared at the man for what seemed to be over a minute, yet it couldn’t have been. The rain had begun to pour into my car but I was unaffected by its chill. His blue eyes were squinting at the large drops of water but they shone bright through the grime on his face that had been transformed to streaks because of the rain, as if he were looking through a cage. The hood over his head was soaked in a pathetic attempt to keep him dry. Adam squeezed my leg to awaken me from the trance.

“We, uh, have a ten for you… if you’d like,” my voice did not sound like my own. The expression on my face, I’m sure, was blank and dumbfounded. I reached through the car window to hand him the ten dollar bill when I was startled by an unknown voice that I did not expect to hear.

“A ride would be better, it’s awfully miserable out here.” His voice was gruff but sounded no older than twenty-five. It made me realize that he was probably no older than my husband and I, how horrible to be homeless and alone at such a young age. Adam leaned over my large, impregnated belly with force to take a look at the stranger who stood at mercy of our car window. The stranger seemed to be taken back by the large presence of my husband.

“Hey, just take the money and carry on, you’re lucky we even stopped.” Here it was, the tone in Adam’s voice that reinforced his intensity.

“Wait,” I cried, still fuming with adrenaline at our present situation, “we could just take him up the road a little ways so he could wait out the rain somewhere in town,” I whispered, hoping that the words would only be heard by Adam. Apparently though, the homeless man took this as an invitation and before Adam could answer we heard the opening and closing of our rear car door.

 Adam began to grow red with rage, “Hey! Who said you could let yourself in?! I don’t know who the hell you think you are but we are not a damn taxi!” He had lost control of the situation and his emotions, this only fueled his anger. “You make one wrong move and I will throw you back out on the streets where you belong and I’ll beat you so bad that even the strongest rain storm won’t wash off all the blood oozing out of you!” I placed my tender hand on his burning face and forced him to look at me. My blue eyes seemed to calm him in a way that nothing else could and I knew that all he needed was a remembrance of the partner that sat beside him. His eyes echoed to me the deepest fear that a man could experience and something inside of me began to ache. This was my fault, I had forced this situation upon him. Amongst the chaos, the stranger simply remained quiet in the back seat without expression of fear or any symbolic emotion. He was busy shaking the rain off and preoccupied with his attempts to become dry and warm again.

Adam had faced forward, attempting to evaluate the situation as best he could. I turned around to face the stranger in my backseat and simultaneously he looked up at me with a faint smile. His blue eyes continued to disturb me, they were as if you thought you could look through them, but were stopped abruptly by their false transparency.

 “We can take you into town where you can maybe get something to eat and find shelter until the storm wears out. My husband, as you can see does not take well to strangers and he’ll do anything to protect me.” The man moved his bag and cooler to the side so he had taken over the entirety of our backseat.

“And the baby,” he said with an insolent tone. I did not realize until now that Adam and I were holding hands. Adam began to tighten the grip on my hand and before he could explode in rage again I took the words out of his mouth, “what do you mean?”

“I mean he’ll do anything to protect you and the baby. That’s why he can’t stand the sight or the smell of me, because I pose a threat on your upcoming family. It’s alright, I’d probably be the same way too.”

With this Adam seemed to relax. The tone in the man’s voice had changed suddenly so he did not seem threatening, but welcoming and grateful for our generosity. With a simple smile I turned back around, put the car in drive, and continued down the empty, solitary, forlorn road.

Silence filled the car with the most unsettling sound. Since the man had entered the car, the smell of tacos and lotion had been evaporated by his rotting smell. The silence continued for what seemed like hours but could only have been a mere few minutes. This silence was broken, though, by the young gruff voice echoing from the backseat.

“So how long have you two been married?” Adam had seemed calm until now, almost like he had forgotten the entity sitting behind us.

“You don’t need to know anything about our personal lives,” snapped Adam.

“Just trying to make conversation.”

Both men accepted one another’s hostility and continued to look out the window at the gray life passing by.

“We’ve been together for six years, but married for two.” I could not stand this unbearable tension any longer. He was here and it was my fault, I thought that maybe the situation would be less upsetting if we handled it like civilized people. Adam shot me a look of disgust.

“Is this your first child?”

“Yes.”

“What will the name be?”

“Jacob.”

“Nice name.”

“It is.”

With each question and willing answer, my husband began to grow more and more agitated towards me. His looks of distaste continued, but I deemed this situation as a moment that we would laugh at later in our lives. One that we would tell to the baby as an exciting adventure that we had right before his birth.

“Where do you live?”

Adam could not hold it in any longer, “alright! That’s enough questions. We’re simply a good couple of people trying to help you out in your time of trouble. You don’t need to know anything about us that could lead you back into our lives later.”

“Oh that’s the kind of person that you think I am? You think I just bum rides off of people so I can take everything they own? You also probably think that I’m a murderer too. That I’m a rapist. Lord knows what else is going through your mind right now. Tell me, if it wasn’t for your kind, beautiful wife, would you have even stopped?”

Adam grew angrier at the mention of me. “No, I wouldn’t have stopped, and if you mention her again, I’ll be the one that you have to worry about being a murderer.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” I butted in, hoping to end the argument before it got out of control. “We’re almost to town, can’t we just sit here in peace until we get there?”

And so it was, the conversation between my husband and the stranger ceased to exist and we made it to town without a single problem. We dropped the man off at the nearest gas station, handed him our cold Taco Bell food and ten dollars. We did not say a single word to him before we departed, my husband fed him a look of repugnance and I offered him an apologetic smile. As I drove off I could see him standing in the review mirror. His body was facing us and continued to stare at the back side of our car until he disappeared from view. As I was studying the expression on his face I was interrupted by the aggravated tone in my husband’s voice.

“Great idea honey.”

We drove home in complete silence. As soon as we entered the house I was expecting an argument to arise. Instead, my husband simply devoured me within his arms, desperately trying to make his way around my belly. We stood there for many minutes, grateful to have each other safe and sound. With knowledge of one another’s emotions and needs we made love that night in a way that could never be repeated nor replaced. We fell into a deep sleep and dreamt one another’s dreams, so full of love and expectations for the near future of a family.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of a gunshot. Adam’s blood had covered the near entirety of my large belly and the white sheets were stained in red. I looked up and could see the new morning light shining through the parted curtains of our bedroom window, highlighting the curves of the blue-eyed stranger.

He moved the gun to face me and through its tunnel I saw the reality of my mistake. My ears were ringing and sweat had begun to dampen my bare body, but I could hear him say four kind words.

“Thanks for the ride.”