The window is down, the breeze comes in. I enjoy the warm air. The sun is out. We are south of Nelson, on Highway 6, a day after Christmas. Everything feels easy. I’m in the passenger seat of an old pickup. The guy driving hangs his arm out the window. I think he’s cool as hell. I didn’t get his name.
He smiles lazily, open and friendly. He’s wearing one of those flat-brimmed hip-hop caps. Not that I like hip-hop. His long hair is bleached blond by the sun. Some tattoos are visible here and there below his shirt. Full Kiwi accent at play. You want to like him. This pure, unapologetic individuality that defies the norm. Especially for a rule-following kid from Germany. Yeah, that’s me.
Sarah sits on the back seat right now. We met on the flight from Frankfurt. We kept traveling together through the North Island. Now we’re hitching a ride towards the Abel Tasman National Park on the South Island. Google promised one of the most picturesque stretches of coastal land on earth. So, naturally, we want to get there.
The truck itself is worn out. The upholstery is split and stained. I’d rather not look down. I do. Too often. But I feel good. I’m happy we caught a ride. I had never done this before coming to New Zealand. Hitchhiking. Thumbs out to get picked up by strangers. So many kind and interesting people stopped. This time, a pickup was the first to slow down. We climbed in. Grateful for the favor.
He tells us it’s great, what we’re doing. Young people, flying to the other end of the world. No return ticket. He always picks up hitchhikers. He likes doing good things, he says. Giving back to people. He believes in Karma. You reap what you sow. He’s really talkative in his chilled way. Karma is balance, he repeats. Good to balance evil.
For a second I wonder which evil. But he’s cool, and for these few kilometers I am feeling a little cooler myself. Simply because I’m sitting next to him. Cut me some slack. I was just twenty-four. And I’m still German.
“We’ll have to make a quick stop,” he says. Pick up his bro. Sure. Who are we to complain. We’re the cheap ones, riding on someone else’s diesel.
A few minutes later the bro gets in the back. I’m pretty sure no one ever mentioned his real name. He doesn’t say a word himself. He seems nervous. He doesn’t fit the tranquility inside the car.
Ten minutes later we stop outside a house in a random suburb. The bro, I’ll keep calling him that for lack of a better word, walks to the door. It only opens a few centimeters. He doesn’t go in. I can’t see who’s inside. So I look at the garden. It’s green, big, not looked after. The grass needed cutting at least a month ago, hedges overgrown in every direction. There are statues, stone and metal. Some look like art. Some look expensive, fancy. They feel out of place. The house is old. The sitting area on the porch isn’t. Chairs, a table, overly nice and modern. It doesn’t belong.
The bro comes back. He has something under his shirt. Clearly. Like, totally obvious. He tries to hide. I think it’s funny. He gets in and straightaway drops four, maybe five plastic bags of weed. A kilo each I guess. Maybe more. That is a lot of money. Tens of thousands of dollars. On the floor in the back, in the car with us now.
Sarah looks at me. Again, we are German. We follow the rules. I have never even broken any semi-serious one. Now I’m on the other side of the planet, just two weeks in. I’m in a car with that much weed and my brain goes wild. It runs through every scenario at once. What if he only picked us up as cover? Two polite foreigners, harmless, exactly what you’d want in the passenger seat if you were about to drive past a police car. I keep scanning outside. Are there any cops, maybe? There’s a tickling creeping up my spine. What if we get stopped. What if we get arrested. I’d Google it later. That much weed gets you in jail a couple of years. Will they believe we’re just hitchhikers? What will I say, what will Sarah say, what will my mother say. I’m scared. Numb.
I don’t say anything.
The guy doesn’t either. Well, about the weed. Besides that, he keeps the small talk up as if nothing ever happened. I can’t remember if I even answered. He hasn’t changed one bit. Is that what coolness really looks like? The bro is still nervous. Still hasn’t said a thing. He won’t.
Is that what he’s balancing? Karma.
Ten minutes later, maybe, fifteen, maybe twenty, he slowly pulls over. Drops us on the side of the road. Wishes us the best time in New Zealand. He means it, I feel it. Then the pickup is gone around a bend and it’s just us again. Sarah and I. A highway intersection, some buildings, not many people. My numbness is slowly fading.
We stand there. We talk quietly. Shouldn’t we report this to the police? You remember, we’re Germans. That’s hard to get rid of.
We don’t. He was very cool, wasn’t he? We put our thumbs back out.
Season Two · Backpacks · Story 2/12
Well, the story is done. You read it. You rode in the truck with us. Maybe laughed a little, thought about it. And that is it. The meaning is yours.
But, there is more. Much more. BEYOND will be published very soon. Stay tuned.