I told a version of this story at this month’s Tell.
Ted Bundy lured women to his Volkswagen Beetle. Innocent, unsuspecting girls who were mostly just trying to help a guy they thought was in need.
I wasn’t thinking about this as I drove, alone, down a rural road after 10 on a Thursday night. It seemed like I had just past the civilization of suburban strip malls, as if on cue everything grew darker in at the exact moment my gas light came on. I had 80 more miles to go. I would have to stop.
I didn’t know that route and was weighing my options in my head when I spotted an off-brand gas station on my right. Without hesitation I pulled in.
By the time I was born, Ted Bundy was in jail and would stay there until he was executed shortly after my eight birthday. I can tell you for sure that I knew nothing about him during that period when we were both alive at the same time (because my parents were doing their job sheltering me) but Ted Bundy like all the other threats to young women – real or imagined – becomes part of our culture, our collective conscious. He’s the reason we receive forwarded emails from the older women in our lives cautioning us to walk to our cars with our hands balled in fists. Or, in the presence of a would-be assailant, try to gnaw on your shoulder because rapists and murderers don’t like crazy people.
The gas station was pretty well-lit, standing in sharp contrast to the dark nothingness that surrounded it on all sides. I got out, clutching my cell phone, and opened the fuel tank when the engine of a van suddenly cut on and rolled towards me.
“Do you have a credit card?” shouted the driver – a man in his late forties.
“No.” I responded, holding my credit card. I paused. “I mean, yes. But, it’s mine.” I knew the situation was strange and had I actually read all those forwarded emails I may have been scared, but in the moment, I didn’t want to be accused of being a liar.
The thing that’s most terrifying to me about Ted Bundy is that he used people’s kindness against them. He’d often don a sling or use crutches and then fumble with books or a briefcase and ask his victim to help him carry his things to his Beetle where he’d budgeon them with a crowbar and stow them in his car.
“We don’t have a credit card,” the van driver went on. “We just got out of orthopedic surgeon’s -”
“I had foot surgery!” a younger man suddenly appeared in the passenger’s seat.
“We didn’t realize the gas station would be closed and we need gas. Could we give you cash and use your credit card?”
“How much do you want!” The young man opened the door and leaped from the cab. “Ten dollars?” he asks the driver.
He hobbles towards me, left foot in a bandage and shoves two worn five dollar bills into my hands before I can say no. Then he sits down on the curb, tells me his foot hurts and begins unwrapping the dressing from surgery.
“Get back in the car.” the driver says sternly. And the young man does.
I finished pumping my gas. I walked over to his pump and swiped my credit card. I stood there to make sure he only got $10 worth of gas, and that I think, is the strangest part of the story.
He pumped the gas and thanked me. We got into our cards and drove away. And that is when I thought of all the things that could of happened all the ways that that night could have gone terribly wrong. But, they didn’t. And I wasn’t scared.
There will always be Ted Bundys. Real monsters out there to be scared of. But there will also always be strangers in need. I’m not trying to be careless or naive, but I’ll chose to not be afraid.
