A Getaway Car Request

Someone was whispering my name. At first, I thought I was dreaming.

The voice persisted, tugging me out of sleep.

“Margo, Margo, it’s me, Dick J.”

I opened my eyes to the dark night and realized the voice was coming from outside my bedroom window.

“Dick J, what are you doing waking me up in the middle of the night?”

“I need the car keys,” he said. “I’m running away from home, and I need the car.”

“It’s the company car. You can’t have it to run away in.” “But I can’t walk to leave!” he pleaded. “No car keys.” I shut the window, muttered something unladylike, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

Dick J was a junior in high school, the son of the editor of the local newspaper my parents owned. I had promised my mother I’d come back after college to help at the paper until it sold, which meant I got caught up in the drama of the editor’s family, too.

That night was my first inkling of the restless, talented, complicated boy he was. He needed an escape route, but he sure didn’t need mine. He would eventually find his way—reporting on his experiences riding with the notorious Bandidos Motorcycle Club, marching in the 1960’s civil rights demonstrations in Alabama, interviewing laborers, teaching in universities, and even chronicling the Waco tragedy in one of his six books.

But back then? He was just a teenager outside my window, begging for the keys.

Little 

Voice