Jim Gallien had driven four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaska dawn. He looked like a teenager with tattered clothes and shaggy hair flecked with white. Jim drove on and the boy faded into the drifting snow.

            Jim’s muscles were sore after a long night in the factory and there was still twenty miles to go on the empty highway. He just wanted to get home to his wife.  He remembered the spices in the kitchen and how she used to wait for him until the sauces got cold, but every night he was later as he took on extra shifts and now he was never there.  Jim would get home early morning and she would be reading in her bed, trying to stay awake. If only he could escape into that book and she would see him still there between the pages.  

He turned up the heat in his old red truck and glanced in his rear view mirror, catching sight of the scar above his eyebrow. He remembered the hot flames, his parents, his house and life eaten up. At fifteen, his thumb was raised high on the snow covered street. He was half dead when a stranger found him.

 He stopped the car and waited for a second on the empty road before turning around. When he got there, the boy was on the ground shivering, eyes closed, his thumb slightly raised. His frozen hands couldn't open the car door. So Jim lifted him in.