Published: August 15, 2008 11:09 am      

‘Nikki’ — A harsh lesson learned, right here in Beckley

Fear can lend a kind of glitter to the unknown, even in the mind of a veteran photojournalist, sipping a cup of mocha at a local coffee shop.

I promised myself long ago that someday I would do a photo-essay on the street children of Seattle, Wash., where it is believed that literally thousands of runaway teens from all over the West Coast have taken to the streets in their flight for obscurity, preferring a kind of dark, rough-living, vagabond existence to the well-lighted comforts of home.

Only this isn’t Seattle or anywhere else at the far end of the concrete Interstate jungle. It’s Beckley, W.Va.

Still, I noticed a young female standing on the curb as I entered the full-of-go establishment on a recent summer afternoon.

A quarter of an hour later she was still there.

Perhaps it was just the reporter in me, or a rising curiosity that I’ve honed over the years. I couldn’t just walk away.

“Are you waiting for something?” I blurted in the direction of the seemingly out-of-place teen.

Even her 5-foot-8-inch frame couldn’t mask her childish figure. This pale, pretty, dark-haired girl looked no older than 14.

“I’m just waiting for my ride,” her answer came in a drawling, timid eighth-grader-like voice.

“I’m no child. I’m a woman,” she affirmed. “A married woman — almost. I’m 18.”

“Then I guess you’re not lost,” I stammered.

“Lost — heavens, no!” she declared. “What makes you think that?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just that young women usually don’t stand on the curb with their bag in their hand and their eyes on idling18-wheelers.”

She countered: “Actually, I am waiting for someone — but I’m not in any harm. I can tell you that.”

She asked me what I did. A photographer, I told her.

“Are you a teacher?”

I hadn’t expected that question.

“How did you know?”

“You have that ease. I figured you were a teacher. You have the look.”

Well, I have been accused of worse. But she was right.

“I’d like to take a few pictures of you before you go,” I said. “I’m doing a photo-essay on girls who run away from home. I know you aren’t a runaway, at least I don’t think you are. But I’d still like to photograph you.”

“Okay,” she said, “if you really want to.”

My digital camera clicked away for a few seconds while she turned first toward me and then to a row of semis parked behind her.

After I finished, I asked her if she had had anything to eat. “I’m not hungry,” she intoned, in a soft, cheerless voice, letting some of her dark hair dangle in front of her luminous, almond-shaped eyes.

Sometimes she let out a shy smile, clearly self-conscious about her childlike innocence. For a moment, her sallow cheeks were almost rosy with the promise of hot food and companionship.

Just the same, I told her, I was going into the restaurant to get a hotdog and a cold drink. “Can I get you something?” I asked off-handedly.

“That’d be Okay, I guess,” she said.

I made my way toward the restaurant and ordered two hotdogs and two drinks.

On the way in, I wondered about the young female who masqueraded as a grown-up and seemed to hold her trust of strangers in her two hands.

I thought of the many thousands of teens that run away each year to a life of abuse, cruelty and possibly crime. I wanted to turn to someone, even a stranger, for help. I discounted the risks of helping a wayward teen, some mother’s child, in her flight across the friendless miles.

The apprehension I felt inside for perhaps committing a trespass against the laws of the land in no way impeded my decision to aid the victim of a seemingly inscrutable fate.

Secretly, though, I hoped to see a waiting vehicle with loving parents and adoring siblings parked near the curb when I returned with the food and drinks. And yet, a queasy uneasiness emerged in the pit of my stomach. Should I have called the authorities? My cell phone lay on the console of my car.

How was I going to resolve the issue in a manner that was fair and wise?

When I came out to look for the ebony-eyed damsel that I had left by the side of the road, however, I realized that a resolution wasn’t even necessary.

The young woman had politely moved on.

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Top o’ the morning!

— Blankenship is a columnist for The Register-Herald.

E-mail: jabbb@suddenlink.net