The Accident...

The one with a hat came out of his front door and having closed it, double locked the mortise. He set off down the path, shut the gate behind him and walked about twenty paces down the street, when he stopped, retraced his steps, and went back inside. He re-emerged some three minutes later and walked to the bus stop. Had he not gone back indoors and wasted those three minutes, doing whatever – getting a handkerchief, picking up his mobile, locking the back door – he would have caught the bus and been alive today (in all probability).

The bald one would appear to have had no chance, as he was driving the truck. But then again, he had not been rostered for run in the first place, and might well never have been there at all.

The woman was always there, for she worked in the shop. And of course, the truck, at least in theory, could have gone out of control elsewhere, in which case only the bald one would have been involved, and then only if, as he did, he volunteered to swap his shift. And of course, if the bus had been running late then the one in the hat might have caught it and been well out of it and safe further along the road.

So, looked at in one way, it was quite unlikely the truck would career down the hill, over the bus-stop, and into the shop window, killing all three of them, but in point of fact this was what happened.

The bald truck driver had only been living in the city for a little over two weeks. He had arrived from the South looking for work – any work. He got a job almost immediately as a truck-driver by presenting a forged Heavy Goods Vehicle License successfully. He was an illegal, and his identity papers were forged also. He had never driven a truck before. He had volunteered for the run because it looked fairly straightforward and local and he thought it would be an ideal training run.

The hat-wearing victim had been an obsessive compulsive since adolescence. A large part of his waking day was taken up with checking and re-checking his movements. He worked as a chronometer repairman, which meant of course he had to spend a greater part of his waking day checking and re-checking movements. He was also obsessive compulsive and had narrowly missed death on a number of previous occasions, as we all do.

The woman was a sad case. Her personal life was arid and empty except for the cat, and she liked to work in the window of the shop because she said it gave her an opportunity to see the people going about their business or just waiting for the bus. She had once met the obsessive compulsive, and even spoken to him, but she did not recognise him. It was when she had had her watch repaired, which was quite a long time ago.

The obsessive compulsive had also met the bald truck driver before – when he had had his watch repaired the day he got the job. It is possible the obsessive compulsive recognised him just before impact, though it would have made no difference. The fact though that he was known to both of the others made the occurrence even more unlikely, but did not stop it happening.

The truck driver had a serious drink problem. This was one of the reasons he was looking for work in a new town. He had in fact caused another fatal accident previously, this time running over some people on a zebra crossing while speeding, drunk, in a sports car. He was in the south then, where he also did not have a valid driving licence.

The woman liked her work, and rarely took a day off. This morning however, her cat had been sick. She was on the point of calling in sick and ringing the vet for an appointment for the cat, when the cat threw up a fur-ball practically at her feet as she stood with the telephone receiver already in her hand. So, she cleaned up the mess instead and went to work as normal.

Most watches today are not chronometers, but rather are digital. As a result, the obsessive compulsive had been getting less and less work as the years went by. Some days no one at all came into his shop. As he was already well past retiring age, he sometimes wondered to himself why he bothered going in at all. In fact, he had had a pretty bad fall, and grazed his shins, while checking he really had turned off the gas, but not noticing the crate behind him. He felt quite unwell, but he felt he had to go in, as he always did. The crate was there because he had used it to stand on to check the ceiling light fitting, which turned out to be OK. Or at least he thought so.

The truck driver had been bald since a train he was driving as a young man smacked through a pedestrian crossing having missed a signal. It was in a rural part of the south and there was, thankfully, no one about, but it made a mess of the gates, and his record, and gave him a great fright. His hair fell out in clumps. It was probably then, when he was fired for the first time, all those years ago, his dependence on alcohol began.

The woman knew that once the cat had brought up the fur-ball the cause of the vomiting was gone unless he had two or more fur-balls, which was unlikely, though not impossible. She was not so sure because she did not really understand her cat’s digestion – few people do, and she brushed him somewhat compulsively every evening because it might help, and in any case they both enjoyed it. She thought she had seen a flea, and had written a note on the board on the door to remind her to get some flea stuff from the Vet at the weekend. This cat was really her whole life, though he cared a jot for her once he had been fed and brushed and stroked. Actually, he had quite a nasty streak and regularly killed birds! He had nearly been knocked down himself more than once. But then, he had nine lives.

The obsessive compulsive’s light fitting was anything but O.K. It was only because the crate was rubberised plastic, his shoe soles were rubber (he was a vegan) and he touched the fitting wearing rubber gloves, which he had been wearing while washing the dishes, that he was not electrocuted, or at least badly shocked, because it was live, and the gloves were still wet. He should have known this as the lamp holder was burnt black and sparking a lot and the bulbs kept blowing. This was what he had come back in for, but as he was getting on, his memory was not what it was and he could not remember what it was he came back to check. The delay of course meant he missed the bus.

As a young woman, she had been very pretty and had many admirers. One time a young Californian had proposed to her and asked her to accompany him to the States and make a new life there. He did not like cats though, so she declined. He was later killed in an earthquake, so in one way it was just as well. Sometimes, in the evenings, she let her mind dwell on it a bit too much, which was not good for her. She did not really like anyone who her cats (she had had a succession of them) did not like, and they liked very few people, which is why she was lonely.

The obsessive compulsive only became a Vegan because of a chance reading of The New Scientist in his barber’s. Never one for doing things by half – rather the reverse – he went for it whole hog, or rather wholeheartedly. It was when he threw out all her leather boots and shoes his wife had left with the kids, and although his health was better, it was all downhill from there on in, so to speak. By the time of the accident his wife was already dead, and he had lost all contact with the children, none of whom were even vegetarian.

The truck driver liked to play chess. He was good and won championships. Where he came from, chess was an important game. He was disappointed that here in the North it did not attract the same support or cachet. He had a series of computer chess partners with whom he played in the evenings. He had a particularly knotty problem with one game, and it was this he was considering when the truck crashed.

The shop in which the woman worked was an Internet café. This enabled her to keep in touch with her sister who had gone to New Zealand many years previously to marry a sheep farmer. They had survived many earthquakes, possibly because they could look out for each other. She was actually reading an e-mail from her nephew, about the sheep, when the truck crashed.

The truck driver was of course not really a truck driver, which was part of the problem. He mainly drank only in the evenings on weekdays. So drink was not really part of the problem, although he drank a lot in the evenings, and was probably hung-over this morning, which may explain why he snorted two lines of coke in the washroom before climbing into the cab in the yard at the top of the hill.

All things considered, this was an accident waiting to happen.

The cat went to a sanctuary where he lived out his other lives. The Internet Café owner claimed huge insurance compensation, retired to the country, and the Café never re-opened as such. The truck company went bankrupt, and the dealers in the washroom had to move on. The bus company rebuilt the bus stop and carried on as if nothing untoward had happened. The obsessive had left full and detailed instructions as to what to do with his ashes, which was just as well. Life, in other words, went on.

© Dave Cuffe 2025

2002