Hitcher – Simon Armitage

Continuation into Prose

          Driving through Leeds, it was just an average day when I picked him up. He didn’t look too well. Tired? Stressed? We’ll never know now. The movement of the car felt natural like the wind. The expressionless faces we drove past; the mind-numbingly grey buildings and flats just drove more anger into our minds.

          He told me that he was following the sun, to West from East, with nothing but a toothbrush, and the good earth for a bed. Those words meant a lot to me: Good earth. I respected him, but I couldn’t go back now. So as we drove along the long windy road, we sat there silently, no radio, just the low rumbling of the engine and the occasional bump as the car hit a stone. We drove for about two hours; the traffic was at a standstill for twenty minutes at a time; with constant silence only broken by the odd murmur by the hitcher, only to be ignored by me.

          Once the road was quiet enough, we were just leaving Harrogate by this time; I let him have it. Round the head just once, and then I grabbed the krooklok. Bang! Crash! You could hear his skull being crushed as I hit him with it six times. Still on the never ending road, I lent him against the already grimy door. I sped towards the A1 and finally, when the time was right I opened the door and helped him fall out, and as he bounced down the verge I laughed, but then I realised. With a sudden halt I stopped the car; I could hear the abuse of other drivers who were swerving past me and the constant honking of horns. I didn’t care. I started the car again and as I drove off I reflected, if there was the slightest chance he survived, he could walk from there. As I drove off into the sunset I knew that my swarming anger had boiled down. I could possibly, finally, live a typical life.

I had to get rid of this car. It dawned on me that the next morning the police would be hunting me down so I had to escape fast. Someone must have seen me. I hastily sped down to Watford Gap where I nervously stole a different car, an Audi A4, navy blue. I hurried down to Dover and abruptly hitting a massive dilemma: Leave all my possessions, wife, kids and my job to live in France, or get the life-sentence. I decided speedily and boarded the ferry by foot and sat there anxiously while we crossed the channel. People were looking at me nervously and giving me dodgy looks. I tried to pay no attention to them and get some sleep. However, my guilty conscience kept nagging at me.

On arriving at Calais I was dead scared. I explored the coastal town as much as I could, but I was too exhausted. I found quite a busy road and stuck my thumb out as the intermittent car drove past. My fingers had grown numb from the cold and I started to wonder if the French understood the sign of the Hitcher. Several cars had driven past and I had started to give up. But, as I tried for what was going to be my last time, the car slowed. My happiness was quickly overcome by fear; nevertheless I examined the driver and got into the back of the run-down car. I remember thinking to myself it would be an improvement on sleeping outside.

          On this journey, as well as managing to get an hour of sleep, recalling the previous day; it gave me ample time to think. Although we were the same age, we were two very different men. Just a family man, I knew my way around places whereas, he was an absent-minded man, following the compass with nothing to live or die for. My reflections were disturbed by an English voice on the radio about a murder that had taken place in Harrogate.

          Sweat came gushing out of my burning forehead, would they find me?