Hitchhikers

They were two final year French students who decided to take a road trip down the length of South America.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but not today!  An hour ago their camper van had broken down and here they were, on the Lima to Santiago Highway, almost 2,000 kilometres from Lima or Santiago.

It was difficult to imagine a more remote place than this.  In every direction was only arid ground, it seemed like rain had never fallen on this rugged plain.   To the South were some snow capped mountains which gave the illusion of water somewhere in this hostile environment.

Carole, the younger of the two, kicked the wheel of their van savagely, cursing their bad luck.  Martine sat at the side of the road, drinking the last few gulps from their water bottle.  It had been hours since they had seen another vehicle and they hadn't passed a sizeable town since the day before yesterday!

Both girls being in a bad mood, they mutually decided not to talk to each other for a while.   The only sound they could hear apart from the hissing of steam from their knackered van was the sound of a buzzard high overhead.   Martine threw her empty water bottle at the bird in impotent fury; it missed by at least half a mile and thudded to the ground.

But suddenly they looked at each other!  The sound was distant and very faint at first, but soon unmistakable.  There was a car approaching!

The old banger finally came into sight; it was almost as ancient as the man driving it.   The car looked like an old American Chevrolet.  The driver was a very elderly man, dishevelled with a chequered shirt and crumpled old tie, wearing what had been a white panama hat but was now so dirty that it looked like a brown panama hat. 

The two girls looked at each other.   They couldn't imagine a stranger person to hitch a lift from.  But then other choices were in short supply today.

Martine flagged down the car, almost finding herself splattered over the bonnet as it slowly came to a halt. Perhaps the old man's reflexes were not what they had been, or maybe he just didn't give a damn!  But the car did come to a halt.  The car did not need air conditioning; it had no glass in half the windows.

Martine asked the wizened old man if he was travelling south.  There was a moments pause before he nodded slightly, indicating that he was.  She then plucked up the courage to ask if he would take them along.  Again there was a pause before the old man nodded his head slightly.  It was not an encouraging reception, but they had only two choices.   Get in the car, or wait here, wherever ‘here’ was.

After a moments hesitation they decided to get in the car, but both sitting in the back.  The wizened old man put his foot on the pedal and after a jolt they slowly drove off.

After a long wait at the roadside it was a relief to be moving again.  However the relief soon turned to mild exasperation as a long protracted silence ensued.  Clearly the old man was not much of a conversationalist. Being in a car with a silent stranger was not the most pleasant of experiences.

Martine tried to break the silence, stuck to the dashboard was a small effigy of a catholic saint.   Martine asked the old man which saint it was?  He looked at her in the rear view mirror; he had empty grey eyes which met hers only for a moment, before he looked down again.   He gave no reply only adjusting the statue on the dashboard slightly.  That was very unnerving, knowing that the man had understood the question but chose not to answer. He had not uttered a word since they got in the car.  In fact he had not uttered a word at all.

Martine noticed that the old man had tattoos on his old wrinkly arm. Perhaps they were related to the military? They all looked quite menacing, one was a serpent coiled round a bloody dagger. Another showed a human skull with a snake emerging from the eye socket.  She didn’t recognise them, but they were surely very old, because he was very old. 

A tattooed and silent old man, it seemed quite eerie.  But then he was taking them where they wanted to go.  But was he?  They had no way of telling for sure.  This countryside all looked the same.  South American desert scrubland, miles of arid ground, the occasional bush, but no other signs of life. Even the buzzard had disappeared. There also seemed to be no other traffic on this road.   Perhaps they had taken the wrong road miles back and were now lost in the immensity of the continent? They had taken the choice to get into the car; it had seemed like the only choice at the time.

It was very hot today and stuffy in the car, Carole was fighting hard not to dose off.  For a few minutes her eyelids grew too heavy and she fell asleep.  At first she wavered between being half asleep and awake, then finally she drifted off into sleep. It was not a very pleasant sleep.  She woke up with a jerk after having a particularly unpleasant dream.   She had dreamt that the old man had suddenly turned around grinning, reaching under his seat and producing a bloody knife, like the one displayed in his tattoo.

However when she woke she found that the car had stopped.

They were at a tiny and grubby roadside garage, just a couple of ramshackle buildings in the middle of nowhere.  But the first signs of human habitation they had seen for many miles.    Carole looked round, quite concerned.  Where was Martine? And where was the strange old man?

Carole quickly exited the vehicle, slamming the door behind her and went into the garage.  It was a cramped little cantina that doubled up as some kind of general store.  The shelves were sparsely stocked with stuff that looked out of date ten years ago.   The only person she could see was a rather fat behind the counter.  He wore an old straw hat and a string vest that was several sizes too small for him.  He was also smoking a cigar the odour of which seemed to resemble old socks. 

Carole went over to the counter and asked the man if she had seen the occupants of the car, another French girl and a wizened old man?  Unlike the old man, this fat shopkeeper was only too happy to speak; apparently he did not need to stop to breathe.  Pidgin English flowed from his mouth in streams; the challenge would be to get him to stop talking.

The old man was harmless it seemed.  He had been a soldier in Peru in the struggle against the Shining Path, a revolutionary/ terrorist movement.  The old man had been badly injured in a bomb-blast and now could neither speak nor hear.  Carole breathed a huge sigh of relief.  It seemed as if the old man was quite harmless, they had clearly misjudged the old fellow, judging him by appearance alone.

So Carole asked where were Martine and the old man?  Surely now they should thank the old man and apologise to him for their excessive suspicion.

The fat man, whose name was Carlos laughed.  He threw his head back and emitted a torrent of laughter that made his huge belly shake up and down.  That was where the problem lay it seemed………..

Although the old man was harmless……………Carlos did not possess such innocence.

 He lit up another cigar, puffing a little wisp of grey smoke into Carole’s face. 

‘Your companions were here!’   He said with a laugh……………..’but now………………..!’.    He laughed again, a hideous primeval laugh that made Carole’s skin crawl. 

Had she run out of choices?